Reiseskildringer

My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born.. 'Lika is little known to most travellers - apart from Plitvice Lakes National Park and the birthplace of Nikola Tesla' she says.

'It's a region of wild beauty that has been battered by centuries of conflict. Used as a buffer zone between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires for hundreds of years, Lika became a land of war and warriors. And when Yugoslavia started to disintegrate in 1991, it was here where some of the first shots were fired.'Shipped off to Lika as a child during the supposedly golden years of Tito to stay with relatives she barely knew, Novakovich has been revisiting Croatia ever since, researching the story of her family's often harrowing life: in 1941 her aunt was the only survivor of Serbs massacred by Croatian fascists; and her mother saved her grandmother from being buried alive when she was thought to be dead from typhus.

Amidst adversity there is resilience and laughter, too, with plenty of light to balance the shade. Eccentric and entertaining characters abound, showing typically sardonic Balkan humour. And, this being the Balkans, much of daily life revolves around food, which features prominently.

Forfattere: Mary Novakovich
Publisert måned: Aug
Publisert år: 2022
Utgave: 1.utg
Sider nr: 272

For 15 years, award-winning travel writer Stephen McClarence and his BBC Radio journalist wife Clare Jenkins made a series of journeys through India to learn about one of its most eccentric and fast-dwindling communities: the Anglo-Indians. Mainly descendants of British men and Indian women, their combined heritage stretches back 350 years through the times of the East India Company and the British Raj. In Jhansi - a railway hub in the state of Uttar Pradesh and inspiration for John Masters's 1950s book Bhowani Junction - the Anglo-Indian community is reduced to around 30 families.

Teatime at Peggy's shares their stories. Inspired by Jenkins' own Anglo-Indian family connections, the couple immersed themselves in the customs of this little-known dimension to India, soon developing a profound affection for their new friends, particularly for two of the area's most memorable figureheads: the title character 'Aunty Peggy', daughter and widow of railwaymen, overseer of the European cemetery, and 'friend of the great and the good, the rich and the poor'; and Captain Roy Abbott, the last British landowner in India, who never dined without wearing a blazer, cravat and immaculately pressed trousers. The authors spent hours at Peggy's kitchen table - eating cake, samosas and curry; drinking tea; welcoming eccentric characters, like Pastor Rao who could recite Winston Churchill speeches from memory; listening to stories, told in lilting accents, of the Railway Institute and May Queen Balls, Monsoon Toad Balls (where 'the ugliest, most hideous-looking man' would win the prize), waltzes and foxtrots, dancing in the jungle to Victor Silvester gramophone records, games of rummy and housey-housey, and Anglo-Indian cookery that embraced plum cake, goat's brain curry, Mulligatawny soup and crème caramel.

Warm, humorous and evocative, Teatime at Peggy's is a lyrical, loving homage to the Anglo-Indians. Filled with larger-than-life characters and with the ever-present exhilaration of 21st-century India, it is both intimate and revelatory, and a testament to the importance of tradition, community and friendship. This enchanting book is for anyone who knows India well - or who simply yearns to take the 'trip of a lifetime' to the 'sub-continent' and see things a little differently.

• Forfattere: Stephen McClarence og Clare Jenkins
• Publisert: Juni 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781804692424

Journey through Southern India is a delightfully irreverent yet insightful travel memoir that invites readers to join two wisecracking retirees on an extraordinary three-week odyssey across the dazzling landscapes of southern India. It neatly fills in some of the geographical gaps left after the duo's tour of northern India, described in author Mark Probert's 2021 book, Journey through India (2021). The two British pensioners' latest 'trip of a lifetime' proves to be an unforgettable tour brimming with strange encounters, near-misses and life-affirming moments.

This book's refreshing candour and gentle wit sweep readers into a kaleidoscope of rich experiences. With travels taking in the bustling streets of Mumbai and the serene backwaters of Kerala, ancient temples of Hampi and the modern experimental township of Auroville, the cricket world cup and the world's largest bust, this fast-moving narrative is an immersion into a dazzling world of vibrant colours, exotic aromas and cacophonous soundscapes. From your armchair, you can meet an internationally famous yoga guru, swim in the Arabian Sea and celebrate Diwali in what was once the world's second-largest city, Hampi.

Whether dodging Delhi belly with a thimbleful of Imodium, nearly causing an international incident at the Auroville exhibition centre or finding themselves accidentally stoking political fervour at a Mumbai rally, Mark and his best friend Nick gamely stumble into experiences that would shake travel certainties in even the most daring souls. Yet it is his openness to adventure, self-deprecating humour in the face of chaos and profound appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit that makes Mark such an enchanting and compelling guide on this intercultural exploration of India's intoxicating extremes. Fun yet thoughtful, and written in richly descriptive prose, Journey through Southern India takes readers far beyond a typical tour itinerary to deliver an authentic, amusing and surprisingly moving account of a traveller's quest for perspective, connection and meaning amid the beautiful contradictions of the subcontinent.

This is a perceptive, open-hearted memoir of an unforgettable journey - one that inspires us to live every adventure to its fullest.

• Forfatter: Mark Robert
• Publisert: Desember 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784779863

In A Long Way South, itinerant traveller Sara Stewart relates memories salvaged from her explorations of Latin America during 1974/5, a turbulent, politically unstable period where kidnappings and smuggling were commonplace, where dead bodies lined the roads and where tanks guarded the streets of two capitals following a military coup and insurgency. Posing as the ship captain's niece, Sara crossed the Atlantic in a cargo boat before docking in Veracruz, Mexico. There she followed an Irishman and his pack of hounds as they hunted jackals through desert cacti, then met film makers and fishermen - and fell in love.

Travelling by local buses and trains, she gradually headed south, watching dead bodies pile up in Central American countries and celebrating Christmas in El Salvador, before eventually reaching South America. In Ecuador she rode on a train roof through towering landscapes and encountered tribal people, then travelled by sea to the fabled Galápagos Islands. Once back on the South American mainland, she braved rampant lawlessness in Lima, tanks and troops lining the streets of the Peruvian capital.

In Bolivia she joined a bus full of female smugglers, traversed flooded rivers and survived freezing nights. Tanks also characterised Sara's time in Santiago, the Chilean capital, which had just experienced a military coup that ended democracy and established General Pinochet's long-lasting dictatorship. Continuing southwards, Sara crossed the vastness of Patagonia to endure rough seas on a boat with esteemed author Bruce Chatwin, before venturing across the Andes into Argentina.

The country proved to be out of control, characterised by crazy inflation, political mayhem and kidnappings, and abject poverty contrasting with ostentatious wealth. Reaching Brazil, Sara's journey culminated with marvelling at Iguaçu Falls before unexpectedly partying with notorious Great Train Robber and fugitive Ronnie Biggs near Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema Beach. An authentic recollection of intrepid travels during an era long before travel became straightforward, the memoirs collated in A Long Way South are a thrilling, engaging read - a compendium of tales as much about remarkable people as they are about the diverse, fascinating places and charged political situations that characterised 1970s Latin America.

• Forfatter: Sara Stewart
• Publisert: November 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784779856

After eight years living in Copenhagen, an English journalist, driven by a passion for languages and mountains, finally rebels. With little more than an assortment of Earl Grey teabags, Danish candles and a map, Georgina Howard abandons her all-too-cosy, cinnamon-scented lifestyle and drives south. The journey leads to wild and craggy landscapes in the Basque Pyrenees on the French/Spanish border, where place names are written in a bizarre, foreign tongue full of 'x's and 'z's.

Losing her heart to this beautiful land and her pride to the inscrutability of the language, Howard moves into an isolated barn in a mountain hamlet. While pagan festivals reverberate through the valleys, her Basque neighbours - farmers, shepherds, a gravedigger and a champion female lumberjack - observe her, bemused. Only when her daughter, Marion, is born - after an unsuccessful relationship with an eccentric Basque miller - do Howard's neighbours drop their reserve and welcome her into their homes.

Taking Marion's upbringing upon themselves, they fatten her up on spicy Basque sausages and black bean stews, teach her Basque nursery rhymes and train her to milk sheep. Meanwhile, Howard converts a barn into the headquarters of an international business providing walking, culture and language tours. Resigned to the ineptitude of their new neighbour, with patience and amusement, the locals tow her car out of ditches and teach her how to stack wood, catch mice, unblock septic tanks and drink wine from a leather gourd.

In the Footsteps of Smugglers follows the adventures of an outsider: a single mother, linguist, cosmopolitan nomad and cultural chameleon who paradoxically makes her home among an indigenous people deeply rooted in their land, with a language and culture dating back to Stone-Age times. Unwittingly, she repays their hospitality by luring anti-terrorist squads, blackmailers and spies into their midst as the dramatic past of the Basque Country proves to have unexpected and far-reaching consequences. An inspiring, humorous travel memoir, Bradt's In the Footsteps of Smugglers weaves behind-the-scenes vignettes of daily rural life and historical research to produce authentic insights on all things Basque, threaded with a rhapsody on the theme of identity.

• Forfatter: Georgina Howard
• Publisert: Jul. 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781804692110

Taking the Risk is Hilary Bradt's engaging, insightful, amusing and sometimes alarming memoir about serendipitous adventures in travel and publishing. A travel industry trail-blazer who co-founded Bradt Guides, Hilary looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters. and success.

From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset. Barely into her twenties, Hilary Bradt thumbed lifts around the Middle East for three months before spending four years working and travelling in the US. Between 1973 and 1976 Hilary explored, and worked in, South America and Africa with her then husband George, often journeying through literally uncharted territory in their quest to find new hiking routes.

The discovery of an ancient trail to Machu Picchu unexpectedly inspired their first guidebook. From 1977 the pair wrote several backpacking guides, and set up Bradt Guides. This was just as well, because Hilary's career in occupational therapy ended when potential employers noticed that time taken off for travel exceeded periods of employment.

During the 1980s, Bradt Guides grew and became successful - but that didn't stop Hilary travelling, including as a tour leader. Join Hilary as she relives in detail the rigours of travel before the days of the internet or mobile phones, including smuggling her husband across an international border and frequently getting arrested despite efforts to be responsible tourists. Learn how Hilary's lack of experience made the early days of publishing quite unlike those of any other successful publisher.

Laugh (or cry) at Hilary's ability to court media disasters while seeking the limelight, including waving around condoms on BBC TV. Taking the Risk comprises the collected stories of an inveterate, intrepid traveller whose joyous exploration of the world has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people - anyone who has owned a Bradt Guide. A unique book from a unique individual, it will delight anyone who has ever travelled or ever wondered what goes into making the books we read.

• Forfatter: Hilary Bradt
• Publisert: 2024
• Innbinding: Innbundet
• Antall sider: 320
• ISBN: 9781804691847

A new, updated version of the celebrated 1968 title, Galapagos: Islands of Birds, by the renowned late ornithologist Bryan Nelson, with additional, previously unpublished reminiscences and lively and irreverent memories from his wife June. This timely reissue breathes new life into a classic work of natural history that will appeal to bird-lovers and Galapagos-lovers alike. It is as memorable for its groundbreaking descriptions of Galapagos wildlife as for June's naked appearance in the News of the World accompanied by a quote from the Duke of Edinburgh.

In 1964 the late Bryan Nelson, a zoologist, and his wife June spent a year living on two uninhabited, waterless Galapagos islands studying the three species of booby ('we couldn't resist also studying the great frigatebird and waved albatross, too' says June). Bryan's book, Galapagos: Islands of Birds was published in 1968 and, although by necessity a scientific study, his light touch and the extraordinary hardships and delights of living in total isolation with no means of rescue should things go wrong, make it an exceptionally good read. Now, nearly 60 years later, June Nelson has extracted the story of that extraordinary year and complemented it with her own recollections.

The couple's research and findings remain relevant and interesting, so plenty of wildlife descriptions are retained, but it is the mischievous mocking birds and friendly sea lions which will captivate the reader as much as the famous blue-footed boobies and waved albatrosses. At the end of their stay on Hood, when their clothes were literally in tatters and they went barefoot, they had news of the imminent visit of The Duke of Edinburgh and the Royal Yacht Britannia. June's description of this visit and their lunch on board with Prince Philip, make a surreal ending to a year of deteriorating food: 'Now our flour had around 50 maggots or beetles per pound...

• Forfattere: Bryan og June Nelson
• Publisert: April 2022
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784778859

'Don't send him to Torremolinos; it's not his kind of tundra.' Such was the mantra of The Sunday Times when considering assignments for Brian Jackman, for whom deserts, rain forests and mountain ranges have always been more enticing habitats. After decades spent travelling and writing about the places and wildlife that have inspired him, one of the world's most experienced naturalists has turned his focus onto the story of his inspirational life. 'This is no ordinary autobiography', he says.

West with the Light sweeps through Jackman's wartime evacuation, grammar school, Soho jazz clubs of the '50s and the navy to a career in travel journalism to which his first marriage gave way before he found a new, true and more lasting love that abides to this day in his beloved rural Dorset. Beginning with memories of Edwardian London and the growth of suburbia, it provides a vivid portrayal of post-war travel and the rise of a new sort of tourism - ecotourism - set against the background of the most turbulent decades the world has ever known. Through it all shines Jackman's lifelong love of nature, instilled by childhood holidays in the West country and the stories that led to his passion for Africa and the big cats that that still walk through his life and dreams.

Rippling across continents with Jackman's natural charm and hallmark stylish prose, his recollections include lively first-hand encounters with pioneering wildlife conservationists like George and Joy Adamson, Iain and Saba Douglas-Hamilton, Richard Leakey, Gavin Maxwell and Jonathan Scott. Travellers, wildlife enthusiasts, writers and anyone with a love of adventure will adore this book.

• Forfatter: Brian Jackman
• Publisert: August 2021
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• Antall sider: 256
• ISBN: 9781784778361

Iain campbell has been fascinated by mountains for as long as he can remember. In his new book, he tells the story of a journey following the course of the indus river from its mouth in the mudflats of karachi through the karakorum, kashmir and the himalayas to its source in ladakh on the indian side of the tibetan plateau, where it springs from the 'lion's mouth' on mount kailash. His narrative paints an insightful, honest and heartfelt portrait of pakistan, a country that through all his wanderings of the deserts and mountains of asia kept drawing him back, and a place which combines a rich religious heritage with some of the most spectacular mountains in the world.

'i came to see how closely the indus river is involved with pakistani religious life and how this has been true for thousands of years' he says. 'i took four months to make this trip and was able to travel slowly... It became apparent to me as I travelled and developed personal friendships that the image of pakistan that we are often fed by the media is distorted.

i found the pakistanis to be the most hospitable people I have ever met, to the point where I would have to allow time on my walks in the mountains for the delay caused by sitting down to tea and chapatti in every settlement.'over the course of his journey, he is exposed to all sides of local life, from a sufi shrine attended by crocodiles to a holy man competing with saudi-sponsored wahhabi clerics in the swat valley, a near meeting with the fairies of nanga parbat and the temple of a three-year-old buddhist lama on the edge of the tibetan plateau. Engrossing and eye-opening, iain campbell's account of his travels through this mesmerising land will appeal to travellers, mountaineers, trekkers, wilderness enthusiasts, anyone interested in the culture and history of the subcontinent, and fans of quality travel writing.

Publisert måned: Aug
Publisert år: 2019
Sider nr: 213

A bestseller when first published in 1982, The Marsh Lions portrays a vivid picture of life and death on the African savannah through the story of a pride of lions in Kenya's world-famous Masai Mara game reserve. The story is essentially a true one. All the central characters are real, and most of the incidents described actually happened.

For five years, Brian Jackman and Jonathan Scott followed the Marsh pride and their progeny, painstakingly recording the daily drama of life and death on the African plains. In time they came to regard them as old and familiar friends and real individuals - the big resident males, Scar, Brando and Mkubwa and three lionesses known as the Marsh sisters. Their lives, together with the leopards and cheetahs that shared their wild paradise, offer a unique insight into the unforgiving world of these magnificent carnivores.

The Marsh Lions were the most successful group to be filmed for Big Cat Diary, the BBC's hugely successful TV series. With Jonathan Scott as co-presenter, The Big Cat Diary camera teams allowed millions of viewers to observe the ongoing saga of the Marsh pride at a time when lions are fast disappearing all over Africa. The Marsh Lions is a powerful reminder of what the world stands to lose if the big cats were to vanish forever and highlights the need to cherish the Mara as one of the most beautiful of the earth's wild places.

• Forfattere: Brian Jackman, Jonathan Scott og Angie Scott
• Publisert: 2012
  
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781841624280

Almost everyone on safari hopes for a glimpse of the charismatic and elusive leopard. Chui was the first of a new generation of leopards Jonathan Scott watched and photographed in Kenya's Masai Mara Game Reserve in the 1970s and 1980s. He spent every available moment watching and photographing Chui and her cubs, Light and Dark, aware that he was only privileged to do so for as long as they chose to remain visible.

His classic account tells the story of the mother leopard as a solitary hunter providing for herself and her offspring. He records encounters with baboon, hyaena and man, hazards facing the cubs as they learn to fend for themselves and periods of play and relaxation. Some years after Chui disappeared, a young female appeared, Half-Tail.

Jonathan and Angela have followed her and her daughter Zawadi, stars of the BBC's Big Cat Diary, for the past twenty years, bringing the story up to date. Nobody has studied leopards more closely or known them more intimatelyJonathan says: 'The update is based on our work with Half-Tail and Zawadi from both the pictures and text perspective - Angie worked with us on Big Cat Diary as the stills photographer from 1996 and before that we both worked with Half-Tail from the time she first appeared around Leopard Gorge and Fig Tree Ridge - our kids grew up on safari with Half-Tail and Zawadi as stars of their own Mara adventures.'

Forfattere: J.Angela scott
Publisert måned: Aug
Publisert år: 2013
Utgave: 2utg
Sider nr:228