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Armchair Travel
We've been expanding our selection of travel writing books so that there are now dozens to choose from. The following is a small selection of the books on our shelves.
From China to Peru, from the United Kingdom to New Zealand, there are adventures to spark anyone's interest.
Whether you're looking for inspiration for your own journey of exploration into another part of the world, or just want something to wile away hours in the sun, then we have the book for you.
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Tao: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China
Goda, Aya
As protests swirl in the cities and all foreign faces arouse suspicions, venturesome young Japanese student Aya Goda travels deep into the interior of China.
There she falls in love with the charismatic and combative wandering painter Cao, whose work is initially tolerated by the Chinese authorities and then banned, suddenly flipping the couple over onto the wrong side of the law. With the police on their tails, the pair criss-cross the vastnesses of middle China and push up into Tibet, where Cao has been trained as a sky-burial master. By truck and by jalopy, biplane and train, dodging bandits and bureaucrats alike, the pair take a high-speed, high-risk journey through this fast-changing country.
Like some East Asian Cassady and Kerouac, Cao and Goda are wild kindred spirits in search of enlightenment and freedom, and Goda's prose - clear and metallic as a Himalayan stream - permits the reader to share their every intrepid step and twist and to taste the tangibly different flavours of contemporary China.
Price: $29.90
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Fly Solo: The 50 Best Places On Earth for a Girl to Travel Alone
Williamson, Teresa Rodriguez
There's a whole big world out there. Here's how every woman can get out and conquer it-solo.
This is an inspiring guide for women who want to "fly solo"-yet stay safe, sane, and solvent during their travels. With candid advice and insider's secrets about some of the most exciting places on earth, readers will find:
- A quiz to help determine what sorts of trips best suit one's personality, interests, and goals
- The essential female-friendly spots every woman should visit
- Why each destination is perfect for solo travellers, important foreign phrases, what to pack, what shoes to wear, special events, historical facts, where to meet the global glitterati, and a list of the top ten things women must do while visiting
- Where to eat, meet, party, people watch, sunbathe, soul-search, shop, spa, frolic, photograph, and more
Price: $29.90
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Don't Tell Mum:
Hair-raising Messages Home From Gap-year Travellers
Hoggart Simon, Monk Emily
The e-mail home is an essential part of every gap-year back-packer's journey.
Where once the news of a fresh tattoo, the purchase of a gold Mercedes or a village chief's proposal of marriage would have had to wait until a traveller's return, those left at home are now able to follow every trial and tribulation of their loved one's attempt to 'find themselves'.
Simon Hoggart and Emily Monk have collected together the funniest, most surreal, most alarming gap-year e-mails into a treasure-trove of correspondence.
Price: $34.90
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The River at the Centre of the World
Winchester, Simon
The mighty Yangtze splits China in two, between the wheat-growing North and the rice-growing South; almost 500 million people live and work along its banks.
In this compelling book, award-winning writer Simon Winchester and his plucky companion Lily travel upstream all the way from bustling cosmopolitan Shanghai to Tibet. Their 3,900-mile journey takes them past the magnificent Three Gorges, soon to be the site of the world's largest hydroelectric dam, through jungles, grasslands, high plains, polluted industrial landscapes and ice-covered mountain ranges. Winchester sketches in the background, describes a host of strange encounters and vividly reveals the harsh realities of today's China.
Price: $27.90
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Shambhala: the Road Less Travelled in Western Tibet
Braham, Laurence
In Shambhala, Laurence travels to Lhasa, where he obtains an ancient Buddhist scripture entitled Shambhala Sutra, stolen from Tashilumbo Monastery.
By following Shambhala Sutra as a road map, Laurence goes on the road to look for the kingdom of Shambhala as described in the sutra. As he travels deeper into the harsh regions of Tibet, he finds that Shambhala Sutra has led him on a journey to discover the kingdom of Shambhala within his heart.
Price: $27.90
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Hokkaido Highway Blues
Ferguson, Will
It had never been done before.
Not in 2,000 years of Japanese recorded history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from one end of the country to the other. Nor had anyone hitchhiked the length of Japan. But, heady on sakura and sake, Will Ferguson bet he could do both.
The resulting travelogue is one of the funniest and most illuminating books ever written about Japan.
Price: $29.90
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On the Road to Kandahar
Burke, Jason
A brilliant, fearless journalist who knows huge areas of the Islamic world intimately, Burke now turns to the wider question of how we are to get to grips with radical Islam and what it really means.
Burke has travelled all over the great arc of Islamic land, from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and he uses this in his new book to great effect to show how various and completely unmonolithic Islam really is and how the sort of standard Western generalizations about it are both stupid and dangerous.Price: $27.90
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The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest: Travel Tales of the South Pacific
Lay, Graeme
This marvelous collection of travel stories from the South Pacific reveals Paul Gauguin's shocking Tahitian secrets, retraces the last tragic days of Robert Louis Stevenson, and recounts the author's own haunting by Herman Melville, as well as his attempts to seduce the Slovenian Olympic ski team in the Cook Islands.
Price: $29.90
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Show Me the Magic
Caulfield, Annie
An engaging, eccentric, and humourous travel book about a most inhospital country in Africa: Dahomey.
This is a country where corruption is rife, where Catholicism shares a place with Voodoo, and where the north is Muslim, arid and tough and the south colourful, sophisticated and artistic. Here, the countryside ranges from pretty English rural, to arid sub-Sahara.
All this and more is seen by Annie in the back seat of a taxi driven by control-freak IsidorePrice: $27.90
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Fresh-air Fiend:
Travel Writings, 1985-2000
Theroux, Paul
Written in his distinctive and evocative style, Paul Theroux's Fresh-Air Fiend is a collection of his short travel writing from 1985 through 2000.
From Hong Kong to Honolulu, through China and the USA, Theroux throws new light on both familiar territories and unknown corners of the earth.
Price: $26.90
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The Great Railway Bazaar:
By Train through Asia
Theroux, Paul
The Orient Express; The Khyber Pass Local; the Delhi Mail from Jaipur; the Golden Arrow of Kuala; the Trans-Siberian Express; these are just some of the trains steaming through Paul Theroux's epic rail journey from London across Europe through India and Asia.
This was a trip of discovery made in the mid-seventies, a time before the West had embraced the places, peoples, food, faiths and cultures of the East.
For us now, as much as for Theroux then, to visit the lands of The Great Railway Bazaar is an encounter with all that is truly foreign and exotic - and with what we have since lost.
Price: $27.90
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Ghost Train to the Eastern Star:
On the Tracks of the Great Railway
Theroux, Paul
Starting off on the Eurostar from London, Paul Theroux once again sets out on a railway journey through the East, travelling overland through Eastern Europe, and eventually reaching India and Asia.
Infused with the changes that have shaped the exterior landscape and enriched with developments to his own perceptions and psychology, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is an absorbing and beautifully written follow-up to The Great Railway Bazaar.
Full of life and impeccably evoked, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Paul Theroux at his very best.
Price: $54.90
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Once While Travelling: The Lonely Planet Story
Wheeler, Tony and Maureen
Founders of the phenomenally successful publishing company Lonely Planet, Tony and Maureen Wheeler have produced travel guides to just about every country across the globe.
Lonely Planet Publications was born in 1973 when the Wheelers self-published a quirky travel guide, Across Asia on the Cheap. This was quickly followed by what soon became the backpackers' bible, South-East Asia on a Shoestring . Going boldly where no other travel publisher had ventured, their budget-conscious travellers guide provided knowledge long before the advent of mass tourism.
Once While Travelling: The Lonely Planet Story is a unique mix of autobiography, corporate history and travel book. It traces Tony and Maureen Wheeler's personal story as well as the often bumpy evolution of their business into the world's largest independent travel publishing company. Above all, their memoir reveals the spirit of adventure that has made them, according to the New York Daily News, 'the specialists in guiding weird folks to weird places'.
Price: $29.90
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Sliced Iguana
Tree, Isabella
Behind the façade of sombreros and tequila, tourist traps and holiday resorts, there lies a very different Mexico.
In Sliced Iguana Isabella Tree explores a country that is the heart and lifeblood of the Americas, a country of extremes and contradictions. In a land so markedly shaped by machismo, she finds a town controlled by arm-wrestling matriarchs and party-mad transvestites and in war-torn Chiapas she discovers shamans worshipping Mayan gods inside Catholic churches and conducting exorcisms with the aid of Pepsi.
Through her narrative Isabella Tree threads the brightly coloured history of Mexico and tells the stories of the people that have defined its fractured past and will shape its future - kings and conquistadors, politicians and rebels, shamans and priests, mestizos and indigenous Indians. This is a story of Mexico like no other, capturing the essence of its psyche and illuminating the struggles and hopes of a people and a country on the cusp of change.
Price: $26.90
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Tribe
Parry, Bruce
Over four years Bruce Parry lived for a month at a time with fifteen different tribes in some of the world's most remote regions for his BBC series Tribe. His insatiable curiosity took him deep into the heart of each community, whether in the frozen plains of the tundra or the depths of a tropical rainforest. In societies which appeared strikingly different from out own, Bruce found much that confirmed our common humanity.
On an unforgettable journey in words and pictures, Bruce eats, sleeps and breathes the lives of these remarkable tribes, takes part in dramatic rituals and forging friendships that will last a lifetime.
It is a fascinating insight into the lives of people who often face desperate problems but who are rich in hospitality, good humour and wisdom.
Price: $29.90
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Family OE
Williamson, Luke and Karen
If you are planning to take your children on an extended trip overseas, Family OE is a must-have. It's packed with good advice gathered by the Williamson family on their eight months of travel in Western Europe, Turkey and Canada.
This book is not a "where to" guide, but a "how to", tailored specially to family travel and covering such topics as planning, what to take, preparing your children for the trip, what to do about school, budgeting, health and safety, and more.
Practical tips are interleaved with travel anecdotes and snippets from the family's journals. Black-and-white and colour photographs help illustrate the ins, outs, ups and downs of family travel, and are also guaranteed to whet the appetite and get you planning your own Family OE.
Price: $39.90
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Where on Earth Can I...?
Norman, Libby
Do you want to ride the fastest train, cross the highest bridge, see the oldest object, drive the longest road, watch a film in a natural amphitheatre, visit the largest pyramid, get some retail therapy in the world's largest shopping mall, eat in the world?'s smallest restaurant, ride down the longest river or climb to the top of the tallest building?
This guide is a fantastic, fact-filled new book full of quirky and unusual ideas for the traveller who really wants to experience everything.
Price: $24.90
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The Snow Leopard
Matthiessen , Peter
In 1973 [Matthiessen] journeyed with George Schaller, a field biologist, to Crystal Mountain in the Himalayas, to study the wild blue sheep of the region called bharal. They also hoped to see the rare snow leopard, an almost mythical creature which Schaller once glimpsed on a previous visit.
Matthiessen is a student of Zen Buddhism and for him this was as much an inner journey as a field trip. He succeeds well in blending the spiritual with the earthly and his book is an evocative account of a remote and timeless place and its people. Price: $39.90
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A Walk In The Woods
Bryson , Bill
The Appalachian Trail covers 14 states, and over 2,000 miles. It stretches along the East Coast of the United States, from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. It is famous for being the longest continuous footpath in the world. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas - Redneck country - Moonshine, Lil' Abner, there's bears in them thar hills.
Reared in the tradition of Mark Twain, James Thurber and S.J. Perelman, Bryson used his many years in Britain to soak up a peculiarly English sense of irony and humour and to hone a laugh-out-loud style that is uniquely, hilariously, his own.
Price: $27.90
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The Ascent Of Rum Doodle
Bowman , Bill
The Ascent of Rum Doodle is a parody of the non-fictional chronicles of mountaineering expeditions that were popular during the 1950s, as many of the world's highest peaks were climbed for the first time. Though a parody, it has become one of the most famous and celebrated books of mountaineering literature.
A small mountain in the Masson Range in Antarctica, near Mawson Station, bears the official name Rumdoodle Peak inspired by this book.
The northeast ridge of Pikes Peak, in Colorado, has been unofficially nicknamed Rumdoodle Ridge by local climbers.
Price: $29.90
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Around The Weird In 80 Days
Smith , Rich
When you've broken 25 of the USA's most absurd laws, what do you do next?
If you're Rich Smith, you return to the scene of the crime, and then: watch the convicts compete in the Prison Rodeo at Oklahoma State Prison; expose yourself at the Amtrak Mooning in Orange County, California; bob for pig's feet at the Redneck Games, in Buckeye Park, Georgia.
Join Rich Smith and his merry men (and woman) on their hilarious journey as they travel from state to state in search of the most bizarre events the land of the free has to offer.
Price: $34.90
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Robbie Coltrane's B-Road Britain
Coltrane , Robbie
Instead of scaling the Himalayas, trekking across the Antarctic or traipsing through the Brazilian rainforest, Robbie Coltrane has set himself a uniquely British challenge. Armed with a map, a classic car and a sense of adventure, he'll be exploring strange and exotic parts that are a bit closer to home.
From cheese-chasing in Gloucestershire and Star Trek conventions in the Black Country to gurning competitions in the North East and Burry Man whiskey-fuelled walks through Scottish towns, Robbie's drive is a determination to uncover what makes the British singularly British.
Price: $38.90
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Pedal Power: Great Bicycle Journeys
Sinclair , Roy
In a bold attempt to combat inevitable dotage, Roy Sinclair set off to discover the world (more correctly, selected parts of it) by pedal power. In doing so, frequently accompanied by his Japanese partner, he experienced people of different cultures and languages in a way that might otherwise have been impossible.
Inspired by a former New Zealand prime minister, he set off to ride the length of Japan (the first New Zealander to do so) in an effort to have a World Peace Bell gifted to his country.
Sometimes opinionated and more often unashamedly biased, his world discovered by pedal power is one we all will want to journey through. His compelling stories of overseas bicycle rides are woven amongst those of the country he loves most - New Zealand.
Price: $36.90
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A Long Ride for a Pie
Mulliner , Tim
A cyclist's epic, world-crossing road trip is presented from the perspective of a base culinary urge. What is it about New Zealand that most expats and travellers miss most? Beautiful clean beaches? The majestic Southern Alps? Mum?
For Tim Mulliner, after nearly four years of working in Britain, it was the experience of sinking his teeth into a proper Kiwi pie of the sort that melted in your mouth and left tiny flakes of pastry stuck to your lips, a small shower of crumbs on your shirt, and a nice warm, satisfied feeling in the stomach.
So Tim jumped on his 27-speed bike to head across western Europe, eastern Europe, Turkey, India, Iran, Pakistan, Tibet, China, South-East Asia and Australia, and finally home to New Zealand.
Price: $29.90
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Strangers in my Sleeper
Riordan , Peter
Wellington journalist Peter Riordan married two loves - India and trains - when he travelled the "iron threads" of the vast subcontinent, taking in deserts, great rivers, dusty, dirty cities teeming with humanity, mountain ranges, rainforests, rice and tea plantations - and one or two officious railway ticket officers.
Each chapter describes a leg of his journey, from Madras, across India and through Pakistan and Bangladesh and back into India, and mainly takes the form of a series of conversations - on love, life, religion, politics and more - with his fellow passengers. .
Price: $29.90
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Inside the Cannibal Pot
Lay, Graeme
On a tiny, sun-fried island in Melanesia, where visiting tourists provide the only income for a cash-starved populace, for a few bucks you can "Have Your Photograph Taken with the Cannibals and the Cannibal Pot". Lay begins with an altercation with James Bond in Tahiti, which has him in indignant traveller mode. As an optimistic traveller, he tries to buy Viagra in Vanuatu - with interesting consequences.
"Inside the Cannibal Pot" explores the whole notion of why and how we travel, and the often-hilarious and usually unplanned consequences.
Price: $29.90
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The 1 Thing
Moore, Bob
Have you searched for a kauri tree in Kauri, or found yourself getting a tattoo in Wellington at 2am? Come to think of it, have you checked the time on Clapham's clocks in Whangarei, visited the northernmost Kiwi pub (Houhora, if you were wondering), or tasted the cheese in Mercer, or . . . . The list is as long as State Highway 1, New Zealand's unique physical and cultural nerve column.
Well, Bob Moore has done all these and more.
Price: $29.90
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Shopping for Buddhas
Greenwald, Jeff
Shopping for Buddhas is Jeff Greenwald's story of his obsessive search for the perfect Buddha statue.
In the backstreets of Kathmandu, he discovers more than he bargained for...and his souvenir-hunting turns into an ironic metaphor for the clash between spiritual riches and material greed. Politics, religion and serious shopping collide in Jeff Greenwald's witty, thought-provoking account of his experiences in Nepal.
Price: $22.90
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Going as Far as I Can
Fallowell, Duncan
Left money in a friend's will to write a book, Duncan Fallowell, whose previous excursions have taken in Sicily and St Petersburg, decided on New Zealand, on the grounds that he couldn't go any further, to cure himself of the need to travel and, though he doesn't admit it, to write a kind of anti-travel piece, which is part of this elegant and companionable book's charm.
Price: $34.90
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Jaywalking with the Irish
Monagan, David
David Monagan is a restless, middle-aged father of three who for years has dreamed of relocating from the USA to Ireland, the land of his forebears.
In his elegantly written, often hilarious narrative, Monagan describes his family's evolving struggle to come to terms with life in a strange land.
Price: $29.90
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The Kindness of Strangers
George, Don
A timely collection of 26 inspiring tales.
The Kindness of Strangers explores the unexpected human connections that so often transfigure and transform the experience of travel, and celebrates the gift of kindness around the world
Price: $29.90
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By the Seat of my Pants
George, Don
Lonely Planet knows that some of life's funniest experiences happen on the road.
This collection presents 31 globe-girdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face collies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken.
Price: $34.90
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Lonely Planet Unpacked
Wheeler, Tony
Every traveller has a horror story to tell: lost luggage, bad weather, illness or worse. In this lively collection of travel disaster tales, Lonely Planet writers - Tony Wheeler among them - share their worst moments of life on the road.
From Kenya to Sri Lanka, from Brazil to Finland, from the Australian outback to India, these travellers have encountered hurricanes, road accidents and nasty parasites.
Reading these funny and frightening stories from the dark side of the road will make you think twice about a career as a travel writer, but the best thing about them is the knowledge that it all happened to somebody else.
Price: $29.90
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Bad Lands
Wheeler, Tony
In an age of plastic knives on planes, Tony Wheeler can make the extraordinary claim of having visited all the rogue countries currently on newsreaders' lips.
Bad Lands is a witty first-hand account of his travels through places often perceived as having some of the most repressive and dangerous regimes in the world: Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Taking into account each country's attitude to human rights, terrorism and foreign policy, he asks 'what makes a country truly evil?' and 'how bad is really bad?' - all the while engaging with a colourful cast of locals and hapless tour guides, ruminating on history and debunking popular myths.
Price: $34.90
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Not the Only Planet
Broderick, Damien
Not the Only Planet is a unique collection of stories about travelling both ends of the space-time continuum by internationally celebrated sf writers.
A family takes a package tour to the Crucifixion; astronauts on Mars confront the difficulty of reporting on the unimaginable; and a phrasebook for tourists offers a hilariously skewed vision of travel to come.
Not the Only Planet offers a set of exotic post-cards from worlds that don't exist. Yet.
Price: $27.90
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Tales from NoWhere
Wheeler, Tony
This is a short story anthology of adventure in places that feel like the middle of nowhere.
Includes contributions from well-known international adventurers.
Price: $27.90
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