Books that make us travel 3

Mountain and adventure literature transports us to majestic landscapes, extreme challenges, and transformative experiences. From epic tales of expeditions to introspective narratives of solo explorers, this list presents a selection of books that capture the essence of life on the edge and the relentless pursuit of the unknown.

1. " The White Spider" (1959) by Heinrich Harrer

• A gripping account of the conquest of the Eiger, one of the most feared and challenging mountains in the Swiss Alps. The "White Spider" refers to a dangerous formation of ice and snow on the Eiger's north face, which has been the scene of numerous failed attempts and tragedies.

2. "Guide for Innocent Travelers" (1867 ) by Mark Twain

• In 1867, the first known modern tourist excursion departed from the port of New York, bound for the classic Mediterranean scenery. The man who would later become Tom Sawyer's father signed up—armed with his characteristic biting humor and command of language, which would make him one of the most important American writers of all time—with the promise of sending travel reports to the newspaper that paid for his ticket, the Alta California.

3. "The Tao of Travel" by Paul Theroux

• Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of world travel and brings together the best of his work and the most memorable passages from the authors who shaped him as a reader and traveler: Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Johnson, Evelyn Waugh, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, and D.H. Lawrence, among others. A philosophical guide and travel book in one, The Tao of Travel is a work to be given as a gift and treasured, to be read again and again, as a bedside book that charts the spiritual path of the traveler within us all.

4. "Five Trips to Hell: Adventures with Me and That Other Guy" by Martha Gellhorn

• Martha Gellhorn, a pioneering war correspondent, visited dozens of countries, had homes in Italy, Cuba, Kenya... But she only decided to write about travel after an unpleasant incident in Crete. Discouraged, wondering why she was traveling, she got to work. The result is this collection, featuring the best of her worst trips.

5. "The Old Patagonian Express" by Paul Theroux

• The story chronicles a six-month journey across the American continent by train. The adventure begins on a commuter train from Boston and ends when an old express train arrives in the city of Esquel, in the heart of Argentine Patagonia. In between, the author crosses Mexico, delves into Central America, visits Machu Picchu, and takes a few days off in Buenos Aires in the company of Jorge Luis Borges. However, his story never descends into picturesqueness, but manages to evoke a fascinating cultural fresco with memorable observations and subtle irony.

  
  

6. "The Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles

• Considered one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century, The Sheltering Sky narrates the journey to the Sahara Desert of Port Moresby and his wife, Kit, accompanied by their friend Tunner. Initially organized as a way to save their marriage, the trip turns into a nightmare. Arriving from New York, the three protagonists collide with an incomprehensible reality where nothing is ever what it seems, leading them to discover within themselves the depths of evil that lurks in every human heart. As Tennessee Williams said, this is "a wild and terrifying novel, an allegory of man and his deserts."

7. "At the Antipodes" by Bill Bryson

• Australia is much more than a huge country. And much more than the largest island in the world. It's a universe unto itself. Dry, arid, barren, with an extreme climate and atypical fauna. A country where the hairiest worm kills with its poisonous sting, where seashells not only sting, but chase you, where a shark can gobble you up or irresistible waters drag you out to sea. Ignoring these threats, Bill Bryson traveled to Australia and fell in love with the country. Who could blame him? The people are cheerful, witty, and attentive; its cities are safe, clean, and modern; the beer is cold, and the sun often shines. Life doesn't get much better than this.

  
  

8. "Journey to Japan" by Rudyard Kipling

• In 1889, one of the most important writers of English literature and Nobel Prize winner in 1907, Rudyard Kipling, embarked on a journey through Asia with one final destination: the Land of the Rising Sun. He found himself there at a time of great change, with the transition from the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Meiji Era and at a time when the country's Westernization was beginning. In the narrative, the author uses the character of an invented professor to discuss the present and future of Japan and is generally very critical of its situation.

9. "Letters from Istanbul" by Mary Wortley Montagu

• A collection of letters written by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu during her stay in the Ottoman Empire in the early 18th century. As the wife of the British ambassador, Lady Mary offers a fascinating and detailed account of life in Istanbul, with unique observations on the culture, customs, and especially the women she encountered in places inaccessible to other European travelers.

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10. "A Madhouse at the End of the World" by Julian Sancton

• In August 1897, young Belgian commander Adrien de Gerlache set out on a three-year expedition aboard the ship Belgium with dreams of glory. His destination was the unexplored edge of the Earth: the frozen continent of Antarctica. But Gerlache's plans to be the first to reach the magnetic South Pole would quickly go awry.

11. "The Shortest Way" by Manuel Leguineche

• Manu Leguineche was twenty-three years old when he managed to join an unlikely expedition to travel the world by car. It was 1965, and everything was changing. This book, written years later and now a classic, recalls that trip.

10. "The River" by Wade Davis

• In 1941, Professor Richard Evans Schultes, who would later become, until his dying day, the director of the Harvard Botanical Museum, disappeared into the Amazon rainforest, where he spent the next twelve years of his life exploring unmapped rivers, collecting plants unknown to science, and studying the wisdom and customs of dozens of indigenous tribes in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, and, particularly, Colombia. Thirty years later, in the early 1970s, Schultes sent two of his most distinguished students, Tim Plowman and Wade Davis, to follow in his footsteps to investigate the botanical secrets of coca, the reviled source of cocaine, the sacred plant known to the Incas as the divine leaf of immortality.

-The three books about Bouvier's experiences:

12. "The Ways of the World" by Nicolas Bouvier

• In 1953, at just twenty-four years old, Nicolas Bouvier embarked on a journey through Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan with the cartoonist Thierry Vernet aboard a tiny Fiat Topolino. Throughout their seventeen-month expedition, the two men collected their impressions and experiences—Bouvier wrote them down and Vernet illustrated them—in an attempt to capture them and portray the customs of the people who inhabited the various countries along their adventure, which culminated in Afghanistan.

13. "The Scorpion Fish" by Nicolas Bouvier

• An introspective account of the author's time in Galle, a coastal city in Sri Lanka, during his extended journey through Asia. Trapped by illness and isolation, Bouvier faces an intense inner struggle as he experiences the exotic landscape, stifling heat, and oppressive solitude of the place.

14."Japanese Chronicle" by Nicolas Bouvier

• There is no other country like Japan in the vast spiritual geography of this exquisite Swiss narrator. From his first visit in 1955, he returned countless times until 1970, seduced by the complexity of its culture and the pendulum-like abyss of its contradictions, which Bouvier embraces with fascination. A flood of literary awards celebrates a unique prose that connects with poetic flair the lightness of the moment with the magic of the past; the Zen atmosphere of the places with an aura of intimate emotion that captivates us as we read it.

15. "The Damned Obsession with Climbing Mountains" by Jon Krakauer

• This collection of essays and articles that appeared in Outside and Smithsonian magazines is the debut work by the author of Into the Wild. It chronicles several true adventures set in the most remote, diverse, and coldest reaches of the planet, from Alaska and Arizona to the Alps, in pursuit of the highest and most rugged peaks: K2, McKinley, Denali, Everest, and Eiger.

16. "In Praise of Walking" by Leslie Stephen

• When you walk, you move more than your body: you move your mind, your spirit, your entire system of being. As you traverse the spatial distance, you gain a vital spiritual distance with which you can see anew the problems that haunt your day, your work, your life. In this brief and honest work, accompanied by magnificent illustrations by Manuel Marsol, Leslie Stephen defends one of her passions: "I may regret at some point some pleasures that don't deserve such a label, but the pleasure that concerns me here is distinctly and fundamentally innocent. Walking is to recreational activities what farming and fishing are to industry: it is primitive and simple; it puts us in touch with Mother Earth and simple nature; it doesn't require complex equipment or uncommon enthusiasm."

17. "Walking on Ice" by Werner Herzog

• In the winter of 1974, filmmaker Werner Herzog embarked on a solo journey from Munich to Paris, where film historian and critic Lotte Eisner awaited him. An act of love that, according to Herzog, would keep his close friend Lotte alive, who was gravely ill. During this monumental odyssey, the filmmaker documented everything he saw: forests, storms, snow, deserted villages, and uninhabited towns. The story is composed of reflections on cold and absolute solitude, on the myth of travel as a heroic pilgrimage, and offers continuity with his cinematic work, allowing us to witness the origins of his creative process.

  

18. "Reunion with Tibet" by Heinrich Harrer

• In Seven Years in Tibet, which was an international success, Harrer told us about his odyssey to the Forbidden City of Lhasa, his friendship with the Dalai Lama, and his coexistence with the Tibetans until the Chinese invasion.

  Thirty years later, Harrer is granted permission to return.

  In this volume, he describes present-day Tibet, dominated by the Chinese, and compares it with free Tibet, where religion and faith were once the center and content of all life. Harrer meets old friends and tells us about the Cultural Revolution, collaborators, Tibetans in exile, and the unwavering faith of the Tibetan people.

  Harrer reflects and studies with the Dalai Lama, now residing in Dharamsala, how to ensure the independence of the Tibetan people.

19. "Tintin in Tibet" by Hergé

• It is the twentieth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialized weekly from September 1958 to November 1959 in the magazine Tintin and published as a book in 1960. Hergé considered it his favorite Tintin adventure and an emotional endeavor, as he created it while suffering from traumatic nightmares and personal conflict over deciding to leave his wife of three decades for a younger woman.

  

20. "A Long Way to Go: The True Story of a Flight to Freedom" by Slavomir Rawicz

• Slavomir Rawicz (1915-2004) was a Polish cavalry officer who was captured by the Russians in 1939 and sent to a forced labor camp. His escape from the gulag with six other comrades became one of the most extraordinary human feats ever recorded. Their desire for freedom led them to cross the Gobi Desert and other inhumane areas of Asia. Once free, he enlisted in the British Army to fight against the Nazis. After the war, he was unable to return to his native Poland, which was occupied by the Soviets, and remained in England, where he raised a family and lived to tell the tale of his extraordinary experience, which has inspired many since its first publication.