Three men on motorcycles: The Amigos ride to Ladakh


Ketan Joshi - 2017
    (And SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED….in spirit form. Cybernagger! Astralnagger! ) There are two routes to Ladakh - the Srinagar-Leh road and the Manali-Leh road. Which one should we do? Ah...Let’s do both! What other places should we go to? Ah...Let’s go everywhere! The most epic ride of India deserves a most epic travel story! Read the madcap adventures of the Amigos. Adi - Mr Perpetual Motion, the sunglass executioner. Delzad - the Ghost rider, the tandoori fanatic. Ketan - the cool rider. the husband of SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED! The most hilarious ride story ever written. Check out the sample right now! EXPLORE INDIA WITH THE AMIGOS Ketan, Adi and Delzad ride all over India on their Royal Enfield motorcycles and have the most amazing and hilarious adventures. Join the Amigos as they ride and get insights on Indian history, culture, customs and a bellyaching amount of laughs. Three Men on Motorcycles - The Amigos Ride to Ladakh Three Men Ride Again- The Amigos Ride to Spiti Three Men Ride South The Amigos Ride to Coorg Three Men Ride the Cliffhanger The Amigos Ride the Most Dangerous Roads in the World Check out photos and videos of the rides on www.ketanjoshi.net

Throwim Way Leg: Tree-Kangaroos, Possums and Penis Gourds


Tim Flannery - 1998
    He finds many -- from a community of giant cave bats that were supposedly extinct to the elusive black-and-white tree-kangaroo -- and along the way has a wealth of unforgettable adventures. Flannery scales cliffs, descends into caverns, and cheats death, both from disease and at the hands of the local cannibals, who wish to take revenge on his "clan" of wildlife scientists. He eventually befriends the tribespeople, who become companions in his quest and whose contributions to his research prove invaluable. In New Guinea pidgin, throwim way leg means to take the first step of a long journey. The journey in this book is a wild ride full of natural wonders and Flannery's trademark wit, a tour de force of travelogue, anthropology, and natural history.

Faraway


Lucy Irvine - 2000
    The invitation had come from an intrepid 80 year-old, Diana Hepworth, who in 1947 set sail from England to find a faraway paradise where she and her husband Tom could raise a family.

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart


Tim Butcher - 2007
    However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition — but travelling alone.Despite warnings Butcher spent years poring over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and venturing to the Congo’s eastern border. He passed through once thriving cities of this country and saw the marks left behind by years of abuse and misrule. Almost, 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the Atlantic Ocean, a thinner and a wiser man.Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, vividly told in Blood River, is more remarkable still.From the Hardcover edition.

A Game Ranger Remembers


Bruce Bryden - 2009
    Bruce Bryden's tales of 27 years in the service of our most famous park make a gripping and entertaining read, abounding with encounters with elephant, lion, buffalo, leopard and rhino, whether darting for research, managing culling operations by helicopter or stalking on foot. In the best tradition of bushveld stories, there is a great deal of shooting, and a fair amount of running away; there are meetings with extraordinary characters among the rangers; memorable gatherings; hilarious mishaps and narrow escapes; and throughout, a great love and respect for both the wilderness and the creatures that inhabit it.

Sea Room: An Island Life in the Hebrides


Adam Nicolson - 2001
    Outer Hebrides, 600 acres . . . Puffins and seals. Apply . . . ”.In this radiant and powerful book, Adam describes, and relives, his love affair with this enchantingly beautiful property, which he inherited when he was twenty-one. As the islands grew to become the most important thing in his life, they began to offer him more than escape, giving him “sea room”—a sailing term Nicolson uses to mean “the sense of enlargement that island life can give you.”The Shiants—the name means holy or enchanted islands—lie east of the Isle of Lewis in a treacherous sea once known as the “stream of blue men,” after the legendary water spirits who menaced sailors there. Crowned with five-hundred-foot cliffs of black basalt and surrounded by tidal rips, teeming in the summer with thousands of sea birds, they are wild, dangerous, and dramatic—with a long, haunting past. For millennia the Shiants were a haven for those seeking solitude—an eighth-century hermit, the twentieth-century novelist Compton Mackenzie—but their rich, sometimes violent history of human habitation includes much more. Since the Stone Age, families have dwelled on the islands and sailors have perished on their shores. The landscape is soaked in centuries-old tales of restless ghosts and ancient treasure, cradling the heritage of a once productive world of farmers and fishermen.In passionate, keenly precise prose, Nicolson evokes the paradoxes of island life: cut off from the mainland yet intricately bound to it, austere yet fertile, unforgiving yet bewitchingly beautiful.Sea Room does more than celebrate and praise this extraordinary place. It shares with us the greatest gift an island can bestow: a deep, revelatory engagement with the natural world.

Call of the White: Taking the World to the South Pole


Felicity Aston - 2011
    The team would not be experienced explorers but "ordinary" women who want to inspire others to follow their dreams. She received more than 800 applications and led a team from places as diverse as Jamaica, India, Singapore, and Cyprus—some of whom had never even seen snow or spent the night in a tent before joining the expedition—on one of the toughest journeys on the planet. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds ripped through base camp, frostbite and injuries were an everyday occurrence, and deadly crevasses cracked beneath their feet. This is their story of newfound strength, persistence, and friendships.

The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das


Merrily Weisbord - 2010
    She was hailed and reviled as the first Indian woman to write an autobiographical cult classic about love and desire. Admirers dubbed her, "The First Feminist Emotional Revolutionary of Our Time." The tabloid press called her "The Love Queen of Malabar." Merrily Weisbord found Das's work so compelling that she flew to South India to meet her. The Love Queen of Malabar is the story of their decade-long friendship, an experiment in mutual revelation. Recounting the development of their relationship, Weisbord relates the dramatic events of Das's life, including her transition from celibacy to sexual awakening at age sixty-seven when, provoking the greatest scandal of her notorious life, she converted to Islam for love and renewal. Both observer and direct participant, Weisbord elegantly presents new biographical insights and cultural details about Kerala and India without exoticisation or stereotyping. The Love Queen of Malabar is an evocative and beautifully crafted work, as seamless as the finest novel, and will captivate readers across the globe.

The Larmenius Inheritance


John Paul Davis - 2013
    Hidden amongst his cargo is a legendary treasure – its very existence known only to those deemed worthy.500 years later, esteemed history professor William Anson is found murdered in La Rochelle. Around his neck, an ancient medallion, one that has not been seen since 1307. He is the grandmaster of the Knights of Arcadia: a society of men deemed worthy. His killers, a ruthless brotherhood, whose existence is equally legendary. And they will not rest until they have reclaimed what was once theirs.For Anson’s son, navy outcast Matt Anson, his father’s death is just the start of a series of events that turn his life upside down. Meanwhile, in London, journalist Nicole Stocker is sent to look into a string of deaths, including the mysterious demise of Anson. But as progress starts to be made, she is dragged off the case, attacked, and soon running for her life.As the futures of Anson and Stocker become intertwined, it becomes clear there is more at stake than mere history. An explosive secret remains buried, one that threatens to bring half the world to its knees. And some want it exposed…

The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier


Ian Urbina - 2019
    But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation.Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways -- drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely.Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning expos�, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.

The Fireman's Wife


Susan Farren - 2006
    Having herself spent several years as a paramedic, she knew too well the dangers of the emergency profession. But as fate would have it, she met Dan -- and everything changed. Suddenly she was married to a man who had wanted to be a fireman ever since he was a child, and she found herself faced with the sacrifices and struggles that accompany this challenging career. Being a fireman's wife meant relocating her family, living without her husband for days at a time, and wondering every time she heard a siren if he would make it home safely. Ultimately, it also meant receiving the phone call every fireman's wife fears may come: the news that her husband had been in an accident.Susan speaks on behalf of thousands of firemen's wives nationwide -- the women who hold down the fort while their husbands are on the job. Their sacrifice is our gain, and for the first time, this book tells their story.

The View from Casa Chepitos: A Journey Beyond the Border


Judith Gille - 2013
    Without consulting her husband or knowing how she's going to pay for it, she makes the owners a full price offer. Despite a rough start in the new culture, Gille and her family eventually befriend their neighbors on callejon de Chepito and form a close bond with the Cordova clan. As their affection for the lively Mexican family grows, so do the complications of their cross-cultural relationship. When the oldest daughter seeks to cross the border illegally, the lives of the two families become inextricably entwined. The View from Casa Chepitos puts a human face on the immigration controversy and paints an intimate portrait of Mexican life. But the story also explores the deeper issues women of all ages and cultures face: affirming their self-worth and purpose, building enduring relationships, and discovering where it is they truly belong. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian


Phil Doran - 2005
    Just as he and his peers had replaced the older guys when he was coming up the ranks, it was now happening to him. And it was freaking him out. He came home every night angry, burned- out, and exhausted. After twenty-five years of losing her husband to Hollywood, Doran’s wife decided it was finally time for a change—so on one of her many solo trips to Italy she surprised her husband by purchasing a broken-down 300-year-old farmhouse for them to restore. The Reluctant Tuscan is about the author’s transition from being a successful but overworked writer-producer in Hollywood to rediscovering himself and his wife while in Italy, and finding happiness in the last place he expected. In the witty tone that made him a success as a writer in Hollywood, The Reluctant Tuscan captivates those who simply love a good travel narrative as well as anyone who loves the quirky humor of Bill Bryson, Dave Barry, and Jerry Seinfeld.

Atlas of Remote Islands


Judith Schalansky - 2009
    There are still places on earth that are unknown. Visually stunning and uniquely designed, this wondrous book captures fifty islands that are far away in every sense-from the mainland, from people, from airports, and from holiday brochures. Author Judith Schalansky used historic events and scientific reports as a springboard for each island, providing information on its distance from the mainland, whether its inhabited, its features, and the stories that have shaped its lore. With stunning full-color maps and an air of mysterious adventure, Atlas of Remote Island is perfect for the traveler or romantic in all of us.

You've Gone Too Far This Time


Danny Bent - 2011
    For twenty years he had wanted to do something to raise money for charity. The one minute was when as their teacher he was put on the spot by his pupils and declared that the means was by bike, and he was going to India. What he had signed up for was slogging along roads with trucks bearing down on him, unable to see and choking in the smog; shooting down treacherous descents with 100 foot drops, shaking with cold and too numb to brake; muscle burn and saddle sores; delirium and food poisoning; thirst and malnutrition; foul and insanitary conditions; life-threatening crises; obstructive border guards, crazed dogs and inquisitive passers-by. 'You've Gone Too Far This Time, Sir ' is a real and compelling blow-by-blow account of Danny's trip across Europe, the former Soviet Republics, Russia, China, Pakistan and India. And what people he met They are the true delight of this book, mostly charming, sometimes reckless, occasionally threatening, always unpredictable, and forever inviting Danny to be up for the challenge of entertaining them, in one instance by dancing in front of a packed stadium, in another by eating sheep's brains in a local night market. Danny turns the wheels, you turn the pages. The pace is relentless. The story is both heart-stopping and heart-warming. The arrival is breakdown-and-cry emotional. And there's loads of fun and wonderment along the way too. What a book What a ride Live your dream. Go for it, Danny.