Travel Memoir

Once upon a time, there was a little boy. His belly full of laughter, his life full of joy. Until one day, something changed; stripped his innocence away. The hole inside making space for the devil to come and play.

The opportunity to tour Israel came at a good time. For months, my life has been a mindless plodding through necessary routine, as monotonous as an all-night shift on an assembly line. Life gets that way sometimes, when nothing specific is wrong but the world around us seems drained of color. My weekly worship experiences and daily quiet times with God have felt as dry and stale as last year's crackers. I'm ashamed to confess the malaise I've felt. I have been given so much. Shouldn't a Christian's life be an abundant one, as exciting as Christmas morning, as joyful as Easter Sunday?

Fuzzy-haired, neurotic, cello-playing Catrina is devastated when her lover, Jack, leaves her to go surfing on the other side of the world. Trapped in a dead-end job and torn by his departure, Catrina dreams of running away. But how do you run away when you're flat broke? Luckily, her friend Andrew comes up with a plan: they'll get an old van, turn it into a camper, and busk their way from Norway to Portugal, via the midnight sun. Andrew is one of her oldest friends and they share many of the same passions.

In the powerful travel-writing tradition of Ryszard Kapuscinski and V. S. Naipaul, a haunting memoir of a dangerous and disorienting year of self-discovery in one of the world's unhappiest countries.

Gripping and often poetic, Alone Against the North is a classic adventure story of single-minded obsession, physical hardship, and the restless sense of wonder that every explorer has in common. What Shoalts discovered as he paddled downriver was a series of unmapped waterfalls that could easily have killed him. Just as astonishing was the media reaction when he got back to civilization. He was feted by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and congratulated by the Governor General. People were enthralled by Shoalts’s proof that the world is bigger than we think.

Building on the success of The Yarn Whisperer, Clara Parkes' rich personal essays invite listeners and devoted crafters on excursions to be savored, from a guide who quickly comes to feel like a trusted confidante. In Knitlandia, she takes listeners along on 17 of her most memorable journeys across the globe over the last 15 years, with stories spanning from the fjords of Iceland to a cozy yarn shop in Paris' 13th arrondissement.

Voyage to the outcrops of the tropics, where dreamers and degenerates mingle in an exotic setting of mysterious jungle ruins, narcotic drinks, and secret un-surfed waves. In this encomium to his experience teaching English in Micronesia, S. Jacques Stratton offers a wry portrayal of the ex-pat life, conveyed through vignettes and characters that evoke a lost, limnal latitude. Both memoir and travelogue, augmented with photographs from the author's collection, Islands on the Fringe will spark the wanderlust of those who crave offbeat adventure beyond the main-traveled routes.

In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first.

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike - it's at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright, modern take on the age-old questions: How do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? Can you love someone without the need for commitment or any expectations for the future?

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

✨ True Stories. Real Diplomacy. Unexpected Friendships. 🌍 Ever wonder what it's really like to live inside the world of diplomacy? Step into a life few get to experience—as seen through the eyes of Dr. Maryann Beebe-Ally, a successful American businesswoman who suddenly becomes the Ambassador’s wife of a foreign embassy in the Middle East. 📖 From the Caribbean charm of Guyana to the desert elegance of Kuwait, this captivating memoir takes you behind palace gates and embassy walls. As the wife of Guyana’s Ambassador to Kuwait, Dr. Maryann navigates royal ceremonies, cultural ...

The definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of Into the Wild. Read by the author. Also, hear a Fresh Air interview with Krakauer conducted shortly after his ordeal.

What does it take to be one of the world's best high-altitude mountain climbers? A lot of fundraising; traveling in some of the world's most dangerous countries; enduring cold bivouacs, searing lungs, and a cloudy mind when you can least afford one. It means learning the hard lessons the mountains teach. Steve House built his reputation on ascents throughout the Alps, Canada, Alaska, the Karakoram, and the Himalaya that have expanded possibilities of style, speed, and difficulty.

How to Quit Your Job and Travel the World is not just a catchy title. It's a promise. Herein contains all the information you need to tuck in your desk chair for the last time. If you dream about exploration and adventure, if your heart croons wanderlust, this guide is for you. With tips and tricks, Kate will not only help you find your way, but know what to expect. Learn how to find work while you travel; how to be a ski instructor, au pair, tour guide, teacher or travel blogger.

In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port - launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe from the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages.

Whether navigating the backroads of Louisiana or Thuringia, exploring the snowy Quebec woods, or performing onstage at Rush concerts, Neil Peart has stories to tell. His first volume in this series, Far and Away, combined words and images to form an intimate, insightful narrative that won many fans. Now Far and Near brings together reflections from another three years of an artist's life.

Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle, and the trials, landscapes, and cultures she encountered along the way. The route takes her through the valleys and snowy mountain passes of Europe and India to the scorching deserts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the metal of her bicycle, Rozinante (named after Don Quixote's steed), becomes too hot to touch.

Travel writer Steve Malins spent time as a young man challenging himself and learning about the world around him. He qualified as a military parachutist by the age of 19, sailed across the Atlantic and worked in the heart of Luxembourg. After a sabbatical “Down Under” in Australia learning to fly, farm and dive the Great Southern Land, he and his fiancée sold up in London and moved to Melbourne to start a family, embracing the climate, opportunities and offer of new life on an acre of land. There was lots to do—train as a firefighter, farm; fish the bay, camp and ski the Alpine, and ...

The only place in the United States that Hemingway could really call home after he started writing was the tropical island of Key West. During his decade here in the 1930s, he acquired his famed macho persona as Papa, the biggest Big Daddy of them all. This vivid portrait of Ernest Hemingway's Key West reveals both Hemingway, the writer, and Hemingway, the macho, hard-drinking sportsman. His Key West years turned out to be his most productive: he finished A Farewell to Arms, started For Whom the Bell Tolls, and wrote several other books, including Green Hills of Africa.

In 1994, retired CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt set out to spend a perfect year in America - traveling to his 12 favorite American places, in just the right month for a visit to each. With his well-known warmth, humor, and insight, he shows them to us now in Charles Kuralt's America.