Compiled during a three-month stay in Granada, Spain, Tales of the Alhambra assembles descriptions, myths, and narratives of historical events. After completing a literary project in Madrid, author Washington Irving traveled to Granada, Spain. Immediately taken by its beauty and extravagance, Irving requested a travel guide and began filling notebooks and journals with his observations and description of the magnificent setting. Beginning with an expedition through the Andalusian mountains on horseback, cherishing the grandeur of the nature, Irving took his time to enjoy and observe the landscape and culture of the country. After their horseback ride through the mountains, Irving and his guide stopped at an inn for a drink. During their stay, Irving witnessed artistic culture through music and dance, noting how the locals seemed to celebrate every-day occurrences, creating a happy environment. Upon entering the city, Irving requested permission from the governor to stay at the Alhambra palace. Originally built on the ruins of Roman buildings, the Alhambra was a small fortress built in 889 CE, and had been largely ignored and forgotten by the time Irving arrived in Granada. While staying in the Alhambra, Irving explored the abandoned palace and recollected the myths set within its walls, recording every detail of its architecture, story, and mystery. The Alhambra palace had been mostly forgotten, and left unmaintained until Washington Irving's narrative and recollections revived interest. Upon its original publication in 1832, Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra piqued the curiosity of readers who were completely engrossed in Irving's description of the previously abandoned fortress. With delicate prose and intricate detail, Tales of the Alhambra appeal to readers' sense of adventure, and allows its audience to explore the wonders of Granada, Spain alongside Washington Irving. This edition of Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra features a new, eye-catching cover design and is printed in a font that is both modern and readable, inviting contemporary audiences to divulge in the grandeur and beauty of a medieval fortress.

The Ayahuasca diaries is a vine-entangled tale of shamans, jungles, psychedelic substances, a broken-hearted poker player, a few pretty girls (and a couple who aren't) and several dark temples where smoking and spitting are encouraged . . . if only to ease access into the spirit world. In this, the first South African title to chronicle the South American Ayahuasca experience, Caspar Greeff, in the throes of a mid-life crisis, travels to Peru with his father where they are introduced to Ayahuasca, "the vine of the dead". The dark, foul-tasting psychedelic brew is made up of the leaves of an indigenous shrub and a jungle vine. While Ayahuasca is believed to transport its drinkers to the world of spirits, the land of the dead, it is also known as "the mother of all medicine" by the Quechua Indians of the Amazon. They regard it as a healer of body, mind and spirit, which enables its drinkers to purge both physical and spiritual toxins. Documented as a cure for everything from cancer to cocaine addiction, Ayahuasca is a way to clear emotional blocks, to gain a sense of inner peace and an enlightened perspective on life. This lively travelogue takes the reader along on the author's psycho-spiritual odyssey through the rain forests of Peru and further to Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador where Ayahuasca is taken in the dark of night at ceremonies presided over by shamans who sing otherworldly songs that are both magical and healing. His Ayahuasca experiences ignite in him a renewed enchantment with life that leaves him with a burgeoning sense of self and an intimate connection with the natural world.

When Mike Tomkies moved to a remote cottage on the shores of Loch Shiel in the West Highlands of Scotland, he found a place which was to provide him with the most profound wilderness experience of his life. Accessible only by boat, the cottage he renamed 'Wildernesse' was to be his home for many years, which he shared with his beloved German Shepherd, Moobli. Centred on different landscape elements - loch, woodlands and mountains -Tomkies describes the whole cycle of nature through the seasons in a harsh and testing environment of unrivalled beauty. Vivid colours and sounds fill the pages - exotic wild orchids, the roar of rutting stags, the territorial movements of foxes, otters and badgers, an oak tree being torn apart by hurricane-force gales. Nothing escapes his penetrating eye. His extraordinary insights into the wildlife that shared his otherwise empty territory were not gained without perseverance in the face of perilous hazards, and the difficulties and challenges of life in the wilderness are a key part of this remarkable book.

Set in 1867, The Innocents Abroad is a travel book that follows a group of Americans from New York City to the renowned Holy Land. Throughout the journey, author Mark Twain uses humor and wit to make astute observations about the diverse people and legendary locales. Described as the "Great Pleasure Excursion," Twain and his traveling companions visit some of the most illustrious cities in the world. They make stops in Italy, France, and Greece as well as modern-day Israel and Ukraine. With each trip, the author notes the contrast between expectation and reality. He critiques the misrepresentation of cultural sites and events with notable irony and disillusion. The retelling of a worldly expedition through an American lens made >The Innocents Abroad a massive commercial success. It's one Twain's best-selling books and became a staple within the travel genre. Readers will thoroughly enjoy the author's enlightening take on the Old World and public perception. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Innocents Abroad is both modern and readable.

In 1966 Dervla Murphy travelled the length and breadth of Ethopia, first on a mule, Jock, whom she named after her publisher, and later on a recalcitrant donkey. The remarkable achievement was not surviving three armed robberies or the thousand-mile trail, but the gradual growth of affection for and understanding of another race.

First published more than thirty years ago, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains -- the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express -- are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.

Like most travelers in Burma, Norman Lewis fell in love with the land and its people. Although much of the countryside was under the control of insurgent armies--the book was originally published in 1952--he managed, by steamboat, decrepit lorry, and dacoit-besieged train, to travel almost everywhere he wanted. This perseverance enabled him to see brilliant spectacles that are still out of our reach, and to meet all types of Burmese, from District officers to the inmates of Rangoon's jail. All the color, gaiety, and charm of the East spring to life with this master storyteller.

Inspired by the discovery of his childhood copy of Treasure Island, The Mail on Sunday's Frank Barrett embarks on a literary quest around Britain, from Eliot's East Coker to Austen's Bath, Winnie-the-Pooh's Hartfield to Dracula's Whitby. Armed with a lifetime of reading and his National Trust membership, Frank is on a personal odyssey through the Britain that has inspired so many writers to capture it in lines or verse, the homes they lived in, the museums that remember them. There will be rain, there will be truculent tour guides, there will be satnav misdemeanours (there may even be tuberculosis), but Frank will carry on regardless. Where? To the lighthouse...

In August 1939 the Irish travel writer Richard Hayward set out on a road trip to explore the Shannon region just two weeks before the Second World War broke out. His evocative account of that trip, Where the River Shannon Flows, became a bestseller. The book, still sought after by lovers of the river, captures an Ireland of small shops and barefoot street urchins that has long since disappeared. Eighty years on, inspired by his work, Paul Clements retraces Hayward's journey along the river, following - if not strictly in his footsteps - then within the spirit of his trip. From the Shannon Pot in Cavan, 344 kilometres south to the Shannon estuary, his meandering odyssey takes him by car, on foot, and by bike and boat, discovering how the riverscape has changed but is still powerful in symbolism. While he recreates Hayward's trip, Clements also paints a compelling portrait of twenty-first century Ireland, mingling travel and anecdote with an eye for the natural world. He sails to remote islands, spends times in rural backwaters and secluded riverside villages where the pub is the hub, and attempts a quest for the Shannon connection behind the title of Flann O'Brien's novel At Swim-Two-Birds. The book gives a voice to stories from water gypsies, anglers, sailors, lock keepers, bog artists, 'insta' pilgrims and a water diviner celebrating wisdom through her river songs and illuminates cultural history and identity. It focuses on the hardship faced by farmers and householders caused by the flooding of the river, which in recent winters left fields and towns under siege by water. Wildlife, nature, and the built heritage, including historic bridges, all play a part. The Shannon Callows, which used to be 'corncrake central', is explored for birdlife, along with the wildflower secrets of roadside hedges and riverbanks. On a quixotic journey by foot, boat, bike and car, Paul Clements produces an intimate portrait of the hidden countryside, its people, topography and wildlife, creating a collective memory map, looking at what has been lost and what has changed. Through intermittent roaming, he maps the geography of the river in stories, testimonies and recollections, intercutting the past and the present in an eternal rhythm. Beyond the motorways and cities, you can still catch the pulse of an older, quieter Ireland of hay meadows and bogs, uninhabited islands and remote towpaths. This is the country of the River Shannon that runs through literature, art, cultural history and mythology with a riptide pull on our imagination. This is a tribute to Ireland's longest river reflecting the deep vein flowing through the culture of the country

At a time of climate crisis, isolation and social breakdown, Driving with strangers is a manifesto to alter how we think about our place in the world. Veteran hitchhiker and lifelong aficionado of hitchhiking culture, Purkis journeys through the history of hitchhiking to explore the unique opportunities for cooperation, friendship, sustainability and openness that it represents. Join Purkis on the kerbside, in search of Woody Guthrie as he examines the politics of the travelling song, deep on a Russian hitch-hiking expedition, or considering the politics of travel and risk on the 'Highway of Tears' in British Columbia, Canada. The reader is taken on a panoramic road trip through a century of hitchhiking across different decades, countries and continents. Purkis, a self-styled 'vagabond sociologist', is the perfect passenger to accompany you on a journey away from isolation, social distancing, closed borders and into a better understanding of why and how strangers can enrich our lives. -- .

This unique book is the first to bring together a group of influential China experts to reflect on their cultural and social encounters while travelling and living in the People's Republic. Filling an important gap, it allows scholars, journalists, and businesspeople to reflect on their personal memories of China. Private experiences-vivid and often entirely unanticipated-often teach more about how a society actually works than a planned course of study can. Such experiences can also expose the sometimes naive misconceptions visitors often bring with them to China. China experts relate stories that are always interesting but also more: they tell not just anecdotes but telling anecdotes. Why are there no campus maps? (Because, if you don't know where you're going and why, you don't need to be here.) What's the allure of Mickey Mouse? (He could break all sorts of rules and get away with it.) What's a sworn brother in China? (Somebody who fights for your honor even when you're not looking.) Covering nearly a half-century from 1971 to the present, these stories open a vivid window on a rapidly evolving China and on the zigzag learning curve of the China trippers themselves.

Chloe Chard assembles fascinating passages from late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century accounts of travel in Italy, by Northern Europeans, writing in English (or, in some cases, translated into English at the time); 'Tristes Plaisirs' includes writings by Charles Dupaty, Maria Graham, Anna Jameson, Sydney Morgan, Henry Matthews and Hester Lynch Piozzi. The extracts often focus on the labile moods that contribute to the 'triste plaisir' of travelling (as Madame de Stael termed it): moods such as restlessness, anxiety, exhaustion, animal exuberance, sexual excitement and piqued curiosity. The introduction considers some of these responses in relation to the preoccupations and rhetorical strategies of travel writing during the Romantic period and introductory commentaries examine the ways in which the passages take up a series of themes, around which the five chapters are ordered: 'Pleasure', 'Rising and sinking in sublime places', 'Danger and destabilization', 'Art, unease and life', and 'Gastronomy, Gusto and the Geography of the Haunted'. -- .

Includes the piece of journalism Norman was most proud of, an article on the devastation of Amerindian populations in Brazil, which resulted in the establishment of Survival International, which campaigns to protect tribal people and their environments. Travel writing that makes you laugh, but also brings home the world's hurt in glorious under-statement.

A Swedish novelist and ardent feminist makes her notes on America. Interesting observations on American culture (politics, race relations, manners, education, etc.), having traveled through New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Mid-West, and the South.

In 1910., Dr Hackmann started on a lengthy tour throughout Mongolia, China, Japan, Cambodia, Siam, and India, studying Buddhism and other Eastern Religions, Shintoism and Taoism. He returned to London in the spring of 1911, and published this book.

Two kittens were abandoned in a park. The women who found them were about to head off on a mountain trek and the animal shelter was closed. The cats seemed game so their rescuers brought Bolt and Keel (so named) along for the adventure. It was the first of many. Kayleen VanderRee, an avid photographer, chronicled their trips on Instagram and soon the cats' adventures went viral. Bolt and Keel invites readers to join the cats (and their humans) on a journey through British Columbia's forests, mountains and rivers. With the cats sitting in the bow of a canoe, perched on a shoulder or navigating snowy trails, these images and charming captions capture an exploration of the natural world that any cat-and any cat lover or adventure seeker-would envy.

The idea of a journey without companions is too daunting for most travelers. Not so the women of this collection. These contemporary pioneers savor the ultimate freedom of solo travel. Marybeth Bond discovers the dubious pleasures of desert camel-riding when she decides to follow an ancient Indian trading route. Faith Adiele, a black Buddhist nun, enters a deserted train station at 3:00 a.m. in a Thai village controlled by armed bandits. Ena Singh negotiates with Russian police to visit the blue-domed city of Samarkand. In A Woman Alone, these women and others tell their funny, thrilling, occasionally terrifying, ultimately transformative stories of navigating some of the most unusual destinations on the globe.

In June 2016, Rodrigo Duterte won the Philippine presidential election by a landslide. Infamous for his bombastic temper and un-PC wisecracks, he is waging a brutal drug war that has killed more than 12,000 people so far. Over the last nine years, British writer Tom Sykes has travelled extensively in the Philippines in order to understand the Duterte phenomenon, interviewing friends and enemies of 'The Punisher' -- as he is known -- in politics, the media, the arts and civil society. Sykes witnesses anti-government demonstrations in the capital Manila and visits the provincial city of Davao, where Duterte began his crusade against crime using police and vigilante death squads. By delving into Duterte's troubled childhood of violent rebellion, Sykes discovers what motivates the man today in his pursuit of a merciless 'war on the poor' -- as Amnesty has described it -- that has no end in sight. The Realm of the Punisher also examines oppressed and marginalized groups in the modern Philippines through encounters with a transgender rights campaigner, an 86-year-old former sex slave to the Japanese in the Second World War, a public artist who must work while under attack from Maoist rebels, and slum-dwellers resisting violent eviction by a real estate company. The past is never far away from these present-day problems and Sykes' travels to festivals, cemeteries, war memorials and a tomb housing an embalmed corpse reveal the ways in which key figures in Philippine history -- from Jose Rizal to Ferdinand Marcos -- have influenced current affairs. Funny, tragic, enlightening and uncompromising -- and infused with the author's strong sense of social justice -- The Realm of the Punisher is the first major travel book by a Westerner to explore Duterte's Philippines.

An extensive ramble, which Liverpudlian Hodgson documented in letters home. He was interested in American landscape to some degree, but more in the Americans' manners, public and private institutions (such as schools), Native American culture, and the like. vol. 1of 2

Bruce Springsteen -- 'The Boss' -- has towered over the rock world since he shot to international fame with 'Born to Run' and other classics in the early 1970s. He has always been an outspoken advocate of his home state of New Jersey, which has produced many stars of stage, screen and the musical world, and was the backdrop for the international success of award-winning The Sopranos TV series. In this remarkable narrative of travel and cultural history, Oxford historian and author James Pettifer makes his own philosophical journey as a visiting scholar at Princeton University, where Springsteen's music becomes a metaphor for the nature of New Jersey society. Set within the kaleidoscope of life in the state with its rich and complex history, it takes place in the key year of 2007 with the release of the brilliant Magic album at the height of the Bush Administration and against the background of the intensifying Iraq War. This book explores the extraordinary loyalty New Jersey inspires among its cognoscenti as well as derision from its detractors. In a place of acute social contradictions, driving energy and vast differences in wealth, the glittering intellectual world of Princeton is a short Turnpike drive away from some of the most dangerous urban areas in the United States. The Jersey Shore is also a recurrent theme, with its romantic history, sinister marshlands, vast and beautiful sand dunes, and violent winter storms. In Meet You in Atlantic City James Pettifer has written a unique cultural history that will appeal to rock fans with its literary analysis of the 2007/8 Magic album tour, the last to include founder E Street Band members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons. It is also a guide to the central role of New Jersey in American history generally, where decisive battles in the War of Independence were fought in and near Princeton, and where more recently the influence of crime and gambling on the social and economic forces that led to the Trump presidency was already in evidence.

Bruce Springsteen -- 'The Boss' -- has towered over the rock world since he shot to international fame with 'Born to Run' and other classics in the early 1970s. He has always been an outspoken advocate of his home state of New Jersey, which has produced many stars of stage, screen and the musical world, and was the backdrop for the international success of award-winning The Sopranos TV series. In this remarkable narrative of travel and cultural history, Oxford historian and author James Pettifer makes his own philosophical journey as a visiting scholar at Princeton University, where Springsteen's music becomes a metaphor for the nature of New Jersey society. Set within the kaleidoscope of life in the state with its rich and complex history, it takes place in the key year of 2007 with the release of the brilliant Magic album at the height of the Bush Administration and against the background of the intensifying Iraq War. This book explores the extraordinary loyalty New Jersey inspires among its cognoscenti as well as derision from its detractors. In a place of acute social contradictions, driving energy and vast differences in wealth, the glittering intellectual world of Princeton is a short Turnpike drive away from some of the most dangerous urban areas in the United States. The Jersey Shore is also a recurrent theme, with its romantic history, sinister marshlands, vast and beautiful sand dunes, and violent winter storms. In Meet You in Atlantic City James Pettifer has written a unique cultural history that will appeal to rock fans with its literary analysis of the 2007/8 Magic album tour, the last to include founder E Street Band members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons. It is also a guide to the central role of New Jersey in American history generally, where decisive battles in the War of Independence were fought in and near Princeton, and where more recently the influence of crime and gambling on the social and economic forces that led to the Trump presidency was already in evidence.

Through the centre of China's historic capital, Long Peace Street cuts a long, arrow-straight line. It divides the Forbidden City, home to generations of Chinese emperors, from Tiananmen Square, the vast granite square constructed to glorify a New China under Communist rule. To walk the street is to travel through the story of China's recent past, wandering among its physical relics and hearing echoes of its dramas. Long Peace Street recounts a journey in modern China, a walk of twenty miles across Beijing offering a very personal encounter with the life of the capital's streets. At the same time, it takes the reader on a journey through the city's recent history, telling the story of how the present and future of the world's rising superpower has been shaped by its tumultuous past, from the demise of the last imperial dynasty in 1912 through to the present day. -- .

WINNER of the USA Book News 2006 History: Media/Entertainment category!Everything important that has ever happened in New York began or ended in the city's best bars. From the deep mahogany of downtown to the polished brass of uptown, The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York recounts the drama, characters, and stories of the city's most important meeting places. This book is about the people and events that have unfolded within these historic establishments, and demonstrates how each bar has served as a backdrop for both business deals and social gatherings, but also for private moments of reflection. Although their patrons have changed over the years, these bars have quietly remained a constant source of fellowship and conviviality from generation to generation. Over thirty profiles containing vignettes of famous lore and little-known history are accented by stunning black-and-white images sure to intrigue both longtime New Yorkers and visitors to the city. The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York provides a unique glimpse inside New York's foremost bars and how they came to be what they are today.