**Soon to be a major film starring Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner - Girl Who Fell From the Sky** On December 24th 1971, the teenage Juliane boarded the packed flight in Peru to meet her father for Christmas. She and her mother fought to get some of the last seats available and felt thankful to have made the flight. The LANSA airplane flew into a heavy thunderstorm and went down in dense Amazon jungle hundreds of miles from civilization. She fell two miles from the sky, still strapped to her plane seat, into the jungle. She was the sole survivor among the 92 passengers, which included her mother. Juliane's unexplainable survival has been called a modern-day miracle. With incredible courage, instinct and ingenuity, she crawled and walked alone for 11 days in the green hell of the Amazon. She survived using the skills she'd learned in assisting her parents on their research trips into the jungle before coming across a loggers hut, and, with it, safety. Now she tells her fascinating story for the first time and shares not only the private moments of her survival and rescue but her inspiring life in the wake of the disaster.

The Achuar people have survived in isolation in the Amazonian jungle by aggressively resisting intruders. In this book, Descola depicts an altogether unfamiliar civilisation, whose values often seem bizarre to Western eyes.

'Oliver Sacks is a perfect antidote to the anaesthetic of familiarity. His writing turns brains and minds transparent' - Observer When Oliver Sacks, a physician by profession, injured his leg while climbing a mountain, he found himself in an unusual position - that of patient. The injury itself was severe, but straightforward to fix; the psychological effects, however, were far less easy to predict, explain, or resolve: Sacks experienced paralysis and an inability to perceive his leg as his own, instead seeing it as some kind of alien and inanimate object, over which he had no control. A Leg to Stand On is both an account of Sacks' ordeal and subsequent recovery, and an exploration of the ways in which mind and body are inextricably linked.

"Looking East" explores early modern English attitudes toward the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth century. To a nation just arriving on the international scene, the Ottoman Empire was at once the great enemy and scourge of Christendom, and at the same time the fabulously wealthy and magnificent court from which the sultan ruled over three continents with his great and powerful army. By taking the imaginative, literary and poetic writing about the Ottoman Turks and putting it alongside contemporary historical documents, the book shows that fascination with the Ottoman Empire shaped how the English thought about and represented their own place within the world as a nation with increasing imperial ambitions of its own.

Exploring the unknown is a personal account of a South African's backpacking journey of self-discovery and adventure off the beaten trail. In 1990, leaving behind a life of white privilege and a career, the author travelled to 35 countries in five years on a shoestring budget as the apartheid regime collapsed with uncertainty. A time of carefree travel, inbred survival instinct and always proudly South African he became set on seeing and experiencing as many cultures and places using maps, travel books and various modes of transport. An exciting and funny account with history and politics enmeshed throughout the story, spanning three continents the author using temporary bases in and around London to springboard his travels-United Kingdom, Ireland and Europe- East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Morocco and South East Asia-Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Hong Kong and Cuba. In 1996, he returned home before choosing a new life in Canada. In 2003, he travelled to Namibia and in 2005 embarked on a special trip to Mozambique.

This is the collected travel essays of Elizabeth Taylor, a Victorian adventuress who specialized in traveling to, and writing about, the coldest lands on earth. Throughout her wildly exciting life she collected many 'firsts', including being one of the first recognized explorers of the American Arctic region.

The challenge of rugged, cold places was her romance, and her essays include descriptions on the culture, family life, folklore and natural history of Alaska, Arctic Canada, Iceland, Norway, Scotland and the Faeroe Islands of Denmark. Included in this delicious volume are reprints of her original photos and illustrations.

Taylor traveled by birchbark canoe, steamboat, Red River ox carts and horseback, and even experienced a shipwreck. As a self-taught botanist and zoologist, she wrote about the local flora, fauna and wildlife she observed in her journeys, and today two plants carry her name. She collected plant and fish specimens for the American Museum of Natural History, Cornell University, Catholic University of Washington, the Smithsonian Institution and Pitt Rivers Museum of Oxford University.

"There is a pleasing squishiness about a big puddle, and a little excitement in seeing how deep one is going to go".

"It is unreasonable, I confess. One is scorched by the hot sun, drenched in storms, bitten by mosquitoes, gnats and deer flies, lives on bacon and camp bread, sleeps on the ground, and is perfectly happy withal".

"Another time I should take as many prunes as possible".

THE LAND OF THE CAMEL Tents and Temples of Inner Mongolia By SCHUYLER CAMMANN THE RONALD PRESS COMPANY f NEW YORK Copyright, 1951, by THE RONALD PRESS COMPANY All Rights Reserved The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing 1 from the publisher. PRINTED IN THE XJNITED STATES OF AMERICA To Marcia WHO WAITED FOREWORD This book describes western Inner Mongolia in 1945. For almost nine years this region had been cut off by hostilities with the Japa nese, which began there in 1936, and it will probably be a very long time before any American can get there again. Even before the war it was little known, as the distance from the China coast had prevented foreign contacts, except for a handful of missionaries. The war years had brought marked changes to Inner Mongolia, accelerating the exploitation, terrorization, and dispossession of the Mongols which the Chinese had begun some forty years before. Enough Mongols were still living there, however, to enable us to see and share their life in tents and temples, after the end of the war brought us leisure from other activities. It seemed important to write down what we saw of their strange customs and complex religion, as well as to describe the forces that were undermining their old traditions and their way of life. Thus this is primarily an account of the Mongols we met, and their opponents among the immigrant settlers and border officials. But it would not present a complete picture of the region if it did not also describe the semifeudal realm of the Belgian mission ary fathers, . which has now passed into history. Most of Chapter 10 has previously been published inthe Bulletin of the University Museum, Philadelphia, while some of the passages dealing with Mongolian chess have appeared in an article for Natural History. The writer is especially grateful to Walter Hill and to Dr. William LaSor for their kindness in allowing him to use their photographs. SCHUYLER CAMMANN University of Pennsylvania September, 1950 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 1 First Impressions of Mongolia 3 2 Crossing the Ordos 9 3 The Great Plain IS 4 Camp Life and Recreation 21 5 Farmers of the Great Plain 28 6 The Victory in Shanpa 41 7 Our First Lamasery 48 8 The Mongols at Home 57 9 Meeting Dunguerbo 66 10 The Living Buddha of Shandagu 73 11 Chien-li Temple, Pride of the Oirats 85 12 More Lama Personalities 96 13 Mongol Festival 101 14 Down the Range to Dabatu Pass 106 1 5 Temple in the Gobi 1 14 16 Dunguerbo and His Family 121 17 The Journey to Ago-in Sume 130 18 Temple of the Antelope Cave 137 19 Last Days in Shanpa 143 20 Lo-pei Chao 152 21 South by Camel 163 22 Ninghsia Interlude 173 23 The Second Camel Trip 183 24 Leaving the Ordos 193 Index 199 vii ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Getting the truck aboard the Yellow River ferry 12 Ordos camels in summer, with sagging humps 12 Chinese immigrant farmer ploughing up old Mongol grazing land on Hou-tao Plain 13 Farmers harvesting soy beans on Hou-tao Plain 13 The camp well 24 A Chinese mother rides into Shanpa to market 24 A Provincial army caravan enters Shanpa 24 Typical Chinese tenant farmers homes on Hou-tao Plain 25 Tsong Kapa, founder of the Reformed Sect, with episodes from his life 52 Tara, the Green Goddess. Gilded bronze image from a Mongol lamasery 53 Mongol woman milking goats 64 Yurts in the wasteland, Beilighe Pass 64 Dunguerboturning a giant prayer wheel in a lamasery 65 Shandagu Miao at the base of the mountains. Author in foreground 80 Chortens at Shandagu Miao 80 Yamantaka and other demon-gods 80 The Golden Image at Shandagu Miao 81 Main pieces from two Mongolian chess sets 88 Playing Mongolian Chess 89 Peacock pawns and rabbit pawns from two Mongolian chess sets 89 The Abbot, Lopon Dorje, receives some guests 104 Two Oirat matrons in festival finery 105 A Mongol woman brings her child to the Festival 105 A Temple in the Gobi...

The sea life is embedded in Christian Lamb's DNA. In this delightful memoir she takes her readers on board with her, chronicling her adventures as she cruises the world, to every continent and across every sea, spanning a lifetime. As a passionate plantswoman, an inquisitive historian, and an insatiable traveller, Christian follows the routes of her heroes, the seafarers, botanists and explorers of old, and rediscovers their stories in person, setting them in the context of the modern world. And all along the way, from New York to Patagonia, New Zealand to Moscow, the shipboard characters accompanying the author round out this wry and witty narrative, a charming account of sailing the ocean and exploring the furthest corners of the earth in eighty years.

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.

In the Encyclopedia of Travel Literature, an expert sketches the lives and achievements of explorers, adventurers, novelists, and poets from l450 to the present and describes, critiques, and quotes from their works. Before visual media, readers learned about foreign countries, exotic realms, other peoples, and intrepid adventurers through travel writers. Here you'll read about Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who died in 1817 on his return trip from Mecca and was buried still disguised as a Muslim; George Sand, who scandalized Europe by illegally wearing trousers and wrote a singularly interesting travel book; and Lord Byron, who fictionalized his Grand Tour in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Includes illustrations

English spas have a long and steamy history, from the thermal baths of Aquae Sulis in Bath to the stews of Southwark, the elegant pump rooms of Cheltenham and Buxton to the Victorian mania for hydrotherapy and Turkish hammams. 'The Secret History of English Spas' is an informative but light-hearted social and cultural history of our obsession with drinking and bathing in spa waters. It tells the stories of the rich, the famous, the poor and the sick, all of whom visited spas in hopes of curing everything from infertility to leprosy and gonorrhoea. It depicts the entrepreneurs who promoted these resorts - often on the basis of the most dubious scientific evidence - and the riotous and salacious social life enjoyed in spa towns, where moral health might suffer even as bodies were cleansed and purged. And yet English spas also offered an ideal of civility and politeness, providing a place where social classes and sexes could mingle and enjoy refined entertainments such as music and dance - all part of the fashionable pastime referred to as 'taking the waters'.

The story of the Giro d'Italia - Italy's equivalent of the Tour de France, and its superior in the eyes of many - is as dramatic and full of extraordinary characters as the story of Italy itself. Heroism, suffering, feuds and betrayals, tradition under threat from modernity all play out against a timeless landscape. The iconic riders, mythical stories and career defining exploits are conveyed in rich, vibrant prose.

Of all those admirable and doughty Victorian lady-travellers Miss Amelia Edwards is surely one of the brightest lights, and this, her classic introduction to ancient Egypt, still stands up like an obelisk above the bulk of learned tomes and endlessly churned out travel guides. Straightened means obliged her to earn her living, and she was already a successful writer and a talented artist and musician when, in middle-age, bad weather unexpectedly changed her life. Her painting holiday in France sabotaged, she took a boat from Marseilles to Alexandria, and hired a dahabiyah to venture up the Nile. The rest of her life she devoted tirelessly to the setting-up of professional excavation in Egypt, founding the Egypt Exploration Fund (with Reginald Stuart Poole) and establishing the first chair of Egyptology in England at University College, initially occupied by her protege Flinders Petrie. Nothing of the contagious enthusiasm and wonder she conveys, as the beauties of Egypt are daily unfolded before her, is lost from the subsequent research and painstaking erudition she crams into these pages. The joy is as fresh as when first felt, and the reader feels privileged to share these experiences with her.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

An entrancing, sun-drenched bicycle journey, from the beaches of southern Spain to solar temples in the Outer Hebrides. In this great feast of armchair travel, John Hanson Mitchell tells of his fifteen-hundred-mile ride on a trusty old Peugeot bicycle from the port of Cadiz to just below the Arctic Circle. He follows the European spring up through southern Spain, the wine and oyster country near Bordeaux, to Versailles (the palace of the "Sun King"), Wordsworth's Lake District, precipitous Scottish highlands, and finally to a Druid temple on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides, a place where Midsummer is celebrated in pagan majesty as the near-midnight sun dips and then quickly rises over the horizon. In true John Mitchell fashion this journey is interspersed with myth, natural history, and ritual, all revolving around the lure and lore of the sun, culturally and historically. The journey is as delicious as it is fascinating, with an appeal for all those who look south in February and are drawn to dunes, picnics under castle walls, spring flowers, terraced vineyards, Moorish outposts, magic and celebrations. In short, to everything under the sun. A Merloyd Lawrence Book

"Amerikafahrt" by Wolfgang Koeppen is a masterpiece of observation, analysis, and writing, based on his 1958 trip to the United States. A major twentieth-century German writer, Koeppen presents a vivid and fascinating portrait of the US in the late 1950s: its major cities, its literary culture, its troubled race relations, its multi-culturalism and its vast loneliness, a motif drawn, in part, from Kafka's "Amerika." A modernist travelogue, the text employs symbol, myth, and image, as if Koeppen sought to answer de Tocqueville's questions in the manner of Joyce and Kafka. "Journey through America" is also a meditation on America, intended for a German audience and mindful of the destiny of postwar Europe under many Americanizing influences.

Originally published in 1900, this early works on The South Indian Railway is extensively illustrated throughout and will appeal greatly to any historian interested in the subject. Chapters include; General History, Races & People, Religions & Castes, Architecture, Description of the railway, Information for travellers, Tourist Routes, Itinerary and Sport. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

In Riviereland lewer Karel Schoeman verslag van twee reise deur Nederland. In die eerste, korter deel skryf hy oor 'n besoek aan die stede Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft, Haarlem en Leiden as deel van uitgebreide navorsing oor die VOC-tydperk, maar besoek ook kleiner plekkies soos Meppel en Hattem wat bande met sy eie grootouers het. Die tweede deel handel oor 'n langer verblyf in die provinsie Gelderland, die mees landelike van die Nederlandse provinsies. Die reis het weer eens ten doel om navorsing te doen oor figure soos Jan van Riebeeck, Simon van der Stel en baron Van Reede van Oudtshoorn, asook die gewone werkslui wat in diens van die VOC was, soos die vryburger Jan van Herwerden en sy vrou Jannetje Boddijs. Terselfdertyd word die skrywer voortdurend getref deur die skoonheid van die landskap in gebiede soos die Hoge Veluwe en die groot riviere die Ryn, die Maas en die IJssel wat deur die vlak land vloei. Die boeiende verslag van 'n verblyf in die buiteland word dus telkens verryk deur herinnerings aan en verbintenisse met die vroeë koloniale geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika en die skrywer se eie familiegeskiedenis.

'Both moving and hilarious' Spectator, Books of the Year 'A tale of gloriously eccentric British pensioners. Aitken rivals Alan Bennett in the ear he has for an eavesdropped remark ... boy, can he write.' Daily Mail, Book of the Week FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE TIMES BESTSELLING A CHIP SHOP IN POZNAN. One millennial, six coach trips, one big generation gap. When Ben Aitken learnt that his gran had enjoyed a four-night holiday including four three-course dinners, four cooked breakfasts, four games of bingo, a pair of excursions, sixteen pints of lager and luxury return coach travel, all for a hundred pounds, he thought, that's the life, and signed himself up. Six times over. Good value aside, what Ben was really after was the company of his elders - those with more chapters under their belt, with the wisdom granted by experience, the candour gifted by time, and the hard-earned ability to live each day like it's nearly their last. A series of coach holidays ensued - from Scarborough to St Ives, Killarney to Lake Como - during which Ben attempts to shake off his thirty-something blues by getting old as soon as possible.

In recent decades, private jets have become status symbols for the world's wealthiest, while quick and easy flights have brought far-flung destinations within the reach of everyone. But at what cost to the environment? Around the world, flying emits around 860 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, and until the outbreak of Covid-19, the aviation industry was one of the planet's fastest-growing polluters. Now is the perfect time to pause and take stock of our toxic relationship with flying. Part climate-change investigation, part travel memoir, Zero Altitude follows Helen Coffey as she journeys as far as she can in the course of her job as a top travel journalist - all without getting on a single flight. Between trips by train, car, boat and bike, she meets climate experts and activists at the forefront of the burgeoning flight-free movement. Over the course of her travels, she discovers that keeping both feet on the ground is not only possible but that it can be an exhilarating opportunity for adventure. Her book is brimming with tips and ideas for swapping the middle seat for the open road.

Following on from her hugely popular books, My Good Life in France and My Four Seasons in France, ex-pat Janine Marsh shares more heart-warming and entertaining stories of her new life in rural France. Since giving up their city jobs in London and moving to rural France over ten years ago, Janine and husband Mark have renovated their dream home and built a new life for themselves, adjusting to the delights and the peculiarities of life in a small French village. Including much-loved village characters such as Mr and Mrs Pepperpot, Jean-Claude, Claudette and the infamous Bread Man, in Toujours la France! Janine also introduces readers to some new faces and funny stories, as she and Mark continue their lives in this special part of northern France. With fantastic food, birthday parties, rural traditions old and new - Jean-Claude introduces snail racing to the village - and trouble with uninvited animals, there is never a quiet moment in the Seven Valleys.

Throughout history, intrepid men and women have related their experiences and perceptions of the world's great cities to bring them alive to those at home. The thirty-eight cities covered in this entertaining anthology of travellers' tales are spread over six continents, ranging from Beijing to Berlin, Cairo to Chicago, Lhasa to London, St Petersburg to Sydney and Rio to Rome. This volume features commentators across the millennia, including the great travellers of ancient times, such as Strabo and Pausanias; those who undertook extensive journeys in the medieval world, not least Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta; courageous women such as Isabella Bird and Freya Stark; and enterprising writers and journalists including Mark Twain and Norman Lewis. We see the world's great cities through the eyes of traders, explorers, soldiers, diplomats, pilgrims and tourists; the experiences of emperors and monarchs sit alongside those of revolutionaries and artists, but also those of ordinary people who found themselves in remarkable situations, like the medieval Chinese abbot who was shown round the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris by the King of France himself. Some of the writers seek to provide a straightforward, accurate description of all they have seen, while others concentrate on their subjective experiences of the city and encounters with the inhabitants. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling historian Peter Furtado, each account provides both a vivid portrait of a distant place and time and an insight into those who journeyed there. The result is a book that delves into the splendours and stories that exist beyond conventional guidebooks and websites.

How do the experiences of today's tourist compare with those of more than a century ago? Views of Old Europe demonstrates that there are interesting differences, and some surprising similarities, between the present day traveler and his early modern counterpart. It is a highly engaging and well-composed account of a two-year long journey in the 1840s, mostly on foot, through Britain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Austria and Switzerland. The work was so popular, that the original edition was followed by many further printings in less than two years. This new edition, with a new preface and index, is based on a revised 1850 version. Although the book's talented young author, Bayard Taylor, went on to become a diplomat, essayist, and poet, his first employment afer leaving the family farm was as a printer's apprentice. The idealistic youth's cherished goal was to visit various European countries, to see first-hand the circumstances in which great culture and art arose. When Taylor's cousin asked him to be his companion on an extended journey through the Old World, Taylor, although without much money, found the opportunity too tempting to pass up. This memoir is multi-faceted. A multitude of perceptive observations about European society are set against the background of the journey narrative, which keeps moving at a deliberate but very pleasant pace. In these observations, Taylor strikes just the right balance between panorama and detail. The communities of that time, in all their charm, ebullience, traditional customs, and protectiveness, are brought into clear focus, facilitated by the copious notes kept by the author. Over the long course, a variety of beauties both natural and man-made were encountered: mountains, rivers, lakes and woods, as well as galleries, museums, churches, mansions, and cathedrals. But the tour had its share of challenges, including fatiguing hikes on back-roads, inadequate funds, and avoiding robbers. There was also a dearth of facilities conducive to material comfort and convenience, such as hotels, restaurants and shelters. Still, for Taylor, the advantages greatly outweighed the hardships, and fond reminiscences are evinced in his lovely prose.