Travel Adventure Writing

Whilst in Ireland for an International Song Competition, Tony Hawks was amazed to see a hitch-hiker, trying to thumb a lift, but with a fridge. This seemed amazingly optimistic - his Irish friends, however thought nothing of it at all. 'I had clearly arrived in a country', writes Tony, 'where the qualifications for 'eccentric' involved a great deal more than that to which I had become used'. Two years pass but the fridge incident haunts our author.

Remember when you were a kid, and you used to go round to a friend's house to see if they were playing? Well, as adults we're not supposed to do that. Which is a shame... because Dave Gorman likes playing. He REALLY likes games. So he knocked on the biggest door you could ever imagine - the internet - and asked 76,000 people if they fancied a game. This is the story of what happened next.

When Stephen Bodio was a young boy in the early '50s, he saw an image in National Geographic that became forever etched in his mind: It was a photograph of a Kazakh nomad, dressed in a long coat and wearing a fur hat, holding a huge tame eagle on his fist. And a lifelong fascination with Central Asia was born.

LIFE ON THE ROAD features 29 selected stories and essays about life on the road from Gypsy Jane Finley’s now discontinued website Wanderings: Living the Ordinary Extraordinarily (Stories from the Road). Her stories and essays are based on both her travels in a Mazda Pickup truck with a tiny box-shaped Stubby camper on the back during five years of full-time RVing that started in the year 2000 – on what she calls FREEDOM DAY – and starting in 2005 on her half-time RVing and half-time living in a mobile home in Quartzsite, Arizona at the Desert Gardens RV Park every year up to the ...

Early one May, Sam Neumann arrived in the breathtaking wilderness of Denali, Alaska with a smile on his face and adventure in his heart. But less than 24 hours later, both had evaporated as he stood behind the counter of a filthy gas station - his new place of employment - and tried to piece together what exactly had gone wrong.

Once in a while, a travel book comes along that pushes at the boundaries of the genre. Quondam: Travels in a Once World does exactly that, asking us to reimagine the relevance and potential of travel. In this case, an epic, true-grit expedition by bike through the heart of Africa without the umbilical cord of technology, when being on your own meant exactly that.

Setting off on foot from Winchester, Ken Haigh hikes across southern England, retracing a traditional route that medieval pilgrims followed to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Walking in honour of his father, a staunch Anglican who passed away before they could begin their trip together, Haigh wonders: Is there a place in the modern secular world for pilgrimage?

Whether they are looking for love, their purpose, or the perfect beach, every backpacker finds a unique community—and themselves—along the way. In this one-of-a-kind book, author Paul Neville tells the story of his year spent going around the world on a budget and celebrating a life lived for the journey—not the destination.

Tired of his disconnected life and uninspiring job, Leon Logothetis leaves it all behind - job, money, home, and even his cell phone - and hits the road with nothing but the clothes on his back and five dollars in his pocket, relying on the kindness of strangers and the serendipity of the open road for his daily keep. Along the way, Leon offers up the intriguing and charming tales gathered along his one-of-a-kind journey: riding in trains, buses, big rigs and classic cars; sleeping on streets and couches and firehouses....

This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers' accounts of the West, from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counternarrative to the nation's romantic entanglement with its Western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention.

For the past 50 years, Paul Theroux has travelled to the far corners of the Earth - to China, Africa, the Pacific Islands, Russia, and elsewhere. In Deep South, he turns his gaze to a region much closer to his home. Travelling through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, he writes of the stunning landscapes he discovers - the deserts, the mountains, the Mississippi - and, above all, the lives of the people he meets.

A powerfully built man more than six feet tall, Amundsen’s career of adventure began at the age of fifteen (he was born in Norway in 1872 to a family of merchant sea captains and rich ship owners); twenty-five years later he was the first man to reach both the North and South Poles. Lynne Cox, adventurer and swimmer, author of Swimming to Antarctica (“gripping”—Sports Illustrated) and Grayson (“wondrous, and unforgettable”—Carl Hiaasen), gives us in South with the Sun a full-scale account of the explorer’s life and expeditions.

It's all here: Adventures in Africa, Azerbaijan and the Arctic. Headhunters and prayer flags, liars and thieves, evil spirits and atrocious food. From Tbilisi to Tibet to the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Common Sense and Whiskey is a crisp survey of what's it's like in the real world. You can handle just about anything out on the road with a believable grin, common sense, and whiskey. That's been the author's theory, anyway, for 25 years of international travel. So far, so good.

More than 200 years later, the “voyage of discovery” — with its outsized characters, geographic marvels, and wondrous moments of adventure and mystery — continues to draw us along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Revisit the Lewis and Clark Trail and its famous people, landmarks, and events, exploring questions the expedition continues to raise, such as, What really motivated Thomas Jefferson to send out his agents of discovery? What “mutinous expressions” were uttered? What happened to the dog? Why did Meriwether Lewis end his own life?

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 13th 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 still lead today, 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 Stranded in the Heart of Darkness... "Red-shirted man speaks once more. In turn, I gaze at the interpreter, await his translation. “You have fought and killed many men?” he hesitantly asks. I shake my head. “No,” I say, taken aback. “I have never killed anyone.” “In the voodoo culture,” the translator goes on, “men who are able to wear such a band are considered to be powerful fighters.” Now gesturing towards the red-shirted man. “This man here envies you for your power.” _________________ In 2009, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Vincent Zandri ...

Fed up with questions about what he was going to do when he retired, Edward decided to get on his bicycle and ride from Le Havre to the Mediterranean. He struggled in Normandy to get directions from old men tipsy on Calvados by 9 am, passed by prairies of corn and acres of sunflowers, and hit his stride on the towpath of the Burgundy canal. He explored the mystery of what an ouvrier eats for lunch, and was barred from a swimming pool because his trunks were too decent.

QUARTZSITE STORIES features 13 stories about Quartzsite, Arizona from Gypsy Jane Finley’s now discontinued website Wanderings: Living the Ordinary Extraordinarily (Stories from the Road). Her Quartzsite stories are based on both her travels to Quartzsite in a Mazda Pickup truck with a tiny box-shaped Stubby camper on the back during five years of full-time RVing that started in the year 2000 – on what she calls FREEDOM DAY – and starting in 2005 on her half-time RVing and half-time living in a mobile home in Quartzsite, Arizona at the Desert Gardens RV Park every year up to the ...

As Kohnstamm comes to personal terms with each of his demanding job requirements, he unveils the underside of the travel industry and its often-harrowing effect on writers, travelers, and the destinations themselves. Moreover, he invites us into his world of compromising and scandalous situations in one of the most exciting countries as he races against an impossible deadline

From licking a Monet in Paris, to pushing an abusive macho honeymooner off his sailboat in the shark-infested Galapagos, to saving her toddler son from a charging bull elephant in Africa, these 14 delightful, award-winning true tales will inspire listeners to follow the call of a wild life and leave home with their doors unlocked.