Travel Adventure Writing

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike - it's at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright, modern take on the age-old questions: How do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? Can you love someone without the need for commitment or any expectations for the future?

Phileas Fogg, a distinguished member of London's Reform Club, takes up a wager to circle the globe in just 80 days. Together with manservant Passepartout and a detective named Fix, Fogg makes a fantastic world tour utilizing every means of transportation available in the 1870s. This is a marvelous travelogue mixed with dazzling suspense, delightful fantasy, and lively comedy.

These stories exude suffering at its worst - from the desperate cannibalism of the Donner Party to the brutal starvation and bitter cold endured by Ernest Shackleton's team. Tales of such suffering may be distressing to their listeners, but at the same time, they engage us, offering glimpses of our most fundamental needs.

Curious about the modern love affair with criminal personalities, investigative reporter Conor Woodman spent four years exploring the hidden depths of dynamic cities across the globe. Sharks takes us on a journey through the lawless backstreets of cities as diverse as Mumbai, Bogotá, New Orleans, Barcelona and London. In each he uncovers the people and the scams that keep the global black economy moving.

The following is a selection from three books that were published in 1894, 1910, and 1905 respectively by early pioneers who ventured into Tibet. They are Among the Tibetans, India and Tibet, To Lhassa at Last. Although as Westerners their perspectives are culturally bounded (and too often myopic), they each write vividly and occasionally with great insight about what they experienced in their travels. Sadly, however, two of the narratives are militaristic and we witness an unwanted invasion on behalf of the British to gain controlling interest in the region.

We travel to grow – our Adventure Guides show you how. Experience the places you visit more directly, freshly, intensely than you would otherwise – sometimes best done on foot, in a canoe, or through cultural adventures like art courses, cooking classes, learning the language, meeting the people, joining in the festivals and celebrations. This can make your trip life-changing, unforgettable. All of the detailed information you need is here about the hotels, restaurants, shopping, sightseeing.

This is Switzerland's second largest city (behind Zürich), with 178,900 residents, and is heavily influenced by its French neighbors to the west and south. Here you'll find the quintessence or haute école of everything Switzerland stands for in the new century: beauty, wealth, education, international relations, and culture, not to mention romantic scenery at its finest. One aspect of Geneva that is hard to miss is the Genevois' love of food....

Following the hugely popular and successful Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, Michael Palin set off to meet another challenge: an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the world's largest ocean, the Pacific.

Swept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day, armed only with a backpack and fantasies of the open road, he hitchhikes off into the awesome emptiness of Australia's outback. What follows is a hilarious, hair-raising ride into the hot red center of a continent so desolate that civilization dwindles to a gas pump and a pub. While the outback's terrain is inhospitable, its scattered inhabitants are anything but.

What would happen if you quit your life for a year? In a pre-COVID-19 world, the Wheelan family decided to find out; leaving behind work, school, and even the family dogs to travel the world on a modest budget. Equal parts "how-to" and "how-not-to" - and with an eye toward a world emerging from a pandemic - We Came, We Saw, We Left is the insightful and often hilarious account of one family's gap-year experiment.

The Home of the Blizzard is a tale of discovery and adventure, of pioneering deeds, great courage, heart-stopping rescues and heroic endurance. This is Mawson’s own account of his years spent in Antarctica, travelling in sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds. At its heart is the epic journey of 1912-13, during which both his companions perished. Told in a laconic but gripping style, this is the classic account of the struggle for survival of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition - a journey which mapped more of Antarctica than any expedition before or since.

Four thousand miles, two companions, and several other means of local conveyance later, he emerged on the Mediterranean. The story Morrison tells of this spectacular - and spectacularly harrowing - journey is a mash-up of narrative travel writing, investigative reportage, and current history, resulting in a thoughtful, funny, and frightful trip across a region whose people are trying to claw their way from war and poverty to something better.

In 2015, 36-year-old Chicago resident David King finds himself at a personal and professional crossroads. Feeling bored and restless, he longs to strike out on a crazy journey in a quest for beauty, kindness, and inspiration as to where his life should go from here. Having taken up biking as a hobby, he consults a map of the United States and, in a spur-of-the-moment decision, vows to ride across the country—from San Diego to Miami. Part travelogue, part memoir, part spiritual journey, America on Two Wheels is an ode to pursuing the open road with an open heart.

Michael Smith spent 20 years restoring Melbourne's beloved Sun Theatre and becoming one of Australia's last independent cinema operators. He then set off on a rather different journey: to become the first person to fly solo around the world in an amphibious plane. With limited flying experience, no support team and only basic instruments in his tiny flying boat, the Southern Sun, Smith risked his life to make modern aviation history.

An airline story is in the news today! And so it goes. There's hardly a day now that an airline incident of some sort or another is not in the news. We're taking a lot closer look at air travel these days than ever before. Therefore, as regards the psychology of travel, we should take a much closer look at what actually happens on airplanes.

On June 21, 1992, two best friends summited Mount Rainier. Within hours, their exquisite accomplishment would be overshadowed by tragedy. On their descent, Jim Davidson fell through an ice bridge on Rainier's northeast flank, plunging eighty feet into a narrow crevasse inside the Emmons Glacier and dragging Mike Price in after him. Mike fell to his death; Jim, badly injured and armed with minimal gear, faced an almost impossible climb back out of the crevasse, up a nearly vertical ice wall.

Jeff Alt takes you along every step of his 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail adventure. This entertaining journey includes bears, bugs, blisters, captivating characters, skunk bedmates, and hilarious food cravings. Alt walked more than five million steps in tribute to his brother, who has cerebral palsy and lives in a home called Sunshine. This trail adventure has inspired an annual event that has raised more than $200,000 for Sunshine. It includes hiking tips for the whole family.

After Kim and her husband, Brian, decide to quit their jobs to travel around the world, they're given a yellow envelope containing a check and instructions to give the money away. There are only three rules for the envelope: don't overthink it, share your experiences, and don't feel pressured to give it all away. Through Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, and beyond, Kim and Brian face obstacles, including major challenges to their relationship.

In 1935, Fred A. Birchmore left the small American town of Athens, Georgia, to continue his college studies in Europe. In his spare time, Birchmore toured the continent on a one-speed bike he called Bucephalus (after the name of Alexander the Great's horse). A born wanderer, Birchmore broadened his travels to include the British Isles and even the Mediterranean. After a lengthy, unplanned detour in Egypt, Birchmore put his studies on hold, pointed Bucephalus eastward, and just kept going.

Tasmania to London. One end of the globe to the other. Eight hundred hitchhiking rides. Eighteen thousand miles. Four seasons. Three continents. Nineteen countries. How many rides does it take to hitch from Tasmania to London? Rogue wanderer Jamie Maslin decides to find out, propelling him into a high-stakes adventure of a lifetime that sees him tackle searing desert, freezing mountains, tropical jungle, and barren steppes on little more than a thumb and a prayer.