Walking to Singapore - A Year Off the Beaten Path in Southeast Asia

Tired of short vacations, Janet and John quit their jobs, shouldered backpacks and decided to explore beyond the edges of their American map. The outcome of their adventure is A Frog in My Backpack, a vivid, humorous voyage to foreign lands, living with what they could carry, conquering fear of the unknown.

Over five continents, they met with adventure: Descending to an underground cathedral of salt, following a postcard to a mountain of gods, hiking the Himalayas. They met the locals: The Turkish boy who pantomimed a rifle and proclaimed, "Danger for your life!" and Abdul who whispered, "Want a bugging device? I have to get rid of it."

A Blind Date With the World gives the reader a seat in the ox-cart with the team that eventually won a grueling 40,000 miles-in-seventeen-days-through-ten-countries travel adventure. Chalmers offers up a steady barrage of colorful, intriguing and provocative insights into our Global Village as he and his partner-in-crime race through sacred holy grounds, track down orangutans and employ every conceivable method of public transportation.

Billed as the HumanRace,what was thought to be relaxing champagne and caviar sojourn around the world turned into “the scavenger hunt from hell!” The race had its rabid competitors from around the world chasing down aphrodisiacs in Asia, escaping train fires in Egypt and skulking around graveyards at midnight in France, for fame and fortune awaiting them in New York City. Chalmers and Valvur eventually won the race, but not without barely surviving the ordeal and transforming themselves into global cultural terrorists.

Expressive, heart-thumping, compelling and totally irreverent, A Blind Date With the World offers a unique and colorful looks at “Homo touristicus” running amok in the world at the height of the Greed is Good Go Go years. A must read for any real adventurer or armchair traveler.

Remember when you were a kid and you got your first bicycle? After a few weeks of mastering the dynamics of balancing, steering, and pedaling, all at the same time hopefully, your father released his protective, steadying grip on the seat and you went wobbling off on your own. It was probably your very first taste of independence and freedom and you knew you liked that feeling very much. Few things in life have ever compared to that first solo ride.

Almost 40 years after my first solo bike ride, I was able to recapture the excitement and passion of that momentous occasion when I pedaled out of Anchorage, Alaska bound for Tierra del Fuego-the very tip of South America. No matter that it was 17,500 miles distant and would take 3½ years to get there I vowed I would achieve that goal if it took the rest of my life.

Journey in Bhutan: Himalayan Trek in the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon is not a guide, it is the trip. Through informed and sensitive narrative and personal journal, Trish Nicholson shares her experience trekking and absorbing local culture and history in the Land of the Thunder Dragon, the unique Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan hidden deep in the Himalayas.

An anthropologist and storyteller as well as a photographer, the author takes us on knee-wrecking gradients over passes three miles high, following the footsteps of Buddhist pilgrims, to meet yak herders families. We listen to monks chanting in ancient monasteries, and enter fortified dzongs containing religious treasures. We visit shops with smoked yak cheese, car parts, felt boots and silver coated biscuits on the counter. The author’s photographs – 37 original colour plates – let us see for ourselves the sacred mountains, smiling people, and amazing architecture.

In this Year of the Dragon, if you are unlikely to get to Bhutan any other way, this book will take you there. If you’ve been, or plan to go, it will enrich your experience. For those who like to dig deep, there are suggestions for further reading, a glossary, historical time-line, and a survival guide to Bhutanese Buddhism.

TWO PLANE TICKETS, NO PLAN, ONE DREAM

Overland adventurer John Dwyer has less than three months to cross China, Tibet, Nepal and India and he has a to-do list:

Drink snake blood

Get smuggled into Tibet

Hike to Mount Everest Base Camp

See dead bodies burning by the Ganges

Get from China to India in ten weeks

Ranging from the Great Wall of China to the Taj Mahal, his journey takes him across Asia’s most fascinating regions. Join him on his epic trek as he meets the ear cleaners of Chengdu, hikes into the peerless Himalayas, watches secretive ceremonies in Tibet, fends off a champion hawker at the Great Wall, and meets a woman that will change his life forever.