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Books > Travel > Travel writing > General
Isabella Bird was one of the most famous and admired travel writers
of the nineteenth century. The first woman to be elected to the
Royal Geographical Society, she published eight volumes of travel
writings which documented her lifetime of travels to every
continent. Often ill as a child, at age eighteen she underwent
partially successful spinal surgery to remove a tumor from her
spine, yet continued to suffer from a series of ailments. Bird's
doctor adviced travel as a cure, so in 1854 she was given one
hundred pounds by her father and told she could travel until her
money ran out. Leaving Liverpool in June, she travelled to Halifax,
Nova Scotia to visit cousins. Becoming restless, Bird undertook
wider travels, covering nearly 6,000 miles, visiting Maine, Ohio,
Illinois, Michigan, Quebec, New York, and Massachusetts. She
detailed her travels in letters to her sister which went on to
become the basis for her first book, The Englishwoman in America,
published in 1856. This first trip overseas, and the resultant
book, set Bird up for a highly successful career as a traveller and
writer.
'Electrifying.' Anne Applebaum 'Mesmerising.' Financial Times
'Seductive and terrifying in equal measure.' The Times 'Required
reading.' Observer A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of
21st century Russia: into the lives of Hells Angels convinced they
are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists,
bohemian theatre directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters,
supermodel sects, post-modern dictators and oligarch
revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new
power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life
is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be
switched and all values are changeable. It is home to a new form of
authoritarianism, far subtler than 20th century strains, and which
is rapidly expanding to challenge the global order. An
extraordinary book - one which is as powerful and entertaining as
it is troubling - Nothing is True and Everything is Possible offers
a wild ride into this political and ethical vacuum.
A British navy officer travels extensively, from New England to the
deep South and a bit into the Mid-West, offering thoughts on
American manners, morals, political views and situations, and so
forth. vol. 2 of 3
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book
may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,
poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the
original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We
believe this work is culturally important, and despite the
imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of
our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in
the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
"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.
In 1937, the Scottish writer, Neil Gunn, gave up his job in the
civil service, sold his house in Inverness, and bought a boat. With
his wife and his brother John, he set off on a three-month voyage
around Inner Hebrides. The boat had outlived its first youth, and
its engine was somewhat cranky; she went tolerably under sail.
These are not high recommendations, but for Gunn, and at times his
fellow voyagers, the vessel was an argosy of freedom, of adventure
and misadventure-for they were fairly inexperienced sailors, and
the waters of the region are by no means placid. Gunn was a Scots
nationalist in a sense that goes far beyond the political, even
though he thought that an independent Scotland was the only proper
basis for a reasonable civilization. He was by nature poetic,
uplifted or cast down by changing skies, seascapes, and shores. His
descriptions of those things, including their moods, are remarkably
evocative. And he is also a passionate historian of his country,
exalting its possibilities, anathematizing its shortcomings. The
book is illustrated with Daisy Gunn's photographs taken on the
voyage, which are palpably amateur but wonderfully telling.
Queen Victoria so liked the Isle of Wight she built a royal
residence here. Thousands of people got stoned here at music
festivals in the late 1960s. And, in the very un-hippyish Covid
summer of 2020, Hunter Davies and his girlfriend escaped
locked-down North London for a week’s holiday on the Isle of
Wight, fell in love with its sleepy charm – and ended up buying a
Grade II-listed love nest in the elegant Victorian seaside resort
of Ryde. Love in Old Age tells the story of their first twelve
months on the island. It brings together the themes of love in old
age; Covid lockdown; rural escape; the anxieties of house-buying;
and the history and curiosities of England’s largest and second
most populous island – all bound together by Hunter Davies’s
inquisitiveness about people and places, and his irrepressible and
ironic sense of humour.
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...
This is the first travel book that tested the idea that a
five-year-old daughter makes for a useful international travelling
companion. Together Dervla Murphy and her daughter Rachel with
little money, no taste for luxury and few concrete plans meander
their way slowly south from Bombay to the southernmost point of
India, Cape Comorin. Interested in everything they see, but only
truly enchanted by people, they stay in fisherman's huts and
no-star hotels, travelling in packed-out buses, on foot and by
local boats. Instead of pressing ever onwards, like so many
travellers, they double back to the place they liked most, the hill
province of Coorg and settle down to live there for two months.
Anchored by her daughter's delight in the company of her Indian
neighbours, Dervla Murphy creates an extraordinarily affectionate
portrait of these cardamon-scented, spiritually and agriculturally
self- sufficient Highlands. If travel is underwritten by an
unwitting search for a lost paradise, this is a quest that was
achieved - made possible with the right sort of travelling
companion.
A British navy officer travels extensively, from New England to the
deep South and a bit into the Mid-West, offering thoughts on
American manners, morals, political views and situations, and so
forth. vol. 3 of 3
General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date:
1877 Original Publisher: S. Low, Marston, Searle,
The world is full of places that inspire and bring us joy: they
might be exceptionally beautiful, resonant with history, untouched
by civilisation or rich in memory. This is an atlas that gathers
together some of the most enchanting and reinvigorating places
around the world in order to heal and captivate, including
beautiful destinations in Greece, Italy, Japan, America, Chile and
Australia, to name but a few. We’re taken to the tops of
mountains, solitary cliffs, elegant cities and also some less
expected locations: airports, hydroelectric stations and meteorite
craters. Great travellers have always known that travelling can
broaden the mind; here we see how it can also heal it. A
Therapeutic Atlas reminds us that the world is far broader and more
inspiring than we tend to appreciate day to day. Tempting images
are combined with short essays that discuss the power of particular
places to help us with the difficulties of being human. We locate
places that are therapeutic because they coax us out of familiar
patterns of thought and liberate our minds. This is a book that can
be read when travelling, as a real-life atlas, but as importantly,
when travel is difficult, it reminds us that there is no place like
home and the sanctuary of our own bed.
Covering the Rocky Mountains and Oregon, with descriptions of the
Native American tribes in the region.
A noted journalist of his day takes notes on and retells the
history, in detail, of many places in New York, Virginia, and
Pennsylvania. In PA, much detail is offered on Utopian societies
and new religions and the like. vol. 1 of 2
Golovin, a Russian who became naturalized in England, traveled to
the United States and wrote letters commenting on American culture,
education, law, immigration, and other matters.
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
The hilarious and insightful memoir of a Brit trying assimilate
into life in Japan. Over ten years we follow Chris Broad as he
unravels the wonders and eccentricities of one of the world's most
mysterious cultures, rising from underqualified English teacher to
YouTube sensation in the process. When Englishman Chris Broad
landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd
made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero
teaching experience, was he was about to be the most quickly fired
English teacher in Japan's history? Abroad in Japan charts a decade
of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that
comes with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this
book seeks out to unravel one the world's most mysterious and
impenetrable cultures. Spanning 10 years and 47 prefectures, Chris
takes us from the chilling summit of Mount Fuji to the chaotic
neon-lit streets of Tokyo. With blockbuster moments such as a
terrifying North Korean missile incident, a Japanese national TV
experience gone horribly wrong and a week spent with Japan's
biggest movie star, Ken Watanabe, Abroad in Japan is an
extraordinary and informative journey through the Land of the
Rising Sun.
After Paul Stutzman lost his wife to breast cancer, he sensed a tug
on his heart--the call to a challenge, the call to pursue a dream.
Paul left his stable career, traveled to Georgia, and took his
first steps on the Appalachian Trail. What he learned during the
next four and a half months changed his life--and will change
readers' lives as well.
In "Hiking Through," readers will join Paul on his remarkable
2,176-mile hike through fourteen states in search of peace and a
renewed sense of purpose, meeting fascinating and funny people
along the way. They'll discover that every choice we make along the
path has consequences for the journey and will come away with a new
understanding of God's grace and guidance. Nature-lovers, armchair
adventurers, and those grieving a loss may not be able to hike the
AT themselves, but they can go on this spiritual pilgrimage with a
truly humble and sympathetic guide.
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