Sacred to the Buddhists, the inspiration for Shangri La, the Gorge is as steeped in legend and mystery as any spot on earth. As a river-running challenge, the remote Tsangpo is relentlessly unforgiving, more difficult than any stretch of river ever attempted. Its mysteries have withstood a century's worth of determined efforts to explore it's length. The finest expedition paddlers on earth have tried. Several have died. All have failed. Until now.In January 2002, in the heart of the Himalayan winter, a team of seven kayakers launched a meticulously planned assault of the Gorge. The paddlers were river cowboys, superstars in the universe of extreme kayaking who hop from continent to continent ready for the next death-defying pursuit. Accompanying them was author Peter Heller. A world-class kayaker in his own right, Heller has logged countless river miles and several major first descents. He joined the Tsangpo Expedition as a member of the ground support team and official expedition journalist, and was also granted the exclusive opportunity to write the book about the descent. Hell or High Water is that book-greatly expanded from his coverage for Outside magazine. Filled with history, white-knuckle drama, and mutiny in one of the world's most storied-and remote-locations, Hell or High Water is as riveting as any of the great epic adventures throughout history. Publication coincides with the release of a documentary about the expedition by National Geographic.

    With only a folding bicycle and a towable suitcase, Australian Lynette Chiang spent three months touring Cuba, eshewing tourist hotels and typical itineraries in favor of an unpredictable day-to-day existence among ordinary citizens. She discovered a people who, despite great privation, are warm, generous, and generally happy. Her narrative covers equally well the challenges of travel on two wheels and the surprises of life in the land of Fidel.Read more about Lynette at http://www.galfromdownunder.com/cuba

    Introduced by Michael Palin, OxTravels features original stories from twenty-five top travel writers, including Michael Palin, Paul Theroux, Sara Wheeler, William Dalrymple, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Lloyd Jones, Rory Stewart, Jan Morris, Dervla Murphy, Rory MacLean, and others. Each of the stories takes as its theme a meeting - life-changing, affecting, amusing by turn - and together they transport readers into a brilliant, vivid atlas of encounters.This extraordinary collection is published in aid of Oxfam and all royalties from the book will support Oxfam's work.

    By turns humorous and poignant, Merchasin provides an informed look at Mexican culture and history, exploring everything from healthcare, Mexican-style, to religious rituals; from the educational role of the telenovela to the cultural subtleties of the Spanish language. Written with a clear eye for details, a warm heart for Mexico, and a lively sense of humor, This Is Mexico is an insider's look at the joys, sorrows, and challenges of life in this complex country.

    Now imagine throwing it all away to Hitchhike a country under the iron fist of communism with a dubious grip on the language, accompanied by a colorful and sometimes frightening menagerie of characters, human and otherwise, and carrying an illegal video camera in your backpack. That's exactly what Karin Muller did.At Globe Pequot, we specialize in travel guides, not travelogs. But every once in a while, we come across a tale so wonderful, we just can't walk away. It happened with Size of the Worlds. It's happened again with Hitchhiking Vietnam. What we love about this book is not just the adventure, the culture, the incredible vistas it opens up in our minds' eyes, but the grace, wit, and style with which Karin tells her story. Millions of PBS fans already agree!You will absolutely fall in love with Karin Muller. We did!

    S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India.Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.

    When she befriends some Tibetan nomads, her trek quickly evolves from a daredevil adventure to a journey of self-discovery and personal revelation.

    Goa Freaks begins in the mid 1970s and tells of Cleo's love affair with Goa, a resort in India where the Freaks (hippies) of the world converge to partake in a heady bohemian lifestyle. To finance their astounding appetites for cocaine, heroin, and hashish, the Freaks spend each monsoon season acting as drug couriers, and soon cleo is running her own "scams" in Canada, Australis, and the United States. (She even gets her Aunt Sadie in on the action.) Wish her earnings she builds a veritable palace on the beach- the only Goa house with running water and a flushing toilet. Cleo becomes the hostess of Anjuna Beach, holding days-long poker games and movie nights and, as her money begins to run out, transforming the house into a for-profit drug den. Tracing Cleo's love affairs, her stint hiding out at the ashram of the infamous Bhagwan Rajneesh, and her sometimes-harrowing drug experiences, Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India is candid and compelling, bringin to life the spirit of a now-lost era.

    His profound management sutras are derived from his bestselling books on business and management. They show how individuals can realize their potential, create wealth and achieve lasting success by following uniquely Indian principles (based on Hindu, Jain and Buddhist mythology) of goal setting, strategic thinking and decision-making.

    A hijacking, several nuclear explosions and a religious experience ... just some of the ingredients in the latest tour de force from the bestselling author of the Carpet Wars. In the searing summer of 2004, Christopher Kremmer returns to India, a country in the grip of enormous and sometimes violent change. As a young reporter in the 1990s, he first encountered this ancient and complex civilisation. Now, embarking on a yatra, or pilgrimage, he travels the dangerous frontier where religion and politics face off. tracking down the players in a decisive decade, he takes us inside the enigmatic Gandhi dynasty, and introduces an operatic cast of political Brahmins, 'cyber coolies', low-caste messiahs and wrestling priests. A sprawling portrait of India at the crossroads, Inhaling the Mahatma is also an intensely personal story about coming to terms with a dazzlingly different culture, as the author's fate is entwined with a cosmopolitan Hindu family of Old Delhi, and a guru who might just change his life.

    He volunteered for the job well aware that hanging out of slow-moving choppers over hot LZs blazing with enemy fire was not conducive to a long life. But that wasn’t going to stop Specialist Sever.From Da Nang to Cu Chi and the Mekong Delta, Sever spent thirty-one months in Vietnam, fighting in eleven of the war’s sixteen campaigns. Every morning when his gunship lifted off, often to the clacking and muzzle flashes of AK-47s hidden in the dawn fog, Sever knew he might not return. This raw, gritty, gut-wrenching firsthand account of American boys fighting and dying in Vietnam captures all the hell, horror, and heroism of that tragic war.From the Paperback edition.

    Kaplan offers up a vivid snapshot of the nations surrounding the South China Sea, the conflicts brewing in the region at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and their implications for global peace and stability.

    Written by the bestselling author of 'Platoon,' Dale A. Dye.

    <br><br>Part Tuscan idyll and part cautionary tale, Wendy Laird’s latest Kindle Single tells the flip-side story of expat existence, what it takes to make it happen, and how a life on a well-mapped trajectory can veer off course in the process. Laird’s beautiful prose and acerbic wit keep the book, if not her own agenda, on the right track.

    So they rent out their California home--dog and cat included--and embark on a yearlong trip around the world. The couple is swept up in the adventure of a lifetime: traversing the Sahara on camels, trekking in the Himalayas, scrambling over Cambodian temples, crossing the Andes, scaling a New Zealand glacier.The book traces the odyssey in forty-eight colorful dispatches from six continents. Whether barreling across India with a former tank driver at the wheel, getting clipped by Vietnam's oldest barber, touring a notorious Bolivian prison with inmates as guides, or braving a cyclone in Fiji on a rubber raft, McIntyre taps his signature wit to convey the joys, perils, and frustrations of prolonged travel. He also writes eloquently of such touching moments as flying kites with a boy in Indonesia and sleeping under the stars in Morocco.Funny, heartwarming, and full of expert tips, The Wander Year will inspire and entertain veteran and armchair travelers alike."A superb writer."--Los Angeles Times"A reader's dream."--San Diego Union-Tribune