Travel books
This section is dedicated to reading, a very important part as well as a relaxing pre-trip! Here we have reported a short list of the latest books read, with their reviews. They are all very valid titles that in addition to giving some advice, they also make us daydream. Of course, this list will also be in continuous development!
Enjoy the reading!
“This is the best part of all literature: discovering that your desires are universal desires, that you are not alone or isolated from anyone. You belong ”.
La vita segreta di Petra
Cristina Cori
Russia coast to coast in transiberiana
Cristina Cori
This is the journey that Cristina Cori, a Roman girl with a nomadic soul, undertakes alone to discover Russia and Mongolia.
Wanderlust
Filippo Buscaroli
198
Gunnar Garfors
“I have visited 193 countries in the last 10 years, 3 in 1992 and 2 in 2000. I have traveled alone to 96 of the 198 countries and with at least one other traveler for the remaining 102.
I have visited almost every country with my brother Øystein Garfors (35) and with my friends Andreas Munkelien (21) and Asbjørn Havnen (17).
All three, along with 9 other friends and family, united in the celebratory journey of the last country ".
Good night Mr. Lenin ...
Tiziano Terzani
In August 1991 Terzani was along the Amur River in Siberia when he heard the news of the anti-Gorbachev coup, which had just taken place in Moscow. He decides to immediately embark on the long journey that will take him in two months, through Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus, to the capital. An exceptional experience, fixed in the notes, reflections and photographs that make up this book: a direct testimony of an epochal event, a gallery of different individuals and peoples, a panorama of legendary cities, unknown places, vestiges of the past and overbearing signs of the new advancing. A journey, and a book, which gave us a snapshot of the definitive decline of the Soviet empire
Leopard skin
Tiziano Terzani
Terzani arrived in Vietnam in 1972. He saw and lived the hell of those days and handed over his experience as a witness to the war to the diary that the following year appeared under the title "Leopard skin". He returned to Vietnam in 1975 and was one of the very few Western journalists who witnessed the liberation of Saigon. In “Giai Phong!”, Published in 1976, he related the diplomatic and war background of those feverish months. The two books, collected in a single volume, describe not only the battles and horizons of a war that was the myth and emblem of a generation, but also the suffering of civilian populations and their moral and material change after the end. of the clashes.
The forbidden door
Tiziano Terzani
In February 1984 Tiziano Terzani was arrested in Beijing, searched, interrogated and, finally, expelled from the country. For four years he had lived there with his family, trying to feel "Chinese": he had sent his children to the local school, he had reached places unknown to tourism, he had seen a different China from what appeared on the surface. Rich in news and data, considerations and impressions, this book is at the same time a reportage, a travel diary, an essay on contemporary sinology and the exciting novel of a human adventure.
Adventures in Africa
Gianni Celati
This book reminds me of the opening part of Nanni Moretti's “Caro diario”. There a man in the summer was riding a Vespa through deserted Rome, and this gave the thrill of seeing the images of the streets, the facades of the houses, the great daily silence, as if we were seeing and hearing everything for the first time. In "Adventures in Africa" there is the same thrill of seeing the images of life flow by, as in a dreamy first glance in the morning that redeems all travel experiences, both those imagined and those lived.
Like Nanni Moretti's, this is also a diary, which becomes a zigzag tale, often comic, and with a faithful study of the life of tourists. It seems that an invisible camera follows the man who writes on the long journey through Mali, Senegal and Mauritania, only to take us to look at the world with affection.
"When I think of all the books I still have to read, I have the certainty of still being happy"
A soothsayer told me
Tiziano Terzani
In 1976 a Chinese fortune-teller warned Tiziano Terzani, correspondent of the "Spiegel" from Asia: "Be careful. In 1993 you run a great risk of dying. Never fly that year ". In 1992 Terzani felt tired, doubtful about the meaning of his work. He remembers that prophecy and sees it as an opportunity to look at the world with new eyes. He decides not to take a plane for a year, without giving up his job. The result of that experience is a book that is an adventure novel, autobiography, travel story and reportage at the same time.
That time when traveling ...
Luciano del Sette
Collection of anecdotes, memories, micro-stories and impressions of a tourist in twenty-five years of travel, sorted by themes.
In Asia
Tiziano Terzani
Tiziano Terzani and Asia, a story lasting a lifetime. But is it Terzani who tells us about Asia or is it Asia that tells us about Terzani? Difficult to say, so strong is the bond that this man has decided to forge, since 1965, with the most mysterious and contradictory of continents. Reading this book, you find yourself reliving the events that have marked Asian history in the last thirty years, rethinking the great ideals that formed it and the protagonists of its turning points, taking a look at its future. And at the same time Terzani invites us to listen to the other voice, that of the true East, lived in its everyday life, in the midst of women and men, difficulties, contrasts, rituals, curiosities ...
Ebony
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Ryszard Kapuscinski descends into the African continent and lets himself be submerged, avoiding obligatory stops, stereotypes and clichés. He goes to live in the houses of the poorest suburbs, swarming with cockroaches and crushed by the heat, he falls ill with cerebral malaria; he risks death at the hands of a warrior. Kapuscinski never loses the reporter's lucid and penetrating gaze and does not renounce the storytelling of the great narrator.
Letters against the war
Tiziano Terzani
This book collects a series of unpublished letters or even published in the "Corriere della Sera". With these correspondences - from Kabul, Peshawar, Quetta, but also from Orsigna, Florence, Delhi and his refuge in the Himalayas - Tiziano Terzani begins a pilgrimage of peace between East and West. According to the author, in fact, "it is not enough to understand the drama of the Muslim world in its confrontation with modernity, the role of Islam as an anti-globalization ideology, the need on the part of the West to avoid a war of religion", it is above all necessary to understand , be convinced, believe that the only possible way out of hatred, discrimination, pain is non-violence.
"Knowing that you have something nice to read before going to bed is one of the most pleasant sensations in life"
Around the world by motorbike
Marco deambrogio
Marco Deambrogio has an all-consuming, total passion: to go far, to see what lies beyond the next bend ... He says he is not an extreme traveler, but looking at his exploits it is difficult to believe him: from New Guinea to the Amazon, going as far as the North Pole with a Russian shipment. Maybe it all started when he reads the novels of Salgari, Stevenson and London, while still a kid, or maybe when he experienced a first escape on a motorbike across the Po Valley, dreaming of speeding towards Beijing. Then, in 1996, flights of fantasy were replaced by kilometers ground by any means: on foot, on skis, by car and, finally, by motorcycle. He writes diaries, following the example of famous predecessors. And one day, while crossing the Australian outback in a jeep, he is struck by a dazzling vision: on the edges of the sandy track, in the middle of that sunburnt nothingness, there is the skeleton of a motorcycle. Monument to a daredevil who failed, however, having attempted the unthinkable. Madness, of course, but why clip your wings yourself why not plan a trip to the edge of the impossible, between guerrillas and snowstorms, corrupt policemen, geysers, sperm whales and mysterious craters? After all, to go around the world you need to take the same attitude that you have on any other trip: tackle one stage at a time and savor them all.
The wrong way
Peter Moore
The author, a nostalgic enthusiast of hippy freedom and a lover of travel - but also short of money - decides to undertake a truly adventurous feat: returning from London to his native Sydney traveling through Europe, the Middle East and Asia with a rather limited budget and without ever "taking flight". A novel on the road with unfailing musical background, "The wrong road" offers the reader a curious look at very different worlds and realities, offering pages of escape and freedom.
The Gates of Arabia
Freya Stark
Freya Stark in the 1920s and 1930s traveled - on foot, horseback, camel and donkey, and by all other locally possible means - through the Middle Eastern territories of Islam, collecting all sorts of material. In this book you recount the very adventurous journey from the port of Aden to the heart of the Hadramaut on the trail of the disappeared 'incense routes' and the equally disappeared Mineo, Sabean and Imiarite empires. A journey that she faces alone as the only possible way for the foreigner to come into authentic contact with a different country and her people.
The first football war
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Just over twenty-five, Ryszard Kapuscinski left for Africa in 1958 and then continued his restless journey through Latin America and the rest of the world. In this book, the Polish journalist offers his first impressions as an attentive observer of the society and politics of distant countries, such as Ghana, Congo, South Africa, Algeria, Honduras, El Salvador.
Butterflies on the Mekong
Corrado Ruggeri
It is a novel of reality written with the rhythm of the journalistic style. Banquets in the mountain villages of Thailand, among the tribes that cultivate opium, with a fixed menu based on dog meatballs or Vietnamese dinners with the cobra presented alive and killed live, to drink the still hot blood. A journey between Thailand and Vietnam in which the tourist luxury of Bangkok contrasts with the poverty and poetry of today's Vietnam, in which the guerrilla girls, killed while fighting, dressed in their black traditional costume, have put on their wings and are become the multicolored butterflies of the Mekong.
"Books give us a delight that goes deep, they talk to us, advise us and bind us with a sort of active and penetrating familiarity"
Rhapsody in black
Giorgio Bettinelli
20,000 kilometers on a Vespa, six and a half months within a journey of 144,000 kilometers and three years and eight months from Chile to Tasmania: a journey through Angola, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, to complete the circumnavigation, which began in Morocco, of a continent where injustice, vulnerability and tragedy are elevated to the nth degree, a Babel where twelve-year-old boys trained by guerrillas have already killed and drank the blood of enemies; where corruption and dishonesty are virtues to survive.
The end is my beginning
Tiziano Terzani
Tiziano Terzani, knowing that he has reached the end of his career, talks to his son Folco about what his life was and what life is: "If you understand something, you want to leave it there in a package," he says. So he tells of a whole life spent traveling the world in search of the truth. And looking for the meaning of the many things he has done and the many people he has been, he outlines a fresco of the great passions of his time. "If you ask me at the end what I leave, I leave a book that maybe will help someone to see the world in a better way, to enjoy their life more, to see it in a bigger context, like what I feel so strong."
I go to the Cape
Sergio Ramazzotti
A crossing of Africa, crossing the Sahara without an off-road vehicle, tackling the climbs of red and slippery mud in the heart of the jungle on a rusty bicycle, using all kinds of means - trucks, freight trains, taxis, vans, ferries, small boats - or going on foot and without money to bribe the authorities.
The old Man and the Sea
Enest Hemingway
Set in Cuba. Its simplicity is steeped in meaning and the figure of the old man is truly amazing: his tenacity is admirable and exemplary. Unusual ending that helps to give realism to the work that, otherwise, could have been too tending to moralism.
What we have understood of the world by being tourists by chance
Syusy Baldy & Fabrizio Roversi
The volume is a small guide to planet Earth and its inhabitants, written in two voices by two well-known amateur travelers, one lazy and full of phobias, the other unconscious and tireless. One prefers certainties, the other the mystery. The book is not the gadget of the transmission: in it there are the things that the “Tourists by chance” were not able to tell with the images, but which deserved to be fixed by their pen. The most beautiful and disturbing sunrises on the planet, the panic of the metropolis, the most extravagant foods, sexual customs, the misunderstandings of the language ... all seasoned with useful tips for the amateur traveler who will find in the book a curious and amusing breviary for travel planetary.
“La lettura è il viaggio di chi non può prendere un treno”
Another round of the carousel
Tiziano Terzani
Traveling has always been a way of life for Tiziano Terzani and so, when he is told that his life is now in danger, setting off in search of a solution is his instinctive response. Only this is a journey different from all the others, and also the most difficult because every step, every choice - sometimes between reason and madness, between science and magic - has to do with his survival. In the end, the external journey in search of a cure turns into an internal journey, the journey back to the divine roots of man.
In India
William Dalrymple
Dalrymple has lived for a long time in India, his true second home, for six years in Delhi and for four around the entire subcontinent: from the drug lord's strongholds at the northwestern border to the jungles of the Tamil Tigers, from the cocktail parties of Bombay to the temple, in Kerala, of the goddess Parashakti, "she who sits on the throne of five corpses". This book is the portrait of an India suspended between ancient traditions, the Western model and the threat of chaos: the India of the age of Kali, the one that precedes the destruction of the world by means of the "fire of a thousand suns".
Travel to italy
Guido Piovene
Guido Piovene's journey to Italy began in Bolzano and continued region after region, city after city, to cover every land, even the most forgotten. It lasted three good years. An unprecedented undertaking from which an unprecedented book emerged, as scrupulous as a census, as faithful as a photograph, detailed as an indictment. The Italy that Piovene visited and described is that of the 1950s, between reconstruction and economic boom and which should appear, to a contemporary glance, ancient and distant. Instead it is not like that. Piovene manages, like an anthropologist, to bring out from his journey the national character, the immutable one, which resists fashions and the reverses of history.
The sea is involved
Matteo Scarabelli
The Mediterranean, border, indefinite margin, between continents, countries, religions, a place of infinite encounters and clashes. The term "Mediterranean" means "within a land", but what is this land? And who are its inhabitants? Matteo Scarabelli has decided to get to know him in his own way, by bicycle, pedaling 13,000 kilometers across three continents, twenty countries, hermetic closures, impossible and unexpected passages. By becoming a bit Moroccan, a bit Bedouin, a bit Muslim, a bit Jewish. At the home of Egyptians and Albanians he discovered the courageous stories of many emigrants, from Abdel Fattah Hassan to Giuseppe Ungaretti. Riding the faithful Ronzinante he found fantastic hospitality, guerrillas and terrorist attacks, mint tea, angry dogs and beautiful women. Ten lonely months on a bicycle, a little odyssey of the soul. A crazy journey around a complicated sea. Difficult to digest, impossible to forget.
The traveler
Gary Jennings
It is said that while Marco Polo was on his deathbed, friends and acquaintances urged him to admit that all the adventures he narrated were nothing more than ignoble lies. The old leader then stood up on his pillows, cursed everyone and declared: "I have not told even half of what I have seen and done". Jennings, in these pages, tells us exactly what Marco Polo, the great traveler, saw, lived and suffered and which was never told.
“I discovered very early that the best travel companions are books: they speak when you need them, they are silent when you want silence. They keep company without being intrusive. They give a lot, without asking for anything. '
The cruel way
Ella Maillart
In June 1939, two young women leave Europe to leave in a Ford for the rising sun. Their itinerary unfolds along Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. But alongside the geographical one, the two women also follow a second path, venturing into the secret of their soul in search of new balances. A path marked by the contrast between two different personalities: alongside the author, prototype of a strong and liberated woman, a fragile creature, Annemarie Schwrzenbach, travels, hidden under the pseudonym of Christina. Also a writer, Christina tries the most difficult path: the one that could distract her from the self-destructiveness of her choices.
On the line of the Equator
Mike Horn
Three continents, three oceans, twenty-four time zones, forty thousand kilometers between land and sea. Traveling the entire circumference of the globe along the equator is a feat that only a man sick of adventure could accomplish. His name is Mike Horn. His mission is Latitude Zéro.
On the wings of an Ape
Paolo Brovelli
In 1998, as part of the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the Piaggio Ape, Paolo Brovelli and Giorgio Martino (architect, photographer, extreme traveler) designed the EurAsia Expedition: an itinerary of exploration and research across the Eurasian continent. On board two Ape TM703s, specially set up by Piaggio, they left Lisbon on April 30 to arrive in Beijing on November 28, after traveling 25,000 kilometers in 200 days, crossing 20 countries at an average of 120/130 kilometers a day. Moved exclusively by a great passion for discovery, for contact with different peoples, with a spirit of adventure, they have touched - between impervious, bumpy roads or simple tracks and nothing more some of the most remote and unknown (but very fascinating) regions of Land. From the Anatolian to the Tibetan plateau; from the deserts of Turkmenistan to the plain of the Ganges; from the ancient caravan centers of Central Asia to the cities of classical China; from the Karakorum to the Himalayas. Very different landscapes, ethnic and political-social scenarios at the antipodes, trying to overcome the distance - physical, but above all mental - between East and West, to rediscover that contact between the two civilizations that seems increasingly destined to get lost.
In the extreme lands
Jon Krakauer
In April 1992, Chris McCandless walked alone into the immense wilderness of Alaska. Two years earlier, after completing his studies, he had abandoned all his possessions and donated his savings to charity: he wanted to leave civilization to immerse himself in nature. Inadequately equipped, with no preparation for the extreme conditions he would encounter, he was found dead by a hunter four months after his departure for the lands north of Mount McKinley. Next to the body was found a diary that Chris had opened upon his arrival in Alaska and which has allowed us to reconstruct his last weeks. Jon Krakauer came across this story almost by chance, remaining almost obsessed, and wrote a long article in the magazine "Outside" which aroused enormous interest. Later, with the help of Chris's family, he dedicated himself to the reconstruction of the boy's long journey: two years across America in pursuit of a dream. This book, in which Krakauer tries to understand what may have prompted Chris to seek a state of absolute purity in contact with unspoiled nature, is the result of three years of research.
Around the world in barcastop
Alberto Di Stefano
Having just crossed the threshold of thirty years, with a solid job in Milanese finance, Alberto Di Stefano decides to leave everything and set off for the tour of the world on a sailing boat. Dream in itself not original and more and more frequent which however turns into a real new way of traveling. The book is the account of a year of travel in the name of improvisation, a journey that, only by looking back, lends itself to being structured in rules. On the one hand, narration of travels and encounters, on the other a manual on how to build a barcastop experience by minimizing the risks and taking full advantage of the benefits.
“He could read. It was the most important discovery of his entire life. He could read. He possessed the antidote to the terrible poison of old age "
On a vespa
Giorgio Bettinelli
During a stay in Indonesia, Giorgio Bettinelli receives an old Vespa as a gift. Until then he had never driven a two-wheeled vehicle. After his "scooter apprenticeship" through Indonesia, he decides to return to Italy to embark on a trip from Rome to Saigon, with his now inseparable Vespa. It travels 24,000 kilometers, through 10 countries. Each chapter of the book is set in one of several countries and tells of roads in poor condition, of "difficult" countries or tormented by internal conflicts and guerrillas, but also of moments of unbridled freedom, unforgettable landscapes and encounters with the most varied people. , against the backdrop of a miserable and opulent, tragic and hilarious Asia.
Brum brum
Giorgio Bettinelli
Between 1994 and 1995, Giorgio Bettinelli began his journey from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and between 1995 and 1996 he crossed the 52,000 kilometers that separate Melbourne from Cape Town on a Vespa. After the thousand events and meetings of the first stage, Bettinelli embarks on a journey that lasted over three years that takes him from Chile to Tasmania, through the Americas, Siberia, Europe and Africa.
The great journey
Giuseppe Cederna
In November 1999 Giuseppe Cederna left with some friends for the North-West of India, the destination of a Hindu pilgrimage to the sources of the sacred river par excellence, the Ganges. Driven by a series of coincidences, he travels by car and on foot along the Via delle Sorgenti e delle Confluenze. A story in which the amazement of the journey into a nature that still manifests itself as unknown and miraculous, the extraordinary encounters, the reconquest - precisely through the filter of distance - of a closeness to the deepest self and to the images of childhood merge.
In Patagonia
Bruce Chatwin
After the last war, some English boys, including the author of this book, bent over the maps, were looking for the right place to escape the next nuclear destruction. They chose Patagonia. And it was precisely in Patagonia that Bruce Chatwin would have gone, not to save himself from a catastrophe, but on the trail of a prehistoric monster and a navigator relative.
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
Time is said to heal any wound. But, for Amir, the past is a long-clawed beast, ready to catch him back when he least expects it. Many years have passed since the day the life of his friend Hassan changed forever in an alley in Kabul. That day, Amir committed a terrible crime. So when an unexpected phone call reaches him at his home in San Francisco, he realizes he has no choice: he must go home, to find Hassan's son and settle the accounts with his never-atoned mistakes. But waiting for him, in Kabul, there are not only the ghosts of his conscience. There is a shocking discovery, in a violent and sinister world where women are invisible, beauty is outlawed and kites no longer fly.
Hitchhiking to the Himalayas
Vikram Seth
"I have always wanted to go to Tibet, however I know that this desire is largely due to the fascination that surrounds the unknown. I know very little about the Tibet region and will know firsthand its climate and geography. I have no Tibetan friends. A photo of the Potala, Tibetan dancers seen in Darjeeling, an article or two on the Dalai Lama represent all my knowledge; from such fragments my idea of Tibet is formed. And in a certain sense my intent is not to take a trip to Tibet, but simply to cross it. "
My polar flight
Roald Amundsen
Between May and June 1925, Roald Amundsen, the great explorer of the Antarctic continent, led an expedition aboard two seaplanes and came within a breath of flying over the North Pole. An epic feat that saw a handful of men challenge nature in one of its most surprising and terrible aspects, the eternal ice. A fight against bad weather, cold and deprivation, at the limits of human possibilities. This book collects the accounts of that experience written by Amundsen and his companions. A faithful chronicle of real events that has all the flavor of the most compelling adventure novel.
In Afghanistan
Rory Stewart
In January 2002, shortly after the invasion of US troops, Rory Stewart took the trail from Herat to Kabul, Afghanistan, through the Ghor Mountains. The purpose of the trip - all on foot - is to travel the "middle lands", places that are not unreachable, but certainly not reached by modernity. Its Afghan itinerary, traveled five hundred years ago by the Indian emperor Babur the Great, is today an impervious path between stony ground and snow-covered valleys, made even more dangerous by the presence of anti-personnel mines. Those who venture there with the necessary slowness, however, have the opportunity to discover an extraordinary nature, the architectural vestiges and the mysticism of ancient dynasties now extinct.
1000 places to see before you die
Patricia Schultz
Around the world, continent after continent, here is the best the world has to offer: 1000 places to live. Sacred ruins, grand hotels, unspoiled nature, villages, castles, festivals, restaurants, cathedrals, hidden islands, opera houses, museums, and much more. Each tells you exactly what to visit. Stop dreaming and get moving!
Peacekeeper profession
Andrea Angeli
An exciting book full of life lived intensely. The story of a friend on the front line from Pinochet’s Chile to Cambodia, from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to the Balkans. Many funny and curious anecdotes but just as many stories that leave you a lot to think about…. Dear Andrea, the Afghan part is missing… I am waiting for a continuation of your book soon!
"The ones that leave me breathless are the books that when you have finished reading them you would like the author to be your close friend and be able to call him on the phone whenever he turns you around"
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