Travel Essays

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was a short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat. The short story "The Devil and Tom Walker" is about a miserly man who makes a deal with the devil. Irving’s fictional character Diedrich Knickerbocker is a Dutch-American historian and narrator of "The Conspiracy of the Cocked Hats" and the “golden age” of Wouter van Twiller, the Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam.

When I wrote my first monthly blog post in November of 2016, I didn’t really have a grip on my purpose, what my central theme or message was, or what the blog would become. I was simply and spontaneously moving pen across page. Now, looking back eight and a half years later, I realize: “Oh! I was home on the roam.” That first post doesn’t mention this, but I wrote it from Sunyani, Ghana. After a somewhat random and uncertain start, I quickly get it in gear, sitting down once a month (occasionally twice) to write about what moved me the most during the preceding weeks. Almost always ...

From the award-winning essayist and author of the “shrewd as hell and hysterically funny” novel Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe comes a moving and unforgettable essay collection about his travels around the globe as he reflects on the power and complexity of human relationships. From the award-winning essay “Lover's Theme”, in which Evan James explores the life of a drag queen in San Francisco, to his poignant story of coming out in “One Hell of a Homie”, this essay collection brilliantly captures both the beauty and pain of relationships - friendly, familiar, and romantic.

A personal story promising laughs, surprises, tears, and joy, and guaranteed to warm your heart! When a grandmother embarked on a two-week travel adventure to Italy with her eighteen-year-old twin granddaughters, Margie Miklas’s long-awaited dream became a reality. Excited to share her beloved Italia, she hoped to create a special experience they’d treasure for the rest of their lives.

Edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodríguez, Journeys offers access to Ramanujan's personal diaries and journals, providing a window into his creative process. It will include literary entries from his travels, his thoughts on writing, poetry drafts, and dreams. His diaries and journals served as fertile ground where he planted the seeds for much of his published work....

Twenty years ago Joe Bennett hitchhiked the length and breadth of New Zealand. The result was A Land of Two Halves, a portrait of the country and its many contradictions that is as telling today as it was then. For as Joe says in his reintroduction to this classic road trip, the name of the All Black first five may have changed but there is still an All Black first five, the waves still thump against Hokitika beach and the debate still rages over the Treaty of Waitangi.

Baumer''s life was ended by an SUV in January of 2017 while he was walking barefoot across America for the second time to draw attention to climate change. Baumer was a prolific wizard of non sequitur and displacement, and these writings show the maturation of an absurdist conscience, applying itself to inequities of access: power, security, and meaning itself, within the confines of America and within that, the contemporary professionalized writing culture.

Thailand, the land of smiles and golden dreams, is languishing, and Pattaya, its biggest fun city, is succumbing to a thousand ills. Pattaya Pains is about living in Pattaya over the long term. Even though the collection of essays, stories, and observations herein would relish the golden dream of painting Pattaya as a romantic hotspot where Thais and foreigners bond, it can’t do so - not only because East is East and West is West, but also because Thais just don’t see foreigners in a good light.

Understanding humans and human nature is one of the toughest jobs. Many time what seems right and good or vice versa can be completely different if explored to proper depth. In many instances, we all form an opinion about the people we meet without actually knowing anything about them. But hearing and learning about such instances helps us to redefine our thought process and become wiser. Sudha Murty's book Wise and Otherwise will take you to a journey across the length and breadth of India through narrations of 51 stories inspired by the extensive travels of the author herself.

Ever suffered the collective flatulence of 80 c-passengers while sailing on a serene Asian river? Or called out for rescue in true Bollywood style while locked up in a minaret in Persia? Or had to cross a pack of hyenas en route to the loo?

When Taran N. Khan first arrived in Kabul in the spring of 2006 - five years after the Taliban government was overthrown - she found a city both familiar and unknown. Falling in with poets, archaeologists, and filmmakers, she begins to explore the city, and, over the course of several returns, discovers a Kabul quite different from the one she had expected. Shadow City is an account of these expeditions, a personal and meditative portrait of a city we know primarily in terms of conflict.

What's it like to be a trail angel and can romance truly blossom from first meeting to marriage on the Pacific Crest Trail? How do trail names get bestowed and what does it mean when you find yourself roaring back at a mountain lion? How have climate change, technology, and the sheer number of hikers affected life on the PCT? Find the answers to all these questions, and so many more, in the diverse writings gathered in Crossing Paths, an anthology of stories and poems written by PCT hikers.

Il viaggio più affascinante è un viaggio antico, graduale, privato e sociale insieme: il viaggio in treno. I treni sono teatri, caffè, bazar. L'unico talk-show che non conosce crisi è quello che si replica quotidianamente sulle rotaie. La confidenza genera libertà: ci ha messo insieme il caso, ci dividerà una stazione. I treni aiutano a pensare. Tutti i grandi viaggi - dai pellegrinaggi cattolici al Grand Tour, dalla prima partenza con gli amici al viaggio di nozze - sono, in fondo, una scoperta di se stessi: il panorama che c'interessa sta dentro di noi.

Through stories remembered and imagined, A Stranger's Pose draws the listener into a world of encounters in more than a dozen African towns. Iduma blends memoir, travelogue, and storytelling in these fragments of a traveler’s journey across several African cities.

It started as a simple journal exercise. Tom Sullivan wanted to list his top 10 favorite hunting, fishing, and climbing trips. Once completed, however, he noted something he found quite interesting. The majority of the excursions he noted didn't result in a harvest of fin or fur, nor did they remind him of any found and conquered summit. Instead, he had selected past trips where something remarkable had occurred and valuable lessons had been learned. This became the inspiration for his first collection of adventure essays.

Tony Wheeler, travel addict, Lonely Planet founder and intrepid traveller over five decades, has discovered that the more you travel, the more extraordinary the world becomes. His enthusiasm for trekking the globe is contagious: it is impossible to listen to On Travel without scouring for deals, searching for unusual places and deciding to leave the luggage behind in an escape to the unfamiliar.

This book is the first volume of a collection of RoadRUNNER travelogues created by James T. Parks, which focus on locations and routes steeped in American history. Jim’s original articles are scattered piecemeal throughout various RoadRUNNER bimonthly issues, spanning more than a decade of time. With that in mind, we have updated information, where feasible, that appeared in the original articles. Listeners who are interested in how America came to be what it is today will find this integrated collection of historically themed adventures of particular interest.

Los países de Europa del Este son el blanco de esta crónica de viajes, suerte de ensayo sobre literaturas distantes, y a la vez colección de estampas sobre la identidad y los desplazamientos.

A Month of Sundays: The New Mexico Columns is a collection of columns from writer Harry Musselwhite's work with The Rome News-Tribune (Rome, Georgia). The book is a tribute to the beauty, landscape, and atmosphere of the American Southwest.