The Travel & Tourism category has 695 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 853 ratings. The most-rated is Vagabonding.
Beyond the Coffee Shop
Summary
Canada is blessed with thousands of kilometers of empty roads which seem to wind on forever through forested hills and between still blue lakes. What better way to explore them than by riding 40-year-old Italian motorbikes, famous for their dodgy electrics and sparse dealer network? Forty-year-old bikes, aged rider, thousands of kilometers of virtually unserviced empty roads in the middle of bear-, wolf-, and blackfly-infested wilderness - what could possibly go wrong?
©2015 Nicholas Adams (P)2019 Nicholas Adams
Last Chance to See
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin. Join Douglas Adams, best-selling and beloved author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and zoologist Mark Carwardine on an adventure in search of the world’s most endangered and exotic creatures. In this book, Adams’ self-proclaimed favourite of his own works, the pair encounter animals in imminent peril: the giant Komodo dragon of Indonesia, the lovable kakapo of New Zealand, the blind river dolphins of China, the white rhinos of Zaire, the rare birds of Mauritius island in the Indian Ocean and the alien-like aye-aye of Madagascar. Inimitably witty and poignant, Last Chance to See is both a celebration of our most extraordinary creatures and a warning about what we have to lose if we do not act soon. Featuring a fantastic new foreword by the authors' longtime friend Stephen Fry and an afterword from Mark Carwardine that considers what has changed since the book was first published, Last Chance to See feels more urgent than ever before.
©1990 Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine (P)2020 Penguin Audio
An Arabian Journey
Summary
Following in the footsteps of famed explorers such as Lawrence of Arabia and Wilfred Thesiger, British explorer Levison Wood brings us along on his most complex expedition yet: a circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula. Starting in September 2017 in a city in Northern Syria, a stone's throw away from Turkey and amidst the deadliest war of the 21st century, Wood set forth on a 5,000-mile trek through the most contested region on the planet. He moved through the Middle East for six months, from ISIS-occupied Iraq through Kuwait and along the jagged coastlines of the Emirates and Oman; across a civil-war-torn Yemen and on to Saudia Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, before ending on the shores of the Mediterranean in Lebanon. Like his predecessors, Wood traveled through some of the harshest and most beautiful environments on Earth, seeking to challenge our perceptions of this often-misunderstood part of the world. Through the relationships he forges along the way - and the personal histories and local mythologies that his companions share - Wood examines how the region has changed over thousands of years and reveals a side of the Middle East we don't often see in the media.
©2018 Levison Wood (P)2019 Tantor
Blanket of Stars: Thru-Hiking the Camino de Santiago
Summary
An unlikely pilgrim battles agoraphobia to reclaim life beyond the sofa. The 800-kilometer journey along the Camino Frances provides a scenic backdrop to ponder midlife crisis and chronic illness, an empty nest and marital discord, military service and post-traumatic stress, rage and grief, heartbreak and fear - and the way forward. El Camino de Santiago, known fondly as "The Way", is a matrix of trails with starting points across Europe leading to the sacred relics of Saint James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Often considered a Catholic pilgrimage, this ancient route predates Christianity. The Way continues to evolve, attracting spiritual seekers with and without religion, thru-hikers, fitness junkies, history buffs, and the curious. Armed with humor, grit, and a backpack named Little Agnus, Lockhart tackles emotional and physical obstacles, shares adventures with pilgrims from all over the world, mothers traveling teens, endures blisters and bicycle seats, and embraces the glory of Mother Nature and the intrinsic spirituality of peregrination. She finds herself transcending from a human being on a spiritual quest to a spiritual being on a human quest.
©2018 C.W. Lockhart (P)2018 C.W. Lockhart
Ship for Brains: Cruise Confidential 2
Summary
Cruise ship crew have it hard. Cruise ship rock stars have it harder! Bruns is back to expose the high seas art world. In this hilarious sequel he vividly describes his ship life highs and lows, misadventures, mis-flirtations and, through it all, his astute insights into human nature.
©2011 Brian David Bruns (P)2018 Brian David Bruns
Alone Time
Summary
"In Paris (or anywhere else, really) a table for one can be a most delightful place." (Alone Time, as seen in The New York Times) A wise, passionate account of the pleasures of travelling solo In our increasingly frantic daily lives, many people are genuinely fearful of the prospect of solitude, but time alone can be both rich and restorative, especially when travelling. Through on-the-ground reporting and recounting the experiences of artists, writers, and innovators who cherished solitude, Stephanie Rosenbloom considers how being alone as a traveler - and even in one's own city - is conducive to becoming acutely aware of the sensual details of the world - patterns, textures, colors, tastes, sounds - in ways that are difficult to do in the company of others. Alone Time is divided into four parts, each set in a different city, in a different season, in a single year. The destinations - Paris, Istanbul, Florence, New York - are all pedestrian-friendly, allowing travelers to slow down and appreciate casual pleasures instead of hurtling through museums and posting photos to Instagram. Each section spotlights a different theme associated with the joys and benefits of time alone and how it can enable people to enrich their lives - facilitating creativity, learning, self-reliance, as well as the ability to experiment and change. Rosenbloom incorporates insights from psychologists and sociologists who have studied solitude and happiness, and explores such topics as dining alone, learning to savor, discovering interests and passions, and finding or creating silent spaces. Her engaging and elegant prose makes Alone Time as warmly intimate an account as the details of a trip shared by a beloved friend - and will have its many listeners eager to set off on their own solo adventures.
©2018 Stephanie Rosenbloom (P)2018 Penguin Audio
Himalaya
Summary
In his most challenging journey to date, Palin tackles the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on earth. It is a virtually unbroken wall of rock stretching 1,800 miles from the borders of Afghanistan to south-west China. Penetrated but never conquered, it remains the world's most majestic natural barrier, a magnificent wilderness that shapes the history and politics of Asia to this day. Having previously risen to the challenge of seas, poles, and deserts, the highest mountains in the world were a natural target for Michael Palin. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in six months of hard traveling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the mighty peaks of K2, Annapurna, and Everest, the bleak and barren plateau of Tibet, the gorges of the Yangtze, the tribal lands of the Indo-Burmese border, and the vast Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh. He also passes through political flashpoints including Pakistan's remote north-west frontier, terrorist-torn Kashmir, and the mountains of Nagaland.
©2014 Audible, Inc. (P)2014 Michael Palin
Steps out of Time
Summary
Years ago, an overachieving and harried young mother accidentally flushed her gold watch down the toilet. Time passed, but the image of the lost watch continued to haunt her, a symbol of an overcommitted life. Two decades later, propelled by a series of curious coincidences, she leaves behind her busy professional life, her cell phone, and her family to escape the tyranny of time and walk 500 miles across Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Steps out of Time brings the mysterious and wonderful world of the Camino to life with its tales of serendipitous encounters, new friends made (and one tragically lost), stunning natural beauty, and unforgettable food. By the end of her journey, an exhausted and exhilarated Katharine Soper is keenly aware she has completed much more than a monthlong walk.
©2013 Katharine B. Soper (P)2019 Tantor
Motorcycle Therapy
Summary
From the Canadian Rockies to the Panamanian Jungle, Motorcycle Therapy rumbles with comic adventure as two men, fleeing failed relationships, test the limits of their motorcycles and their friendship. Join the horn-honking, signal-flashing, wheelie-popping pair as they endure painful bee stings, painful snakebites, and (when they talk to girls) painful humiliation.
©2006 Jeremy Kroeker (P)2013 Jeremy Kroeker
How to Be a Family
Summary
In this "funny and honest" (Pamela Druckerman) memoir, Slate editor Dan Kois sets out with his family on a journey around the world to change their lives together. What happens when one frustrated dad turns his kids' lives upside down in search of a new way to be a family? Dan Kois and his wife always did their best for their kids. Busy professionals living in the D.C. suburbs, they scheduled their children's time wisely, and when they weren't arguing over screen time, the Kois family - Dan, his wife Alia, and their two pre-teen daughters - could each be found searching for their own happiness. But aren't families supposed to achieve happiness together? In this eye-opening, heartwarming, and very funny family memoir, the fractious, loving Kois' go in search of other places on the map that might offer them the chance to live away from home - but closer together. Over a year the family lands in New Zealand, the Netherlands, Costa Rica, and small-town Kansas. The goal? To get out of their rut of busyness and distractedness and to see how other families live outside the East Coast parenting bubble. How to Be a Family brings listeners along as the Kois girls - witty, solitary, extremely online Lyra and goofy, sensitive, social butterfly Harper - walk through the Kiwi bush, ride bikes to a Dutch school in the pouring rain, battle iguanas in their Costa Rican kitchen, and learn to love a town where everyone knows your name. Meanwhile, Dan interviews neighbors, public officials, and scholars to learn why each of these places work the way they do. Will this trip change the Kois family's lives? Or do families take their problems and conflicts with them wherever we go? A journalistic memoir filled with heart, empathy, and lots of whining, How to Be a Family will make listeners dream about the amazing adventures their own families might take. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Dan Kois (P)2019 Hachette Audio
Long Way Down
Summary
Winner of the British Book Awards, Popular Non-Fiction Award, 2008. Eighteen countries. Five shock absorbers. Two bikers. One amazing adventure. After their fantastic trip round the world in 2004, fellow actors and bike fanatics Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman couldn't shake the travel bug. Inspired by their UNICEF visits to Africa, they knew they had to go back and experience this extraordinary continent in more depth. Joining up once more with producer/directors Russ Malkin and David Alexanian and the Long Way Round team, and with two new BMWs loaded up for the trip, their route took them from John O'Groats at the northernmost tip of Scotland to Cape Agulhas on the southernmost tip of South Africa. Riding though spectacular scenery, often in extreme temperatures, Ewan and Charley faced their hardest challenges yet. With their trademark humour and honesty, they tell their story: the drama, the dangers, and the sheer exhilaration of riding together again, though a continent filled with magic and wonder.
©2007 Long Way Round Ltd (P)2007 Hachette Audio
Driving Miss Norma
Summary
When Miss Norma was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she was advised to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But instead of confining herself to a hospital bed for what could be her last stay, Norma - newly widowed after nearly seven decades of marriage - rose to her full height of five feet and told her doctor, "I'm 90 years old. I'm hitting the road." Packing what she needed, Norma took off on an unforgettable cross-country journey with three professional nomads - her retired son, Tim; his wife, Ramie; and their standard poodle, Ringo - in a 36-foot RV. Driving Miss Norma is the charming, infectiously joyous chronicle of their experiences on the road - a transformative journey of living life on your own terms that shows us that it is never too late to begin an adventure, inspire hope, or become a trailblazer. As this once timid woman says yes to living in the face of death, she tries regional foods for the first time, zip-lines through a former stranger's yard, and reaches for the clouds in a hot air balloon. With each passing mile (and one educational visit to a cannabis dispensary), Miss Norma's health improves, and conversations that had once been taboo begin to unfold. Norma, Tim, and Ramie bond in ways they had never done before, and their definitions of home, family, and friendship expand. Stop by stop, state by state, they meet countless people from all walks of life - strangers who become fast friends and welcome them with kindness and open hearts. Infused with this irrepressible nonagenarian's wisdom, courage, and generous spirit, Driving Miss Norma reminds us that life is beautiful and precious and that family, fun, and self-discovery can happen at any age.
©2017 Tim Bauerschmidt and Ramie Liddle (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Distant Suns
Summary
Sam Manicom's dynamic third book transports you to Southern Africa, South and Central America. Sam has a gift for describing the vibrancy of people and places, and you are led effortlessly through three very different parts of the world by his enthusiasm and his acute observations. Human behavior, drama, passion, disaster, humor, and the pure adrenaline buzz of overlanding such far-flung, wild and exotic places are all here. This thought-provoking mix is brought alive by both his descriptive, which can make the mouth water or the hairs on the back of the neck crawl, and the historical tidbits and cultural notes about the people and places he visits. Distant Suns highlights the joys of traveling with others and how, when you are with others, you often do and see things you otherwise may not have done; but also touches on the added stress that comes with traveling in groups - even small groups. Unlike his two previous books, Sam travels with a companion, Birgit, who you'll have met during the course of his previous book Under Asian Skies. Distant Suns is the story of how boy meets girl, both endowed with a mile-wide streak of wanderlust, and both fiercely independent, but learning to live together on the road, and saving each other's lives on occasion. Birgit catches your attention right away with her incredible initiative and capability with her bike. Yet, she'd only been riding a bike for 600 miles when they arrived in Kenya at the beginning of this journey. Sam and Birgit's adventures are never without peril, but the attitude they have is what makes them terrific world travelers. Over the course of three years, a lot of things can and do go wrong, but Sam and Birgit don't let any of them stop them from completing their journey. When Paul Theroux wrote, "Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land," he could have been describing Distant Suns.
©2008 Sam H.N. Manicom (P)2016 Sam N.H. Manicom
This Van Could Be Your Life
Summary
From the bestselling author of The Long Run comes an emotional and adventurously funny true story of a man, a van, and a family on an epic journey of rediscovering what matters most. It’s been a rough time for Mishka Shubaly and the women in his family. In a failed quest for something stable, they’ve all arrived at a crossroads. Divorce, unemployment, eviction, addiction, sobriety, an abusive marriage, grief, homelessness, breakups, and abandonment. Can Mishka, still single, self-doubting, and on the lost side of forty, help? Maybe. He’s got the idiotic idea of a pilgrimage from Southern California to northern Saskatchewan for a family reunion. Eight troupers in all. And so sisters, nieces, nephews, and mom (armed with a bulletproof positive attitude) pile into Mishka’s 1976 shag-carpeted Chevy van. It’s a little wounded itself but raring to go. With four thousand miles of road ahead of them, Mishka steers headlong on a journey toward a better understanding of what defines a family, and what it means to grow up, grow apart, and get back together again - at ten miles to the gallon.
©2020 Mishka Shubaly (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Secrets of the Savanna
Summary
"Vividly written... Their story is thrilling - the kind of tale that wild-animal lovers won't easily forget." (People)
In this riveting real-life adventure, Mark and Delia Owens tell the dramatic story of their last years in Africa, fighting to save elephants, villagers, and - in the end - themselves. The award-winning zoologists and pioneering conservationists describe their work in the remote and ruggedly beautiful Luangwa Valley, in northeastern Zambia. There they studied the mysteries of the elephant population’s recovery after poaching, discovering remarkable similarities between humans and elephants. A young elephant named Gift provided the clue to help them crack the animals’ secret of survival. A stirring portrait of life in Africa, Secrets of the Savanna is a remarkable record of the Owenses's unique passions.
©2006 Mark Owens and Delia Owens (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Getting High
Summary
What is the best way for the average person to authentically experience the world's greatest mountain range - the Himalayas? Fortunately, there is now a good answer. The Annapurna Circuit in Nepal is the most popular footpath in Asia. Its genius lies in its design. Trekkers wind their way around and along some of the world's greatest peaks, ultimately getting near 18,000 feet, without ever having to do any 'technical climbing'. This Circuit is widely considered one of the world's great treks, and mortals from all around the world are coming to Nepal for the unique chance to 'get high'. Bill Walker ('Skywalker') struggled his way through the Annapurna Circuit in 2012. He has written this entertaining tale of his journey in this land of Sherpas, cold, altitude, and rushing water.
©2013 Bill Walker (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Country Driving
Summary
From the best-selling author of Oracle Bones and River Town comes the final book in his award-winning trilogy, on the human side of the economic revolution in China. In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China. Hessler writes movingly of the average people - farmers, migrant workers, entrepreneurs - who have reshaped the nation during one of the most critical periods in its modern history. Country Driving begins with Hessler's 7,000-mile trip across northern China, following the Great Wall, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau. He investigates a historically important rural region being abandoned, as young people migrate to jobs in the southeast. Next, Hessler spends six years in Sancha, a small farming village in the mountains north of Beijing, which changes dramatically after the local road is paved and the capital's auto boom brings new tourism. Finally, he turns his attention to urban China, researching development over a period of more than two years in Lishui, a small southeastern city where officials hope that a new government-built expressway will transform a farm region into a major industrial center. Peter Hessler, whom The Wall Street Journal calls "one of the Western world's most thoughtful writers on modern China", deftly illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against foreigners, is now building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world.
©2010 Peter Hessler (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Indian Creek Chronicles
Summary
Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award, Indian Creek Chronicles is Pete Fromm's account of seven winter months spent alone in a tent in Idaho guarding salmon eggs and coming face to face with the blunt realities of life as a contemporary mountain man. A gripping story of adventure and a modern-day Walden, this contemporary classic established Fromm as one of the West's premier voices.
©1993 Pete Fromm (P)2017 Tantor
Surfacing
Summary
"[Kathleen Jamie’s] essays guide you softly along coastlines of varying continents, exploring caves, and pondering ice ages until the narrator stumbles over - not a rock on the trail, but mortality, maybe the earth’s, maybe our own, pointing to new paths forward through the forest." (Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing, "By the Book" in The New York Times Book Review)
An immersive exploration of time and place in a shrinking world, from the award-winning author of Sightlines.
In this remarkable blend of memoir, cultural history, and travelogue, poet and author Kathleen Jamie touches points on a timeline spanning millennia, and considers what surfaces and what reconnects us to our past. From the thawing tundra linking a Yup'ik village in Alaska to its hunter-gatherer past to the shifting sand dunes revealing the impressively preserved homes of neolithic farmers in Scotland, Jamie explores how the changing natural world can alter our sense of time. Most movingly, she considers, as her father dies and her children leave home, the surfacing of an older, less tethered sense of herself. In precise, luminous prose, Surfacing offers a profound sense of time passing and an antidote to all that is instant, ephemeral, unrooted.
©2019 Kathleen Jamie (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Tortillas to Totems
Summary
Sam Manicom's dynamic fourth book is an enticing yet frequently challenging motorcycle journey across the dramatic landscapes of Mexico, the United States and Canada. Sam's partner Birgit is no longer a novice motorcyclist - riding through southern Africa and South America turned her into a rider capable of facing any challenge. But Sam was worried. As they arrived into North America they had been travelling around the world by motorcycle for six years and he was beginning to think that North America was going to be easy; too easy in fact. Were all the challenges of travel in the developing world countries going to be missing? Sam couldn't have been more wrong. Samuel Johnson wrote, "The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them how they are." After all, aren't these some of the main reasons for going travelling? To experience as many different things and ways of life as possible? To discover new and wonderful things, but also to have preconceived ideas challenged. This true-life story has more twists and turns than a Rocky Mountain Pass, and more surprises than anyone could expect. As it did them, at times it could challenge you too. Woven into this surprising story are canyons, cowboys, idyllic beaches, bears, mountains, Californian Vineyards, gun-toting policemen with grudges, glaciers, exploding volcanoes, dodgy border crossings, and some of the most stunning open roads that a traveler could ever wish to see. A gripping rollercoaster of a journey across North America. Sam and Birgit are thrown into a completely new set of challenges. These adventures bring alive the history, geography, human relationships and the pure joy of the open road.
©2011 Sam H.N. Manicom (P)2017 Sam H.N. Manicom