Book List
Here are some of the travel books I like.
Asia
India is well served by travel books. My favourites include:
Eric Newby: Slowly Down The Ganges
Michael Wood: The Smile of Murugan
William Dalrymple: Nine Lives
Allen Ginberg: Indian Journals
Afghanistan also has a good literature:
Peter Levi: The Light Garden of the Angel King
Jason Elliot: A Hidden Smile
Robert Byron: The Road to Oxiana
Eric Newby: A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush
Nepal
Peter Matthiessen: The Snow Leopard
Iran
Jason Elliot: Mirrors of the Unseen
Americas
Mexico
Hugh Thomson: Tequila Oil
Ronald Wright: Time Among The Maya (with Guatemala and Belize)
Peru
Ronald Wright: Cut Stones and Crossroads
Hugh Thomson: The White Rock
Hugh Thomson: Cochineal Red (I love his description of the Qoyllurit'i festival)
Argentina
Bruce Chatwin: In Patagonia
Chile
Sara Wheeler: Travels in a Thin Country
Amazonia
Wade Davis: One River
Africa
Sudan
Edward Hoagland: African Calliope
Charlie Pye-Smith: The Other Nile (also Egypt and Ethiopia)
Michael Asher: In Search of the Forty Days Road
Michael Asher: A Desert Dies
East Africa
Peter Matthiessen: The Tree Where Man Was Born
Morocco
Elias Canetti: The Voices of Marrakesh
Niema Ash: Travels With My Daughter
Europe
Greece
Kevin Andrews: The Flight of Ikaros
Patrick Leigh Fermor: Roumeli (the first book I read which gave me something of the romance of travel)
Patrick Leigh Fermor: Mani
Lawrence Durrell: Prospero's Cell
Sara Wheeler: An Island Apart
General - covering several countries
Nicolas Bouvier: The Way of the World
Colin Thubron: Shadow of the Silk Road - my favourite travel book of recent years
Nick Danziger: Danziger's Travels
Gavin Young: Slow Boats to China
Brian Schwartz: Travels Through The Third World - one of the few books to explore cheap travel
Places I have not been
Tim Mackintosh-Smith: Yemen
Edward Hoagland: Notes from the Century Before
Amitav Ghosh: In An Antique Land
