It's Almost Like Being There
Grab your passport, pack your gear, and get ready to experience - vicariously - some great off-the-beaten-path journeys.
- Esprit de Battuta: Alone Across Africa on a Bicycle
by Pamela Watson
Australian Pamela Watson traveled alone by bicycle from Dakar, Senegal to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania through seventeen
countries, over eighteen months and covering over 9,000 miles. This gripping book documents her eye-opening experiences
with the people of west, central and east Africa along with the economic, political and social realities of the continent.
- The Places In Between
by Rory Stewart
In 2002, after most of the Taliban were deposed, Scotland's Rory Stewart, a journalist and ex-military, traversed
Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul on foot, traveling Babur's (founder of the Mughal empire) route. "You will die,"
one of the secret police tells Stewart as he began his journey. Warning aside, Stewart wrote a narrative that captured
heartfelt, terrifying, comical and insightful episodes about the Afghan people and their land, against a backdrop of another
turbulent year in their history.
- The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
by J. Maarten Troost
Troost followed his wife, Sylvia, to Kiribati, a tiny island nation in the South Pacific. The plan: while Sylvia was
working for an international nonprofit, Maarten intended to soak up the local color and write a literary masterpiece.
Paradise right? Days end with magnificent sunsets and airplanes can't land because pigs occupy the island's sole runway.
But Kiribati wasn't paradise. It was polluted, overpopulated and scorchingly hot. Yet after two years, Troost and his wife
were reluctant to return home. It's a revealing look at culture shock and culture clash, and about learning to adapt and enjoy.
