The most recommended books on travelers

Who believes men alone have redrawn the maps of the world? Gertrude Bell, beautiful adventurer, mountaineer, archaeologist, writer, linguist, and self-taught photographer, championed Arab self-rule, advising the British military in creating the nation of Iraq after World War I. Thwarted in love, this Victorian debutante set forth on a life as colorful as Lawrence of Arabia, with whom she became a close friend. I marveled at her courage, traveling alone in the vast desert of Arabia with a few native guides, dining with Bedouin chiefs who had never deigned to receive a woman before. It’s impossible to describe her life in a few sentences, but it was a revelation to me that a woman of the Victorian era could accomplish what few men had, while remaining a correct English lady.

Henry Pulling, a reluctantly retired bank manager, meets his 70-ish-year-old Aunt Augusta for the first time in more than 50 years at his mother’s funeral. His Aunt is vibrant, even outrageous, and he is anything but—a man whose only hobby is growing dahlias. An Aunt myself, I love a story about a wild, non-traditional Aunt, and her relationship with her nephew. As the title suggests, the story is told through the eyes of Henry. His views of his life and their travels are filled with humor and insight. The joy of this novel follows the challenges that arise when two generations confront their expectations of each other and themselves—expectations that are never more alive than when we travel. 

Nala's adventure shows how the love of an animal can change the trajectory of a man's life. Dean set out to explore the world on his bike. Along the way he met and fell head over wheels (!) with a kitten, whom he named Nala. Something about the piercing eyes and plaintive meowing of the bedraggled little cat proved irresistible. He couldn't leave her to her fate, so he put her on his bike and then, with the help of local vets, nursed her back to health. Soon on his travels, they forged an unbreakable bond -- both curious, independent, resilient and adventurous.

This is just plain fun and inspiring to read!

Three friends, each on the brink of a quarter-life crisis, make a pact to quit their high-pressure New York City media jobs and leave behind their friends, boyfriends, and everything familiar to embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world.

From the first chapter when they were invited to dance with the Maasai in Kenya, I was swept along with them for an unforgettable journey!

Damon Galgut recently won the Booker Prize for his riveting, satirical The Promise, but, much as I admire that novel, Galgut’s earlier (also Booker-nominated) semi-autobiographical novel, In a Strange Room, remains my favourite. It comprises three long short stories, all centred on a character called Damon, alerting us to the autobiographical element of the stories. And yet Galgut resists the total identification of autobiography, partly by his device of switching disconcertingly between first and third-person narration (sometimes ‘Damon,’ sometimes ‘I’), and present and past tenses. But the novel is more than technical trickery: the shifting perspectives allow us different angles on the complex relationships depicted in the different sections, rather as a cubist painting affords us a multifarious perspective on its subject. And like other books on this list, this one features a protagonist who travels: something of a trope in South African writing.  

Tobias Smollett, Scotland’s greatest novelist before Scott and Stevenson, was dying in a villa on the Ligurian coast when his masterpiece Humphry Clinker came out in London in 1771. Yet every page is written with astounding verve, immersing readers in the vibrant chaos of eighteenth-century Britain, the sights and sounds of its teeming cities and health resorts—even, in several virtuoso passages of gross-out description, its nauseating smells and tastes. Like Richardson before him, Smollett gives his narrative over to multiple voices, this time to riotously comic effect. Five Anglo-Welsh tourists (splenetic Bramble, scathing Tabitha, witty Jery, romantic Lydia, their hilariously unpredictable servant Win) travel the length and breadth of a nation in the throes of urbanization and commercial modernity, by turns disgusted and enchanted, constantly failing to agree on what they see. Illicit romances play out in the background, but Smollett’s main interest is in the turbulent dynamism of four-nations… show more.

A book that deconstructs shibboleths of Britons’ patrician identity and their romantic urge to escape modernity in the Arabian desert, A Barren Legacy reorders and erases the imperial world of From Empire to Orient. The author has spent decades working as a civil servant in Oman and has written several Lonely Planet Guides about Middle Eastern countries. Here, she reviews the Arabian journeys of some media-savvy contemporary British travellers and articulately delivers the genre of Arabian travel-writing into the post-modern era. 

Florence Nightingale, Freya Start, Gertrude Bell, Karen Blixen, and many other well-known women share their travel adventures in this wildly audacious and inspiring collection of stories. From encountering a madman in the Amazon to surviving a shipwreck, these intrepid globe-trotters overcome many challenges in their dauntless explorations. This book will show you a different side of these famous women.

Rosita's travel stories are beautifully written, and they reinforce my belief that the world really is a small place, and through shared experiences with different people in places elsewhere, even if we don’t speak the same language, we can relate in some intimate way with everybody that we meet.

I have the same fierce urge as her to travel and discover new places and cultures around the globe, and I have spent over two years doing that. It’s about the journeys, the amazing places you see, the people you meet, and the personal growth you undergo when you get out and explore the world.

I’ve had some of these same travel experiences - both good and bad - like a dangerous bus ride or places of gut-wrenching beauty.

Why, and how, did a man from Togo in West Africa go to Greenland? And what did he think when he arrived there?

Wouldn’t you like to know what circumstances drive people from one end of the earth to the other? This book has surprising answers, and tells you facts about both Togo and Greenland which you never knew!