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Tom Sheppard's 40 years of overlanding experience make him one of the world's foremost experts on desert travel. Among the highlights, he's tackled six solo Sahara expeditions since 2001, and he led the first coast to coast crossing of the Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, which won him an award from the Royal Geographical Society. 

Sheppard's gift for writing about complex topics with simplicity and clarity has also made him a bit of a guru. The author of the highly sought after Vehicle Dependent Expedition Guide, a book that fetched as much as $500 per copy on Ebay when it went out of print, he's the most sought-after source of overland advice by those in the know. His more recent books -- Quiet for a Tuesday and "The Nobility of Wilderness" -- tell the story of his wide-ranging solo travels in Algeria, including an epic off-track army dodging adventure.

Sheppard has spent the past several years lobbying the Algerian government to create a Sahara Protected Area, preserving a unique region of the desert for future generations.

I had a chance to talk with Tom when I wrote a profile piece about him for the Sept/Oct 2010 issue of Outpost magazine. I've decided to share the interview with you in it's entirely. I hope you enjoy it.

Ryan: Please tell me a little about your childhood. Did it predict in any way the path that you would take later in life?  

Tom Sheppard: Born and raised in India till I was 12 - which included the tag-end of WW2. My father was a tea planter in north-east Assam near the Burma frontier and the constant aerial activity sparked my eventually joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot. It may even have planted the seed of my love for the desert: I found the jungle a bit claustrophobic and gasped at the deserts of Rajasthan out of the train window as we headed for Bombay when we shipped back to UK.

Ryan: Was nature a big interest? Were you adventurous? Did you exhibit early talents? 

Tom Sheppard: Some early interest in nature which has grown more rapidly in recent years so that even on country walks in the UK I am amazed and uplifted by the beauty and variety around me - the delicacy, elegance, symmetry, design, colour of wild flowers; the young leaves on the trees unfurling in spring and early summer. In the desert, of course, nature is overwhelming - the sheer scale ... and the miracle of plant and animal life. I don't think I was especially adventurous. Early talents? I was often labeled 'artistic'  - a two-edged accolade, of course, among beer-swilling, back-slapping fighter pilots! But I guess it helped with my later pursuits taking snaps and putting books together.

Ryan: What were the turning points in your life? What was the tipping point that caused you to take up exploration so wholeheartedly? What is it about you/life experiences that made you so responsive to this kind of pursuit? Did someone help you or champion you along the way? 

Tom Sheppard: The clincher, the moment from which I was permanently hooked on the desert, is touched on in Quiet for a Tuesday (QFAT) - seeing dawn break from an aircraft over Jebel Uweinat in south east Libya and the vastness of the desert emerge from the shadows beneath us (see Q.6 below also). It brought tears to my eyes. Almost surreal, such a landscape gradually appearing out of the grey beneath. Predisposition to this response? I've never been a gregarious person (beware, more cliché-labels looming!) but landscapes like that have double the impact if you're on your own without the distractions and pressures of other people. And no, there was no champion/coach in the background.

Ryan: What is the major attraction for you when it comes to travel? 

Tom Sheppard: Most of the normal constituents of 'travel' fill me with dread! Airports, the bureaucracy, crowds, jostling queues at tiny windows, flying cattle-class, insincere cabin staff, officious functionaries ... I don't have to tell you, I'm sure! Nor is it 'the people and the food and the beaches and the .... etc'. Travel, for me, only has any 'attraction' when you are free of all that, when the pressure is lifted, when you are free to take your time; free, even, of the constant low-level pressure of living in a hideously overpopulated place like the UK. Having said that I am enormously moved by, and respectful of, the genuine hospitality and kindness of people I have met in ones and twos in my desert adventures. Alas, conditioned to be suspicious, on my guard and waiting for the sting, all too often the genuineness is only apparent in retrospect - a sick reflection on our society.

Ryan: What is the greatest travel challenge for you personally? The physical, the mental?

Tom Sheppard: I think it must be the mental. Overcoming the bureaucratic barriers at the beginning, going into the endless minutiae of planning and equipment levels (that bit nonetheless enjoyable and satisfying), the en-route decision-making - monitoring supply levels and reserves, decisions on navigation; but then the reward of activating it all in the careful progression of the trip; keeping things carefully judged and safe, caring for the vehicle on which in remote desert regions on your own your safety, and life, depend absolutely. The impetus of the trip, the stimulus of the landscape, seem well able to absorb any physical stress without leaving any trace (except, perhaps the occasional bout of dehydration - QFAT pp.43-44).

Ryan: What was your most memorable experience?

Tom Sheppard: I guess it must be that time looking down at Jebel Uweinat and the dawn over the Libyan desert (back jacket flap, top quote, QFAT). Especially coming on top of the excitement and expectation of my first pilot trip in a large transport aircraft to Khartoum and Aden - exotic destinations.

Ryan: What do you know as a result of your journeys that the rest of us don't?

Tom Sheppard: Judging from my observation of those for whom it is a first experience, it would seem that the peace, tranquility, freedom and beauty conferred by the remote desert is something not yet appreciated by many.

Ryan: What impact does your work/travel have on your personal life? 

Tom Sheppard: Complete takeover! I've come to the conclusion that I am a certifiable workaholic and (unapologetic) perfectionist. I have to have (and usually have) a grand projet onto which I can focus totally. The perfectionism - or put less pejoratively, just getting things absolutely right - goes with the territory. As I say repeatedly in QFAT, ' ... life is about detail'. Pilot training (or even my day to day motorcycling) is a good place to start with this approach; if you don't 'get things right', you'll probably die, and take others with you.

Ryan: What are you most proud of? What mistakes have you made? What mistakes do you continue to make?

Tom Sheppard: I suppose it has to be the organization, team training and execution of the  coast-to-coast West-East Sahara expedition. Mistakes: too many miles in a day. After 40 years I think I'm at last getting it licked! Strange to say, until recently my record was set in 1979 in the Hoggar mountains: 12 miles and most of the time spent stopped and taking pictures! Mistakes I continue to make? Judging distance visually in the desert - notoriously difficult. (See pic and caption p.188/189, The Nobility of Wilderness.)

Ryan: What are the most significant lessons you have learned from solo desert travel? 

Tom Sheppard: 'Doucement, doucement!',  as an avuncular Algerian truckie once told me as I crouched at the side of the track mending a puncture. Take it steady. Be a granny. 'Get things right'. Life is about detail. Plan ahead. Recce on foot. Or, to put it another way ... no, I already have! And all easier to do when you're on your own.

Ryan: How has travel changed you? 

Tom Sheppard: Hard to say since the change is so gradual but looking back, say, 35 to 40 years, my passion for the beauty of desert landscapes and the magic of solitude remain unchanged. I do, however, see it now in the wider world context, appreciate its perilous rarity not just within Algeria but in relation to the whole planet. True wilderness, very precious, that must not be spoiled or desecrated; that must, with the application of a few simple rules (TNOW, p.237), be protected (TNOW p.233). Totally relevant to all this, and to the survival of our species - yes, the survival of our species - is population. World population. When is it going to stop? Read - slowly, and weigh - p.166, QFAT.

Ryan: What traits (contributing to your success) do you possess that others may lack? What characteristic are you most grateful for? Do you enjoy the most? Do you least like about yourself?

Tom Sheppard: See 7 and 8 above. I'm grateful for these traits but probably value most of all my sense of wonder - which keeps expanding. The skills of animals and birds, the extraordinary mutual rapport there seems to be between man and certain groups of species. The beauty of horses. The apparent miracles of nature, the beauty of leaves on a tree in spring and early summer, the fact the earth's axis is tilted over at 23° (without which there'd be no spring or summer); the staggering ingenuity of the human brain, the cleverness of software designers, the metallurgists who give us 150,000-mile auto engines, the extraordinary and ever-expanding capability of electronics, the teams that begat GPS and Google Earth. And the edge taken off so much of it by the dumb-ass technophobia and lack of appreciation by our opinion-makers - 'the media' - and how it rubs off on the average person. President Obama was right: 'Put science back in it's proper place.'

Most enjoyed? After the expedition itself and the photography, the huge creative treat of putting a book together to enshrine the landscapes - all here at home, taking it steady, 'getting it right' as our wonderful software and hardware allow us to do; tweaking and honing it for as long as you like.

Least liked about me? Probably my ears. Getting bigger; and noise-damaged years ago with a pronounced higher-frequencies dip in the audiogram.  But you ought to see the fancy electronic do-dads I have to lift the curve ... !

Ryan: What is your greatest achievement?

Tom Sheppard: Being so modest! (Think about it ... !)

Ryan: What is your greatest wish for yourself?

Tom Sheppard: The promise of a carte blanche visa arrangement for yearly solo Sahara trips in Algeria!

Thanks again Tom for taking the time to talk with me.

Those interested in Tom's books should visit Desert Wind Publishing. I highly recommend them!

All images copyright Tom Sheppard

No one likes a well thought out reading list more than I do. They obsess me, it's true. But they also serve to focus my efforts, reveal themes and dialogues that pass from author to author, and expose me to new writers I might not otherwise have read.

I'm just a few books away from completing the Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century--a project I've been chipping away at off and on for 5 years--and it got me thinking about my own area of expertise: travel literature.

I took a couple hours today to browse through my bookshelves and come up with my own Road Wisdom Top 10 Travel Books. Something to keep you busy this summer as you laze on the beach or sneak reading breaks at work.

1) Prospero's Cell - Lawrence Durrell

Born in colonial India in the foothills of the Himalayas but sent to boarding school in England, Lawrence Durrell hated the buttoned-up lifestyle of the north. When his father died he saw an opportunity to escape. Somehow, by some incredible art of persuasion, he convinced his mother to pack up their entire family--four children, of whom he was the eldest--and move them all to the Greek island of Corfu.

They lived a crazy island life with eccentric locals and writers dropping by--people like Freya Stark and Patrick Leigh Fermor--and during all those years Durrell plugged away in a little stone house on the side of a mountain and taught himself to write. Prospero's Cell is the story of those years.

When you've finished this, read Reflections on a Marine Venus and Bitter Lemons, Durrell's other island books. And then read everything else he's written. Everything.

2) The Great Railway Bazaar - Paul Theroux

One dark day in the early 1970's, at a loss for what to write next, novelist Paul Theroux boarded a train in London and set out on the longest continuous rail journey he could map. The story of his trip from Britain through Europe to India and Sri Lanka, across Southeast Asia, up Japan, and full circle back to England on the Trans-Siberian Express became an immediate best seller and catapulted the author into the literary big leagues.

That first book was pivotal because it introduced extensive dialogue to a genre that had always tended towards the personal diary, pontification, and self-aggrandizement. Theroux's gift for allowing strange local characters to reveal a place in their own words, coupled with a keen eye for the telling observation, has made him arguably our greatest living travel writer. Start here, and read everything he has written.

3) The Odyssey - Homer

I consider The Odyssey to be the greatest traveler's tale ever told. The origins of the story are fiercely debated by scholars, but it's generally attributed to the blind poet Homer and is a written record (circa 8th century BC) of what was initially oral tradition.

The poem tells the story of the crafty general Odysseus and his journey back to Ithaca after the Trojan War. According to the book it took him 10 years to get home--though 7 of those years were spent indulging every possible island vice with the nymph Calypso, so he can be forgiven for taking the roundabout route...

It's a gripping tale filled with angry gods, brazen nymphs, Cyclops and shipwrecks, and it's as exciting today as it was when monsters inhabited the edge of every parchment map. Read it immediately--and then flip back to the first page and read it again.

4) The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard

The Worst Journey is a memoir by one of the survivors of Robert Scott's 1910-1913 Antarctic Expedition, and it's probably the greatest piece of adventure literature I've ever read. It's a giant brick of a book, but I never once found it slow. The hardships these men endured are difficult to believe--the author's midwinter expedition to collect eggs from the Emperor penguin's breeding grounds was an epic of survival in itself, with temperatures so low it took the men half an hour each night to work their way in to their frozen sleeping bags, thawing them bit by bit with their failing body heat. The entire story is told in such an underrated way, and so matter of fact. It's a tale of true heroism and an up close look at an age of exploration that's long since vanished.

Upon his return to England 3 years later, with most of his companions dead and Robert Scott frozen to death along with several other members of the South Pole party, Cherry-Garrard took those hard-won eggs he had gathered at such cost on his scarcely believable winter ordeal, and he donated them to the British Museum. They were left in a storeroom drawer unstudied, and not a single person thanked him for bringing them.

The closing pages of the book contain one of my favourite passages in all of travel literature:

"And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man, you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery. Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say 'What is the use?' For we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal. If you march your Winter Journeys, you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg."

 

5) Arabian Sands - Wilfred Thesiger

Wilfred Thesiger was the last Victorian Age explorer, a man born after his time. He came of age during the era of the steam train, and he watched with disgust as the automobile and the airplane changed the world. He felt least at home in his own culture and with his own kind, and he deeply resented what he saw as western civilization's unstoppable steamrolling of the diversity and colour of the earth's peoples.

Arabian Sands tells the story of Thesiger's explorations of the Empty Quarter. He crossed this fiercest of sand deserts twice by camel with Beduin tribesmen in what was the last and greatest expedition of Arabian travel.

Of traveling in the desert, he wrote, "I was exhilarated by the sense of space, the silence, and the crisp cleanness of the sand. I felt in harmony with the past, travelling as men had travelled for untold generations across the deserts, dependent for their survival on the endurance of their camels and their own inherited skills." Thesiger died in 2003 at the age of 93. His book is a classic of the travel writing genre, and a glimpse into our recently vanished past.

6) Libyan Sands - Ralph Bagnold

Ralph Bagnold began to explore the deserts of Egypt (referred to as the Libyan Desert) while stationed in Cairo in the 1920's and 30's. It was there that he and a small group of friends first took Model 'T' Fords out into the sands--something everyone agreed was impossible given the difficulties of navigating vast dune seas. Over the course of their expeditions they pioneered techniques that are used by desert drivers even today, opening previously unexplored territory and making the first recorded east-west crossing of the Libyan Desert in 1932.

During the Second World War, Bagnold went on to form the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), carrying out small mobile hit and run attacks in the deepest parts of the Sahara, using the skills they'd built on expedition. When the war ended he went into his lab and he wrote The Physics of Blown Sand, which is still the main reference in the field.

But Bagnold wasn't just a pioneer of desert driving techniques and a scientist. Libyan Sands, the book he wrote about his early driving expeditions, is a beautifully observed book filled with eloquent prose; a true classic of desert travel writing. It's not easy to find, but it's worth the effort to track it down. 

7) The Impossible Journey - Michael Asher

Talk about a honeymoon to remember! Immediately following their marriage in London, Michael Asher and his wife Marianetta flew to Mauritania to set out on the first west-east crossing of the Sahara by camel.

It was an unbroken journey of nine months and 4500 miles, and the first recorded crossing of the Sahara from west to east by non-mechanical means. Newswire service Reuters referred to it as "the last great journey man had still to make."

The trip also made for epic travel writing, by a writer who had worked and lived with nomads for years, and who knows a thing or two about camels. Be careful when you crack this one open--you won't be able to put it down.

8) In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin

Bruce Chatwin redefined the genre by weaving his Patagonian travel narrative with small nuggets of historical information and strange local anecdotes in a seamless tapestry of adventure, exploration and lore.

He was a controversial figure, and there were repeated allegations that he fictionalized some of the characters and conversations in his travel books--but Chatwin himself said his portrayals were not intended to be faithful representations. Instead, he sought to capture the essence of that place and that experience. Whether or not you agree with his approach, the sparse style he developed is a work of art worthy of appreciation.

9) In Search of Conrad - Gavin Young

This book was an immediate favorite for me, because I love the novels of Joseph Conrad.

Gavin Young takes to his sailboat and cruises the Malay Archipelago to visit the places Conrad lived in and wrote about: Jakarta, Borneo and the Celebes in Indonesia, and by cargo-ship from Singapore to Bangkok Young also tracked down the remaining traces of the people who became the inspiration for Conrad's protagonists in his novels, and he found that though the surface has changed, Almayer's Folly and Lord Jim live on..

 This is a very cool book for those who love literature, and the story behind the story.

10) Motoring with Mohammed - Eric Hansen

Eric Hansen is better known for Stranger in the Forest, the account of his walks across Borneo with indigenous peoples. But my personal landscape is the desert and, if forced to choose, I prefer his beautifully written book on Yemen.

This is the story of Hansen's quest to rescue 7 years worth of journals, which he buried in the sand on a small island in the Red Sea after a shipwreck left him stranded 10 years before. The book is filled with the sort of characters you only meet on the road: a guide forever on the lookout for one more sheep to squeeze into the back seat of his car, madcap expatriates and Eritrean gun runners. At times surreal and always sensitively observed, Motoring with Mohammed is an incredible journey into a largely forgotten corner of Arabia.

Hansen is a first rate travel writer and you should track down all of his work.

So there you have it. My Road Wisdom Top 10 Travel Books. Don't take this list too seriously--it's subjective after all, and my top 10 will change over time because I never stop reading.

These are just the first great travel books that popped into my head. You'd also do well to read the journals of Sir Richard Francis Burton, and books by Freya Stark, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Robyn Davidson, Lawrence Millman, and Simon Winchester. That'll give you a solid start on some of the greats of the genre.

If you give these books and these writers a chance, they'll open new worlds and expose you to new ideas as you set out on the road to realize your own vagabond dreams.

I hope you'll take a moment to share your own favourite travel books with me in the comments.

We'll get to North Korea soon, I promise. I'm in London at the moment and wanted to share something with you.

Spent some time searching for the tomb of one of my heroes. He's buried in a marble replica of a Bedouin tent in a little cemetery in Mortlake...

Captain Richard Francis Burton lived a life people today would hardly find believable. He spoke some 29 languages and dialects. One of the most prolific adventurers of all time, he was the first European to enter the Ethiopian city of Harare, was co-discoverer of the source of the Nile, and was one of the few foreigners ever to make the pilgrimage to Mecca in disguise. Burton was also a master of the sword. On one expedition he fought off an attack by Somali tribesman that saw him wounded through the mouth by a spear, the scars of which are visible in all his later photographs.

Burton's writings provide a fascinating glimpse into an age when we still hadn't come to grips with the limits of our known world. They contain a wealth of detailed observations about native peoples, plants, wildlife, minerals, ruins, and the etymology of place names, and yet are seldom dry. His sense of wonder at penetrating the unknown and the freedom of exploration are always present.

Burton was also a man ahead of his time. He translated the Kama Sutra when Victorian morals would rather have seen it repressed. He referred to native peoples as "intelligent and humane" when most regarded non-Europeans as "sub-human". He approached the world on its terms rather than his own. For the serious traveler, all of his works are worth reading.

Stay tuned for more notes from the road...

Though Henry Miller's book on Greece, The Colossus of Maroussi, is generally regarded as his greatest achievement, he also wrote a second travel book which should be regarded as a definite classic of the genre.

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare chronicles Miller's return to America in 1939, hot on the heels of the Greek trip referred to above, and from what he believed would be an open-ended life in France. The journey begins on a note of hope: "I wanted to have a last look at my country and leave it with a good taste in my mouth. I didn't want to run away from it, as I had originally. I wanted to embrace it, to feel that the old wounds were really healed." Instead, he finds despair: a nation where giant industries deaden the lives of their workers while polluting the environment, and a population which seeks nothing greater than credit, cheap cars, and vapid mass consumerism. It says a great deal that many of Miller's scathing critiques are just as relevant today.

And yet the book contains a note of hope. It's also a celebration of those rare individuals--eccentrics, artists, and creative people of all stripes--whose stubborn resilience represents everything that made the nation great in the first place.

A few years after this trip, Miller finally made peace with the land of his birth. He found his paradise in Big Sur, California, and that is where he lived out the rest of his life.

Charles Doughty's imposing 1,400 page tome is one of those strange books many people hail as a masterpiece of travel literature but which few of those people have read. Famous among scholars of Arab history and culture, it's more often been described as "an achievement" than a gripping read. But thanks to this well chosen selection from Dover Publications, the casual reader can now enjoy some of the author's best passages without bogging down in rambling Victorian-age digressions.

Charles Doughty traveled the Arabian peninsula in the 1870's, when Wahabi fanaticism was at its height. Other explorers had made similar journeys before him, but usually in disguise. Doughty traveled openly as a Christian and an Englishman, among ragged Bedouin tribesmen and devious Arabian townsmen, through desolate wasteland where his life was worth less than the coins in his pocket. He was repeatedly robbed, sometimes beaten, and often taken advantage of, but he also found kindness, honesty, and companionship on his journey. Once you get past the old-fashioned style of his prose, the story of his famine-level existence and his endurance of climactic and cultural extremes makes for a gripping read.

Doughty's remarkable firsthand observations of Arab life and culture provide modern readers with a window into our now vanished past, as well as a glimpse of what it was like to travel before there were hostels, tour packages, or the Lonely Planet.  Travels in Arabia Deserta can be a challenging read, but the insights you'll come away with are worth the effort.

(For those like me who are interested in old explorer's journals, Dover publishes many of these in inexpensive reprint editions. Some of this stuff can be very hard to come by, so I'm grateful for a company like Dover that continues to put it out there.)

If you want to write meaningful travel literature, you've got to immerse yourself in everything that's been published in the genre. In addition to reading broadly, I've made it a habit to read deeply of specific writers whose work truly resonates with me. I first read everything they've ever published. Next, I read their collected letters and journals. After that comes biographies, and finally, critical writings about the author's work.

I've read everything published by Paul Theroux--not just his brilliant travel books, but also his much larger catalog of fiction. For those who haven't read him, it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to my favourite travel writer. For those who have, please read on for a review of his most recent book of travel lit.

The publication of a new book by Paul Theroux is always a bit of an event for serious travelers, whether armchair or active. In his latest work, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux sets out to retrace the route of his groundbreaking first travel book, thirty years later. It is a journey that finds him absolutely at the top of his form.

Already an established novelist, Theroux injected new life into the travel genre in 1975 when he published The Great Railway Bazaar. The story of his mammoth train journey from Britain through Europe to India and Sri Lanka, across Southeast Asia, up Japan, and full circle back to England on the Trans-Siberian Express became an immediate best seller and catapulted the author into the literary big leagues.

That first book was pivotal because it introduced extensive dialogue to a genre that had always tended towards the personal diary, pontification, and self-aggrandizement. Theroux's gift for allowing strange local characters to reveal a place in their own words, coupled with a keen eye for the telling observation, has made him arguably our greatest living travel writer.

"Writing about travel has become a way of making sense of my life," Theroux says in the opening chapter, "the nearest I will come to autobiography." That sense comes across most clearly in this new work. The Theroux of Railway Bazaar was somewhat lost: nearly out of money, a novelist struggling for ideas. He set out on that first journey in 1973 with the vague notion of finding something to write about. And though we only read about it now, three decades later, he was also struggling with desperate loneliness, the constant ache of homesickness, and a deeply troubled marriage. The writer who takes this new journey is a changed man: the highly regarded author of dozens of acclaimed novels and travel books, wealthy, respected, and happily married. He is more relaxed, introspective, open, and with nothing to prove. As the journey unfolds Theroux looks back to confront that earlier self, to relive what he was and to take comfort in what he has become.

The issue at the heart of the book is one I've often struggled with: whether to return to a place where you had experiences which fundamentally altered the course of your life.

"The decision to return to any early scene in your life is dangerous but irresistible," Theroux writes, "not as a search for lost time but for the grotesquerie of what happened since. In most cases it is like meeting an old lover years later and hardly recognizing the object of desire in this funny-looking and bruised old fruit."

Will revisiting these places and seeing the inevitable changes alter your precious memory of them? Will sadness and nostalgia for what has been lost come to replace what you had there? If so, are those memories better left safely untouched, cherished in the past rather than revised by the present?

In the end, Theroux finds his joyful reunion--one particular episode in Burma was especially moving, a meeting with a family who remembered him and who had waited patiently for his return--and he finds a sense of peace with his past.

[Note: I met that family when I was traveling in Burma back in 2002. When I told them I'd searched out their hotel because Theroux had written about it in Railway Bazaar, they asked if I could give them his phone number. They were always hoping he would return. I was glad to read that he did.]

Readers of The Great Railway Bazaar will be pleased to note that Ghost Train to the Eastern Star also covers new ground. Due to war in Afghanistan and an inability to secure a visa for Iran, Theroux was forced to reroute through the Caucasus nations of Georgia and Azerbaijan, and the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, all of which he was visiting for the first time. As he travels through these poverty stricken offshoots of the former USSR, we are reminded of his scrupulous honesty, his firm belief that the bleaker aspects of a country cannot be ignored--as they have been by so many writers of the "isn't it lovely here" persuasion. Theroux has always sought to produce a balanced view in his travel writing, and while that may not fuel everyone's ideal dream, I believe that it cuts much closer to the honest reality of the experience.

Fans of Theroux's work will find all his strengths on display in this new book: his gift for dialogue, precise observation, the well-chosen anecdote or detail which reveals a place, and a full cast of fascinating characters. From the brilliant opening chapter--which startles by calling into question the very practice of travel writing--you can expect to be well and truly hooked.

But don't take my word for it. Pick up a copy for yourself.