Books are always the go-to point of relaxation on a beach or beside the pool. As March celebrates World Book Day, we decided to provide some reading inspiration for your future travels.
Charlie Parker: On Roads That Echo: A bicycle journey through Asia and Africa
Having pedalled 18,000 miles from Britain to Beijing, Charlie Walker’s homeward leg carried him a further 26,000 miles through Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The two-and-a-half-year journey spanned the mountains and deserts of former Soviet Republics, Afghanistan on the fearful brink of foreign withdrawal, and remote corners of the Congolese jungle.
From hiking through sandstorms in the Gobi desert to barrelling down rapids in a dugout canoe, this adventure, and Charlie’s many encounters, gives insight into the past, present, and future of often-overlooked places during periods of great change.
Felicity Aston: Alone in Antarctica
Felicity Aston, physicist and meteorologist, took two months off from all human contact as she became the first woman, and only the third person in history, to ski across the continent of Antarctica alone. Her journey, assisted with simple apparatus of cross-country, becomes an inspirational saga of one woman’s battle through fear and loneliness as she honestly confronts both the physical challenges of her adventure, and her own human vulnerabilities.
Ann Vanderhoof: An Embarrassment of Mangoes
Canadians Ann Vanderhoof and her husband, Steve, quit their jobs, rented out their house, moved onto a 42-foot sailboat called Receta and set sail for the Caribbean on a two-year voyage of culinary and cultural discovery.
Vanderhoof describes the sun-drenched landscapes, enchanting characters and mouthwatering tastes that season their new lifestyle. They drop anchor in 16 countries - 47 individual islands - where they explore secluded beaches and shop lively local markets.
Gregory David Roberts: Shantaram
Shantaram, a 2003 novel, involves a convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict escaping from prison and fleeing to India. The novel is commended for evoking the portrayal of life in 1980s’ Bombay.
Rattawut Lapcharoensap: Sightseeing
The young Thai-American writer offers a visceral collection of short fiction stories that offer a fascinating view of contemporary Thailand though generational conflicts, and cultural shiftings beneath the glossy surface of a warm, Edenic setting. Lapcharoensap offers a diverse, humorous, and deeply affectionate view of life with radiant tales that are written with exceptional acuity, grace and sophistication, and present a nation far removed from its exotic stereotypes.
Howard Marks: Mr Nice
A favourite with backpackers in Southeast Asia, the book is a romping good read as it chronicles the extraordinary life of a quite ordinary man, Howard Marks. From the quiet Welsh hills to the bustling streets of Karachi, the beaches of Spain, and the courts of the Old Bailey, Marks lived a life that was anything but ordinary across the 1960 to the 1980s.
During the mid-1980s Marks had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines, and owned 25 companies across the world. Whether bars, recording studios, or offshore banks, all were money laundering vehicles serving the core activity: dope dealing. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to 50 tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada and had contact with organizations as diverse as MI6, the CIA, the IRA, and the Mafia.
Orhan Pamuk: The Museum of Innocence
A deeply poignant book set in 1970s Istanbul as Pamuk writes of Kemal, the son of an educated urban family, who falls in love with a distant relative, the beautiful 18-year-old Füsun, who comes from a family of modest means. An ill-fated love affair relates how Kemal collects objects that remind him of his lost beloved. Pamuk has also built a real Museum of Innocence in Istanbul where you can visit Füsun’s house and see “her” collection.
Norman Lewis: A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam
Originally published in 1951, Norman Lewis traveled in Indo-China during the last years of the French colonial regime. Much of the charm and grandeur of the ancient native civilizations survived until the devastation of the Vietnam War. Lewis could still meet a King of Cambodia and an Emperor of Vietnam; in the hills he could stay in the spectacular longhouses of the highlanders; on the plains he could be enchanted by a people whom he found "gentle, tolerant and dedicated to the pleasures and satisfactions of a discriminating kind."
Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner
The debut novel of Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini tells the story of Amir, a young Afghan boy from Wazir Akbar Khan, Kabul. The story is set against a backdrop of the beginning of the end for the country’s monarchy, the Afghan conflict and the rise of the Taliban regime. Much like the author’s other work, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini holds the reader completely through the complexities of a nation in transition.
Andy Probert is an independent journalist who writes about global travel news, airlines, airports, and business. His work has appeared globally on the BBC, and in many national newspapers and magazines.
