Published by John Murray Press “...the idea that wonder, mystery, awe, new worlds and undiscovered realms might lie a train ride away, rather than on a carbon-intensive flight to the far side of the globe, opened up possibilities for a different type of travel. What other unlikely landscapes might be lurking out there, ready to …
Continue reading Outlandish—Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes: Nick Hunt
Published by Chatto & Windus “Across the heart of Asia, at the ancient convergence of steppe and forest, the grasslands of Mongolia move towards Siberia in a grey-green sea. ... “Somewhere deep in this hinterland rises one of the most formidable rivers on earth. It drains a basin twice the size of Pakistan, and more …
Continue reading The Amur River—Between Russia and China: Colin Thubron
Published by Cannongate and Harper Peter Hessler is an American journalist who speaks fluent Chinese and was The New Yorker’s correspondent in China from 2000 to 2007. While he was there, he got himself a Chinese driving licence and travelled through the country. Hessler applied for a Chinese driving licence in 2001. Acquiring the licence …
Continue reading Country Driving—A Chinese Road Trip: Peter Hessler
Translated from French by Linda CoverdalePublished by Penguin “I’d promised myself that before I turned forty I would live as a hermit deep in the woods.” That was Sylvain Tesson’s promise to himself, a promise that he kept. Tesson spent six months in a cabin on the shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia from February …
Continue reading Consolations of the Forest—Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga: Sylvain Tesson
Published by Vintage and Penguin I read The Snow Leopard when I was in my early 20s, and I loved it enough to put it on my list of 10 favourite books—where it has stayed since then. Published in 1978, The Snow Leopard is a classic, blending travel and philosophy. Peter Matthiessen was an American …
Review by B.V. Tejah Some travel books are well-suited for pandemic lockdowns. We find ourselves locked inside, while our minds can soar to distant places. These books make us ponder over the nature of faraway cultures; they would be a useless tourist guide and would not include maps. Pico Iyer’s wonderful, odd little book (240 …
Published by Mariner Books, Harper Perennial and Picador Rory Stewart had set out to walk from Iran all the way to Nepal—through Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. But in December 2000, when the Iranian government took away his visa, the Taliban refused to allow him to enter Afghanistan. So Stewart had to go directly to Pakistan. …
It all began when Chris Stewart, 29 and out of work, bumps into a friend. “My great-aunt Jane has been on at me for weeks to find her a skipper [for her yacht], and I thought of you straightaway.” Which was a little odd because Stewart had never been on a boat before, never mind …
Continue reading Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat—Chris Stewart
Think of all the travel books that you have read: how many of them are written by men? Almost all? And yet women have been travelling and writing about it for as long as men. As a reviewer for the website, Women on the Road, I have spent the last few years reading these books. …
Published by Sort of Books Many of us dream of giving up the rat-race and living the simple life in a community far removed from the hustle of cities. These remain dreams for most of us, but not for Chris Stewart and his wife Ana. In 1988, they moved to Alpujarras in Andalucia, Spain, and …
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