Books like A Land of Two Halves — picked by fans

A vivid, amusing account of the author and her friend cycling and sleeping in the wild from Bolivia to Argentina. It is a story of determination and endurance as they push themselves to the extreme, always taking the hardest, highest route. Exhaustion, frustration, and sickness put their friendship to the test. 

As somebody who is the polar opposite, always seeking the easiest way, I was fascinated by this couple’s approach to adventure, and awed by their achievements.  

I always enjoy Bill Bryson’s stories, wherever he travels. He’s like my favorite funny uncle, and I never tire of hearing from him.

After a couple of decades as a Yank in the UK, he was going to move back home. First, he takes us on one last meandering trip all around the nation, to pay homage, to enjoy good memories, and to get amusingly grumpy about inconveniences. His sense of humor is self-effacing, silly, bungling, and very entertaining.  

I love his keen nose for the absurd differences between the two cultures, his collections of comedy place names, and the British slang phrases he never understood. I grew up in the USA but spent all my adult life in the UK, and this had me laughing out loud, frequently. 

How could I not love a book written by a fellow ‘Brexit refugee’? Around the same time Ben Aitken moved to Poland in the wake of the momentous 2016 UK referendum, I fled to Austria. Although we had different motives and his time in Poznan was a temporary adventure, I had to know how it went! And I wasn’t disappointed. There’s dry humour, plenty of self-deprecation, and lots of interesting trivia, which I like. Best of all, it’s a unique premise: “Britain has just reacted to ‘Poles taking our low-paying jobs’. So let me be the first Brit to try going to Poland as a manual labourer, and see how that pans out.” To learn the answers, and have your thoughts provoked whilst being thoroughly entertained, I recommend joining Aitken in the chip shop!

A humorous travel book that visits a bunch of places I’ve been to, including Pyongyang, Jerusalem, and…Thetford! Yes, please! If you’ve lived a life like Fletcher’s or mine, you’ve got no need for fiction because you know that people putting themselves out there in the real world delivers story-fuel beyond compare. The ‘quest’ here is to ‘lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places.’ Okay, it’s a little ethereal and refers to some of his relationship woes—but those words give you a perfect insight into the novel way in which the author sees the planet around him. Oh, and having also landed up basing myself in a Germanic country, I can relate to his experience of having a Teutonic girlfriend too!

Since there are not that many vegan travel books on the market (yet), this title sneaks onto this list, but with a caveat. This book is a collaboration by multiple authors, and some parts are definitely better than others.

The general travel information was clearly written by a vegan and is right on point. However, some of the destination-specific sections seem to be lifted from Lonely Planet’s other titles and weren’t written from a vegan perspective.

While the information about vegan food options in various countries is accurate, a vegan lifestyle is not just about food. Rather, it’s about avoiding causing harm to animals as far as possible through the choices we make in all aspects of our daily life.

Some of the activities mentioned in the Vegan Travel Handbook do not fit within this worldview, which may be off-putting for vegan readers. Nevertheless, for new vegans or vegan-curious travelers… show more.

This writer wrote a series of delightful travel books, but I have found nothing new from her recently, sadly. This book starts wonderfully; the author passes her test to ride a full-size motorbike, which she can barely hold upright and decides (as you do) to test out her newly acquired skills by riding throughout New Zealand.

There is a good description here about a great country and humour too–all enhanced by the struggle to make progress with this, for her, a new form of transport.

I love this one because of the premise: Theroux wants to go up the west coast of Africa, with the caveat that he will go via overland methods only – no planes.

The thinking is that having to traverse the land (or water) itself, however circuitous, tedious, or even dangerous the journey may be, gives us a much greater appreciation for the places we visit. It gives our experiences texture and forces us to be in the present.

I think this is a critical message for us in the modern world. We have this idea that convenience and comfort and speed are necessarily aspirational. But if everything’s streamlined, we end up taking things for granted and essentially just ghosting through life.

Everywhere I went in Iran in 1998 and 2002, there were huge wall paintings of martyrs who had been killed in the war against Iraq (1980-88). Mass attacks led to appalling casualties.

I returned a vicarious Iranian patriot. Christopher de Bellaigue, who speaks good Farsi, took me far deeper into post-revolutionary society in his numerous conversations with individuals from many different milieux, including two who had fought and survived the war.

I regard him as the best guide to the temper of contemporary Iran and the reasons for the fall of the secularizing regimes of the shahs (not least the sudden order in 1936 for women to cast aside the chador, which is likened to an order to go out topless in the west). 

Mass tourism is a funny world, and occasionally it deserves to be skewered with a wink and a smile. This tongue-in-cheek satire is so sharp I continue to cut my fingers on its pages, instantly recognizing the absurdity of some of my own adventures in Eastern and Central Europe.

This Spinal Tap for guidebooks looks at fictional hotels, towns, food, and activities. There are also follow-up guidebooks, one that roasts a mythical Southeast Asian country in a similar fashion and another that pokes fun at a fictional yet familiar country in Latin America.

Veteran travellers, and especially backpackers, will have a riot. 

I had this book beside me while recovering from an urgent hip replacement. A guy who walked solo from Herat to Kabul in the winter of Afghanistan can be a great aid when you struggle in the stairwell.

Stewart–a former MP and nowadays the host of The Rest is Politics podcast–did the job for me in his excellent book and brave walk. A few months after my operation, I hiked the Mont Blanc trail. It's nothing like Afghanistan, but I did come across some icy peaks.