Reiseskildringer

For 15 years, award-winning travel writer Stephen McClarence and his BBC Radio journalist wife Clare Jenkins made a series of journeys through India to learn about one of its most eccentric and fast-dwindling communities: the Anglo-Indians. Mainly descendants of British men and Indian women, their combined heritage stretches back 350 years through the times of the East India Company and the British Raj. In Jhansi - a railway hub in the state of Uttar Pradesh and inspiration for John Masters's 1950s book Bhowani Junction - the Anglo-Indian community is reduced to around 30 families.

Teatime at Peggy's shares their stories. Inspired by Jenkins' own Anglo-Indian family connections, the couple immersed themselves in the customs of this little-known dimension to India, soon developing a profound affection for their new friends, particularly for two of the area's most memorable figureheads: the title character 'Aunty Peggy', daughter and widow of railwaymen, overseer of the European cemetery, and 'friend of the great and the good, the rich and the poor'; and Captain Roy Abbott, the last British landowner in India, who never dined without wearing a blazer, cravat and immaculately pressed trousers. The authors spent hours at Peggy's kitchen table - eating cake, samosas and curry; drinking tea; welcoming eccentric characters, like Pastor Rao who could recite Winston Churchill speeches from memory; listening to stories, told in lilting accents, of the Railway Institute and May Queen Balls, Monsoon Toad Balls (where 'the ugliest, most hideous-looking man' would win the prize), waltzes and foxtrots, dancing in the jungle to Victor Silvester gramophone records, games of rummy and housey-housey, and Anglo-Indian cookery that embraced plum cake, goat's brain curry, Mulligatawny soup and crème caramel.

Warm, humorous and evocative, Teatime at Peggy's is a lyrical, loving homage to the Anglo-Indians. Filled with larger-than-life characters and with the ever-present exhilaration of 21st-century India, it is both intimate and revelatory, and a testament to the importance of tradition, community and friendship. This enchanting book is for anyone who knows India well - or who simply yearns to take the 'trip of a lifetime' to the 'sub-continent' and see things a little differently.

• Forfattere: Stephen McClarence og Clare Jenkins
• Publisert: Juni 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781804692424

One of the greatest pieces of travel and nature writing ever written. Go with Peter Matthiessen all the way to Dolpo, a Tibetan plateau in the high Himalayas. This is the account of a journey to the dazzling Tibetan plateau of Dolpo in the high Himalayas.

In 1973 Matthiessen made the 250-mile trek to Dolpo, as part of an expedition to study wild blue sheep. It was an arduous, sometimes dangerous, physical endeavour: exertion, blisters, blizzards, endless negotiations with sherpas, quaking cold. But it was also a 'journey of the heart' - amongst the beauty and indifference of the mountains Matthiessen was searching for solace.

• Forfatter: Peter Matthiessen
• Publisert: 1998
• Antall sider: 312
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780099771111
  
  

A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. Many years later she tells her story from a hotel in New York, opening a window into an extraordinary half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation and summoning up a quarter of a century of Japan's dramatic history.

• Forfatter: Arthur Golden
• Publisert: 1998
  
• Antall sider: 512
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780099771517

As a child, award-winning travel writer Stanley Stewart dreamed of crossing Mongolia on horseback. This is the story of how that dream was fulfilled by following in the footsteps of a 13th-century Franciscan friar. Eight centuries ago the Mongols burst forth from Central Asia in a series of spectacular conquests that took them from the Danube to the Yellow Sea.

Their empire was seen as the final triumph of the nomadic «barbarians». But in time the Mongols sank back into the obscurity from which they had emerged, almost without trace. Remote and outlandish, Outer Mongolia became a metaphor for exile, a lost domain of tents and horsemen, little changed since the days of Genghis Khan.

In this remarkable book, Stanley Stewart sets off in the wake of an obscure 13th century Franciscan friar on a pilgimage across the old empire, from Istanbul to the distant homeland of the Mongol Hordes. The heart of his odyssey is a thousand-mile ride on horseback, among nomads for whom travel is a way of life, through a trackless land governed by winds and patterns of migration. On a journey full of bizarre characters and unexpected encounters, he crosses the desert and mountains of Central Asia, battles through the High Altay and the fringes of the Gobi, to the wind-swept grasslands of the steppes and the birthplace of Genghis Khan.

Vivid, hilarious, and compelling, this eagerly-awaited book will take its place among travel classics - a thrilling tale of adventure, a comic masterpiece, an evocative portrait of a medieval land marooned in the modern world.

• Publisert: 2021
  
• Antall sider: 265
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780006530275

Empires have collided here, cultures have clashed. Buddhist India claimed it from the south, Islam put down roots in its western approaches, Mongols and Manchus rode in from the north, and, from the east, China continues to absorb what it prefers not to call Tibet. Hunters have decimated its wildlife and mountaineers have bagged its peaks.

Today, machinery gouges minerals out of its rock. Roughly the size of Europe, the region is one of the most seismically active on the planet. Summers bring avalanches, rainfall triggers landslides and winters obliterate trails.

Glaciers retreat, rivers change course and whole lakes quietly evaporate. To some, Himalaya is an otherworldly realm, profoundly life-changing, yet forbidding and forbidden. It has mesmerised scholars and mystics, sportsmen and spies, pilgrims and mapmakers who have mingled with the farmers and traders on the Roof of the World.

Himalaya is the story of one of the last great wildernesses and, in particular, of the bizarre discoveries and improbable achievements of its pioneers. Ranging from botany to trade, from the Great Game to todays geopolitics, John Keay draws on a lifetime of exploration and study to enlighten and delight with this lively biography of a region in crisis.

• Forfatter: John Keay
• Publisert: Okt. 2023
• Antall sider: 432
• ISBN: 9781408891162

Forlagets omtale:

the incredible story of the search for one of mao's lost children, set against the extraordinary backdrop of modern china. 'a son is very important in chinese society,' he had said. 'to lose one is careless. The ancestors would be angry.' intrigued by stories of a son given away by mao and his then-wife during the long march, and mystified by the ‘official' explanation of the boy's fate (whereabouts unknown - no further information available), richard loseby sets out alone across china in search of answers. Tracing mao's own revolutionary journey, the author encounters the extraordinary realities of a new revolution, one that is transforming an ancient culture into a modern economic powerhouse. At the heart of the journey is the hunt for an elusive truth about a brutal and traumatic time in the nation's still raw history. Who was that abandoned boy? Might he still be alive? Would he even want to be found? The result is an amazing traveller's tale – revealing, poignant, funny, sad and unexpected at every turn. A boy of china takes the reader on an unforgettable journey that is at once intimate and epic

forfattere: R.Loseby
Publisert år: 2016
Sider nr:303

Ilija trojanow's journey from mumbai to mecca is told in the tradition of the rihla, one of the oldest genres of classical arabic literature and describes the hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy sites of islam. 'from the very first moment they realise that the hajj - the pilgrimage to mecca - is among the duties of each and every muslim, the faithful long to go.' trojanov, with the help of his friends, donned the ihram, the traditional garb of the pilgrim. He joined hundreds of thousands of muslims who each year go on the hajj, the greatest demonstration of the muslim faith.

in three short weeks he experienced a tradition dating back over one thousand years this is his account, personal yet enlightening, for the interested non-muslims who remain barred from the holy sites of islam.

forfattere: I. Trojanow
Publisert måned: Aug
Publisert år: 2017
Utgave: 1.utg
Sider nr: 150