Grand Prize Winner, Banff Mountain Festival Book Competition The relationship between man and horse on the Eurasian steppe gave rise to a succession of rich nomadic cultures. Among them were the Mongols of the thirteenth century - a small tribe, which, under the charismatic leadership of Genghis Khan, created the largest contiguous land empire in history. Inspired by the extraordinary life nomads lead, Tim Cope embarked on a journey that hadn't been successfully completed since those times: to travel on horseback across the entire length of the Eurasian steppe, from Karakorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia, through Kazakhstan, Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine to the Danube River in Hungary.
From horse-riding novice to spending months in the saddle, he learnt to fend off wolves and would-be horse-thieves, and grapple with the haunting extremes of the steppe as he crossed sub-zero plateaux, the scorching deserts of Kazakhstan and the high-mountain passes of the Carpathians. As he travelled he formed a close bond with his horses and especially his dog Tigon, and encountered essential hospitality - the linchpin of human survival on the steppe - from those he met along the way.
Cope bears witness to how the traditional ways hang in the balance in the post-Soviet world - an era that has brought new-found freedom, but also the perils of corruption and alcoholism, and left a world bereft of both the Communist system upon which it once relied, and the traditional knowledge of the nomadic forefathers.
A journey of adventure, endurance and eventual triumph, "On the Trail of Genghis Khan" is at once a celebration of and an elegy for an ancient way of life.

One summer, Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way - a challenging 256-mile route usually approached from south to north, with the sun, wind and rain at your back. However, he resolved to tackle it back to front, walking home towards the Yorkshire village where he was born, travelling as a 'modern troubadour', without a penny in his pockets and singing for his supper with poetry readings in village halls, churches, pubs and living rooms. Walking Home describes his extraordinary, yet ordinary, journey of human endeavour, unexpected kindnesses and terrible blisters. The companion volume, Walking Away, is published in June 2015.

There are only few human beings who can adapt, survive and thrive in the coldest regions on earth. And below a certain temperature, death is inevitable. Sir Ranulph Fiennes has spent much of his life exploring and working in conditions of extreme cold. The loss of many of his fingers to frostbite is a testament to the horrors man is exposed to at such perilous temperatures. With the many adventures he has led over the past 40 years, testing his limits of endurance to the maximum, he deservedly holds the title of 'the world's greatest explorer'. Despite our technological advances, the Arctic, the Antarctic and the highest mountains on earth, remain some of the most dangerous and unexplored areas of the world. This remarkable book reveals the chequered history of man's attempts to discover and understand these remote areas of the planet, from the early voyages of discovery of Cook, Ross, Weddell, Amundsen, Shackleton and Franklin to Sir Ranulph's own extraordinary feats; from his adventuring apprenticeship on the Greenland Ice Cap, to masterminding over the past five years the first crossing of the Antarctic during winter, where temperatures regularly plummeted to minus 92C. Both historically questioning and intensely personal, Cold is a celebration of a life dedicated to researching and exploring some of the most hostile and brutally cold places on earth.

A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul's profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by internationally acclaimed author Paul Theroux. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul's strikingly original responses to India's paralyzing caste system, its acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. This may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.

This book ventures into the world beyond Lampedusa: the crisis belt that stretches from Kashmir across Pakistan and Afghanistan to the Arab world and beyond, to the borders and coasts of Europe. Celebrated author Navid Kermani reports from a region which is our immediate neighbour, despite all too often being depicted as remote and distant from our daily concerns. Kermani has visited the places where no CNN transmitter truck is parked and yet smouldering fires threaten world peace. In his widely praised, wonderfully agile and careful prose, he reports on NATO's war in Afghanistan and the underside of globalization in India, on the civil war in Syria and the struggle of Shiites and Kurds against the 'Islamic State' in Iraq. He was the only Western reporter present at the suppression of the mass protests in Tehran, travelled with Sufis through Pakistan, talked with Grand Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf, and observed the disastrous Mediterranean refugee route in Lampedusa. Kermani's gripping reports allow us to understand a world in turmoil, to share the suspense and the suffering of the people in it. As if by magic, he brings individual lives and situations to life so vividly that complex and seemingly distant problems of world politics suddenly appear crystal clear. Our world too lies beyond Lampedusa.

Barry Stone, author of 1001 Walks You Must Experience Before You Die, delves into some of the lesser-known aspects of the world's most famous - and not-quite-famous-yet - trails. The perfect accompaniment to practical guidebooks, Stone relates how slings and carabiners kept him from falling headlong off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and reports on the progress of the continental-wide monster, the Trans Canada Trail, gaps in which are still being filled by countless grass-roots communities. With walks that will appeal to everyone regardless of ability, The 50 Greatest Walks of the World includes British classics such as the Pennine Way, Offa's Dyke Path, and the Old Man of Hoy as well as personal favourites such as Italy's Cinque Terre Classic and the Isle of Skye's Trotternish Ridge, one of Britain's finest ridge traverses with almost 2,500m of ascents. Whether it's a climb, a stroll, or a life-changing slog, this book has the walk for you.

'Impossible to put down' Observer 'One of the great books of the century' Times Literary Supplement Rebecca West's epic masterpiece not only provides deep insight into the former country of Yugoslavia; it is a portrait of Europe on the brink of war. A heady cocktail of personal travelogue and historical insight, this product of an implacably inquisitive intelligence remains essential for anyone attempting to understand the history of the Balkan states, and the wider ongoing implications for a fractured Europe.

Beyond Belief is a book about one of the more important and unsettling issues of our time. But it is not a book of opinion. It is, in the Naipaul way, a very rich and human book, full of people and their stories: stories of family, both broken and whole; of religion and nation; and of the constant struggle to create a world of virtue and prosperity in equal measure. Islam is an Arab religion, and it makes imperial Arabizing demands on its converts. In this way it is more than a private faith; and it can become a neurosis. What has this Arab Islam done to the histories of the non-Arab Islamic states: Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia? How do the converted peoples view their past - and their future? In a follow-up to Among the Believers, his classic account of his travels through these countries, V. S. Naipaul returns, after a gap of seventeen years, to find out how and what the converted preach. 'Peerless . . . the human encounters are described minutely, superbly, picking up inconsistencies in people's tales, catching the uncertainties and the nuances . . . there is a candour to his writing, a constant precision at its heart' - Sunday Times

'Extraordinary... A fascinating and intelligent book.' Sunday Times New islands are being built at an unprecedented rate whether for tourism or territorial ambition, while many islands are disappearing or fragmenting because of rising sea levels. It is a strange planetary spectacle, creating an ever-changing map which even Google Earth struggles to keep pace with. In The Age of Islands, explorer and geographer Alastair Bonnett takes the reader on a compelling and thought-provoking tour of the world's newest, most fragile and beautiful islands and reveals what, he argues, is one of the great dramas of our time. From a 'crannog', an ancient artificial island in a Scottish loch, to the militarized artificial islands China is building in the South China Sea; from the disappearing islands that remain the home of native Central Americans to the ritzy new islands of Dubai; from Hong Kong and the Isles of Scilly to islands far away and near: all have urgent stories to tell.

Taking us on a journey through the history of sacred art and architecture, Sacred Sites explores the myriads of ways in which we imbue our environments with profound and enduring meaning.  From our early designation of nature and the body as temple to our futuristic embrace of imaginary realms, we travel the vast and mystical landscapes of myth, religion, and imagination. 
 
Through gathering, we ignite our spaces with spirit, we circle the bonfire, bow down at the forest altar, give praise at the temple to our chosen divinities.  Through pilgrimage, we carve indelible pathways, making our meditative way across continents, generations of footsteps treading, again and again, upon sacred grounds. And through our creative offerings to spirit - we envision new worlds, wildly imaginative odes to what we deem as holy; golden temples hewn of rock, enormous spirals sculpted from sand and soil, silent sanctuaries hidden among wooded groves. We paint the ancient cave walls, carve petroglyphs to mark the way, place roses in veneration at the candlelit shrine. 
 
Slowly, stone-by-stone, we build monuments to our gods, a cosmic geometry held within our sacred architecture of worship. These hidden patterns can be found in the mysterious, towering pyramids found across the globe and throughout an astounding diversity of cultures, in the marble sanctuaries built to house the Greek and Roman goddesses, and in the windblown mountain monasteries of ancient Asia and the indigenous cliff-dwellings of the American Southwest.
 
Nature, art, beauty, these are the common elements found both within the places made sacred by our ancestors and in the multitude of environments where we strive to connect to source, and to ourselves.  Tracing a hallowed route from rugged stone temples to transcendent works of modern architecture, the fifth volume in The Library of Esoterica celebrates the collective history of spaces made sacrosanct through human worship.

Indian Travel Writing is a new five-volume collection co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse. Hitherto, the paucity of readily available travel writing produced by imperial subjects themselves has long been apparent, and this anthology addresses that lack. A veritable treasure-trove, it brings together scarce documents which are currently widely dispersed or very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use. The collection confirms the deeply cosmopolitan sensibility possessed by many Indian travellers, and their narratives provide insightful contemporary critiques of the British Empire and of Euro-American culture more generally. The gathered works often exhibit considerable expertise in local cuisine, politics, and poetry, as well as a keen interest in political theory, human rights, and class conflict. Beyond Britain, continental Europe, and the USA, the collection also includes writing by Indians who travelled to Russia, China, the Far East, Australia, and Africa. Indian Travel Writing draws on the narratives of a diverse range of writers, including Indian princes, statesmen, lawyers, reformers, sportsmen, artists and curators, politicians, and merchants. Each piece is reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. The collection will be particularly welcomed by historians and those working in colonial-discourse studies. It will also be of interest to anthropologists and literary scholars. Each volume is supplemented by a substantial introduction, newly written by the editor, Pramod K. Nayar. The collection also includes a detailed appendix providing data on the provenance of the gathered materials. *********************** Pramod K. Nayar is also the editor of the five-volume Women in Colonial India (2013) (978-0-415-52555-8), another Routledge and Edition Synapse co-publication.

This book, first published in 1903, is an account of Lafcadio Hearn's insights and experiences of Japan. Hearn, known also by the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo, was an international writer who was best known for his books about Japan and Japanese culture. This book will be of interest to students of history and Asian Studies.

When thinking of intrepid travelers from past centuries, we don't usually put Muslim women at the top of the list. And yet, the stunning firsthand accounts in this collection completely upend preconceived notions of who was exploring the world. Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th- to 20th-century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages. Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them. Perfect for readers interested in gender, Islam, travel writing, and global history, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women provides invaluable insight into how these daring women experienced the world—in their own voices.

This book places Bird's visit to Japan in the context of her worldwide life of travel and gives an introduction to the woman herself. Supported by detailed maps, it also offers a highly illuminating view of Japan and its people in the early years of the 'New Japan' following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, as well as providing a valuable new critique on what is often considered as Bird's most important work. The central focus of the book is a detailed exploration of Bird's journeys and the careful planning that went into them with the support of the British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, seen as the prime mover, who facilitated her extensive travels through his negotiations with the Japanese authorities. Furthermore, the author dismisses the widely-held notion that Bird ventured into the field on her own, revealing instead the crucial part played by Ito, her young servant-interpreter, without whose constant presence she would have achieved nothing. Written by Japan's leading scholar on Isabella Bird, the book also addresses the vexed question of the hitherto universally-held view that her travels in Japan in 1878 only involved the northern part of Honshu and Hokkaido. This mistaken impression, the author argues, derives from the fact that the abridged editions of Unbeaten Tracks in Japan that appeared after the 1880 two-volume original work entirely omit her visit to the Kansai, which took in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and the Ise Shrines. Bird herself tells us that she wrote her book in the form of letters to her sister Henrietta but here the author proposes the intriguing theory that these letters were never actually sent. Many well-known figures, Japanese and foreign, are introduced as having influenced Bird's journey indirectly, and this forms a fascinating sub-text.

Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2012 Between the Orinoco and the Amazon lies a fabulous forested land, barely explored. Much of Guiana seldom sees sunlight, and new species are often tumbling out of the dark trees. Shunned by the conquistadors, it was left to others to carve into colonies. Guyana, Suriname and Guyane Francaise are what remain of their contest, and the 400 years of struggle that followed. Now, award-winning author John Gimlette sets off along this coast, gathering up its astonishing story. His journey takes him deep into the jungle, from the hideouts of runaway slaves to penal colonies, outlandish forts, remote Amerindian villages, a 'Little Paris' and a space port. He meets rebels, outlaws and sorcerers; follows the trail of a vicious Georgian revolt, and ponders a love-affair that changed the face of slavery. Here too is Jonestown, where, in 1978, over 900 Americans, members of Reverend Jones's cult, committed suicide. The last traces are almost gone now, as the forest closes in. Beautiful, bizarre and occasionally brutal, this is one of the great forgotten corners of the Earth: the Wild Coast.

What is the purpose of travel in an age when millions are displaced against their will or have no home to speak of in the first place? How can we travel without being tourists, without erasing the stories of those who live where we visit? These are some of the questions addressed in Cristian Aliaga's compelling collection of prose poems, Music for Unknown Journeys. This collection contains Aliaga's "travelling sketches," in the tradition of Matsuo Basho, John Berger, or W.G. Sebald. Each prose poem is geographically situated in his travels across Patagonia or his more recent journeys around the edge-lands of Europe. His work is politically acute, exploring struggles over territory, resources, and culture, in the places he visits. There is an intense emotional charge as he records the stories of those who globalization and contemporary capitalism have used and left behind. This volume brings together a generous selection of Aliaga's prose poems, the majority previously unseen in English, as well as a substantial introduction to the author's work and its context, both literary and political, by the editor and translator. Cristian Aliaga (b. 1962, Tres Cuervos, Province of Buenos Aires) is one of Argentina's foremost contemporary poets. His work has been highly praised in the TLS and elsewhere.

INTRODUCED BY PAUL KINGSNORTH, Booker-shortlisted author of The Wake 'I thought that there were two rules in life - never count the cost, and never do anything unless you can do it wholeheartedly. Now is the time to live.' Artist and wanderer Everett Ruess left home at the age of sixteen to immerse himself in the harsh desert landscapes of the American Southwest. With only his donkeys for company, driven by an insatiable longing for beauty and experience, he ventured ever further from civilisation and into the wilderness of Navajo country. In 1934, at the age of twenty, he vanished without trace in Utah, a disappearance that remains unsolved to this day. Through letters, diary excerpts and poems - charting not only his rugged adventures and his exquisite nature writing but his progression as a writer, and into adulthood - and with commentary by W. L. Rusho, A Vagabond for Beauty tells his remarkable story.

In The Atlas of an Anxious Man, Christoph Ransmayr offers a mesmerizing travel diary-a sprawling tale of earthly wonders seen by a wandering eye. This is an exquisite, lyrically told travel story. Translated by Simon Pare, this unique account follows Ransmayr across the globe: from the shadow of Java's volcanoes to the rapids of the Mekong and Danube Rivers, from the drift ice of the Arctic Circle to Himalayan passes, and on to the disenchanted islands of the South Pacific. Ransmayr begins again and again with, "I saw. . ." recounting to the reader the stories of continents, eras, and landscapes of the soul. Like maps, the episodes come together to become a book of the world-one that charts the life and death, happiness and fate of people bound up in images of breathtaking beauty. "One of the German language's most gifted young novelists."-Library Journal, on The Terrors of Ice and Darkness

'The most bizarre and delicious of travel books' Observer Julian Green was born to American parents in Paris in 1900, and spent most of his life in the French capital. Paris is an extraordinary, lyrical love letter to the city, taking the reader on an imaginative journey around its secret stairways, courtyards, alleys and hidden places. Whether evoking the cool of a deserted church on a hot summer's day, remembering Notre Dame in a winter storm in 1940, describing chestnut trees lit up at night like 'Japanese lanterns' or lamenting the passing of street cries and old buildings, his book is filled with unforgettable imagery. It is a meditation on getting lost and wasting time, and on what it truly means to know a city. 'Truthful, unpretentious and haunting' The Times Literary Supplement

This collection includes the first critical editions of both Anne Grant's Letters from the Mountains (1806), one of the Romantic era's most successful non-fictional accounts of the Scottish Highlands, and Elizabeth Isabella Spence's Letters from the North Highlands (1816), a work that, while influenced by Grant's Letters, attempted to move the genre of the Scottish travelogue in new directions. Read together, these volumes offer complementary views of Scottish Highland life at a time of major historical transition: Grant was offering outsiders her perspective as a long-time resident of the region, while Spence was, unapologetically, writing as a tourist. The Highlands were central to Romantic-era debates on subjects ranging from landscape and aesthetics to national identities, and, as this collection demonstrates, women were making significant contributions to those debates. The four volume set, edited by Kirsteen McCue and Pam Perkins, is accompanied by new editorial material including a new general introduction and headnotes to each work.

Riddoch on the Outer Hebrides is a thought-provoking commentary based on broadcaster Lesley Riddoch's cycle journey through a beautiful island chain facing seismic cultural and economic change. Her experience is described in a typically affectionate but hard-hitting style; with humour, anecdote and a growing sympathy for islanders tired of living at the margins but fearful of closer contact with mainland Scotland.

How to Observe Morals and Manners is the first systematic and substantive treatise on the methodology of sociological research. First published in 1838 and long out of print, this new edition presents for modern students research techniques used by those whose work has been the foundation for present day social science. The book is based upon two years of intensive field research in the United States, and is a pioneering benchmark for all subsequent methodology texts in sociology.

Martineau charts a comprehensive guide to sociological observation, exploring problems of bias, hasty generalization, samples, reactivity, interviews, participant observation, corroboration, and data recording techniques. Couching her observations as advice to travellers visiting foreign lands, she warns against preconceptions and urges strict reporting of observed patterns of cross-sections of social life. She also illustrates how to use interview data to corroborate observational data. Pragmatic tips and specific questions are suggested for exploring the major institutions of society, including religion, education, marriage, popular culture, markets, prisons, police, media, government, fine arts, and charities.

Intended as a treatise on methodology, the book is also an insightful work of theory. Before Marx, and well before Durkheim and Weber, Martineau examined social class, forms of religion, types of suicide, national character, domestic relations and the status of women, delinquency and criminology, and the intricate interrelationships between social institutions and the individual. The book will be of interest to sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, historians, and researchers in women's studies. The introduction by Michael R. Hill locates the book within Martineau's overall epistemology of social analysis, revealing her to be a reflexive, critical, and scientific pioneer of sociological thought.

When you are racing 435 miles through the jungles and mountains of South America, the last thing you need is a stray dog tagging along. But that's exactly what happened to Mikael Lindnord, captain of a Swedish adventure racing team, when he threw a scruffy but dignified mongrel a meatball one afternoon.

When they left the next day, the dog followed. Try as they might, they couldn't lose him - and soon Mikael realised that he didn't want to. Crossing rivers, battling illness and injury, and struggling through some of the toughest terrain on the planet, the team and the dog walked together towards the finish line, where Mikael decided he would save Arthur and bring him back to his family in Sweden, whatever it took.