10 Great Travel Books
Ten great travel books although in fact there are so many great travel books I’ll follow this up with 10 more great travel books and then with 10 great travel novels. The very best travel books are often at the very least slightly fictional and some great novels are as much about travel as anything else.
1. Swallows & Amazons – Arthur Ransome – when I was 10 years old this was the last book my parents ever read to me and it’s a major reason LP guides are so full of maps. The maps of lakes you could sail to are superbly quirky. Apart from writing children’s books Ransome also managed to get sued by Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde’s odious lover) and married Leon Trotsky’s personal secretary!
A favourite coffee mug.
2. Atlas of Remote Islands – Judith Schalansky – I’ve probably given away more copies of this book than any other title, the subtitle ‘Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will’ tells it all. When I put up a blog about it in 2010 I’d been to five of the 50, in 2023 I added a sixth tick when I visited Norfolk Island. If you’ve reached double figures you are definitely a serious traveller.
3. The Road to Oxiana – Robert Byron – regularly listed as the ‘best book’ from travel writings golden era between the wars – hilarious and frighteningly perceptive about a lot of things that would happen in Central Asia 50 years later. In fact much of what Byron wrote about Iran and Afghanistan is still spot on today.
4. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush – Eric Newby – the very epitome of a ‘just go’ travel book – just wander off to the Hindu Kush in the ‘50s and climb a few previously unclimbed mountains. ‘But we don’t know how to climb mountains,’ Eric’s companion suggests. ‘Not a problem, we’ll go to Wales for the weekend and learn how.’ Plus this classic travel book managed to go out of print in the US and Lonely Planet picked it up, kicking off a friendship with Eric and Wanda. Now how Eric and Wanda met – Love & War in the Apennines – is another great travel book.
5. A House in Bali – Colin McPhee – Positive proof that the best travel books don’t actually travel anywhere. In the 1930s a music student hears gamelan music in a film, moves to Bali, falls in love with the place, decides to build a house and stay there. This is still my favourite of all the ‘live somewhere and build a house’ books.
6. A Season in Heaven – David Tomory – a terrific oral history of the ‘road to the east’, the ‘hippy trail’ and that whole awakening to the possibilities of exotic travel. This is a book which has made me very nostalgic. The Afghans ‘were an example to us all, proving that you could be smart, tough, proud, broke, stoned and magnificently dressed, all at once.’
7. The Places in Between – Rory Stewart – everything that’s best in travel writing, an impossible adventure (walk across Afghanistan just after the Taliban depart) and extremely well written. I followed his same route a couple of years later (not on foot, comfortably in a 4WD) and he had every village name down accurately, none of the maps did. Pity he lost out to Boris Johnson to lead the Tory party.
I like that cover because I ended up at the same place – Chisht-e-Sharif – on my (comfortable) little Afghanistan trip. 
8. Moby Duck – Donovan Hohn – another book where the subtitle tells it all: ‘The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them.’ Which is exactly what Mr Hohn does, he tracks the rubber duckies back to their birthplace in China, follows them across the Pacific, where a rogue wave washed a containerful of them off their ship, and eventually to the beaches where so many of them have washed up. And all because one of his school students related the story in class.
9. Naples ’44 – Norman Lewis – history or travel? Never mind, it is the book on Naples. Lewis turns up in Naples when the Germans have pulled out, but the war is very definitely still going on. Naples has always been a chaotic place, but in ’44 it was especially anarchic. The author went on to a travel writing career dedicated to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is to say when things are most interesting. Burma as civil war broke out after WW II? He was there to write Golden Earth. IndoChina as French colonial rule was collapsing and the Americans were yet to arrive on their useless Vietnam mission? Yes that was A Dragon Apparent.
10. Country Driving – Peter Hessler – the author gets to grips with China by getting behind the wheel. I loved the comic process of getting a Chinese driving licence which tells you an awful lot of about modern China. Question Number 352 from the driver’s exam: If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should
a. Not tell him
b. Reply patiently and accurately
c. Tell him the wrong way
My Chinese driving licence from my Silk Road MGB trip in 2017
