With his hands gripping the handlebars and feet on the pedals, Sylvester has given BMX riding new zest as he embraces life to the fullest and lives out his imagination. Sylvester sets an exciting cadence from the start: jumping out of a plane with his BMX bike in hand into the Dubai desert. It s stunts like this that make it easy to understand how this young BMXer from Queens, New York, has redefined the sport on his own terms and become one of the most recognizable faces in the sports world along the way. Inspired by his globally acclaimed digital film series, GO, this book showcases Sylvester s adventures through dynamic photos and video stills of adventures that aren t possible without his bike, which is never far and incorporated into his journey in unexpected ways. Sylvester s fearless mindset is demonstrated during his various travel undertakings: sumo wrestling in Tokyo, fencing at Somerset House in London, and racing Ferraris along the Malibu coast. Nigel Sylvester: GO includes many of Sylvester s friends, such as Super Bowl champion wide receiver Victor Cruz, DJ Khaled, celebrity jeweller Greg Yuna, Steve Aoki, and NBA champion Nick Young, among others. Nigel s story captures his thrilling adventures in cities around the globe from his point of view with unapologetic grace and style.

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879) is a work of travel literature by British explorer Isabella Bird. Adventurous from a young age, Bird gained a reputation as a writer and photographer interested in nature and the stories and cultures of people around the world. A bestselling author and the first woman inducted into the Royal Geographical Society, Bird is recognized today as a pioneering woman whose contributions to travel writing, exploration, and philanthropy are immeasurable. In 1872-after a year of sailing from Britain to Australia and Hawaii-Isabella Bird journeyed by boat to San Francisco before making her way over land through California and Wyoming to the Colorado Territory. There, she befriended an outdoorsman named Rocky Mountain Jim, who guided her throughout the vast wilderness of Colorado and accompanied her during a journey of over 800 miles. Traveling on foot and on horseback-Bird was an experienced and skillful rider-the two formed a curious but formidable pair, eventually reaching the 14,259 foot (4346 m) summit of Longs Peak, making Bird one of the first women to accomplish the feat. A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, Bird's most iconic work, was a bestseller upon publication, and has since inspired generations of readers. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Isabella Bird's A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains is a classic of American literature and travel writing reimagined for modern readers.

When Jerome K Jerome and his friend decide to attend the Oberammergau Passion Play, an Easter pageant that is performed in Oberlin, Germany once every decade, they turn the trip into a vacation. From London to Germany, the pair plan a cross-continent trip, excited to sight-see and experience different cultures. However, the friends run into conflict before they even take off, unsure what to pack. While they sort through contradicting advice from others, the pair cannot decide if it would be worse to take more than they need, or less. After they defeat their relatable packing struggle, they finally embark on their journey. The men encounter even more troubles, as they struggle to find directions, board their train, and overcome cultural barriers. However, through unfamiliar foods, strange beds, and misunderstandings, it is impossible to miscommunicate the gorgeous landmarks they encounter, including the Cologne Cathedral and the Rhine river. Their vacation may not go as planned, but it most certainly will be memorable! Featuring misadventures, iconic settings, and admirable friendship, Jerome K. Jerome's Diary of a Pilgrimage is a genius work of comedic nonfiction. Written in the form of essays depicting memorable anecdotes, Jerome's work is composed by delightful, humorous prose and poignant observations. Mixing humor and sentiment, Jerome extends his observations to everyday life, and uses the details of his journey to paint broader truths about civilization and the human race. With vivid descriptions of the social scene and stunning landscapes of major European cities such as London, Cologne, and Munich, Diary of a Pilgrimage paints a perfect image of the journey, allowing readers to experience a vicarious adventure throughout 19th century Europe. </ p> This edition of Diary of a Pilgrimage by Jerome K. Jerome features a stunning new cover design and is printed in a font that is both modern and readable. With these accommodations, Diary of a Pilgrimage caters to a contemporary audience while preserving the original hilarity of Jerome's work.

My First Summer in the Sierra is the incredible true story of John Muir's iconic time spent working in the California mountain range of the Sierra Nevada's. In this republished edition, read about his experience that shaped so much of environmental stewardship today. In the summer of 1869, a young John Muir joined a crew of shepherds working in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Spending countless hours working with the group, Muir also worked tirelessly to advocate for the land's protection. His efforts eventually transpired into the founding of Yosemite Valley as a national park, a landmark event in the history of United States environmentalism. A glimpse into Muir's private journals, My First Summer in the Sierra is the remarkable retelling of his time there. Full of humorous anecdotes and insightful prose, John Muir personal narrative will likely inspire you to pack up your belongings and head for the mountains.

America was a source of fascination to Europeans arriving there during the course of the nineteenth century. At first glance, the New World was very similar to the societies they left behind in their native countries, but in many aspects of politics, culture and society, the American experience was vastly different - almost unrecognisably so - from Old World Europe. Europeans were astounded that America could survive without a monarch, a standing army and the hierarchical society which still dominated Europe. Some travellers, such as the actress Fanny Kemble, were truly convinced America would eventually revert to a monarchy; others, such as Frances Wright and even Oscar Wilde, took their opinions further, and attempted to fix aspects of America - described in 1827 by the young Scottish captain Basil Hall, as 'one of England's "occasional failures"'. Many prominent visitors to the United States recorded their responses to this emerging society in their diaries, letters and journals; and many of them, like the fulminating Frances Trollope, were brutally and offensively honest in their accounts of the New World. They provide an insight into an America which is barely recognizable today whilst their writings set down a diverse and lively assortment of personal travel accounts. This book compares the impressions of a group of discerning and prominent Europeans from the cultural sphere - from the writers Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray and Oscar Wilde to luminaries of music and theatre such as Tchaikovsky and Fanny Kemble. Their reactions to the New World are as revealing of the European and American worlds as they are colourful and varied, providing a unique insight into the experiences of nineteenth century travelers to America.

Listography for travel! This guided journal features 4-colour illustrations and over 70 thought-provoking list topics for journalers to list all their travel adventures, near and far - including past trips and future destinations. Prompts range from the quintessential (cities and countries visited/hope to visit, world cuisines, road trips) to the idiosyncratic (memorable people met, places you have no interest in visiting, where to time travel to).

This book is a historical and critical assessment of contributions by American writer and lecturer John Lawson Stoddard (1850-1931). It is the first scholarly effort to provide visual and literary analyses of his illustrated travel works and political writings. It claims that Stoddard was a principle engine behind movements toward transforming tourism into a growing consumer culture, democratizing liberal arts education, and fueling anti-WWI campaigns. By the late 1870s, John Lawson Stoddard had played a major role in transforming the aristocratic Grand Tour into a mass cultural phenomenon. His photographs and accompanying public lectures on distant places and peoples caught the attention of decision makers in the U.S. government, but perhaps more importantly, his images and text were imprinted in the minds of millions of audience members. This book suggests how critical approaches borrowed from the interdisciplinary literature of visual culture are helpful in assessing the imagery and identity of a nineteenth-century American travel lecturer and author. It uncovers buried aspects of the personal and public life of Stoddard, and reveals his significant contributions to American political and social history.

'Robert Twigger is not so much a travel writer as a thrill-seeking philosopher' Esquire The Himalayas beckon and we go ... Some to make real journeys and others to make imaginary ones. These mountains, home to Buddhists, Bonpos, Jains, Muslims, Hindus, shamans and animists, to name only a few, are a place of pilgrimage and dreams, revelation and war, massacre and invasion, but also peace and unutterable calm. In an exploration of the region's seismic history, Robert Twigger unravels some of these real and invented journeys and the unexpected links between them. Following a meandering path across the Himalayas to its physical end in Nagaland on the Indian-Burmese border, Twigger encounters incredible stories from a unique cast of mountaineers and mystics, pundits and prophets. The result is a sweeping, enthralling and surprising journey through the history of the world's greatest mountain range.

When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusk's sharp and humane perspective.

This volume focuses on how travel writing contributed to cultural and intellectual exchange in and between the Dutch- and German-speaking regions from the 1790s to the twentieth-century interwar period. Drawing on a hitherto largely overlooked body of travelers whose work ranges across what is now Germany and Austria, the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium, the Dutch East Indies and Suriname, the contributors highlight the interrelations between the regional and the global and the role alterity plays in both spheres. They therefore offer a transnational and transcultural perspective on the ways in which the foreign was mediated to audiences back home. By combining a narrative perspective on travel writing with a socio-historically contextualized approach, essays emphasize the importance of textuality in travel literature as well as the self-positioning of such accounts in their individual historical and political environments. The first sustained analysis to focus specifically on these neighboring cultural and linguistic areas, this collection demonstrates how topographies of knowledge were forged across these regions by an astonishingly diverse range of travelling individuals from professional scholars and writers to art dealers, soldiers, (female) explorers, and scientific collectors. The contributors address cultural, aesthetic, political, and gendered aspects of travel writing, drawing productively on other disciplines and areas of scholarly research that encompass German Studies, Low Countries Studies, comparative literature, aesthetics, the history of science, literary geography, and the history of publishing.

This volume examines the hotel experience of Anglo-American travelers in the nineteenth century from the viewpoint of literary and cultural studies as well as spatiality theory. Focusing on the social and imaginary space of the hotel in fiction, periodicals, diaries, and travel accounts, the essays shed new light on nineteenth-century notions of travel writing. Analyzing the liminal space of the hotel affords a new way of understanding the freedoms and restrictions felt by travelers from different social classes and nations. As an environment that forced travelers to reimagine themselves or their cultural backgrounds, the hotel could provide exhilarating moments of self-discovery or dangerous feelings of alienation. It could prove liberating to the tourist seeking an escape from prescribed gender roles or social class constructs. The book addresses changing notions of nationality, social class, and gender in a variety of expansive or oppressive hotel milieu: in the private space of the hotel room and in the public spaces (foyers, parlors, dining areas). Sections address topics including nationalism and imperialism; the mundane vs. the supernatural; comfort and capitalist excess; assignations, trysts, and memorable encounters in hotels; and women's travels. The book also offers a brief history of inns and hotels of the time period, emphasizing how hotels play a large role in literary texts, where they frequently reflect order and disorder in a personal and/or national context. This collection will appeal to scholars in literature, travel writing, history, cultural studies, and transnational studies, and to those with interest in travel and tourism, hospitality, and domesticity.

This book covers the two most famous expeditions of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration: Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition of 1910-12 and Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition of 1914-16. It focuses not only on the two expeditions, but also on the ways in which the reputations of the men who led them have evolved over the course of the last century. For decades after Scott's tragic death on the return journey from the South Pole - to which he had been beaten by only five weeks - he was regarded as a saint-like figure with an unassailable reputation born from his heroic martyrdom in the frozen wastes of the Antarctic.In recent years, however, Scott has attracted some of the most intense criticism any explorer has ever received. Shackleton's reputation, meanwhile, has followed a reverse trajectory. Although his achievements were always appreciated, they were never celebrated with nearly the same degree of adulation that traditionally surrounded Scott. But in the final decades of the twentieth century Shackleton has come to be regarded as the beau ideal of the heroic explorer, a man capable of providing leadership lessons not only for other explorers but also for corporate executives and politicians.Today, Scott and Shackleton therefore occupy very different places in the polar pantheon than they once did. This change has come about with little new information about either man or the expeditions they led coming to light. Their actions and personalities, their virtues and flaws, have not changed. How, when and why attitudes towards Scott and Shackleton have altered over the course of the twentieth century forms the subject of this book. It explores how the evolution of their reputations has far more to do with broader cultural changes in Britain and the United States.

With charm, inspiration, and plenty of whimsy, Taylor reminds us that even in a weary world, it’s possible to celebrate the beauty in each person’s unique story—and make a difference that goes deeper than you’ll ever know.

Flight attendant Taylor Tippett had just finished beverage service and was sitting in the back of a Boeing 737 when she had a revelation: How can I show kindness to these passengers if I can’t show it to myself? She grabbed a tiny notepad and a Sharpie and wrote: “Be kind to yourself.” Before she had time to think about it, Taylor taped the note to a window, posted a picture, and then left the slip of paper in a seat-back pocket for someone on the next flight to find. And soon what started as a personal project to encourage herself and others became a viral sensation.

In Words from the Window Seat, Taylor shares stories of her travels, daily life, and interactions with people of all kinds, anchoring each chapter around a note she’s left for a stranger to find.

As she takes you from Chicago to Paris to Barcelona on planes, trains, and even a skateboard, you’ll:

• learn how to embody love in the midst of someone else’s ordinary day through little acts of kindness;
• discover the small moments of magic that happen when you have the courage to find them; and
• find ways to embrace your authentic self, even though life can be hard.

'I have given my whole life to the mountains. Born at the foot of the Alps, I have been a ski champion, a professional guide, an amateur of the greatest climbs in the Alps and a member of eight expeditions to the Andes and the Himalaya. If the word has any meaning at all, I am a mountaineer.' So Lionel Terray begins Conquistadors of the Useless - not with arrogance, but with typical commitment. One of the most colourful characters of the mountaineering world, his writing is true to his uncompromising and jubilant love for the mountains. Terray was one of the greatest alpinists of his time, and his autobiography is one of the finest and most important mountaineering books ever written. Climbing with legends Gaston Rebuffat, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, Terray made first ascents in the Alps, Alaska, the Andes and the Himalaya. He was at the centre of global mountaineering at a time when Europe was emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and he came out a hero. Conquistadors of the Useless tells of his wartime escapades, of life as an Alpine mountain guide, and of his climbs - including the second ascent of the Eiger North Face and his involvement in the first ever ascent of an 8,000-metre peak, Annapurna. His tales capture the energy of French post-war optimism, a time when France needed to reassert herself and when climbing triumphs were more valued than at any other time in history. Terray's death, in the Vercors, robbed mountaineering of one of its most passionate and far-sighted figures. His energy, so obvious in Conquistadors of the Useless, will inspire for generations to come. A mountaineering classic.

Robert Mads Anderson is an elite mountaineer with a solitary goal: to conquer Everest. After nearly getting killed on his first expedition, he led a team up a new route on the Kangshung Face without oxygen or Sherpa support, climbed solo on the remote North Face, and finally guided a team to the top of the world. Incorporating a who's who of internationally recognised climbers, including Stephen Venables, Reinhold Messner and Chris Bonington, Nine Lives traces the story of Everest, from the big, nationally supported expeditions of the 1980s; through the small teams forging new routes and climbing solo; to the commercially guided expeditions of today. Set against the majestic backdrop of the world's tallest peak, Anderson's nine Everest expeditions over eighteen years define what truly drives a human being to the greatest of heights. With a foreword by Peter Hillary and 32 pages of colour photography, in Nine Lives Robert Mads Anderson offers his personal account of the world's highest mountain.

“Pam spurned conventional rewards, entrusted her dream to eight powerful huskies, and set out alone to cross the Arctic. . . . a most extraordinary journey.� —Sir Ranulph Fiennes, renowned adventurer  Eight sled dogs and one woman set out from Barrow, Alaska, to mush 2,500 miles. Alone Across the Artic chronicles this astounding expedition. For an entire year, Pam Flowers and her dogs made this epic journey across North America arctic coast. The first woman to make this trip solo, Pam endures and deals with intense blizzards, melting pack ice, and a polar bear. Yet in the midst of such danger, Pam also relishes the time alone with her beloved team. Their survival—-her survival—-hinges on that mutual trust and love. 

200 countries; one street each; seven years of travelling and collecting photos, stories, facts and figures about each country. This is not just another photography book. It reveals everything that a street means to society: education, wisdom, youth, experience, happiness, stories, food, and so much more. This is the raw material of life, drawn directly from the experiences of the Belgian photographer Jeroen Swolfs. Seeing the street as a unifying theme, he travelled in search of that one street in each place - sometimes by a harbour or a railway station - that comprised the country as a whole. Each stunning image conveys culture, colours, rituals, even the history of the city and country where he found them. Swolfs sees the street as a universal meeting place, a platform of crowds, a centre of news and gossip, a place of work, and a playground for children. Swolfs's streets are a matrix for community; his photographs are published at a time when the unique insularity of local communities everywhere has never been more under threat.

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.

'He appeared, without a word, in the tent's entrance, covered in ice. He looked like anyone would after spending over twenty-four hours in a hurricane at over 8,000 metres. In winter. In the Karakoram. He was so exhausted he couldn't speak.' Of all the games mountaineers play on the world's high mountains, the hardest - and cruellest - is climbing the fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres in the bitter cold of winter. Ferocious winds that can pick you up and throw you down, freezing temperatures that burn your lungs and numb your bones, weeks of psychological torment in dark isolation: these are adventures for those with an iron will and a ruthless determination. For the first time, award-winning author Bernadette McDonald tells the story of how Poland's ice warriors made winter their own, perfecting what they dubbed 'the art of suffering' as they fought their way to the summit of Everest in the winter of 1980 - the first 8,000-metre peak they climbed this way but by no means their last. She reveals what it was that inspired the Poles to take up this brutal game, how increasing numbers of climbers from other nations were inspired to enter the arena, and how competition intensified as each remaining peak finally submitted to leave just one awaiting a winter ascent, the meanest of them all: K2. Winter 8000 is the story of true adventure at its most demanding.