These are books that have inspired me during the years. Some you already know for sure, some are a little bit hard to find, try out Amazon.com. Random order.
The travels of Ibn Batouta. Unrivalled when it comes to travelling, Done and in the 700's, 75 000 miles (three times longer than Marco Polo) during 29 years...
K2 – The Story of The Savage Mountain. Jim Curran. The interesting story about the most dangerous mountain in the world. The book gives you a complete picture of the history of K2 – from it was first spotted to the last climbs.
Half Safe – With Jeep over the Atlantic. Ben Carlin The title says it all...Crazy adventurers goes over the Atlantic in an amphibian jeep!
My Vertical World. Jerzy Kukuczka. Mountaineering books can be very boring, but this one is full on all the way through. Messner may have been the first person to climb all the 14 8000m peaks, but Kukuczka did it in a completely different way. Hardcore adventure, hardship and almost super human tales.
The Long Walk. Slawomir Rawicz. Hardship and misery during an impossible walk from the concentration camps in Siberia towards freedom.
Running a Hotel on top of the world. Alec de la Seoer. A Little bit different book about Tibet. Not the “normal” stuff, this one is about a young guy who goes to Lhasa and starts working on the Holiday Inn.
The Lost Heart of Asia. Colin Thubron. Some may say this is one droning travel log, but I don't think so. Interesting story about Central Asia, from the author with the most vivid language I've encountered. Very well written and interesting.
Blue Water. Griffith. An interesting introduction to blue water sailing from a very colourful author. If you can't get off the reef - why not use dynamite and blast our way off!
Riding The Iron Rooster. Paul Theroux. Typical Theroux. Sarcastic, dead on spot and very objective. A good picture of China some years back.
The Climb. Anatoli Boukreev and G. Weston DeWalt. Comparisons difficult to avoid...but this one gives a naked, realistic, sometimes dry description of the Everst catastrophe in –96. Very different from Krakauer’s well written, but sensationalistic account of the same incident. This one actually rings of truth...
The Great Game. Peter Hopkirk. A classic! Gives you a very good backround picture of Russia’s and England’s race for India.
Danziger’s Travels – Beyond Forbidden Frontiers. Nick Danziger. Another classic! This book was of great inspiration for me when I started to travel – Full on adventures: Without visas and other unnecessary stuff through Asia.
The Death Zone. Matt Dickinson. Starts off quite boring, but it grows. A novice mountaineerer’s story about climbing Mt Everest from the north.
Papillion. Henri Charrière. You wonder how much beating a human being can take and this is probably pretty much on the limit all the way through. A man with an iron will.
A choice of catastrophes - The disasters that threaten our world. Isaac Asimov. Not a travel book, but I found this one very interesting.
The Cronicles of Tomas Covenant. Stephen Donaldson. The best fantasy I've ever read. Two excellent trilogies about the biggest anti hero ever depicted.
Touching the void. Joe Simpson. A classic mountaineering/travel book about maybe the worst choice to take: To save yourself and let your friend die, or sacrifice yourself and both dies...