“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life,” wrote Jack Kerouac, the life-traveller, who continually inspired himself by being absorbed in the living experience, journeying from one revelation to another. It was not where he went that mattered but what he thought and felt and physically put himself through on the way that mattered. Though Bruce Chatwin travelled farther afield than Kerouac, he nevertheless immersed himself in the process of the journey rather than focussed on the destination or the purpose. Graham Greene absorbed himself in people and social manners on his way whilst Paul Theroux’s literary gaze scanned history and culture whilst travelling along terra firma….and the others, from Wilfred Thesiger to Sven Hedin, Richard Francis Burton, Alexander von Humboldt who ate dirt in Venezuela to other amazing journey makers who lived and wrote about experiences that were intimate, daring, tragic, comic and triumphant.
Inspired by these accounts of journeys and the spirit that drove them, Gyaan Kitaab presents a special edition on travel. We recommend a wide selection of writers and their books and shine a bright spotlight on Bruce Chatwin and his monumental “In Patagonia”.
So dip in and experience the lives and adventures of travel writers of the first order…
