"Sayarer is a precise and passionate writer . . . The vast energy of his commitment to discover, observe and communicate makes for engrossing, often incandescent prose. We need writers who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer is a marvellous example" HORATIO CLARE On the small island of Surin, near the naval border of Thailand and Myanmar, an indigenous people known as Moken 'sea gypsies' struggle to maintain the same timeless existence as their ancestors. As real estate developers, oil exploration and industrial tourism reshape the waters they call home, Sayarer receives a mysterious offer from an idealistic Luxembourger determined to tell a tale of the Moken on film, and in search of a writer to detail the efforts of his motley crew. Events unfold in a reality strangely different to that version captured by the lens. In the quest for indigenous wisdom, cameras and tripods clutter bamboo huts, while fishing trips and dives are staged beneath the waves. With the quest for paradise seeming ever more artificial, award-winning author, Julian Sayarer instead begins listening to the stories of Laurie, an old sailor, with a life on the water behind him, and in whose ship the crew sail out into the Andaman Sea.

Between Germany and Russia is a region strewn with monuments to the horrors of war, genocide and disaster - the bloodlands where the murderous regimes of Hitler and Stalin unleashed the violence that scarred the twentieth century and shaped so much of the world we know today. In September 2016 the German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani set out to discover this land and to travel along the trenches that are now re-emerging in Europe, from his home in Cologne through eastern Germany to the Baltics, and from there south to the Caucasus and to Isfahan in Iran, the home of his parents. This beautifully written travel diary, enlivened by conversations with the people Kermani meets along the way, brings to life the tragic history of these troubled lands and shows how this history leaves its traces in the present. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with current affairs and with the events that have shaped, and continue to shape, the world in which we live today.

For two decades "NPR" commentator Andrei Codrescu has been living in and writing about his adopted city, where, as he puts it, the official language is dreams. How apt that a refugee born in Transylvania found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; where cemeteries are the most popular picnic spots, the ghosts of poets, prostitutes, and pirates are palpable, and in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps.
Codrescu's essays have been called " satirical gems, " " subversive, " " sardonic and stunning, " " funny, " " gonzo, " " wittily poignant, " and " perverse" -- here is a writer who perfectly mirrors the wild, voluptuous, bohemian character of New Orleans itself. This retrospective follows him from newcomer to near native: first seduced by the lush banana trees in his backyard and the sensual aroma of coffee at the cafe down the block, Codrescu soon becomes a Window Gang regular at the infamous bar Molly's on Decatur, does a stint as King of Krewe de Vieux Carre at Mardi Gras, befriends artists, musicians, and eccentrics, and exposes the city' s underbelly of corruption, warning presciently about the lack of planning for floods in a city high on its own insouciance. Alas, as we all now know, Paradise is lost.
"New Orleans, Mon Amour" is an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

In The Face of the Deep we float on and submerge below the ocean's liquid mirror, surfing and diving in a "continuum, concatenation, of sunrises, sunsets...one's consciousness itself rising and falling with the swell." From villages in Samoa to haunts in Hawaii, Thomas Farber tells of encounters in bars and backwaters as he explores Oceania's mythologies and literatures. From treasure hunters of Cocos Island to writers of the Literary Pacific, from Stevenson and Melville to the indigenous writings of Wendt Hau'ofa, Farber navigates the complexities of the Pacific and its peoples. With the play and music of his language, Farber's shimmering reflections give us a fresh appreciation of the Pacific's depths.

"After his "warm, well observed, unpretentious and very funny" books relating his cycle rides the length of England and of Scotland, Mike Carden has turned his attention to his back yard: The Lake District. He visits all the lakes of Lakeland, pokes into its most distant corners, and cycles over every mountain pass (well, he attempts to). Along the way he tells the story of Lakeland. He sees where poets wrote and climbers climbed, he tells of 'oond trailin' and fell-racing, and he hunts for golden eagles and elusive ring ouzels. He visits stone circles, castles and abbeys to tell the history of the people of the fells and valleys, and he conscientiously eats Cumberland Sausage, samples Cumbria's real ales and calls in at a lot of tea shops. With his twenty-year-old son alongside him on the ride (actually more often ahead of him, disappearing up a hill) and sharing his sense of humour, Mike's story of The Challenge, The History, The Wildlife and The Scones is definitely A Lake District Grand Tour." (Adventure Travel Magazine).

Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop. Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament.

Travel writer Ben Aitken moved to Poland in 2016 to understand why the Poles were leaving. He booked the cheapest flight he could find, to a place he had never heard of – Poznan. This candid, funny and offbeat book is the account of his year in Poland, as an unlikely immigrant.

Between peeling potatoes and boning fish, Ben spent time on the road travelling the country. He missed the bus to Auschwitz; stayed with a dozen nuns near Krakow; was offered a job by a Eurosceptic farmer and went to Gdansk to learn how Solidarity rose and communism fell. This is a bittersweet portrait of an unsung country, challenging stereotypes that Poland is a grey, ex-soviet land, and revealing a diverse country, rightfully proud of its colorful identity.

The Cowichan Region is the large area that lies between the cities of Victoria and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, reaching from the protected eastern shores of the island nearly all the way west to the Pacific Ocean. Its cornucopia-like shape is fitting for a place of such remarkable bounty, and this area is home to a growing number of newcomers seeking its pleasant climate, recreational activities and culinary delights. Sometimes referred to as Canada's Provence, the name Cowichan is derived from a Coast Salish word meaning "warm land" or "basking in the sun."
Celebrating this land of plenty, "The Cowichan" dishes up a full sampling of delights from one of BC's most fascinating and varied regions. Mountainous wilderness, large lakes and rivers, broad fertile valleys, enormous estuaries and numerous coastal harbours and islets are home to more than a dozen communities, ranging from seaside and lakeside villages to shop-and cafe-filled towns. Once famous for its fishing and forest resources, the Cowichan region is better known today for its dairy farms and market gardens, vineyards and wineries, alpaca ranches and a rapidly expanding "eat local and organic" culinary food scene.
Author Georgina Montgomery's compelling narrative is beautifully illustrated with photographer Kevin Oke's vibrant images, capturing the beauty of the region.

'A total joy' Laura Kay, author of The Split 'Hilarious and unexpectedly moving' Richard Roper, author of Something to Live For 'The perfect book for summer 2021' James Bailey, author of The Flip Side 'Brilliantly written, properly funny and poignant' Tom Ellen, author of All About Us 'A delightful and unique take on travel writing' Katy Wix, author of Delicacy The setting: Europe. A continent overrun by tourism, where tapas-crawlers cross paths with machine-gun-wielding cops, graffiti tour guides collide with anti-gentrification protestors and, in one classy mountain retreat, a bored patissier teaches mindful croissant-making to a bereaved luggage designer. Witness to this outlandish international spectacle is Mark, comically self-conscious and often thoroughly disturbed by modern life. In his 30s and working as a copywriter for an online travel company despite never having personally ventured further than France, Mark is determined to make up for lost time by embarking on the kind of freewheeling summer expedition he's always dreamed of. And even if his revered older cousin Paris is unable to join him on the trip, he's determined not to let that hold him back. Mark can always email the mysteriously absent Paris about the homes and experiences he has along the way, in intricate and often hilarious detail. Described by The Times as 'one of the finest comic minds of Generation Y', award-winning comedian Liam Williams brings his inimitable mix of humour and pathos to his unforgettable debut novel.

At the time of her death in 1962, Kathleen M. Murphy was recognized as "the most widely and most knowledgeably travelled Irish woman of her time . . . in so far as she let herself be known to the public at all." An abiding interest in sacred sites and ancient civilizations took Murphy down the Amazon and over the Andes, into the jungles of Southeast Asia and onto the deserts of the Middle East, above the Arctic Circle and behind the Iron Curtain. After the Second World War, Murphy began publishing a series of vivid, humorous, and often harrowing accounts of her travels in The Capuchin Annual, a journal reaching a largely Catholic and nationalist audience in Ireland and the United States. At home in the Irish midlands, Murphy may have been a modest and retiring figure, but her travelogues shuttle between religious devotion and searching curiosity, primitivist assumptions and probing insights, gender decorum and bold adventuring. Unaccompanied Traveler, with its wide-ranging introduction, detailed notes, and eye-catching maps, retrieves these remarkable accounts from obscurity and presents them to a new generation of readers interested in travel and adventure.

Wild People is the story of one man's experience living among a rare and almost extinct culture. The Iban are a primitive people who live in the hilly jungles of Borneo'whose peaceful existence of hunting, fishing, tending their crops, and worshipping their gods belies a fierce legacy of head-hunting. This, however, is no ordinary work of travel anthropology"if Andro Linklater takes us into the heart of this world he also take us into our own, and the clash of cultures he documents produces not only memorable insight but ample and sharp-witted humor. The author's sympathetic effort to truly understand this utterly alien and exotic culture is where the book's greatest value lies. Far up the Katibas River, where the maps grow vague, he finds a traditional longhouse agreeable to his three-month stay, and a world that makes no distinction between the physical and spiritual, animal and human, waking time and dream time. He learns how to interpret the oracles of birds, signs and omens of every kind, what gods to sacrifice to for a bumper rice harvest. He takes part in a gawai kenyalang, a rare and complex ceremony performed once in a man's lifetime to ensure his prestige in this and the spirit world. He becomes involved"even in matters of the heart. Seduced and beguiled by the culture he has come to respect and admire, the author asks himself a genuine question: Why not? It seems to work for them"they are not only handsome and brave but happy as well. Wild People gives us a palpable sense of what it might be like to live in a primitive culture. In the tradition of such English travel writers as Colin Thubron and Redmond O'Hanlon, it also tells of a personal journey"the story of one civilized and slightly cynical man's brief and poignant romance with a dying culture.

Awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, Camilo Jose Cela has long been recognized as one of the preeminent Spanish writers of the twentieth century. Journey to the Alcarria is the best known of his vagabundajes, Cela's term for his books of travels, sketchbooks of regions or provinces. The Alcarria is a territory in New Castile, northeast of Madrid, surrounding most of the Guadalajara province. The region is high, rocky, and dry, and is famous for its honey.
Cela himself is "the traveler," an urban intellectual wandering from village to village, through farms and along country roads, in search of the Spanish character. Cela relishes his encounters with the simple, honest people of the Spanish countryside--the blushing maid in the tavern, the small-town shopkeeper with airs of grandeur lonely for companionship, the old peasant with his donkey who freely shares his bread and blanket with the stranger. These vignettes are narrated in a fresh, clear prose that is wonderfully evocative. As the New York Times wrote, Cela is "an outspoken observer of human life who built his reputation on portray-ing what he observed in a direct colloquial style."

"From the beginning, it was a silly idea. This, of course, I liked." So begins Night Train to Turkistan, Stuart Stevens's irreverent, irresistible Chinese travel tale. In the late fall of 1986, Stevens, a young political consultant and writer, invited three friends to join him on an unlikely 5,000-mile quest along China's Ancient Silk Road. Their goal was to retrace the steps of a famous journey made in 1936 by Peter Fleming, an eccentric British writer/traveler, who, like his brother Ian Fleming, had a flair for exceptional adventures. Stevens's choice of companions is more amusing than useful-a triathlete and closet good ole boy, a kung fu expert from Yale, and a six-foot-tall female rower in Lycra stretch gear. Only one of them-Mark Salzman, author of the acclaimed Iron & Silk-had ever been to China before and Salzman is profoundly unsure of he likes being back. Together this improbable foursome sets out from Beijing determined to follow Fleming's route on the Silk Road to Kashgar, the fabled capital of Chinese Turkistan (or Tartary as it has been known for centuries) is one of the wildest, least populated regions on earth, dominated by the fierce Takla Makan desert, a name which translates into "you go in, but you do not come out." In the unbelievable cold of a Chinese winter, Stevens & Co. rumble across China in trains, donkey carts, bicycles, and some of the more memorable buses in recent literature. Often trapped in monolithic Russian-built hotels, they battle, bluff, and plead their way through the mazes of Chinese bureaucracy, surviving on such delicacies as lamb fat and cold noodles. Crammed with unforgettable characters and unforgettably funny scenes, Night Train to Turkistan is a rare, high-spirited romp across a country where travelers are greeted with "Comrades, we welcome you to your journey. Please do not spit everywhere . . ."

A satellite passes. It dips lower in its orbit to have a closer look at Central Asia. The sweep of its vision glosses the Celestial Mountains and the Mountains of Chaos. Its prying lenses probe the Taklamakhan, the Himalaya and the headwaters of Asia's greatest rivers. Mother Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Yellow River, the Salween, Yangtze and Mekong all lie exposed beneath its arc. It's focus is Tibet. At least a few satellites pass over Tibet these days. Their observations are crisp and hard, terse and digital. Statistics are collected while hardy people sleep softly on the land below. Most of the Tibetan people have never heard of satellites. They revere the sun, the moon and the stars, while respecting the harsh winds that can change the temper of a day in moments. Although some of the stars are seen to move very quickly now, the Tibetans' spiritual centre remains Lhasa, around which their lives gravitate no matter how far away from it their homes might be.

An adventure story of real risk-taking and the heroic age of travel. Ten years ago, at the age of 53, Shelby Tucker set out to cross Burma on foot from China to India when land access to Burma was forbidden. Tucker had a rucksack, a diary and some inaccurate maps. He recruited a 6ft 4in Swede, Mats, whom he had met on the train to Beijing. Near the beginning of their walk through the jungle they encountered a group of naked boys bathing - they realized too late that their Chinese Army uniforms were on the banks. With typical sangfroid, Tucker leapt in to join them, shouting incomprehensible English greetings... Before long they were in the hands of the Kachin Independence Army and managed to survive many near misses with the Burmese Army. Despite pain and constant danger, Tucker recorded each day the vivid beauty of the country, and the courtesy and hospitality of the Kachins (the most important of Burma's hidden colonies, about whom very little has been written). Among Insurgents was Colin Thubron's Book of the Year, The Guardian's number 1 travel hardback and the Sunday Times' number 2. It recevied warm acclaim from Anthony Sattin ('packed with insights into tribal identity and the opium trade'), Robert Carver ('outstandingly well written in the insouciant Peter Fleming tradition'), Sara Wheeler ('a thrilling book') and it must surely be shortlised for the Thomas Cook Award.

"In Los Angeles, everyone is a star." - Denzel Washington For more than a century, seekers of sun and celebrity from around the world have flocked to this sprawling metropolis on the Pacific, which Dorothy Parker once described as "72 suburbs in search of a city." But beyond the red-carpet reputation and Tinseltown trappings is a west coast wonderland teeming with unexpected cultural experiences, iconic architecture, gorgeous open spaces, quirky museums, hidden vistas, unconventional art, and obscure stories about the starlets, moguls, personalities, and players who have made Los Angeles their playground. This unusual guidebook explores 111 of the city's most interesting and unknown places and experiences: wander a serpentine path in a spiritual quest of your own making; channel your inner cowboy at a tried and true honky tonk bar; pay homage to the Dude at the bungalow where the big Lebowski lived; turn your car tires into musical instruments on the country's only 'musical' road; sleep with the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin; view a constellation of stars more vivid than anything Hollywood has to offer. From the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, Angelenos and visitors will fall in love with the real Los Angeles. Adventures beckon. Surprises await. Just imagine how much more scintillating your dinner-party storytelling will be.

'Equal parts an inspiring account of Reeve's determination and adventurous spirit, as well as a field guide to some of the most remote parts of the world, Step by Step is a vivid and fascinating title. Readers may be surprised to learn of his early life struggles with mental health, owing to his onscreen persona, but this traces his journey to inner peace.' Independent 'Incredibly honest... one of the best autobiographies I've ever read.' The Sun - best books of 2019 Shortlisted for the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Memoir of the Year Award 'His story reads like a fast-paced thriller.' Daily Mail 'My goodness, it is brilliant. Searingly honest, warm, bursting with humanity. Such brave and inspiring writing.' Kate Humble '[Simon] begins to fill in the gaps in his life story that until recently he has never publicly revealed.' Telegraph PRAISE FOR SIMON REEVE 'TV's most interesting globetrotter' Independent 'The craziest (or bravest) man on TV' Mail on Sunday 'Like all the best travellers, Reeve carries out his investigations with infectious relish, and in the realisation that trying to understand the country you're in is not just fascinating, but also hugely enjoyable' Daily Telegraph 'Simon might just be the best tour guide in the world' The Sun * * * * * * * * * In TV adventurer Simon Reeve's bestselling memoir he describes how he has journeyed across epic landscapes, dodged bullets on frontlines, walked through minefields and been detained for spying by the KGB. His travels have taken him across jungles, deserts, mountains and oceans, and to some of the most beautiful, dangerous and remote regions of the world. In this revelatory account of his life Simon gives the full story behind some of his favourite expeditions, and traces his own inspiring personal journey back to leaving school without qualifications, teetering on a bridge, and then overcoming his challenges by climbing to a 'Lost Valley' and changing his life ... step by step.

In 1949, Jean Cocteau spent twenty days in New York, and began composing on the plane ride home this essay filled with the vivid impressions of his trip. With his unmistakable prose and graceful wit, he compares and contrasts French and American culture: the different values they place on art, literature, liberty, psychology, and dreams. Cocteau sees the incredibly buoyant hopes in America's promise, while at the same time warning of the many ills that the nation will have to confront-its hypocrisy, sexism, racism, and hegemonic aspirations-in order to realize this potential. Never before translated into English, Letter to the Americans remains as timely and urgent as when it was first published in France over seventy years ago.

At twenty-five, Emily Chappell took up cycle couriering while she searched for a 'real job'. Eight years on, she is still riding. As she flies through the streets of London, dancing with the traffic, Chappell records the pains and pleasures of life on wheels: the dangerous missions; the moments of fear and freedom, and ultimately the simple joy of pedalling onward.

'The book grew out of a habit, early adopted when on her travels...of writing...an unpretending narrative of the previous day's proceedings to be sent home to her father.' Thus wrote Thomas Brassey of his wife Annie. As for his own account of their travels, Susanna Hoe describes it as 'full of reports of experts...and often about exports.' And she explores the question, are women travel companions' accounts more generally 'unpretending narratives', and men's the opposite? The theme expanded when the author was asked, 'Do women write with more immediacy, with more colour, more empathy and more attention to detail?' Using extensive quotations, the author pursues those and other questions through the relations and accounts of couples visiting or living in foreign places, from Liberia to Siberia, from Vanuatu to Chinese Turkestan, between 1664 and 1973.

"Everything creaks and bends in heavy seas - what will not bend will simply snap. So many times I wondered how much load we could carry in a powerful storm without breaking apart. If we flooded any faster I would drown in seconds." Patrick Dixon spent years working as a doctor at University College Hospital, while his wife Sheila was a magistrate - high-pressure careers that demanded long hours away from their home, family and passion for sailing. It is a frustrating story many occasional sailors can relate to, but unlike most, Patrick and Sheila realised early enough that they could only bend so far before something snapped, they could only take on so much before they drowned. This is their story of how they made changes (some more challenging than others) that they knows other sailors could make too, regardless of where they are at the moment - how they changed their priorities but managed to sustain a new career that fitted in around life rather than the other way round. It is also the story of their personal journey, both physically (across the Atlantic and to little-visited corners of the Mediterranean) and metaphorically - how a doctor who treated cancer patients coped with a partner facing the same battle. Neither of them wanted to let that flood things either. Through their personal story, with plenty of mishaps that led to insights (both about sailing and life in general), and encounters that turned into opportunities, Patrick and Sheila explore the importance of prioritising the right things in life, and the simple benefits of travel. The book is packed with inspiring but practical advice for all those who have salt in the blood.

'Tangier, the white city poised atop the dark continent which turns out to be the continent of light.' Tangier in the 1960s and '70s was a fabled place. This edge city, the 'Interzone', became muse and escapist's dream for artists, writers, millionaires and socialites, who wrote, painted, partied and experienced life with an intensity and freedom that they never could back home. Into this louche and cosmopolitan world came John Hopkins, a young writer who became a part of the bohemian Tangier crowd with its core of Beats that included William Burroughs, Paul and Jane Bowles and Brion Gysin, as well as Tennessee Williams, Jean Genet, Yves Saint Laurent, Barbara Hutton and Malcolm Forbes. Those intoxicating decades - Tangier's 'Golden Years' - are long gone. Grand old houses that once sparkled with life are shuttered and dark and most of the eccentrics who once lived and loved in the city have died. But here, in the pages of John Hopkins' cult classic, all the decadence and flamboyance of those days is brought to life once more.

Wit, wisdom, adventure, and revelations from sixty years on the road. They say that only truck drivers experience the true grandeur and landscape of America: the winding mountainsides at sunrise, the first frosts of winter descending on apple orchards, the call of the rising roosters. In A Trucker's Tale, Ed Miller gives an inside look at the allure of the work and the colorful characters who haul our goods on the open road. He shares what it was like to grow up in a boisterous trucking family, his experience as an equipment officer in Vietnam, the wide range of vehicles he's mounted, and the daily trials, tribulations, risks, and exploits that define life as a trucker. Ed's vibrant, no-holds-barred tales are hilarious and heartwarming, sometimes cringeworthy or unbelievable-recollections of heroic feels as well as the "fishing stories" that have stretched and shifted from CB radio to CB radio. Many are the results of what he calls, "just plain stupidity." Others bring to light the small acts of kindness and grand gestures that these Knights of the Highway perform each day, as well as the safety risks and continual danger that these essential workers endure. Together they paint a compelling portrait of one of the most important, but least-known industries, and reveal why Ed, and so many like him, just kept on truckin'.