![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ebookers.com\/travel-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Afghanistan-.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nCome to Afghanistan! These days even the most intrepid traveller would think twice (multiply that) before visiting the strife-torn country but decades before the Soviets, Islamic fundamentalists and US platoons wrestled over the often austerely beautiful place, a certain plucky English gent called eric Newby turned up to climb a mountain, whether the mountain dashed like it or not.
\nFrom his adventures, he extracted a wonderfully comical and quintessentially English, downplayed tale of mistranslations and genuinely gruelling mishaps. Read it \u2013 even if a trip to Afghanistan is some way off.<\/p>\n
Cuba \u2013 Waiting for Snow in Havana<\/h3>\n
The odd title of this book by a Cuban exiled from his country as a child evokes a land where Fidel Castro’s victorious Communists locked up dissidents and banned decadent western imports such as Christmas. Forget the ultra-modern Japan of hi-tech gadgetry and neon-draped Tokyo streets. This novel by the Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata tells the earlier tale of a doomed romance between a wealthy, aimless city-dweller and a rural geisha-cum-prostitute in a remote rural town. One of the world’s oldest Christian countries, with ancient and sometimes giddily inaccessible places of worship to prove it, Ethiopia is a deeply beguiling travel destination. This account of a \u201csunburned country\u201d, as one of Australia’s greatest poems puts it, is a dollop of gold-plated drollery from the bestselling travel writer Bill Bryson. Defining statement of bohemian travellers everywhere determined to put off getting a real job for as long as humanly possible, Jack Kerouac’s late 50s novel was welcomed at the time as the voice of the countercultural Beat movement. This early work by one of the 20th century’s greatest travel writers, and equally gifted misanthropists, remains a compelling portrait of a continent. This 1980 story by the Jamaican-American Michael Thelwell is notable for being that unusual thing: a novelisation of a film.<\/a><\/p>\n
\nRead Carlos Eire’s piercing and moving testimony of the history of this increasingly popular tourist spot that many of us now know only through the clich\u00e9s of candy-coloured classic cars and cigar-chewing grandmas.<\/p>\nJapan \u2013 Snow Country<\/h3>\n
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\nDistant as it might be from more familiar Japanese themes, there’s nonetheless a highly recognisable tourist trope at the novel’s centre \u2013 the onsen, a hot spring.<\/p>\nEthiopia \u2013 Notes from the Hyena’s Belly<\/h3>\n
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\nAmong the best literary guides to the nation is this memoir by the emigr\u00e9 Nega Mezlekia. Beginning with youthful pranks involving chili-laced enemas administered to an oppressive teacher’s prized cows, it goes on to describe the author’s involvement with, and attempts to evade, the various fanatical movements that long terrorised among Africa’s most gorgeous places.<\/p>\nAustralia \u2013 Down Under<\/h3>\n
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\nCombining diverting vignettes of his encounters with other folk on the road \u2013 or in this case the Indian-Pacific cross-country train \u2013 and potted histories of hard-pressed early explorers, it cements Bryson’s resemblance to a cuddly geography teacher with a gift for spinning a yarn.<\/p>\nThe USA \u2013 On the Road<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nHis tale of freewheeling across America with barely disguised real life literary chums is also, however, the tale of a serious amphetamines \u2013 among other substances \u2013 abuser. Written in three weeks, it often reads like it, but, hang it, a battered copy still looks pretty good thrust into a faded-jeans back pocket.<\/p>\nAsia \u2013 The Great Railway Bazaar<\/h3>\n
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\nThe volume shows off Paul Theroux’s unapologetic talent for slow, detailed description of people and place, combined with sweeping erudition. Who cares if Theroux just seems to have got grouchier as he ages \u2013 still few writers plunge you into the heat and dust of a foreign country as thoroughly as he does.<\/p>\nJamaica \u2013 The Harder They Come<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nThe film in question, released in 1972 and hugely successful on the island, was a crime caper, reeking of marijuana and clanging with shootouts, that’s best known for supposedly introducing reggae to the rest of the world.
\nThelwell’s novel is a period piece worth reading in part for the salty Jamaican proverbs it ushers on to the page.<\/p>\nBhutan – The Circle of Kharma<\/strong><\/h3>\n