Stephen Fabes
is a medical doctor who uses human stories to explore the landscape of health and disease. In 2016, he arrived home, having cycled the length of six continents.
River Town
by Peter Hessler (2001)
Hessler’s sensitive account of his time as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching on the banks of the Yangtze River is all the more revealing when he shares his students’ hopes, fears and pointed silences.
Dispatches from Pluto
by Richard Grant (2015)
With his yoga-practising liberal girlfriend in tow, Grant moves to deepest Mississippi, a state that tops league tables for all the wrong reasons. And yet despite signs of social dysfunction, he develops an unexpected and requited love for his new home.
In Trouble Again
by Redmond O’Hanlon (1988)
Some may consign this to the ‘doofus does’ school of travel writing, but when a bumbling naturalist heads into remote Venezuelan Amazonia, the resulting misadventure is far too funny, passionate and heart thumping to write off.
Coasting: A Private Voyage
by Jonathan Raban (1987)
An elegant travelogue of a man and his 32-foot ketch, sailing 4,000 miles around the British coast. Raban’s interests – the swirling sea and the national psyche – combine beautifully with entertaining cameos from Paul Theroux and Philip Larkin.
Lands of Lost Borders
by Kate Harris (2018)
Kate cycles the Silk Road with childhood friend Mel. There’s an intellectual voyage here, too – an open-minded meditation on borders.
Indonesia etc
by Elizabeth Pisani (2014)
Like all the most adept wandering writers, Elizabeth will nose around, undaunted, chatting with anyone willing. This attitude, along with an eye for the absurd, makes this a particularly enjoyable survey of some of the little-known lands of Indonesia.
Interstate
by Julian Sayarer (2016)
On an impromptu hitchhike across the USA, heading west like many before him, Julian looks to people to understand a nation.
Alan Partridge: Nomad
by Neil Gibbons et al. (2016)
A send-up of all the worst adventurer tropes, Alan follows in his father’s footsteps, an ‘odyssey’ from Norwich to a nuclear reactor in Kent.