Five Fabulous Reads for Armchair Travel

Here are five fabulous reads for armchair travel. These books will take you to another time and place which would be a very good thing if you’re sitting in a European airport waiting for ash to blow away.

• The Places in Between by Rory Stewart.  This book was published in 2003, after Rory completed a walk across Afghanistan post 9-11. It verges on the unbelievable! He survived because of his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, his wits and I suspect his charm. Great insights into Afghan culture and still a timely read with the ongoing troubles.

• The Mapmaker’s Wife by Robert Whitaker. This is an amazing account of the mostly unknown Isobel Godin, the first woman to travel the length of the Amazon …in 1735.
• The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor, The First Woman Settler of the Miramichi by Sally Armstrong. The author is the great, great, great grandaughter of Charlotte Taylor. British born Charlotte fled England for Jamaica in 1775 with her family’s black butler. From there she traveled to Miramichi, New Brunswick where she became a living part of history, the part that wasn’t in the Canadian history high school curriculm. She married three times, bore ten children and enjoyed a long term relationship with a Native man, during the time of the British America war, while trying to settle a beautiful but harsh area of New Brunswick.
• Passionate Nomad. The Life of Freya Stark by Jane Fletcher Geniesse. The story of Freya Stark, one of the most famous 20th century travelers, reads like fiction. She was fearless, brave, smart and difficult. She traveled widely through the Middle East, often with only a donkey and a guide, testing the accuracy of British maps. In the end she was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and honored by the Royal Geographic Society.
• Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Getrude Bell: Adventurer, Advisor to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach This is one of my all time favourite reads. Getrude Bell explored Arabia at a time when it was unconventional for British females to go anywhere in Britain unchaperoned. But once in the Middle East she explored by camel and horse, alone at times, became a confidante to kings and helped draw the boundaries in the Middle East after World War I.

Happy reading.

Leigh McAdam

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