In the 1960s & `70s, the overland route from Europe to Asia became popular with disillusioned Westerners seeking what they saw as the paradise of the East. Their journeys are now the stuff of travel legend. Road to Katmandu is the story of Patrick Marnham`s own pilgrimage from Turkey to Nepal in 1968. He travelled over three thousand miles, passing through Ankara to Ararat, Tehran & Mashad, Herat, Kandahar & Kabul, Peshawar, Lahore & Varanasi...before finally reaching Katmandu. His journey is a kaleidoscopic blend of tortuous train journeys & lethal truck drives; wild deserts, mountains & isolated villages. At heart this is the story of a generation that was escaping from the routine of conventional life & of how it found
- or lost
- its way. It provides an alluring insight into the nature of the `hippie trail` & of those who forged it, before cheap air travel shrank the world. Road to Katmandu is an extraordinary testimony to the seductive beauty of the overland trail & a tribute to those who formed its ragamuffin cavalcade
- a travel classic.


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This is not a book about French Gardens. It is the story of a man travelling round France visiting a few selected French gardens on the way. Owners, intrigues, affairs, marriages, feuds, thwarted ambitions & desires, the largely unnamed ordinary gardeners, wars, plots & natural disasters run through every garden older than a generation or two & fill every corner of the grander historical ones. Families marry. Gardeners are poached. Political allegiances forged & shattered. The human trail crosses from garden to garden. They sit in their surrounding landscape, not as isolated islands but attached umbilically to it, sharing the geology, the weather, food, climate, local folklore, accent & cultural identity. Wines must be drunk & food tasted. Recipes found & compared. The perfect tarte-tartin pursued. None of these things can be ignored or separated from the shape & size of parterre, fountain, herbaceous border or pottager. So this is a book filled with stories & information, some of it about French gardens & gardening, but most of it about what makes France unlike anywhere else. From historical gardens like Versailles, Vaux le Vicomte & Courances to the kitchen gardens of the Michelin chef Alain Passard. There are grand potagers like Villandry & La Prieure D` Orsan & allotments & back gardens spotted on the way. Monty celebrates the obvious French associations of food & wine & finds gardens dedicated to vegetables, herbs & fruit. It is a book that any visitor to France, whether gardeners or not, will want to read both as a guide & an inspiration. It is a portal to get under the French cultural skin & to understand the country, in all its huge variety & disparity, a little better. ...

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green & kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Isl&, was taken to the nation`s heart & became the bestselling travel book ever, & was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a br&-new journey round Britain to see what has changed. Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn`t altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain`s occasional failings & more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. & not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, & an extra day off at Christmas. Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest & quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous & the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute & perceptive insight into all that is best & worst about Britain today. ...

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green & kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Isl&, was taken to the nation`s heart & became the bestselling travel book ever, & was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a br&-new journey round Britain to see what has changed. Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn`t altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain`s occasional failings & more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. & not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, & an extra day off at Christmas. Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest & quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous & the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute & perceptive insight into all that is best & worst about Britain today. ...

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green & kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Isl&, was taken to the nation`s heart & became the best-selling travel book ever, & was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a br&-new journey around Britain to see what has changed. Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn`t altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain`s occasional failings & more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. & not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, & an extra day off at Christmas. Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest & quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous & the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute & perceptive insight into all that is best & worst about Britain today. Music written & performed by Richard Digance, inspired by The Road to Little Dribbling ...

Beautifully written & full of wonderful descriptions & intriguing tales, In Patagonia is an account of Bruce Chatwin`s travels to a remote country in search of a strange beast & his encounters with the people whose fascinating stories delay him on the road. ...

A real-life adventure that inspired countless travellers in fact & fiction, the ” Penguin Classics” edition of Robert Byron`s ” The Road to Oxiana”

Includes:: an introduction by Colin Thubron. In 1933 Robert Byron began a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, & Teheran to Oxiana
- the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan & the Soviet Union. ” The Road to Oxiana” offers not only a wonderful record of his adventures, but also a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers. Robert Byron (1905-41) was born in 1905, & educated at Eton & Merton College, Oxford. He died during the Second World War, when the ship he was serving on was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath. Byron`s ” The Road to Oxiana” is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. If you enjoyed ” The Road to Oxiana” you might like Charles Darwin`s ” The Voyage of the Beagle”, also available in ” Penguin Classics”. ” The greatest of all pre-war travel books”. (William Dalrymple).” What ” Ulysses” is to the novel between the wars, & what ” The Waste Land” is to poetry, ” The Road to Oxiana” is to the travel book”. (Paul Fussell). ” In any list of the great travel books of the 20th century, Robert Byron`s account of his travels in Persia & Afghanistan, ” The Road to Oxiana”, must be put somewhere near the very top”. (” Telegraph”).


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In 1933, the delightfully eccentric Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad & Teheran to Oxiana
- the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan & the Soviet Union. His arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, although a wonder in itself, is not nearly so amazing as the thoroughly captivating, at times zany, record of his adventures. In addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers. Here, 'armchair travellers will find newspaper clippings, public signs & notices, official forms, letters, 'diary entries', essays on current politics, lyric passages, historical & archaeological dissertations, brief travel narratives (usually of comic-awful delays & disasters), &
- the triumph of the book
- at least twenty superb comic dialogues, some of them virtually playlets, complete with stage directions & 'musical' scoring.' Paul Fussell, from the Introduction to the OUP US paperback, 1982


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Each year, over 200, 000 people pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Often called the Way of St. James, this journey has been an important Christian tradition for centuries. ” The Road to Santiago” is one man`s incredible story of walking almost a thousand miles to experience it. As Rene Freund learns, when you reach the edge of the European continent having walked along the Way of St. James which pilgrims of former times thought to be the end of the world only then do you realize that the old pilgrim s saying is true: the journey does not end in Santiago. The journey begins in Santiago. In this vivid travelogue, Freund not only introduces us to the overwhelming natural beauty he encountered along the way, but also shares his experience of reaching his physical & psychological limits during the arduous journey. ” ...

In 1995, at the age of twenty-three, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps &, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up & down his arms so he could hold conversations, &, per a Communist dean`s orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, & Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China`s changes as he was. Thus began an impassioned immersion into Chinese life. With humor & insight, Meyer puts readers in his novice shoes, winding across the length & breadth of his adopted country --from a terrifying bus attack on arrival, to remote Xinjiang & Tibet, into Beijing`s backstreets & his future wife`s Manchurian family, & headlong into efforts to protect China`s vanishing heritage at places like ” Sleeping Dragon, ” the world`s largest panda preserve. In the last book of his China trilogy, Meyer tells a story both deeply personal & universal, as he gains greater
- if never complete
- assurance, capturing what it feels like to learn a language, culture & history from the ground up. Both funny & relatable, The Road to Sleeping Dragon is essential reading for anyone interested in China`s history, & how daily life plays out there today.

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