Veils and vagabonds

The best travel books released this year

The best travel books released this year

Chewing Gum in Holy Water by Cheryl Hardacre (Allen & Unwin, $26.95): This delightful tale of Mario Valentini's childhood in the Abruzzi mountains of Italy is related by his Australian wife. While still a young boy, Valentini was sent to live with his uncle, a travelling priest, and that's when the real adventures started. Food is at the heart of this charming book: robust and rustic fare, tomatoes torn from the vine, home-grown quinces and chestnuts. All it lacks is recipes; read with a glass of chianti to hand.

Cruise: Identity, Design and Culture by Peter Quartermaine and Bruce Peter (Laurence King Publishing/Thames & Hudson, $49.95): A fab compendium for cruise fans that covers the history of ocean liners and includes images of vintage posters, early trans-Atlantic crossings and even a special edition "Carnival Cruise" Barbie, resplendent in nautical jacket, striped T-shirt and jaunty captain's cap. Early menus are reproduced: scotch broth, boiled codfish, mutton and kidney hotpot, for one's dining pleasure aboard Mauretania in 1907.

Inhaling the Mahatma by Christopher Kremmer (HarperCollins, $35): Subtitled An Indian Odyssey, this is indeed a journey of discovery, beautifully detailed by a distinguished foreign correspondent. While not a travel book in any conventional sense, Kremmer's observations illuminate a complex, fast-developing country where "small tasks can seem insurmountable, but the impossible is achieved with ease". And the title's odd Gandhi reference? It refers to an urn containing the remains of the Mahatma discovered in a bank vault decades after his death. Take the combination of a holy ceremony on the banks of the Ganges, too little care and the wrath of the weather gods ... ashes to the wind.

Looking East by Steve McCurry (Phaidon/Bookwise International, $69.95): McCurry is arguably the best travel photographer working in Asia; certainly his skill for portraiture is without peer and this handsome volume is focused on the faces of Southeast Asia and the subcontinent. Each image covers a generously sized page and the time span is wide: from a pilgrim in a saffron scarf in the holy Ganges-side town of Haridwar, India (1980) to a nomad boy from Tibet (2005). Many of the subjects wear vivid tribal dress and jewellery (a shepherdess in Jodhpur, India, is adorned with stacked bangles from wrist to upper arm) but others, such as an Afghan coalminer, merely display the grime of grinding poverty. It's a splendid publication of images as haunting as McCurry's best-known work: the Afghan girl with mesmerising green eyes who featured on the cover of National Geographic in 1984.

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron (Chatto & Windus, $34.95): The master of observation is back, and again in central Asia. Thubron journeys from the heart of China to Kurdish Turkey (by camel, cart, bus, truck and shanks's pony) via the Silk Road: "a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia". If you haven't read his The Lost Heart of Asia, combine the two for a real holiday reading treat.

The Passionate Shopper by Marion von Adlerstein (Lantern, $39.95): From its pretty-in-pink cover and chapter openers to the cute Lyndal Harris illustrations, this book is a joyful thing. But aside from its decorative appeal, The Passionate Shopper is an undeniably useful book: von Adlerstein has gathered info from travel and fashion insiders on the places to shop, sleep and be stylish across the globe. Where to buy the best cashmere, how to find samples and seconds in New York, gorgeous boutique hotels: all here in abundance.

The Veiled Lands by Christine Hogan (Pan Macmillan, $33): Channelling the likes of Isabelle Eberhardt, Isabel Burton and similar birds of (fearless) passage, this Australian writer sets off at a cracking pace through Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the Persian Gulf states. There are the expected irritants -- unco-operative camels, getting lost in souks and even the Sahara -- but the free-spirited Hogan is bowled over by the warm hospitality of the Middle East.

Ultimate Spa by Judy Chapman (Periplus/Simon & Schuster, $65): This is a grand blockbuster of a publication, crammed with information on dreamy spas and feel-good treatments (and recipes for therapies as intriguing as green papaya enzyme boost). The luscious photography is by Asia specialist Luca Invernizzi Tettoni and the resort spas he has captured are the region's best, from the Four Seasons in Bali (Jimbaran Bay and hillside Ubud) to Anantara at Hua Hin, Thailand. Chapman is an acknowledged spa guru with several books to her credit; my only quibble is the over-emphasis on Bali and Thailand, when the Maldives, Sri Lanka and India surely are deserving of equal attention.

Wild Australia by Theo Allofs and Nicola Markus (David Bateman Ltd/Brumby Books, $59.95): The added incentive to buy this big coffee-table book is that a portion of the proceeds goes to the Australian arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Allofs has spent 10 years photographing some of our most remote landscapes and native animals; his images are divided into five geographic categories, tied together with apposite text by Markus, a zoologist and conservationist. The animal photography is irresistible, from a joey snug in mum kangaroo's pouch to a Spencer's burrowing frog with its bulbous head poking out of a red-sand mound.

ALSO worthy of mention is the Eland series of reissued travel classics, distributed in Australia by UNIREPS (University of NSW), at an average price of $30.95. With retro covers, introductions and substantial author biographies, the collection includes compelling reads such as A Dragon Apparent and Naples '44 by Norman Lewis, A Year in Marrakesh by Peter Mayne and Travels with Myself and Another by Martha Gellhorn. There are more than 40 in the full Eland series, presumably to be released progressively in Australia. The authors pull no punches: Gellhorn subtitles her travel memoir Five Journeys from Hell (and is shown on the cover with a rifle; "I wish to die," she declares at one stage) and let's stay tuned for titles as intriguing as A Cure for Serpents (Alberto Denti di Pirajno) and Scum of the Earth (Arthur Koestler).

Books are listed in alphabetical order and not in any order of merit.