Have you ever experienced a strong compulsion to head for the hills? In your dreams have you ever pictured yourself running free over some beautiful moorland landscape, with the wind in your hair and the heather tickling you elsewhere? Perhaps, until now, you have put it down to eating cheese before going to bed? Well, maybe it is the Call of the North - inviting you to explore the Pennines. Maybe it is time to set aside life's problems, step into the footprints of the heroes of old and lose yourself in some exquisite wilderness. Join Peter Lancaster as he dodges death and disaster travelling the Pennines, with only 'Auntie' (his 1963 Rover) for company...apart from his wife Jane, sheepdog and pint of beer. When life is an uphill struggle, why not pause and take a look at the view for a while?

Embark on a global journey with Charles Koopman, an intrepid American teacher who has traversed over one hundred countries, gathering profound insights along the way. In “Man in the Mirror,” Koopman delves into the rich tapestry of cultures he’s encountered, illuminating their unique approaches to life’s challenges and the attitudes that shape their perspectives. As a self-described “man without a home,” Koopman intimately understands the nuances of diverse societies, revealing how certain universal truths emerge amidst cultural diversity. Through the exploration of fifty maxims, both familiar and obscure, he unpacks their relevance to the myriad landscapes he’s explored, from the bustling streets of South America to the tranquil villages of China, the enigmatic bazaars of the Middle East, and the vibrant tapestry of Africa, juxtaposed with his experiences in his homeland, the United States.

Koopman fearlessly confronts the blurred lines between truth and fiction in today’s media landscape, using age-old adages to shed light on the complexities of perception. By challenging entrenched stereotypes—such as the notion of Africa as a land of desolation—he urges readers to embrace empathy and abandon preconceived notions. Drawing from his immersive firsthand experiences, Koopman encourages readers to step outside their comfort zones and embrace the wisdom of diverse perspectives. “Man in the Mirror” is not merely a reflection on the world as it exists, but a compelling call to action for greater understanding, compassion, and solidarity. In a world plagued by discord and inequality, Koopman’s poignant exploration underscores the imperative of empathy, offering a roadmap towards a more harmonious and equitable future.

The self-published book is inspired by fifty proverbs that the author explains through his own experiences of the countries he has visited. Like his father, another globetrotting educator, Charles can offer readers highly philosophical insights about the world around us and what makes the human race such a fascinating topic. If there is one thing his travels have taught him, it is that every moment should be lived to its fullest as opportunity may never knock again.

To journey through South Africa is to step into a world where beauty is woven into every horizon. This is a country whose landscapes defy description: from the golden savannahs of the Highveld and the emerald vineyards of the Cape to the untamed wilds of Kruger and the dramatic meeting of two oceans at the continent’s edge. South Africa’s uniqueness lies not only in its breathtaking scenery, but in the vibrant tapestry of cultures, languages, and traditions that infuse every encounter with meaning. Here, luxury is found in the stillness of dawn as elephants roam free, in the exquisite comfort of lodges designed to honour the land, and in the knowledge that each experience is anchored in a deep respect for nature and community. The country’s commitment to conservation and sustainability is a way of life – one that invites visitors to become stewards of its wild beauty. To explore South Africa is to be changed by it: to witness a place where grandeur and spirituality coexist, where adventure and serenity are never far apart, and where every moment is a celebration of life’s richness and possibility.
 
The warmth and resilience of South Africa’s people and their deep connection to the land creates encounters that resonate long after departure. Ubuntu, the unique philosophy that ‘we are because of others,’ shapes not only human relationships, but also the approach to conservation and sustainable tourism that defines the country’s finest establishments.
 
The lodges, hotels, and retreats featured in ‘South Africa’s Best’ represent more than luxury accommodation; they all embody a commitment to environmental stewardship and community empowerment by demonstrating how exceptional hospitality can coexist with conservation efforts. Here, solar-powered suites overlook pristine wilderness, organic gardens supply world-class kitchens, and tourism revenue directly supports local communities and wildlife protection initiatives. These properties are bastions of hope, demonstrating that luxury and purpose can flourish together, and that travel can be a force for good.
 
This edition has been enriched through our collaboration with Ardmore, South Africa’s celebrated design studio, whose distinctive ceramics, textiles, and homeware are inspired by the country’s flora, fauna, and folklore. Ardmore reflects a commitment to artistic excellence and social upliftment, embodying the philosophy of Ubuntu. Their work has transformed local talent into internationally recognised artistry while supporting conservation efforts.
 
Our partnership with Steadfast Africa further enhances this collection. As a boutique luxury travel company, Steadfast Africa curates bespoke journeys within South Africa that showcase the country’s most exceptional destinations. Their expertise ensures seamless access to the world-class lodges, exclusive reserves, and immersive cultural experiences featured in this edition. Steadfast Africa ensures that travellers are able to become active participants in preserving the country’s natural heritage and supporting the communities that call these landscapes home.
 
Whether tracking rhino on foot with expert guides, dining on farm-to-table cuisine under the stars, or participating in meaningful cultural exchanges, each featured destination invites guests to engage deeply and mindfully with both nature and heritage. What sets these luxury destinations apart is their shared ethos: a dedication to preserving the country’s wild beauty and uplifting its people, ensuring that South Africa’s wonders will endure for generations to come.
 
‘South Africa’s Best’ gives readers the opportunity to embark on a journey where every page is infused with purpose, gratitude, and the promise of lasting change. In compiling this edition, our hope is to unite travellers who share a love for this remarkable country and a desire to make a meaningful impact. This book is both a tribute and a call to action: to honour and protect the land, people, and wildlife that make South Africa truly extraordinary.

Read the powerful account of one woman's struggle to reshape her identity when all normality has fallen away. When lifelong bird-lover Hannah Bourne-Taylor moved with her husband to Ghana seven years ago she couldn't have anticipated how her life would be forever changed by her unexpected encounters with nature and the subsequent bonds she formed. Plucked from the comfort and predictability of her life before, Hannah struggled to establish herself in her new environment, striving to belong in the rural grasslands far away from home. In this challenging situation, she was forced to turn inwards and interrogate her own sense of identity, however in the animal life around her, and in two wild birds in particular, Hannah found a source of solace and a way to reconnect with the world in which she was living. Fledgling is a portrayal of adaptability, resilience and self-discovery in the face of isolation and change, fuelled by the quiet power of nature and the unexpected bonds with animals she encounters. Hannah encourages us to reconsider the conventional boundaries of the relationships people have with animals through her inspiring and very beautiful glimpse ofwhat is possible when we allow ourselves to connect to the natural world. Full of determination and compassion, Fledgling is apowerful meditation on our instinctive connection to nature. It shows that even the tiniest of birds can teach us what is important in life and how to embrace every day.

Celebrating a "golden age" of travel, this book retraces the steps of a Grand Tour of South East Asia from the turn of the 20th century to the present day. The Romance of the Grand Tour explores the living heritage of 12 exotic port cities: from Rangoon (Yangon), through the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore and the old Dutch East Indies cities of Batavia (Jakarta) and Surabaya, via Bangkok to former Indochina at Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Phnom Penh and Hanoi, through Manila to Hong Kong. Drawing on archival images and accounts as well as present-day photographs and illustrations, the book captures the romance and excitement of these early Grand Tourists, while presenting contemporary scenes and experiences for 21st-century travellers determined to seek out the legacy of a bygone era.

‘Witty and fascinating … a guide book that can't help but inspire’ independent.co.uk Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris, and Shanghai to the stunning desert solitude of Oman’s Empty Quarter – and many places beyond. In World Travel, a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives readers an introduction to some of his favorite places – in his own words. Featuring essential advice on how to get there, what to eat, where to stay and, in some cases, what to avoid. Additionally, each chapter includes illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook. Supplementing Bourdain’s words are a handful of essays by friends, colleagues, and family that tell even deeper stories about a place, including sardonic accounts of traveling with Bourdain by his brother, Chris; a guide to Chicago’s best cheap eats by legendary music producer Steve Albini, and more. ‘An enduring embodiment of Bourdain’s love for the whole world and a reminder of how to stack our priorities the next time we’re able to follow in his footsteps’ New York Times

Die "ver paaie" in hierdie teks (wat in 1949 vir die eerste keer verskyn het) verwys na 'n reis wat die vertellende P.J. Schoeman deur die Kaokoveld in Suidwes-Afrika onderneem het. Deur die soektog na 'n wilde perd ontwikkel die reis egter in 'n verkenning van die gees en word die uiterlike gebeure met die romantiese verlange en die strewe na 'n onvervulde droom verbind.

Dr Joan Louwrens was always drawn to wild places, which were balm to her soul. When her husband died, leaving her alone with two small daughters to raise, she threw herself wholeheartedly into ‘adventure medicine’, seeking out the world’s most remote corners – on land and at sea – to practise her healing, both her own and others.

Working in wild places from the Kruger Park to the Australian Outback, the Atlantic Ocean islands, and both the south and north poles, ‘Doctor Joan’ dealt with a vast range of medical issues, from rabies to deep-vein thrombosis, childbirth to wisdom-tooth extraction, catatonia to depression.

Showing an eagerness to learn and a humility that isn’t always a given in her profession, and with a wry eye and a sympathetic outlook, Joan Louwrens has written a memoir that’s a poignant and often funny story of a life lived to the full

One of Newsweek's 6 best travel books of the last decade. Winner Guild of Food Writers, Food and Travel Award 2018. Winner Best Food Book of 2017, Gourmand Cookbook Awards. Shortlisted for the Art of Eating Prize. Shortlisted for the IACP, Culinary Travel Book Award. Award-winning food and wine writer and photographer Carla Capalbo has travelled across Georgia collecting recipes and gathering stories from traditional food and wine producers in this stunning but little-known country, nestled between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea. The result is a beautifully illustrated cookbook and personal travel guide. Meet Georgia's best chefs and cooks and sample their vibrant, colourful cuisine, including vegetables blended with walnuts and aromatic herbs, subtly spiced stews and the irresistible cheese-filled khachapuri breads that are served on every table. Georgia is one of the world's oldest winemaking areas, with wines traditionally made in clay qvevri buried in the ground. These wines are some of today's most soughtafter by fans of natural and organic viticulture

WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime. Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work, Robert Macfarlane takes us up into the mountains: to experience their shattering beauty, the fear and risk of adventure, and to explore the strange impulses that have for centuries lead us to the world's highest places.

In Afskeid van Europa lewer Karel Schoeman verslag van sy laaste twee besoeke aan Nederland, Duitsland en Oostenryk gedurende die herfs van 2011 en 2013. Dit is veral die stede Amsterdam, Berlyn, Dresden, Salzburg en Wene wat aandag kry en ook met Schoeman se vermoe om mense en plekke wat hy waarneem, in woorde tot gestalte te bring. By dit alles is daar ’n ondertoon van heimwee en gelatenheid omdat die skrywer voortdurend bewus is daarvan dat dit werklik sy laaste besoeke is en hy dikwels aan sy ouderdom herinner word: “‘Elderly,’ lees ek op my vliegkaartjie, ‘can’t walk long distance can sit gate close 15 minutes prior to departure.’ Dit is ek.” Maar afgesien van die element van afskeid, is dit Schoeman se belesenheid en sy vermoe om hede en verlede te skakel wat opval en hierdie boek ’n ryk leeservaring maak. Nie alleen die politieke geskiedenis nie, maar ook die verhale van die gewone mens soos dit in die letterkunde uitgebeeld is, word in verband gebring met die strate, parke, kerke en paleise van die groot stede wat hy besoek. Onvermydelik skryf hy oor die twee wereldoorloe se impak op mens en omgewing, maar ook die vasberade inisiatiewe om te restoureer en te herstel in stede soos Berlyn en Dresden. Die hede met sy massatoerisme, die gewonde daaglikse gang van sake en veral ook die tipiese geregte van die plekke wat hy besoek, verseker dat die boek vir eietydse reisigers ook relevant is.

In hierdie boeiende dagboek doen Johan Badenhorst self verslag oor sy span se reis van 20 000 km deur die ooste van Afrika, met besoeke aan plekke soos Zambie, Tanzanie, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenia, Ethiopie, Somaliland, Djiboeti, Eritrea, die Soedan en Egipte. Dit is ’n plakboek propvol asemrowende foto’s deur Gideon du Preez Swart, kaarte en nuttige inligting vir beide die ervare sowel as aspirantreisiger.

W.A de Klerk was een van die voortreflikste literêre joernaliste in Afrikaans. In Drie Swerwers In Suidwes vertel hy die verhaal van ’n reis wat hy en sy reisgenote onderneem het deur Suidwes-Afrika in 1948.

Hulle volg die voetspore van die Duitse geoloë Henno Martins en Hermann Korn wat in die Namib gaan skuil het tydens die Tweede Wêreldoorlog om die interneringskampe te ontsnap. Sy lewendige verteltrant laat dié veelbewoë stuk geskiedenis uit die stof van ou geskrifte opstaan.

Dit is ’n rygeskakeerde boek vol wetenswaardighede, lewenslustigheid en lewenswysheid.

It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor.

She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance.

So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.

C. Johan Bakkes is die geliefde skrywer van aweregse reisjoernale. Twintig jaar ná die verskyning van C. Johan Bakkes se eerste boek, Moertoe die vreemde in tref dit weer die rak – nie slegs as heruitgawe nie, die skrywer het bygereis en bygewerk. Dit is ’n terugblik sowel as nuwe ervarings/ gewaarwordings soos net Bakkes dit kan verhaal.