Tearing up the Silk Road is an irreverent travelogue that details a journey along the ancient trade routes from China to Istanbul, through Central Asia, Iran and the Caucasus. As Tom Coote struggles through the often arbitrary borders and bureaucracies of China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey, it becomes apparent that the next generation will see themselves in a very different light to their predecessors. New forms of identity are emerging, founded ...

This article details a short trip to Annaba, Constantine and El-Oued in Algeria at the end of April 2009.Algeria has effectively been out of bounds for independent travel for over two decades but it is now beginning to open up again.

This article details a short trip to Tripoli and Leptis Magna in Libya, during the first days of the Arab Spring. Libya appeared to be making its first tentative steps towards opening up to mass tourism but then everything changed.

Turkmenbashi's Land of Fairy Tales is a $50,000,000 amusement park in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. It was meant to be Central Asia's answer to Disney Land but fell somewhat short of expectations.

About this book:Heart of Darkness (1899), by Joseph Conrad, is a short novel about Charles Marlow’s job as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa. This river is described to be “... a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land.” In the course of his commercial-agent work in Africa, ...

In the midst of the French and Indian War, young Alice and Cora Munro set out to visit their father, a colonel in the British army. It's a dangerous journey through the western New York forest—made even more so when their guide, an Huron Indian named Magua, betrays them. They are saved by a white scout named Hawkeye and the last members of the Mohican tribe, Chingachgook and Uncas. Through a succession of kidnappings, rescues, and tragedies, American writer James Fenimore Cooper illustrate...

Jeremy Kroeker is a Mennonite with a motorcycle. He doesn’t have a funny beard and he’s never even driven a buggy, but his family hails from the same Mennonite community that Miriam Toews fictionalized in A Complicated Kindness. From childhood through college, Kroeker attended Christian schools where he learned to think critically back to predetermined conclusions.Years later, when his faith begins to unravel, Kroeker stops short of tossing it all aside, choosing instead t...

"A mesmerising trip across Central Asia . . . A fascinating travelogue" Financial TimesSHORTLISTED FOR EDWARD STANFORD/LONELY PLANET DEBUT TRAVEL WRITER OF THE YEAR 2020Erika Fatland takes the reader on a journey that is unknown to even the most seasoned globetrotter. The five former Soviet Republics' Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan all became independent when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. How...

“Remarkable: a book about borders that makes the reader feel sumptuously free.” —Peter PomerantsevIn this extraordinary work of narrative reportage, Kapka Kassabova returns to Bulgaria, from where she emigrated as a girl twenty-five years previously, to explore the border it shares with Turkey and Greece. When she was a child, the border zone was rumored to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, and it swarmed with soldiers and spies. On ho...

An intelligent, humorous travel tale that is also the story of a tender father-son relationship from ABC Local Radio's legendary broadcaster Jon Faine.'Somehow, I convinced myself it was a good idea. Somehow, I convinced myself that it was do-able. Now I shake my head... We drove through the Gobi desert in Mongolia in a snowstorm, avoided an Iranian sedan doing cartwheels on the freeway near tehran, wove around the shores of the Caspian Sea and navigated the desert in turkmenistan.W...

"A proper travelogue - a joyful, moving and stereotype-busting ride." - National Geographic Traveller, Book of the YearIn 2011, at the height of tension between the British and Iranian governments, travel writer Lois Pryce found a note left on her motorcycle outside the Iranian Embassy in London:... I wish that you will visit Iran so you will see for yourself about my country. WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS!!! Please come to my city, Shiraz. It is very ...

Our illustrated travel guide will take you to Istanbul. Istanbul is Turkey's most populous city, and its cultural and financial center. Located on both sides of the Bosphorus, the narrow strait between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea, Istanbul bridges Asia and Europe both physically and culturally. Istanbul's population is estimated to be between 12 and 19 million people, making it also one of the largest in Europe and the world. Istanbul was one of three European Capitals of Culture in ...