<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.

     Join George and Rachel on their hilarious journey through the wilds of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, as they climb volcanoes, fish for piranhas, trek through the Amazon rainforest, take death-defying bus rides, sample some of the continent’s strangest delicacies, and try to get to Machu Picchu. Armed only with a basic knowledge of Spanish, small backpacks, and bags of enthusiasm, they set off together on what promised to be a life-changing adventure.

    At the heart of their survival was their unshakeable belief in each other and their determination to survive, making Hostage an unlikely love story; for Paul and Rachel, death, at times, seemed preferable to being separated.

    We were traveling with no fixed time limit, no reservations, and only a loose idea of our itinerary. Our goal was to see if we could still have the kind of spontaneous adventures we’d enjoyed in our youth. We spent three months on trains, mostly in Eastern Europe, and the results – often hilarious, occasionally harrowing, definitely life-changing – form the basis of my new book, Adventures of a Railway Nomad: How Our Journeys Guide Us Home. "Adventurous and bold . . . full of twists and surprises." – Chris Brady, NY Times bestselling author of A Month of ItalyI traveled 6000 miles on 38 trains through 13 countries: Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia. "Karen's storytelling is, if possible, even more enticing than her astonishing journey." – Alicia Bay Laurel, bestselling author of Living on the Earth

    Never mind that he hadn't been on two wheels since an inglorious three-month teenage chapter involving a Lambretta, four crashes and an 18-month ban for drink-driving, a plan had begun to loosely form...And so, having completed a six day residential motorcycle course and hastily re-mortgaged his flat, Mike sets off alone, resolving to go wherever the road takes him and enjoy the adventure of heading off into the unknown. He ends up travelling almost 20,000 miles and reaching the four extremes of Europe: the Arctic Circle in the north, the Mediterranean coast in the south, the Portuguese Atlantic to the west and the Iraqi border of Turkey in the east.But really it's a journey inwards, as, on the way, Mike finds his post-divorce scars starting to heal and attempts to discover what he, as a man in his forties who hasn't quite found his place in the world, should be doing. Self-deprecating, poetic and utterly engaging, his is a heroic journey taken for the rest of us too scared to leave our 9 to 5 office-bound existence.

    Determined to finally bite the bullet and saddle up, she set off for Argentina, home of the nomadic gaucho whose spirit still gallops across the plains. In this sprawling country, six-year-olds travel to school on horseback. How difficult could it be? As she learns to sit astride a horse without falling off and befriends the marvelous creatures around her, Polly leaps into the sights and sounds of Argentina past and present: a hair-raising mystery involving Evita Perón becomes a parable about women, politics, and religion; a tango performance in Buenos Aires an occasion for both sorrow and rejoicing. From wine tasting in the Andes to exploring the legendary Perito Moreno Glacier, from investigating the myth of the gaucho to discovering her Welsh roots in Patagonia, Polly takes us along for an exhilarating, unforgettable ride as she finally lives out her dream—at a trot, a canter, and a gallop.

    ‘Ethiopia bred in me the conviction that if there is a wider purpose to our life, it is to understand the world, to seek out its diversity, to celebrate its heroes and its wonders – in short, to witness it.’When Philip Marsden first went to Ethiopia in 1982, it changed the direction of his life. What he saw of its stunning antiquity, its raw Christianity, its extremes of brutality and grace prompted his curiosity, and made him a writer.But Ethiopia at that time was torn apart by civil war. The north, the ancient heartland of the country, was closed off. Twenty years later, Marsden returned. The result is this book – the account of a journey deferred.Walking hundreds of miles through a landscape of cavernous gorges, tabletop mountains and semi-desert, Marsden encounters monks and hermits, rebels and farmers. And he creates an unforgettable picture of one of the most remote regions left on earth. As in his award-winning book ‘The Spirit-Wrestlers’, Marsden reminds us of the brilliant heights that travel writing can attain, whilst celebrating the ageless rewards of the open road and the people for whom the mythic and the everyday are inextricably joined.

    In his 20,000 mile solo journey he encounters corruption in Mexico, finds himself stranded in the highlands of Bolivia and gets arrested in Nicaragua. The road presents Bill with fears to face, immense kindness of strangers, and huge challenges to overcome, all while he copes with his anxiety disorder. Join Bill as he shares a candid account of his experiences bumbling across the Americas.

    suburb. Instead, he humorously falls from one country to the next, striking out repeatedly with the local women, getting robbed, having dreams that became reality, self-diagnosing himself with a host of diseases, and suffering repeated bouts of stomach illness that made marathon bus rides superhuman feats of bodily strength. Along the journey he chronicles the friendships, the women, and the struggles, including one fateful night in Paraguay that he thought would lead to his end.(This book is intended for men, and will be almost universally disliked by women because of its sexist themes and occasional toilet humor.)

    Complemented by easy-to use, reliable maps, helpful recommendations, authoritative background information, and up-to-date coverage of things to see and do, these popular travel guides cover in detail countries, regions, and cities around the world for travelers of every budget, along with extensive itineraries, maps with cross-referencing to the te

    A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Then he made a second, stranger discovery: Amateur explorers are still actively searching for this sunken city all around the world, based entirely on the clues Plato left behind. Exposed to the Atlantis obsession, Adams decides to track down these people and determine why they believe it’s possible to find the world’s most famous lost city and whether any of their theories could prove or disprove its existence. He visits scientists who use cutting-edge technology to find legendary civilizations once thought to be fictional. He examines the numerical and musical codes hidden in Plato’s writings, and with the help of some charismatic sleuths traces their roots back to Pythagoras, the sixth-century BC mathematician. He learns how ancient societies transmitted accounts of cataclysmic events—and how one might dig out the “kernel of truth” in Plato’s original tale.Meet Me in Atlantis is Adams’s enthralling account of his quest to solve one of history’s greatest mysteries; a travelogue that takes readers to fascinating locations to meet irresistible characters; and a deep, often humorous look at the human longing to rediscover a lost world.

    This artificial division of the earth became a feature of the subsequent trading of territories between rival kingdoms. By 1884, as a result of the British Empire's commercial pre-eminence, the globe's prime meridian was definitively drawn through Greenwich. By 1938 the line two degrees west was chosen as England's prime meridian running as it did through most of the country, from Berwick-Upon-Tweed on the Northumbrian coast to the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.Guided by his Ordnance Survey map, Nicholas Crane's book Two Degrees West walks the longitudinal tightrope of this most manmade of geographical lines, stretching nearly 600 kilometres from north to south, never deviating more than a few metres either side of the meridian. The result is a diverse cross-section of England in the late 1990s, from the bleak agrarian world of Northumbria and the Pennines to the racial and urban hybridity of the Black Country. Two Degrees West is an idiosyncratic, offbeat travel book, offering a unique view on the state of the nation at the end of the 1990s. --Jerry Brotton, author of Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World

    Born in Virginia in 1826, Nelson ran away from home as a young teenager to escape a domineering father and to seek adventure in the west. He took odd jobs along with way working on farms, serving as a cabin boy on a Mississippi steamer, and becoming an apprentice with a group of traders traveling west from Missouri. After meeting a band of Sioux, he decided that the nomadic life of an Indian was the adventure he was looking for and got himself adopted into the tribe. Here he learned how to live off the land and acquired the skills of a Sioux warrior. His adopted father was the Chief Spotted Tail and his brother-in-law was Red Cloud—Chief of the Sioux Nation. As a young Sioux brave, Nelson participated in Indian raids and skirmishes. Later, he guided Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, worked as a military scout with William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), fought in the Indian Wars, and served as a lawman in North Dakota. In his many escapades he often narrowly escaped death from bullets, arrows, and knives. Nelson’s story is a fascinating view of the early American west in all its glory. This pre-1923 publication has been converted from its original format for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the conversion.

    

    You will learn exactly what you need to build this home-away-from-home, and it will take you two days or less… and, it’s easily reversed when this mini-RV needs to convert back into your daily driver. Filled with photos and tips on how to thrive on the road on a budget, this book illustrates in a no-nonsense, logical manner how to inexpensively get your vehicle outfitted to serve as a home right away.