Let's get some Travel book recs. I'm going to go ahead

>>1141647
Excellent idea for a thread, OP.

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. He travels by train from England to Japan and back (taking planes and ships where no train is available).

I can't recommend this enough. Extremely well written, funny, informative, exciting, and really makes you want to travel.

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I like the classics of exploration.
>Desert Sands by Wilfred Thesiger
his story of traversing the last non-explored (non-arctic) wilderness on earth.
>The Royal Road to Romance by Richard Halliburton
a true story of the golden age of travel when you could work your passage on boats, climb to the top of the pyramids, and get invited to stay with rich maharajahs
>Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis Stevenson
about bumming around France; I like this book because it reflects my travel style exactly, minus the donkey.

Also pic related.

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Everything by Paul Bowles, fiction or otherwise.
The Sheltering Sky is a great novel if you're not afraid of meaty prose.
All his essays and non-fiction are lucid, inspiring, wonderful. He had a crazy life.

>>1141663
Nice, i'll check it out

bamp

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Dig up some of the travel writings of Sir Frederick Treves. The doctor from "The Elephant Man," Treves also was an extensive traveler for his day and wrote well about his experiences. I particularly liked his book about travel in the Holy Land.

The Highways and Byways of Dorset , Uganda for a Holiday, The Land That is Desolate (about the Middle East), and The Cradle of the Deep (about the West Indies.)

AFAIK, none are currently in print, but check out the books in your local library!

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>>1141647
The guide to Phaic Tan from the Jetlagged Guides series is my favorite. The others are good, but this one is just spot on.

>>1141647
Wow. I was a house manager for a cultural center 16 years ago and Ted Simon came one night to speak and show some slides of his travels. He gave me a copy of this book and personalized it as a thank you for helping with his event. Great guy and a great read.

>go to library to look at books, figuring they would have collections I can easily browse rather than parsing through ebook sites that don't usually have a description of the file or anything
>travel section is a bunch of shitty guides full of hotel listings and expensive restaurants
>like the internet doesn't exist or something

Can someone explain why this is a thing? Especially for normie travelers who are the type to go to hotels in the first place, and usually go 2 weeks or less and stay in more or less one place with everything booked in advance.

>>1143008
60 year old people who know of the internet but do not know the internet are still a thing. Give it 20-30 years and only Lonely Planet will still be in bizniz, I reckon.

As to this thread: André Gide wrote some pretty interesting stuff, travelling around Africa and the Soviet Union when that wasn't really a thing a well-thinking man would do (1920s and 1930s respectively). I particularly liked "Travels in the Congo" and "Return from the USSR". "Return from Chad" was okay, but less than the other two.

Just checked out the book from my local library. Thanks, OP. Reading City of Djinns first and then Jupiter's Travels.

Most have probably heard of these if they're in their 20s, but On the Road and The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. About life on the road through the US. Inspired my first trip... amazing books. Quotes for ages

>>1141647
Are there any travel books written from the perspective of a "loose canon" type guy who chronicles his escapades of getting drunk, hookers, petty crime, getting arrested, etc? Kind of like that story that get;s posted here about that Canadian guy who went to Japan and went on a huge petty crime spree. I can post it if anyone's interested.

>>1144402
>that Canadian guy who went to Japan and went on a huge petty crime spree.

Please don't. Most of us prefer to read about things that really happened, not the borderline illiterate fantasies of internet trolls.

>>1141663
Just completed the first two chapters from his Pillars of Hercules – started with it because it's about the region I'm currently interested in. It looks like the author is preoccupied not so much with describing his experiences or places he visits, but with touching on various issues, like overfishing or cruelty to animals. I don't think it's bad in itself, if only his opinions weren't simultaneously 1) strong 2) shallow and 3) exactly the kind of stuff you expect to hear from a Western liberal, as if I was reading an opinion piece in a newspaper: “I seriously wondered whether there were statues of the man still standing in Spain; and what of the question of Franco’s robust and reactionary Catholicism and his sinister and cabalistic movement Opus Dei?” (which for me translates into "this organisation i'm going to tell you nothing about is very, very bad, mmkey?"). I'm not a fan of fascists (or corrida or overfishing), but this is kind of boring and pointless to read.

Are his books all like this?

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>>1144402
Something like this?

>>1144402
Ian Fleming's 'Thrilling Cities'. Not essential reading but an interesting recollection of Fleming's time as a journalist, before he wrote James Bond.
I wouldn't read it from cover to cover but there's some interesting stories in here. Covers some of the big cities from East Asia & the States, as well as a few European ones.

It not travel literature but I guess some of Hunter S. Thompson's journalism is kinda on that wave. Check out 'The Great Shark Hunt'.

/

Ian Fleming's 'Thrilling Cities'. Not essential reading but an interesting set of writings from Fleming's time as a journalist. I wouldn't read it cover to cover but it's interesting to read about the cities I've visited and the similarities/differences from 50+ years ago.

Not wholely a travel book as much as it is gonzo journalism but I remember reading a book about some woman (think she was a comedy writer for south park or something) who gets a job as a travel writer for some newspaper and just runs off to Uganda to try to get an interview with Joseph Kony. It was properly funny in a dark way

>>1145309
>Are his books all like this?

not TGRB. It's the only one I've read of his. I really suggest you give it a try. it's much more of a strict travelogue than the book you described sounds like. He does have strong, shallow opions, but they're mainly about the people he meets and the conditions of the trains he rides in.

Imagine Larry David traveling across Europe and Asia by train. If that doesn't appeal to you, then forget it. If it does, read it.

>>1141647
My English teacher from school used to go on extraordinary travels around the world, because he is completely free spirited, his name is A J Mackinnon and he wrote The Unlikely Voyage of Jack du Crow, in which he sails from Britain to the Dead Sea in a small dinghy. He also wrote The Well at Worlds End, in which he travels from New Zealand to Scotland, both are tremendous reads, his use of language is magical.

>>1145309
>shallow
>>1145507
>shallow opions

BAKA senpai-a-lams. Theroux's work - both fiction and nonfiction - is very well regarded, and for good reason. To characterize the man as "shallow," especially when you've read only one (or only a few chapters) of his books is more than a little ridiculous.

>>1141673

I just finished reading a biography of Halliburton -- an interesting guy. If you're interested in travel classics you should check out Evelyn Waugh's travel writing -- uniformly good stuff. Also take a look at Fitzroy Maclean's Eastern Approaches -- not strictly travel, but certainly one of the best adventure books ever written.