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The end of elsewhere: travels among the tourists
By Taras Grescoe. 2003
Taras Grescoe plunges into the ruts where the tourists are thickest, starting at the tip of Spain's Land's End and…
finishing, nine months later, on the soldier-patrolled beaches of China's End of the Earth. Along the way, he crosses the entire Eurasian landmass, experiencing all sorts of travel such as all-inclusive resorts, pilgrimages, and bus tours. Some descriptions of sex and violence, some strong language. 2003.The bookseller of Kabul
By Åsne Seierstad. 2003
Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict there. In the…
following spring she returned to live with an Afghan family for several months. For more than 20 years Sultan Khan defied the authorities - be they Communist or Taliban - in order to supply books to the people of Kabul. He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the Communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and hatred of censorship, he is also a committed Muslim with strict views on family life. 2003.Reflections of the moon on water: healing women's bodies and minds through traditional Chinese wisdom
By Xiaolan Zhao, Kanae Kinoshita. 2006
Dr. Xiaolan Zhao has treated thousands of women suffering from fatigue, PMS, infertility, depression, menopausal symptoms and other gynecological disorders…
- common health problems in the West, but not in China, where traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been an integral part of women's lives for thousands of years. She explains what every woman can do in terms of ongoing and preventative self-care to improve her health and vitality and prevent illness. Descriptions of sex. 2006.Red China blues: my long march from Mao to now
By Jan Wong. 1996
Born in Canada, Jan Wong began a rocky six-year romance with Maoism when she went to China in 1972. In…
this memoir, she describes leaving China as she became aware of the harsh realities of the communist system, and returning to China in the late 1980s as a reporter. She covered the crackdown in Tiananmen Square and the capitalist reforms of Deng Xiaoping. 1996.Poets and pahlevans: a journey into the heart of Iran
By Marcello Di Cintio. 2006
Di Cintio prepares for his journey to Iran by taking lessons in Farsi, researching Persian poetry and sharpening his wrestling…
skills. Once there, he talks politics with men in tea houses, wrestles, and visits sites and shrines associated with great Persian poets, learning that poetry is loved and quoted by everyone from taxi-drivers to students. The mosaic of incidents, encounters, conversations, sights, smells and moments creates a detailed impression of a country and society that will challenge preconceptions. 2006.Hitching rides with Buddha: a journey across Japan
By Will Ferguson. 2005
With the same fervour they have for outlandish game shows and tiny gadgets, the Japanese go nuts each spring when…
the cherry blossoms sweep from island to island towards the country's northerly tip. Ferguson, after way too much sake, announced he would be the first person to follow the blossom's progress end to end. To make it a challenge worth doing, he'd hitchhike, resulting in a journey full of misadventures and revelations. 2005.Himalaya
By Michael Palin. 2004
In his most challenging journey, Michael Palin tackles the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on earth, a virtually unbroken wall…
of rock stretching 1800 miles from the borders of Afghanistan to southwest China. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in 6 months of hard travelling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the mighty peaks of K2, Annapurna and Everest, the bleak and barren plateau of Tibet, the gorges of the Yangtze, the tribal lands of the Indo-Burmese border and the vast Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. This book, compiled from his diaries, records the pleasure and pain of an extraordinary journey. 2004.Arabian sands
By Wilfred Thesiger. 1984
Thesiger, the son of a British diplomat, was born in a mud hut in Addis Ababa in 1910. This is…
the account of his travels from 1945 to 1950 during which he lived among the Bedouins and traversed the "Empty Quarter", a vast, arid desert. 1984.A place within: rediscovering India
By M. G Vassanji. 2008
Author M. G. Vassanji was born in Africa, where his Indian grandparents had settled, and his relationship to India had…
been complex and contradictory. Vassanji describes his many visits to India, encompassing bustling cities, quiet landscapes, fantastic stories and fascinating characters, in this his part travelogue and description, part history and meditation, and above all a quest for a lost homeland. Some descriptions of violence. Winner of the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction. Canada Reads 2012. 2008.Life and death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan mountaineering
By Sherry B Ortner. 1999
For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journeyed to test themselves on Everest's treacherous slopes, enlisting…
the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk. 1999.The rope in the water: a pilgrimage to India
By Sylvia Fraser. 2001
Sylvia Fraser's three-month pilgrimage to India in search of "something larger than myself, something deeper, something more." Travelling 12,000 kilometres…
as a solitary traveler across deserts and through jungles, she visits sacred sites such as the twilight city of Varanasi on the Ganges and the Golden Temple of the Sikhs; spends time with a Hindu sect up Mount Abu and meditates eleven hours a day for ten days in a Buddhist retreat while observing a vow of silence. 2001.The dolphin's tooth: a decade in search of adventure
By Bruce Kirkby. 2005
Stuck in an engineer's cubicle and tormented by doubts and boredom, Kirkby quit his job to bicycle the Karakoram Highway…
in northern Pakistan. Over the next fifteen years, he undertook some of the most challenging expeditions the world has to offer, including running Africa's Blue Nile Gorge, climbing Mount Everest, or learning to embrace the wilderness on the Tatshenshini River of Canada's Arctic. 2005.The tiger: a true story of vengeance and survival
By John Vaillant. 2010
Nature writer follows a government tiger-control team as it pursues an endangered Siberian tiger, which had killed a poacher, through…
Russia's far east in the winter of 1997. Explores the beauty of the setting, the tiger's strength, and the political and geographical forces that shaped this remote region. Canada Reads 2012. 2010.Beyond the sky and the earth: a journey into Bhutan
By Jamie Zeppa. 1999
In 1989 Jamie Zeppa decided to try something completely different from anything she had ever done before. She signed on…
as a teacher for two years in the Far East country of Bhutan. Once she arrived there she discovered the difficulties in bridging cultural divides, and the rewards that come from immersing oneself in a completely different culture. 1999.Lands of lost borders: out of bounds on the Silk Road
By Kate Harris. 2018
As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer--had gone extinct. So she…
vowed to become a scientist and go to Mars. Well along this path, Harris set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule. This trip was just a simulacrum of exploration, but Harris realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks, leaving footprints on another planet: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. And where she'd felt that most intensely was on a bicycle, on a bygone trading route. So Harris hit the Silk Road again with Yule, this time determined to bike it from beginning to end. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, she celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other--a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us. Bestseller. Winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize. 2018.The prince of the marshes: and other occupational hazards of a year in Iraq
By Rory Stewart. 2006
British diplomat and author of "The Places In Between" describes his 2003 postwar work as deputy governor in the marshlands…
of southern Iraq. Details the hazards of keeping the peace among the Shia warlords while trying to rebuild the infrastructure. Strong language and some violence. 2006.City of Djinns: a year of Delhi
By William Dalrymple. 1993
Although New Delhi has been invaded and burned many times through the centuries, it has always been rebuilt. During his…
stay there, Dalrymple found a city full of relics, both architectural and human, from different periods of history, side by side. Research description is combined with tales of his travels and encounters with people from various levels of society, different religions, and numerous traditions. 1993.Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas
By Harley Rustad. 2022
NATIONAL BESTSELLER In the vein of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, a riveting work of narrative nonfiction centering on the…
unsolved disappearance of an American backpacker in India—one of at least two dozen tourists who have met a similar fate in the remote and storied Parvati Valley.For centuries, India has enthralled Westerners looking for an exotic getaway, a brief immersion in yoga and meditation, or, in rare cases, a true pilgrimage to find spiritual revelation. Justin Alexander Shetler, an inveterate traveler trained in wilderness survival, was one such seeker. In his early thirties, Justin quit his job at a tech startup and set out on a global journey—across the United States by motorcycle, then down to South America, and on to the Philippines, Thailand, and Nepal—in search of authentic experiences and meaningful encounters while documenting his travels on Instagram. His enigmatic character and magnetic personality gained him a devoted following who lived vicariously through his adventures. But the ever-restless explorer was driven to seek out ever-greater extremes, and greater risks, in what had become a personal quest—his own hero’s journey. In 2016, he made his way to the Parvati Valley, a remote and rugged corner of the Indian Himalayas steeped in mystical tradition and shrouded in darkness and danger. There he spent weeks studying under the guidance of a sadhu, an Indian holy man, living and meditating in a cave. At the end of August, accompanied by the sadhu, he set off on a spiritual journey to a holy lake—one from which he would never return. Lost in the Valley of Death is about one man’s search to find himself, in a country where, for many Westerners, the path to spiritual enlightenment can prove fraught, even treacherous. But it is also a story about all of us and the ways, sometimes extreme, we seek fulfillment in life.Riding the iron rooster: by train through China
By Paul Theroux. 1988
The popular travel-writer's itinerary calls for departure by rail from London and a series of hook-ups that lead him to…
China. To do this, he becomes a temporary member of a tour party that elicits his customary witty observations. Once in China, he strikes out on his own, and provides a portrait of China after the Cultural Revolution. 1988.Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia
By Elizabeth Gilbert. 2007
A successful young author, recently divorced, seeks distraction and solace during a year of travel. She describes finding culinary pleasure…
in Italy, ascetic meditation at an ashram in India, and a love affair in Bali. 2006