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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > General
A Cult Classic, "The Way of the World" is one of the most beguiling
travel books ever written. Reborn from the ashes of a Pakistan
rubbish heap, it tells of a friendship between a writer and an
artist, forged on an impecunious, life-enhancing journey from
Serbia to Afghanistan in the 1950s. On one level it is a candid
description of a road journey, on another a meditation on travel as
a journey towards the self, all written by a sage with a golden pen
and a wide infectious smile. It is published here for the first
time in English with the Vernet drawings which are such a dynamic
part of its whole.
With an introduction by novelist David Vann
Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild examines the true story of Chris McCandless, a young man, who in 1992 walked deep into the Alaskan wilderness and whose SOS note and emaciated corpse were found four months later.
Internationally bestselling author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer explores the obsession which leads some people to discoverthe outer limits of self, leave civilization behind and seek enlightenment through solitude and contact with nature.
In 2007, Into the Wild was adapted as a critically acclaimed film, directed by Sean Penn and Emile Hirsch and Kristen Stewart.
Seeking a temporary escape from the city and a world gone mad, Alan
Brown plots out a personal challenge: an epic coast-to-coast trip
through the lonely interior of the Highlands. He traverses paths
historic and new, eschewing creature comforts and high-tech gear,
trusting his (mostly) serviceable bike and his own skills. Armed
with the essentials and a sense of curiosity, he discovers more
about nature, people, our country, risk and himself than he ever
thought possible. Alan traces a route from Argyllshire's Loch Etive
across remote Rannoch moors, dramatic Grampian terrain and the
beautiful glens of Strathspey to reach the Moray Firth at Findhorn.
Ready for all weathers and obstacles, he succumbs to the hypnotic
daily routine of ride, eat, sleep, repeat. He's savouring the
landscapes, the wildlife and the solitude, and relishing the
self-reliance. He is also picking up clues to past lives and
discovering how the land has been altered by industry and game
sports or, sometimes, conserved for wildlife and trees.
Cairngorms: A Secret History is a series of journeys exploring
barely known human and natural stories of the Cairngorm Mountains.
It looks at a unique British landscape, its last great wilderness,
with new eyes. History combines with travelogue in a vivid account
of this elemental scenery. There have been rare human incursions
into the Cairngorm plateau, and Patrick Baker tracks them down. He
traces elusive wildlife and relives ghostly sightings on the summit
of Ben Macdui. From the search for a long-forgotten climbing
shelter and the locating of ancient gem mines, to the discovery of
skeletal aircraft remains and the hunt for a mysterious
nineteenth-century aristocratic settlement, he seeks out the
unlikeliest and most interesting of features in places far off the
beaten track. The cultural and human impact of this stunning
landscape and reflections on the history of mountaineering are the
threads which bind this compelling narrative together.
The Sea of Zanj has been a place of myth and mystery since time immemorial, and its islands have captured countless imaginations. Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues, the Seychelles and Madagascar – Thomas Victor Bulpin recounts their stories and histories; stories of strange animals and exotic places, of pirates and runaway slaves, of forgotten kingdoms and deadly welcomes.
Much has changed in the islands since Islands in a forgotten sea first appeared in the 1950s, and the author has left an invaluable account of an enchanting and often brutal world far removed from the air-conditioned resorts and package tours so familiar to tourists today.
With the help of a Maratha nobleman, Mark Shand buys an elephant
named Tara and rides her over six hundred miles across India to the
Sonepur Mela, the world's oldest elephant market. From Bhim, a
drink-racked mahout, Shand learned to ride and care for her. From
his friend Aditya Patankar he learned Indian ways. And with Tara,
his new companion, he fell in love. "Travels on my Elephant" is the
story of their epic journey across India, from packed highways to
dusty back roads where communities were unchanged for millennia. It
is also a memorable, touching account of Tara's transformation from
scrawny beggar elephant to star attraction, and of the romance that
developed between her and her owner Mark Shand. For what began as
an adventurous whim has developed, decades later, into a life of
campaigning to provide vital migratory corridors for these
magnificent creatures whose habitat is under constant assault from
man.
'Bags of fish for cats - 50 pence'. So it was written, on a
chalkboard sign outside a fresh fishmonger's, under the arches of
the raised promenade along the beachfront of England's newly super
trendy and booming seaside City of Brighton and Hove. In Brighton
Babylon, PK Heights is a Grade II listed maisonette flat in one of
the City's up and coming Regency Squares that provides the elegant
base for a series of interlocking true stories about the city's
people and their lives. Newly relocated from London, Brighton
resident Peter Jarrette combines and intertwines his stories, using
a colourful palette that is one part Brokeback Beach and three
parts seawater. He vividly portrays a selection of suspect
characters and shocking episodes; much like the curious bits and
pieces that might be on offer in one of those bags of fish for
cats. To the author's consternation, the residents and visitors are
a thoroughly peculiar and motley crew. This former string of south
coast fishing villages with a royal and decadent past may now be a
thoroughly cosmopolitan City and even aspire to being an
international hub, but it has not yet lost its renowned and
celebrated dark side, far from it. Brighton Babylon is populated by
a cast of unsavoury hobos and bother boys; Yardie obsessed golden
shower webmasters from nearby Crawley; mistakenly racist London
hairdressers; strangely scripted market researchers; extemporised
short-haul cabin crew; pushy airline First Officers; politically
incorrect new food emporia; a vengeful, crumbling resort Pier and a
locally obsessed, cat-mad press pack.
Set in the urban pastoral of an East London postcode, Feral Borough
asks what it means to call a place home, and how best to share that
home with its non-human inhabitants. Meryl Pugh reimagines the wild
as 'feral', recording the fauna and flora of Leytonstone in prose
as incisive as it is lyrical. Here, on the edge of the city, red
kite and parakeets thrive alongside bluebell and yarrow, a muntjac
deer is glimpsed in the undergrowth, and an escaped boa constrictor
appears on the High Road. In this subtle, captivating book - part
herbarium, part bestiary and part memoir - Pugh explores the
effects of loss, and lockdown, on human well-being, conjuring the
local urban environment as a site for healing and connection. 'A
subtle, heartfelt and affecting book about home, the city and the
self -- Pugh reminds us that nowhere, however urban, is without
nature; that wherever we go, the intricate web of life continues to
shape and change us.' Rebecca Tamas
A brilliantly witty and intelligent memoir of the adventures,
discoveries, rescues, and narrow escapes of Martha Gellhorn, one of
America's most important war correspondents and the third wife of
Ernest Hemingway. "Gellhorn is incapable of writing a dull
sentence". The Times (London) "Martha Gellhorn was so fearless in a
male way, and yet utterly capable of making men melt", writes New
Yorker literary editor Bill Buford. As a journalist, Gellhorn
covered every military conflict from the Spanish Civil War to
Vietnam and Nicaragua. She also bewitched Eleanor Roosevelt's
secret love and enraptured Ernest Hemingway with her courage as
they dodged shell fire together. Hemingway is, of course, the
unnamed "other" in the title of this tart memoir, first published
in 1979, in which Gellhorn describes her globe-spanning adventures,
both accompanied and alone. With razor-sharp humor and exceptional
insight into place and character, she tells of a tense week spent
among dissidents in Moscow; long days whiled away in a disused
water tank with hippies clustered at Eilat on the Red Sea; and her
journeys by sampan and horse to the interior of China during the
Sino-Japanese War. Now including a foreward by Bill Buford and
photographs of Gellhorn with Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Madame
Chiang Kai-shek, Gary Cooper, and others, this new edition
rediscovers the voice of an extraordinary woman and brings back
into print an irresistibly entertaining classic.
In sy nuutste boek het Dana van sy ware ontmoetings geboekstaaf –
ontmoetings met mense, maar soms ook met dinge – die vleispastei,
of tuisgemaakte braai-apparate. Die stories het hy aanvanklik op
Facebook gepos. Die wat die grootste reaksie gekry het is hierin
verwerk. 'n Ware interaktiewe Suid-Afrikaanse boek.
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