It started out as a serious travel guide, but by the time Jerome K Jerome finished Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), it was arguably the most humorous book ever written on travel. Basically a narrative revolving around three friends – the author, George and Harris, (and their dog, Montmorency) – and their boating holiday down the Thames, the book blended in an enormous amount of humour with local information and characters. The entire book is bathed in humour with fun being poked at just about every activity associated with boat travel – from packing to staying on shore to even trying to open a tin can without an opener. Some of the anecdotes narrated in the book are retold to this day – a tribute to its timelessness. If you are looking for a book that could make you smile, just pick up Three Men in a Boat. It is in fact now available for free download from www.gutenberg.org/etext/308. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
Whatever you associate Sir Sean Connery with, it is certainly not writing about a country, even his own. The man, who many (us at Kunzum.com included) consider to have been not just the first but the best Bond of them all, however, does have a writing streak in him. And it has come to the fore in Being a Scot, a book which he has written in collaboration with Murray Grigor. Read more »
Contributed by Nimish Dubey
It is rare to see an adventure or travel being hailed as a literary classic, but this status has been accorded to Apsley George Bennet Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World. Apsley Cherry-Garrard is best known for being part of Robert Scott’s ill-fated 1910-13 Antarctica expedition in which Scott and his friends raced against Roald Amundsen to be the first to reach the South Pole. Scott and four of his teammates did reach the Pole on 1912 but only to discover Amundsen’s team’s flag already fluttering there. All five died on their way back, casualties of terrible weather and according to some, poor planning. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
How do you reach the center of the earth? And while on the subject, why on earth (pun intended) would you like to travel down the bowels of the planet? Well, both questions were answered in spectacular style by Jules Verne when he wrote A Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864. It revolves around the adventures of a German professor, his nephew and their guide when they decide to make a journey to reach the center of the earth by descending into – yes, read this carefully – a volcano. To most of us who have been brought up in the belief that the center of the earth is a burning hot core, such a journey would be suicidal and seems downright unbelievable, but then this is Jules Verne writing. And the man who gave us the utterly memorable Around The World in Eighty Days, serves up another compelling read. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
Few events have generated as much interest (albeit morbid) as the 1996 disaster on Mount Everest when several climbers perished in an attempt to make the summit. One of the main reasons for this interest is the fact that it inspired arguably the best mountaineering book in terms of narration, Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. However, superb though that title is in terms of narration, its facts have been questioned by many people, most notably Anatoli Boukreev, one of the guides on that fateful day in May whom Krakauer had portrayed in less than glorious light in his book. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
Jon Krakauer added a whole dimension to mountaineering and travel literature when he wrote Into Thin Air in 1996, describing the disaster that claimed the lives of eight climbers on Mount Everest earlier that year. A dozen years later, eleven climbers died on the second highest peak in the world, K2. As on Everest, nature played a role in the disaster – in 1996, a storm had hit the climbers on the way down, in 2008, a serac collapsed sweeping away ropes that were to be used in the descent. As on Everest twelve years ago, man’s stupidity and obstinacy played a greater role in the disaster. And it is part tat Graham Bowley sets out to reveal in his book on the 2008 K2 disaster, No Way Down: Life And Death on K2. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
There have been many books written on the Indian capital. Some have veered to the utterly academic, others to the spiritual, yet others to the role of a simple “see-this-do-that” travel guide and some (alas a very few) have just looked the city through the eyes of a resident. Sam Miller’s Delhi Adventures in a Megacity is fortunately a book that comes in the last category. We have no hesitation in declaring it as one of the best books written about the city, and perhaps the only one that gives you a feel of life in the city, going beyond monuments and history. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
Most people become famous by being the first to do something. Or doing something a certain (record) number of times. And yet one of the most famous names in travel history is a man whose greatest achievement is surrounded in mystery. George Herbert Leigh Mallory was one of the best climbers of his period and had made his first attempt on the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest in 1922. However, it was his attempt on the same mountain two years that made him a legend, even though he did not come back alive from it. Books and theses have been written about that attempt, thousands of dollars spent on finding his body and equipment, almost all of them revolving around one central question, a question that has become on the mysteries of modern travel – did George Mallory make it to the top of Mount Everest almost three decades before Hilary and Tenzing did so? Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
For most people, ascending Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on earth, remains the ultimate travel fantasy. For years, Everest had been most travellers’ holy grail, notwithstanding the risks involved (many people died in their attempts to conquer the peak). A major accident in May 1996 that claimed the lives of eight climbers did shock many but was initially considered part of the hazard of climbing. Until Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air hit the stands later that year.By far the highest selling book on mountaineering, Into Thin Air blew the top off the mountaineering guide business, showing how trained mountaineers acted as “guides” to take totally inexperienced people on to the top of the world. For a massive fee, of course. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
Of all the journeys that have been undertaken, few have been as tragic as the “race to the pole” between Britain’s Robert Scott and Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Both Scott and Amundsen were reputed explorers and each wanted to be the first human being to set foot on the South Pole. It was a bitter race and one that was tinged with controversy – many supporters of Scott claimed that Amundsen had not revealed his plans of setting out for the South Pole in an attempt to ensure he got there first. Both men used different techniques of travel in the dodgy snow – Scott and his team preferred using man-hauling techniques to get their sledges across the snow while Amundsen had no qualms in using dogs. Read more »
Contributed by Nimish Dubey
It’s a book that is considered a literary classic, has sold millions of copies, inspired film directors to convert it to celluloid and even has an animation series named after it. And yet, for most people, it does not really figure among great travel novels, simply perhaps because they had far too good a time reading it to notice that travel was the central theme of the book. We are talking of Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, a book that is admired more in literary circles than in travel ones. Read more »
By Nimish Dubey
Ask someone about reading travelogues and it is a fair chance that they will head off and start looking for books by the likes of Mark Shand, Bill Bryson and Sir Ranulph Fiennes. And there is nothing really wrong with it as these are perhaps the masters of modern travel literature. However, before people start off on these, we would request them to try out some of the older masters. No, yawn not at their being mentioned, for these gentlemen and ladies turned out some of the most magnificent travel writing we have ever read, be it cloaked as fiction or written in classic travelogue style. Read more »
