The best books about forgotten expeditions and extraordinary journeys

Libyan Sands tells the story of Ralph Bagnold’s extraordinary expeditions into the North African deserts between the two world wars. Remarkably for the time, Bagnold chose to use not camels, as his predecessors had done, but specially-adapted Ford Model-A motorcars, in which he covered tens of thousands of miles in extraordinarily inhospitable, waterless conditions, travelling where no motor vehicle and hardly any people had ever been before. The knowledge he accrued would lead him, ultimately, to found and lead the Long Range Desert Group in the Second World War. 

Having written about extraordinary journeys into the polar wastes, and having come to understand, through meeting many of the explorers involved, what it is that has driven them into those wildernesses, what most caught my imagination in Bagnold’s book was his incredibly vivid descriptions of the desert, a barren wilderness that he grew not only to respect, but to love deeply: a wilderness in many ways utterly different from Antarctica, but in other ways remarkably similar in its enduring appeal. 

I first came across Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett when researching Born Adventurer: The Life of Frank Bickerton. In 1911, Fawcett and Bickerton crossed the Atlantic together; Fawcett to continue his work with the Bolivian Boundary Survey and Bickerton to hunt for lost pirate treasure. I thought Fawcett might make an interesting subject for a biography: an Englishman who undertook multiple expeditions into South America and who would eventually disappear altogether in the Amazon in 1925. What David Grann has achieved in The Lost City of Z is very different from a standard biography: yes, he tells Fawcett’s life story, but he also shares the ins and outs of his own search for Fawcett, and eventually sets off in pursuit of the lost city that so obsessed him. The result is a complex, multi-layered, and utterly riveting adventure story. 

Ernest Shackleton is now best known for the heroic failure that was his Endurance Expedition of 1914-17. But the skills that he displayed to such effect on that expedition were honed during his leadership of the British Antarctic (or Nimrod) Expedition of 1907-09 – an expedition with the conquest of the South Pole as its primary objective. Of course, in the final assessment, this expedition failed as well – because Shackleton turned for home when just 97.5 nautical miles from his objective, knowing that his team would die if he didn’t. Beau Riffenburgh’s account of this much less well-known expedition is masterly: meticulously researched and beautifully written; a joy to read. 

This book doesn’t tell the story of one expedition, it recounts many, launched by men of nine different nationalities, all intent on breaking into the closed world of Tibet. I am not alone in considering Hopkirk to be one of the great masters of what might be described as ‘historical travel’ books, and this is surely one of his best. Populated by a wonderful cast of characters, all determined to be the first westerner to reach the sacred, and forbidden, city of Lhasa. I can’t recommend it highly enough – and, enjoy one of Hopkirk’s books, and you’ll enjoy them all.  

In January 2002, less than four months after 9/11 and three since the US invasion of Afghanistan, Rory Stewart set out to walk from Herat to Kabul. In the preface, he states, "I’m not good at explaining why," and he never really answers that question – but the book that resulted from that decision has become a classic in the author’s lifetime. I’m lucky enough to own a rare first edition – rare because it was produced inexpensively and in small numbers by Picador, who clearly expected it to attract little attention. They were wrong: it became an international best-seller and multi-award winner – deservedly so. As well as being packed with detail about the war-torn land through which he travelled and the people he met en route, it is also a deeply spiritual account – moving, troubling, and uplifting in equal measure.