Book Recommendations: Travelling, Adventure, Mystic, Biography

[Zampano]

Hello Everybody!

I always found travel/adventure literature very inspiring and exciting to read. Especially, when they had a mystic/spiriutal/esoteric twist to it. They could be also Autobigraphies. Non fiction

I would be very thankful, if you have any recommendations for me...
To make it easier, here are some examples of the best books I read from this "genre"


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/MeetingsWithRemarkableMen.jpg

MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN
Georges I. Gurdjieff
These are the memoirs of the great mystic and teacher who inspired a generation of disciples and followers before, during and briefing after the Second World War. In Meetings With Remarkable Men Gurdjieff introduces us to some of the companions he encountered in his travels to the most remote regions of Central Asia. With colorful episodes from his adventures, he brings to life the story of his own relentless search for a real and universal knowledge.

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41I2+sdbuQL._AC_UL600_SR600,600_.jpg

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI
Paramahamsa Yogananda
With engaging candor, eloquence, and wit, Paramahansa Yogananda tells the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounters with many saints and sages during his youthful search throughout India for an illumined teacher, ten years of training in the hermitage of a revered yoga master, and the thirty years that he lived and taught in America. Also recorded here are his meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, the Catholic stigmatist Therese Neumann, and other celebrated spiritual personalities of East and West.

https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780874775952-us.jpg

FACES IN THE SMOKE
Douchan Gersi
An explorer describes his encounters with voodoo, shamanism, mental telepathy, zombies, and levitation in the remote regions of Borneo, Haiti, and elsewhere


These were the best 3 I read, Autobiography of a Yogi beeing a lifechanging book for me. Faces in the smoke is an incredible read on supernatural human abilities, mostly Douchan Gersi found in remote areas in the world.

There are also 2 German travel author Helge Timmerberg (fun stories, spirituality "light") and Andreas Altmann.

I would love to hear your recommendations

[Forever]

Looking at some of the titles you have mentioned above, I reckon you will really like The Spiritual Tourist by Mick Brown.

Thanks for your suggestions too btw!

[JackMcThorn]

As far as Adventure goes, this story from an Enlisted man's perspective; an Irishman serving the in the Royal Navy on several Antarctica Expeditions is spectacular and will keep you turning pages.

49378

[Iloveyou]

Hi Zampano, greetings from Vienna!

A book I‘ve not yet read myself, but has been highly recommanded to me:

Baird Spalding: Life And Teaching Of The Masters of the Far East 1924
(English version available for free)
https://archive.org/details/life-and-teaching-of-the-master/mode/2up
It describes the travels to India and Tibet of a research party of eleven scientists in 1894. During their trip they claim to have made contact with "the Great Masters of the Himalayas", immortal beings with whom they lived and studied, gaining insight into their lives and spiritual message.

Travel/Adventure books I enjoyed very much and have read several times over the last decades:

Ted Simon: Jupiters Travels / Jupiters Fahrt Around the world by motorbike in 1973
Wilfried Thesiger: Arabian Sands / Die Brunnen der Wüste (1959)
Ryszard Kapuscinski: The Shadow of the Sun / Afrikanisches Fieber (1998)
A polish journalist in Africa in the 1960/70s
Théodore Monod: Méharées / Wüstenwanderungen (fr., dt. 1989)

Modern stories, easy to read

Tim Butcher: Blood River (engl., dt. 2007)
Michael Obert: Regenzauber (dt. 2005)
Nicolas Marino: travel blog, 88 countries by bike, mostly offroad https://www.nicolasmarino.com/en/nicolonelytraveler

Still on my reading list, not yet read:
Robert Byron: Road to Oxiana (1966)

[Bill Ryan]

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby

Description here:
http://amazon.com/A-Short-Walk-Hindu-Kush/dp/1741795281

The funniest travel book I've ever read, beautifully written, and a genuine classic: one of the very few books that have ever had me laughing out loud when I was reading it in the house all alone.

https://projectavalon.net/A_Short_Walk_in_the_Hindu_Kush_Eric_Newby.pdf

Enjoy. :)

https://projectavalon.net/A_Short_Walk_in_the_Hindu_Kush_Eric_Newby.pdf

[Starkey]

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1439923874l/7665._SY475_.jpg

I recommend Travels by Michael Crichton. It’s his autobiography and it covers his physical travels as well as his spiritual travels. What’s great about it is he is a doctor and very scientifically minded. The end of the book even has a speech he was going to give to the skeptics society about his spiritual experiences.

[9ideon]

Roald Dahl's Cooking Book, "Revolting Recipes (https://www.roalddahl.com/create-and-learn/make/revolting-recipes)".

[Zampano]

Thank you everybody for your recommendations and contribution!
Some of your presented books made in on my shopping list :-)

To me, the funniest travel book was from the great David Foster Wallace.
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Is hilarious, funny, witty and I never laughed that much reading a book.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51R9tEx2DML.jpg

[mizo]

Not mystical but I really like Bill Bryson travel books -A Walk In The Woods is one of my favs...


The photograph caught four black bears as they puzzled over a suspended food bag. The bears were clearly startled but not remotely alarmed by the flash. It was not the size or demeanor of the bears that troubled me--they looked almost comically nonaggressive, like four guys who had gotten a Frisbee caught up a tree--but their numbers. Up to that moment it had not occurred to me that bears might prowl in parties. What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die, of course. Literally **** myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children's parties--I daresay it would even give a merry toot--and bleed to a messy death in my sleeping bag.”

[xidaijena]

:bigsmile:

Well, I recommend :

Conversations with God

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversations_with_God

The Boy Who Saw True

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Saw_True_(book)

The Secret® to the Law of Attraction

https://www.thesecret.tv/

[Mari]

Two excellent intro/intermediate level books I can really recommend:

The Celestine Prophecy series by James Redfield
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13103.The_Celestine_Prophecy

Way Of The Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2255.Way_of_the_Peaceful_Warrior

[Spiral]

John Keels book "Jadoo"

You will not be able to put it down.

[Zampano]

John Keels book "Jadoo"

You will not be able to put it down.

That sounds EXACTLY what I was looking for, thank you.

For me the travel/adventure aspect alongside the authors spiritual/metaphysic journey is most interesting.
Like the explorer spirit of ones person, the drive to discover the inner and outer world, the curiosity, personal stories.

Spiritual life is ordinary life, just that a certain "quality" is added, a new set of eyes so to say.

In Gurdjeffs book Meetings with Remarkable Men, it well describes how seemingly random encounters, travel companions and friends shape and deepens his understanding of existence and the qualities of life.
This, I am sure, can also happend in "ordinary life", since the unseen world sends guides, mentors and people for exchange of knowledge and wisdom to every person.
But I like a certain "dramatic and exotic" touch to it when it comes to reading literature

Also thanks for the other contributions, party people.

I tend to think that I am past the intro/basic spiritual literature, but you never know what insights you get reading a book a second time with a more mature understanding of things.

[lightwalker]

John Muir "Nature Writings" (see on amazon). Also read about him on the wikipedia site. An AMAZING person. Famous for the dog story.

Roy Chapman Andrews "Across The Mongolian Plains" Also read about him on wikipedia. Indiana Jones may have been copied after him.

Beryl Markham "West With the Night". A woman bush pilot in British East Africa ( I was in Africa the whole time I read this)

lightwalker

[lightwalker]

Defending Sacred Ground

Alex Collier

In the Avalon library

[Pilutaq]

The Ars Notoria - An Ancient Magical Book to Perfect Memory and Master Academia
https://www.ancientoriginsunleashed.com/p/the-ars-notoria-an-ancient-magical