Showing titles in Asia

Razeen Sally was born to a Sri Lankan Muslim father and a Welsh mother. Just before his teens, a political conflict tore his family apart and he left Sri Lanka, barely going back for thirty years. When he finally returned ‘home’, he spent much of the next decade crisscrossing the island, trying to understand this paradoxical place. Blessed with nature’s bounty and an easy, pleasure-loving people, it was nevertheless scarred by ethnic conflict and the violence of civil war.

Follow author Robert Whiting (The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, You Gotta Have Wa, Tokyo Underworld) as he watches Tokyo transform during the 1964 Olympics, rubs shoulders with the Yakuza and comes face to face with the city’s dark underbelly, interviews Japan’s baseball elite after publishing his first best-selling book on the subject, and learns how politics and sports collide to produce a cultural landscape unlike any other, even as a new Olympics is postponed and the COVID virus ravages the nation.

Mount Kailas is the most sacred of the world’s mountains – holy to one fifth of humanity. Isolated beyond the central Himalayas, it is claimed by myth to be the source of the universe created from cosmic waters and the mind of Brahma. Its summit has never been scaled, but for centuries the mountain has been ritually circled by Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims. Colin Thubron joins these pilgrims, after an arduous trek from Nepal, through the high passes of Tibet, to the magical lakes beneath the slopes of Kailas itself. His trek around the great mountain, revered by multitudinous others, awakes an inner landscape of solitude....

Maugham spent the winter months of 1919 travelling 1500 miles up the Yangtze river. Always more interested in people than places, he noted down acute and finely crafted sketches of those he met on countless scraps of paper. In the resulting collection we encounter Western missionaries, army officers and company managers who are culturally out of their depth in the immensity of the Chinese civilisation.

Driving terrified me; I hadn't done it in a decade. But if I could drive in India, I could drive anywhere. If I drive a tuk-tuk, I could drive anything. And if I said yes, I'd get to spend 10 days with her. Would that be enough time to find out who she was, what she wanted, and then convince her to abandon that and want me instead? There was only one way to find out.

Catching all the fascination and humour of travel in out-of-the-way places, One's Company is Peter Fleming's account of his journey through Russia and Manchuria to China when he was Special Correspondent to The Times in the 1930s. Fleming spent seven months with the "object of investigating the Communist situation in South China" at a time when, as far as he knew, "no previous journey had been made to the anti-communist front by a foreigner", and on its publication in 1934, One's Company won widespread critical acclaim.

Arising out of Naipaul’s lifelong obsession and passion for a country that is at once his and totally alien, India: A Million Mutinies Now relates the stories of many of the people he met traveling there more than 50 years ago. He explores how they have been steered by the innumerable frictions present in Indian society - the contradictions and compromises of religious faith, the whim and chaos of random political forces.

In his retelling of a Chinese history stretching back 5,000 years, author and China-expert Jonathan Clements focuses on the human stories which led to the powerful transformations in Chinese society - from the unification of China under its first emperor, Qinshi Huangdi, to the Mongol invasion under Genghis Khan and the consolidation of Communist rule under Mao Zedong. Clements even brings listeners through to the present day, outlining China's economic renaissance under Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping.

Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across Northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron undertakes a journey along the greatest land route on earth: the Silk Road. Travelling 7,000 miles in eight months, he traces the passage not only of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions.

Stu Nugent was never a good candidate for a round-the-world cycling trip. He was, and remains, a coward. In a flash of uncharacteristic daring, he attempted to cycle the Northern Silk Road, from Shanghai to Europe. He failed. He failed dramatically. Against a backdrop of the world's most staggering, awe-inspiring landscapes, he was forced to smoke opium at gunpoint, attacked by a snake in a remote Kyrgyz river, robbed at gunpoint by the police, and eventually imprisoned in anonymous jail somewhere on the Kazakh steppe. How did it all go so wrong?

A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet. Up until that point, the farthest east I'd been was Torremolinos, in the Costa Del Sol....

Join Gordon Alexander in Nepal as he drags his "heavy ass" over the Himalayas in this hilarious, adventure-soaked account of the Three Passes Trek, culminating in a visit to Everest Base Camp. Together with guide Subash and porter Nima, Gordon tackles high passes in excess of 5,400 meters (17,700 feet) and explains how high altitude affects a mildly overweight road builder from sea level in the tropics. Each part of the journey brings new challenges, including sub-freezing temperatures, almost falling into a crevasse, and alarmingly warm beer.

After crossing the final mountain passes of Turkish Kurdistan, Ollivier sets foot in Iran, keen on locating vestiges of the silk trade as he passes through Persia's modern cities and traditional villages, including Tabriz, Tehran, Nishapur, and the holy city of Mashhad. Beyond urban areas lie deserts: first Iran's Great Salt Desert, then Turkmenistan's forbidding Karakum, whose relentless sun, snakes, and scorpions pose continuous challenges to Ollivier's goal of reaching Uzbekistan.

Here is William Dalrymple's highly praised and greatly entertaining account of his 1986 trip made while a student at Cambridge, which retraced Marco Polo's route across land from Jerusalem to Xanadu. With him, he took a phial of Holy Oil, 600 pounds and Laura until Lahore, and Louisa from there to Xanadu.

From terrifying missile tests, its unmissable Olympic cheering squad, and the war of words between President Trump and Kim Jong Un - not to mention stranger-than-fiction stories of purges and assassinations - news from North Korea has dominated global headlines. But what is life there actually like? In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city.

The Ridiculous Misadventures of a Single Girl gives listeners an intimate look into what Gabrielle went through when she returned home from her grand European adventure, the challenges she faced as she tried to put the pieces back together, the men - new and old - who shook her world, and the epic conclusion to the real-life story so many have become invested in.

After backpacking her way around India, Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. When a beggar at the airport reads her palm and insists she will one day return - and for love - she screams 'Never!' and gives the country, and him, the finger.

In 2016, Dion Leonard, a seasoned ultramarathon runner, unexpectedly stumbled across a little stray dog while competing in a gruelling 155 mile race across the Gobi Desert. The lovable pup, who earned the name 'Gobi', proved that what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in heart, as she went step for step with Dion over the treacherous Tian Shan Mountains, managing to keep pace with him for nearly 80 miles.

Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times's most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals.

Taking listeners from the snows of the Pamir Mountains to the backstreets of Kashgar—a Central Asian city that could be the setting for One Thousand and One Nights—to the Tian Shan Mountains to the endless Taklamakan and Gobi Deserts of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Bernard Ollivier continues his epic foot journey along the Great Silk Road hoping to make his way to Han China and reach, at long last, the legendary city of Xi'an.