Published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2018, 352 pages. What does Switzerland mean to most people? Cows, chocolate, banking, cheese and mountains—these were some of the responses Diccon Bewes got when he put the question to 100 non-Swiss people. Yes, Switzerland is all these things but there is so much more to this country. In his …
Continue reading Swiss Watching—Inside the Land of Milk and Money: Diccon Bewes
Photo: GaudiLab via Shutterstock For the past nine years, I have been reviewing travel books by women for the website Women on the Road. When I first started, I realized that almost all the travel books I had read until then were by men. For me, this opened up an entire new world of incredible …
Continue reading Travelling the World: A Woman’s Perspective
Translated from Italian by Stash LuczkiwPublished by Harvill Secker and HarperOne, 2020, 137 pages. Original version published in 2018. The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen’s book about his trip to the Dolpo region in the Himalayas, was published in 1978. It is a blend of travelogue, philosophy and nature writing. Almost four decades later, in 2017, …
Continue reading Without Ever Reaching the Summit: Paolo Cognetti
Published by John Murray Press, 2021, 288 pages. “...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 …
Continue reading Outlandish—Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes: Nick Hunt
Published by Chatto & Windus, 2021, 304 pages. “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 …
Continue reading The Amur River—Between Russia and China: Colin Thubron
Published by Cannongate and Harper, 2010, 438 pages. 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. …
Continue reading Country Driving—A Chinese Road Trip: Peter Hessler
Translated from French by Linda CoverdalePublished by Penguin / Rizzoli International Publications, 2014, 243 pages. Original version published in 2011. “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 …
Continue reading Consolations of the Forest—Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga: Sylvain Tesson
Published by Vintage and Penguin, 1979, 312 pages. 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 …
Review by B.V. TejahPublished by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 240 pages. 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 …
Continue reading A Beginner’s Guide to Japan—Observations and Provocations: Pico Iyer
Published by Mariner Books / Harper Perennial / Picador, 2004, 400 pages. 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 …
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