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In Xanadu

William Dalrymple · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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In Patagonia

Bruce Chatwin · 250 pages

"An exhilarating look at a place that still retains the exotic mystery of a far-off, unseen land, Bruce Chatwin's exquisite account of his journey through Patagonia teems with evocative descriptions, remarkable bits of history, and unforgettable anecdotes. Fueled by an unmistakable lust for life and adventure and a singular gift for storytelling, Chatwin treks through "the uttermost part of the ea

Travel WritingDesertHistoryFirst Person Narrator
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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot

Travel WritingDesertFirst Person NarratorAdventure
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Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Paul Theroux · 494 pages

"A rich and insightful travel book in the tradition that made Paul Theroux's reputation, Dark Star Safari takes us the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, forgotten train, and rusting steamer. Theroux confronts delay, discomfort, bullets, and bad food while encountering a remarkable mix of places and people. Beginning in Cairo and ending in Cape Town, he goes on the ultimate safari to the true hea

Travel WritingDesertNonfictionFirst Person Narrator
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Long Way Down

Ewan McGregor, Charley Boorman, Jeff Gulvin · 320 pages

Travel WritingDesertAdventureNonfiction
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Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses

Bruce Feiler · 488 pages

The author recounts his ten-thousand-mile journey across the Middle East in search of the roots of the Bible to discover whether it was an abstraction or a living, breathing entity.

Travel WritingDesertHistoryNonfiction
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A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson · 304 pages

Bill Bryson describes his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail with his friend "Stephen Katz". The book is written in a humorous style, interspersed with more serious discussions of matters relating to the trail's history, and the surrounding sociology, ecology, trees, plants, animals and people.

Travel WritingAdventureFirst Person NarratorNonfiction
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Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback (Vintage Departures)

Robyn Davidson · 280 pages

“I arrived in the Alice at five a.m. with a dog, six dollars and a small suitcase full of inappropriate clothes.... There are some moments in life that are like pivots around which your existence turns…” For Robyn Davidson, one of these moments comes at age twenty-seven in Alice Springs, a dodgy town at the frontier of the vast Australian desert. Davidson is intent on walking the 1,700 miles of

Travel WritingDesertFirst Person NarratorNonfiction
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Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia

Janet Wallach · 419 pages

Reared in the comfortable and privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell turned her back on convention and sought adventure in Arab lands. Traveling numerous times through the Syrian Desert and, at risk to her life, through the great Arabian desert of the Nejd - the last European to do so before the eruption of World War I - she wrote of her travels in widely acclaimed books. T

DesertTravel WritingHistoryNonfiction
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The Road to Mecca

Muhammad Asad · 380 pages

This autobiographical work by one of Europe's best known convert to Islam gives us a rounded portrait of a man in search of adventure and truth. It is part spiritual autobiography, part summary of the author's intuitive insights into Islam and the Arabs, part an impressive travelogue. Punctuated with abundant adventure, moments of contemplation, colorful narrative, brilliant description and lively

Travel WritingDesertFirst Person NarratorNonfiction
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Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest

Douglas Preston · 480 pages

Douglas Preston's Cities of Gold is a riveting account of his journey in the footsteps of Coronado, the legendary 16th-century explorer and conquistador who led the first European expedition through the American Southwest. Preston and a friend, Walter Nelson, set out on horseback across one thousand miles of vast deserts and unknown mountains retracing Coronado's search for the fabled Seven Cities

Travel WritingDesertHistoryNonfiction
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Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before

Tony Horwitz · 496 pages

"James Cook's three epic journeys in the eighteenth century were the last great voyages of discovery. When he embarked for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in 1779, during a bloody clash in Hawaii, the map of the world was substantially complete. Cook explored more of the earth's surface than anyone in history - sailing from the Arctic to the Antarct

Travel WritingHistoryFirst Person NarratorNonfiction
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Wind, Sand, and Stars

Antoine de Saint-Exupery · 258 pages

English translation of "Terre des hommes". Autobiographical account of air travel, captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight.

Travel WritingDesertFirst Person NarratorNonfiction
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The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America

Mike McIntyre · 246 pages

Stuck in a job he no longer found fulfilling, journalist Mike McIntyre felt his life was quickly passing him by. So one day he hit the road to trek from one end of the country to the other with little more than the clothes on his back and without a single penny in his pocket. Through his travels, he found varying degrees of kindness in strangers from all walks of life - and discovered more about p

Travel WritingFirst Person NarratorAdventureNonfiction
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Roughing It

Mark Twain · 558 pages

Travel WritingDesertNonfictionFunny
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Color: A Natural History of the Palette

Victoria Finlay · 448 pages

Travel WritingHistoryFirst Person NarratorNonfiction
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Travel WritingFirst Person NarratorNonfictionFunny
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AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

David Miller · 256 pages

Travel WritingAdventureNonfictionFirst Person Narrator
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Sailing Alone Around The World

Joshua Slocum · 294 pages

Joshua Slocum, one of the most famous of American sea captains, really was the first to single-handedly circumnavigate the world. The epitome of Yankee independence, he had risen from a seaman to the captain of his own ship. Marooned in Brazil, he built a "canoe" in which he returned to America (see The Voyage of the Liberdade). At loose ends at fifty-one, he was offered an old oyster boat which h

Travel WritingFirst Person NarratorNonfictionAdventure
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A Year in Provence

Peter Mayle · 207 pages

In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glo

Travel WritingFirst Person NarratorNonfictionFunny
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Kon-Tiki: Across The Pacific In A Raft

Thor Heyerdahl · 239 pages

Presents the Kon-Tiki expedition led by explorer Thor Heyerdahl as he and his crew travel from South America and Polynesia on a raft made from balsa wood.

Travel WritingFirst Person NarratorNonfictionAdventure
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A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Eric Newby · 253 pages

It is an autobiographical travelogue of Eric Newby,describing,in a comic,understated style,his ascent to Mir Samir.

Travel WritingAdventureNonfictionFunny
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Carsick

John Waters · 322 pages

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads 'I'm Not Psycho', he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash? Along

Travel WritingFirst Person NarratorNonfictionFunny
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The Worst Journey in the World

Apsley Cherry-Garrard · 607 pages

The Worst Journey in the World is a 1922 memoir by Apsley Cherry-Garrard of Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910–1913. It has earned wide praise for its frank treatment of the difficulties of the expedition, the causes of its disastrous outcome, and the meaning of human suffering under extreme conditions. ---------- Contains: - [Worst Journey in the World

Travel WritingHistoryNonfictionAdventure
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Sahara

Michael Palin · 256 pages

Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean, but this was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert. As the journey unfolds, the Sahara reveals not the emptiness of endless sand dunes, but a huge and diverse range of cultures and landscapes and a lo

Travel WritingDesertNonfictionFunny

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