Travel Survival

Travel Tales Collections, Food & Drink, No. 7, February 2015, is part of Michael Brein's Travel Tales Collections series. It contains some of the best stories from Michael's huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

Toilet experiences are an unfortunate yet essential aspect of living that, like it or not, we all must come to terms with, whether on the home front or in strange exotic foreign lands. The necessity of dealing with toilets, where to find them; what to do about them; and how to use them even, elicits from many travelers nothing less than abject terror.

Pirates, parrots, hurricanes, and Himalayas. Stalked by jaguars in the jungle of Guatemala! Will they survive pirates off Costa Rica? How does he escape war in Kashmir? Hanging out with Jim Morrison, surviving a huge tornado at sea, saving the life of a lone fisherman helpless in a storm… Whether you are a landlubber or sailor, an armchair adventurer or world traveler, you'll understand why everyone said he should write a book…

For decades, one especially daring traveler has set off into the wilderness with little more than a sense of adventure. Dick Griffith is an Alaska legend who made his name with a string of fearless feats: rafting down the Green and Colorado Rivers, skiing solo across the icy Northwest Passage, and being the first nonnative to drop into the treacherous Barranca Del Cobre in Mexico.

The first full biography of Griffith, Canyons and Ice offers a rare look at the man behind the soaring achievements and occasionally death-defying moments.

Michael Brein's Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 2 for August 2014 contains 10 among the best travel stories from Michael's huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of his own travels to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

Wilderness survival? With nothing but a knife and hatchet? When you're alone, and the wilderness is Earth at the end of the ice age? Not all the dangers come from predatory animals.

Imagine visiting another time in history and getting stuck there! The first book in the Stuck series, Stuck (In Time) blends adventure, history, and time travel. The three Baxter children - twins Robert and James and their sister, Lucy - use their individual strengths to work together and get themselves out of a string of scrapes.

From licking a Monet in Paris, to pushing an abusive macho honeymooner off his sailboat in the shark-infested Galapagos, to saving her toddler son from a charging bull elephant in Africa, these 14 delightful, award-winning true tales will inspire listeners to follow the call of a wild life and leave home with their doors unlocked.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

With the help of Uncle Archie, this time they travel back to the 16th century. To begin with, all goes smoothly, but then a series of dramatic events means they become separated - then stuck! Robert, James, and Lucy are resourceful children and have to learn to adapt to their circumstances and work both individually and as a team to find a solution to their difficulties. Along the way, they meet several historical figures from the Elizabethan period, including the most famous and important person of them all.

The fate of the USS Flier is one of the most astonishing stories of the Second World War. On August 13, 1944, the submarine struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Sulu Sea in less than one minute, leaving only 14 of its crew of 86 hands alive. After enduring 18 hours in the water, eight remaining survivors swam to a remote island controlled by the Japanese. Deep behind enemy lines and without food or drinking water, the crewmen realized that their struggle for survival had just begun.

Two boys and two girls are best friends. They have skied and snowboarded together into every corner of Jagged Peak in search of adventure, but always within the safety of that ski area's boundaries. Until now, when they follow the tracks of a strange snow-sliding creature into the volcanic out-of-bounds. And vanish into another world. Three land deep in an eerie jungle, and one falls high on an icy cornice - all of them ditched by a tricky, rogue wormhole, which disappears over distant snow-covered peaks.

Mungo Park was an explorer of the real kind. In 1795, only aged 24, he left Gambia for the uncharted interior of Africa, in a journey that would be filled with tragedy, heroism, and adventure. Park was the first European to ever reach the river Niger and the legendary city of Timbuctoo, thus resolving, once and for all, a century-old geographic debate. He travelled with local guides and later entirely alone, through warring kingdoms, robberies, imprisonment, and extreme duress. By the time he returned to Gambia, he had long been given up for dead.

Year after year, climbers return to the world's most difficult mountains. At these places, even the most cautious climber is vulnerable to mistakes, bad weather, and bad luck, which often leads to death. This collection offers harrowing accounts of extreme mountaineering and its potentially fatal consequences.

As Frank Kusy turns 27, he is unexpectedly put in charge of an old people's home in Clapham, South London. Driven to distraction by a crazy cast of characters, he seeks solace in Buddhism, only to find himself up to his ears in plasticine pigs and marathon chanting sessions. Will he make his mum happy by holding down a 'proper' job? Will he make her unhappy by becoming a writer? Will he get to share cheese sandwiches with Kevin in Kathmandu? And will he be forced to exchange his underpants in Japan?

The adventure continues when Abby and Derick begin their second semester at Cragbridge Hall, the most prestigious secondary school in the world. But when Grandpa Cragbridge admits them to the Council of Keys - a secret group of people who have keys to travel back in time - strange things begin to happen. One by one, members are found unconscious and unable to wake, their keys stolen. Now Abby and Derick must scramble to figure out who is behind the attacks before they become the next victims, which would give their enemy the power to change the past forever.

Living on a Russian base next door to angry sea lions, Karen finds herself living and working in remote conditions surrounded by stunning scenery as she discovers the courage to find a different way of living which will change her life forever and inspire others to do the same.

This is the remarkable ship's log/diary of Captain William Bligh, which describes in vivid detail what happened to him and his 18-person crew after the famous "Mutiny" on the "Bounty." In a boat only 23 feet long, Captain Bligh and his men voyaged for 4,000 miles to eventual safety. This book is a partial excerpt from Bligh's work, Voyage to the South Sea, which was commissioned by the English Majesty.

Between 1987 and 1989, Paul Bowles, at the suggestion of a friend, kept a journal to record the daily events of his life. What emerges is not only just a record of the meals, conversations, and health concerns of the author of The Sheltering Sky but also a fascinating look at an artist at work in a new medium.

The true stories in this audiobook are about temporarily disconnecting from the ordinary life of a big-city lawyer to experience exotic islands, strange creatures, and different cultures. The stories are not so much a travelogue as a vicarious island-hopping adventure and spiritual journey.