Books that make you want to pack your travelling gear

Kim, Rudyard Kipling

The orphan Kim’s odyssey towards manhood, taking him through India to the foot of the Himalayas and back, with a stop-off for a British education, is both a ripping yarn and a ripely sensual hymn to the subcontinent’s exoticism and beauty.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller

The smells and sounds of lost childhood homes in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia live on in this beautifully written, funny and candid memoir by the daughter of an enterprising farmer and his intrepid wife.

The Flâneur, Edmund White

In this essay-cum-polemic, White encourages us to view Paris as that Baudelairean figure, the “flâneur”, would have done, wandering without agenda, taking the city by chance.

Life of Pi, Yann Martel

The ocean is some form of punishment for the stricken Pi, but Martel’s vivid descriptions of an exotic water world of animals and colour make you want to dive straight in. And visit Pondicherry and Paris.

A Bend in the River, VS Naipaul

Possibly the most unsettling of this award-wining novelist’s books, this is a meaty masterpiece that views postColonial Africa through the most cynical of eyes.

Naples ‘44, Norman Lewis

Travel books have rarely been as atmospheric or caked in bittersweet nostalgia as this account of the author’s wartime sojourn in the chaotic and vibrant city.

Midnight in Sicily, Peter Robb

Its subtitle, “On Art, Food, History, Travel and La Cosa Nostra”, pretty much sums up this gorgeously written book, which is dripping with sensual prose and observations.

Mountains of the Mind,

Robert Macfarlane

This is Macfarlane’s first book and his best – a dramatic, richly imagined look at our fascination with mountains and the author’s adventures in them.