In his eightieth year, Colin Thubron decides to travel the length of the Amur River, from its source in the swampy uplands of Mongolia to...

When I was young, my father had a subscription to National Geographic magazine, and so, like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, this...

Recently, I was invited to be a guest on the "Library Land Loves" podcast to discuss travel books in general and my new book in...

Colin Fletcher's The Complete Walker, first published in 1968, went through four editions and became the go-to guide for several...

After twenty years as a peripatetic foreign correspondent covering wars and revolutions for the Observer, Gavin Young finds that he needs...

In The Consolations of the Forest, Sylvain Tesson parks himself in a small ranger’s cabin on the shores of Lake Baikal to explore what it...

My memories of Delhi are somewhat vague. I remember snake charmers at the Red Fort and a ordering a hamburger at a Wimpy’s restaurant in...

I recently decided to re-read one of my favorite books about China, Colin Thubron’s Behind the Wall. As I cracked open the cover and saw...

Literary pilgrimages are not that unusual. A whole tourist industry has arisen around visiting the homes and haunts of famous writers: ...

In the summer of 2010, English poet Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. There is nothing too unusual in that, several...

When I was a boy of perhaps 10 or 12 years old, I read a book that made a great impression on me. It was the story of a man who lived in...

My bookshelf at home is weighted down with the books of William Dalrymple. Clearly, I’m a fan. But I had never read his first book,...

John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley has long been on my “to read” list. The other day I had to make a long car journey and thought,...

The unexpected success, in 1975, of Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar led to a renaissance in travel writing. Theroux’s bestseller...

For more than one thousand years, pilgrims have been walking clockwise around the Japanese island of Shikoku seeking the spirit of the...

Stevenson is best remembered as a novelist—as the author of Treasure Island or The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But it was...

I was speaking with an old friend recently, and he told me of his plan to ride the full length of Africa—from Cairo to Cape Town—on his...

I am a big fan of the work of Guy Delisle. Delisle is a graphic artist from Quebec, and he has written four travel memoirs in comic book...

I love reading travel books–a vague category, I know, and one that some writers hate. They feel it demeans their work to be classified...

I first read A Moveable Feast in Grade 13 English class. We had one period each week where we were required to do self-directed reading....