20 TIMELESS TRAVEL BOOKS TO SATISFY YOUR WANDERLUST FROM HOME, FROM PAUL THEROUX TO ROBERT MACFARLANE

i News 3 April 2020

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Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn (1979)

An American war correspondent, Gellhorn recalls the “horror journeys” of her long and eventful career in this unsentimental memoir, many of which were accompanied by “another” – husband Ernest Hemingway, including journeys in China, the Caribbean, Moscow and West Africa. Her writing is uncompromising and contradictory, the subject matter daring and eye-opening.

Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh (2019)

From the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet’s Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, this is a celebration of the glory of train travel and a witty and irreverent look at the world. Packing up her rucksack (and her fiancé, Jem), Rajesh embarks on an adventure that takes her from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, North Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan and beyond.

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The World: Life and Travel 1950-2000 by Jan Morris (2003)

A compendium of journalistic essays that traverse a half-century of globetrotting, including Baghdad, New York and Venice, from the writer best known for her history of the British empire, Pax Britannica. Morris, then known as James, was part of the first expedition to scale Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary, and witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. She transitioned to being a woman in the 70s.

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands by Mary Seacole (1857)

A Victorian-age account of the world by a Crimean war nurse sometimes referred to as “the black Florence Nightingale”. This daughter of a Scottish lieutenant and free Jamaican recalls her time in cholera-stricken Jamaica, Panama, Crimea, Constantinople, Malta and Gibraltar, and her return to London, where she became somewhat of a celebrity.

AFRICA

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski (2001)

As foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, Kapuscinski spent three decades immersing himself in historic events. This compendium focuses on Africa, including a journey from Dar es Salaam to Kampala to witness the independence of Uganda in the early 60s via the Serengeti, where he gets lost, contracts malaria then tuberculosis, and is nearly bitten by a Egyptian cobra.

The Chains of Heaven by Philip Marsden (2006)

Marsden first went to Ethiopia during the civil war in 1982 – a trip that exerted such a grip on him that it changed his direction in life and prompted his career as a writer and his first book, A Far Country: Travels in Ethiopia. For The Chains of Heaven, he returned to the country during peacetime to walk the open road, encountering dramatic gorges, table-top mountains and semi-desert, and a host of characters – from hermits to farmers – along the way.

Journey Without Maps by Graham Greene (1936)

In 1935, Greene spent four weeks walking through Liberia, his first trip outside Europe, in Africa’s first republic founded for freed slaves. The country’s interior was unmapped, prompting a journey signposted by local guides. This is one of his earlier works and the trip was also documented by his companion and cousin Barbara Greene in Land Benighted.

ASIA

Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire by Alev Scott (2018)

Scott searches for vestiges of the Ottomans beyond Turkey’s borders. During her travels through a dozen countries – including Greece, Palestine and Kosovo – she finds a legacy that still reverberates and is still relevant today, particularly among the displaced looking for brighter horizons, but also in Jerusalem, where Jews and Muslims co-exist.

The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts (2020)

According to Vivien Godfrey, CEO of Stanfords bookshop, if you only read one book this year, it needs to be this masterpiece. An insightful guide through Russia’s past and present, it tells of Siberia’s deep connection with piano music, revealing a deep humanity in Russia’s Wild East.

Shadow City: a Woman Walks Kabul by Taran Khan (2019)

Journalist Khan journeys to the land of her forebears, guided by her grandfather, who is intimately acquainted with the city through only books, stories, poetry and myth. These stories conjure a magic in the labyrinthine streets and reveal a fragile city in a state of flux, shape-shifting and flickering with the promise of peace.

Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer (2019)

A tale of adventure, fortitude and poetry, this gorgeous depiction of the Mongol Derby is a literary marvel. Follow Prior-Palmer as she – at just 19 – embarks on the world’s toughest horse race, across the Mongolian plains once traversed by Genghis Khan, through sweltering heat and terrifying storms. The thrill of the event comes alive on the page.

A Beginner’s Guide To Japan by Pico Iyer (2019)

Whether illuminating an unknown place to newcomers or giving those familiar a look through fresh eyes, this playful yet profound guide will leave you desperate to visit Japan. Full of brief but insightful vignettes, Iyer gives incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. The stand-out winner of the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards Travel Memoir of the Year.

AMERICAS

Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell (1992)

A portrait of a bygone era in New York, captured in an anthology of journalistic dispatches written for The New Yorker between 1943 and 1964. Though Mitchell came to Manhattan as a crime reporter, this collection portrays the people that make New York so captivating, from street preachers to saloon keepers.

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1912)

The South American nation Guyana remains uncharted territory even today, with around 85 per cent forest cover from one of only four primary rainforests in the world (guyanatourism.com). Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that this mysterious land of dense jungle was the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s sci-fi classic. Ancient tepuis (table-top mountains) erupt from the jungle canopy, while the thick forest hides the world’s largest single-drop waterfall, Kaieteur Falls – even if prehistoric creatures are a figment of the imagination.

On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux (2019)

The master of contemporary travel writing and winner of the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing, Theroux immerses himself in the beautiful and troubled heart of modern Mexico. Moving through the deserts south of the Arizona border, he finds a place brimming with charm, yet visibly marked by both the US border patrol looming to the north and mounting discord from within.

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (1977)

Inspired to visit the extremities of South America by the remains of a giant sloth uncovered in Chilean Patagonia by his grandmother’s cousin, Chatwin set off for six months, gathering stories from the people and places he encountered in the region, many of whom were settlers and nomads.

EUROPE

Map of Another Town by MFK Fisher (1964)

Moving to Aix-en-Provence from the US after the Second World War, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher traces the roots of her historic adopted home through her everyday life – visits to the food market, coffee in the cafés, set against a Roman backdrop in the sun-drenched South of France.

The Old Ways: a Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane (2012)

The final book of Macfarlane’s landscape trilogy explores the human connection to Britain’s ancient pathways, weaving history with literature and landscape, and explored through geology (chalk, peat and so on). Though it focuses primarily on Great Britain, with paths such as the ancient Ridgeway, it also deviates further to branches of the Camino de Santiago and the Himalayas.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (2018)

After losing their home and livelihoods, Winn and her husband Moth – recently diagnosed with a terminal illness – pack their worldly belongings in two backpacks and set off along the South West Coast Path. It is a tale of endurance that weaves in the realities of homelessness, illness and ultimately hope, seen through the back door of one of the country’s most well-trodden paths.

AUSTRALASIA

Down Under by Bill Bryson (2000)

Intrigued by the extremes and dangers of the vastness and variations of Australia, Bryson sets off on a humorous journey by car and train, hearing tales of 19th-century settlers on a railroad trip into the Outback and witnessing the prosperity of the coast and the dichotomy of icons Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef.