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Travel writer Bill Bryson chronicles the experiences he had and profiles the people and wildlife he encountered while traveling through Australia.

As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved--to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician--had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth; there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond this planet, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars. In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle...

"On an autumn morning in 1849, Henry David Thoreau stepped out his front door to walk the beaches of Cape Cod. Over a century and a half later, Ben Shattuck does the same. With little more than a loaf of bread, brick of cheese, and a notebook, Shattuck sets out to retrace Thoreau's path through the Cape's outer beaches, from the elbow to Provincetown's fingertip. This is the first of six journeys taken by Shattuck, each one inspired by a walk once...

"Legendary travel writer Paul Theroux fearlessly drives the entire length of the US-Mexico border, then goes deep into the hinterland, on the back roads of Chiapas and Oaxaca, to uncover the rich, layered world behind today's brutal headlines."--Provided by publisher.

Simon Reeve begins this final episode the remote Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, a country facing monumental change with the construction of a new transoceanic waterway set to rival the Panama Canal. Reeve then travels to the Honduran island of Roatán, a haven for marine life and tourists - as well as for people fleeing unimaginable violence on mainland Honduras. He ends his Caribbean journey on the iconic island of Jamaica, discovering a country confronting...

Follow Ian Wright's journey down the length of Chile, from the driest desert in the world to the southern-most point before the Antarctic Ocean, in this episode of Globe Trekker. He encounters llama farmers, visits the island made famous in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, sees the largest telescope in the world, and meets the indigenous Mapuche Indians and a group of 8th generation German ex-pats, two groups who work to retain their own language and...

Francesco da Mosto takes a look at Italy as the land of adventure and ambition. Beginning in Venice with actor Ciaran Hinds, he considers how the town struck Shakespeare as the perfect setting for The Merchant of Venice . In Rome, Francesco discovers how Shakespeare used the city as a smokescreen to address the burning political issues of his day while avoiding trouble with Elizabethan censors. Francesco meets Shakespearean actor Mark Rylance, and...

Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient...

John Lloyd Stephens (November 28, 1805 - October 13, 1852) was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. Stephens was a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Maya civilization throughout Middle America and in the planning of the Panama railroad. When the Panama Railroad Company was founded in 1849, Stephens was chosen to be Vice President. He visited Panama and New Granada to make arrangements for the laying of the railroad. On his way to Bogota,...

Extrait: "Les lecteurs qui ont bien voulu m'accompagner, l'an dernier, dans mon excursion à Vienne, se rappellent peut-être la route que nous primes pour nous rendre de Paris dans la capitale de l'Autriche. Après avoir traversé le Mont-Genis, nous touchâmes barre à Venise et à Trieste, puis nous arrivâmes par le Semmering — ce Mont-Genis autrichien — sur les bords du Danube qui n'est malheureusement bleu que dans le titre de la valse de...