Wherever you go, you will not be able to get out of yourself, you will take your problems and doubts with you, says the cliché, but how much can a good trip do for us. New horizons and languages, a different culture, a new landscape change a life, or the look towards existence. And here, in a bookish way, some paths are presented to know some destinations, or rediscover them, read them to the beat of the traveler who traveled them.
This is the case of Miquel Molina, who in Seven Days on the Riviera (Cathedral) tells how, during a week in the summer of 2021, he set foot on the same Italian and French lands that saw the passage of English romantic poets, the narrator Mary Shelley or of musicians like the Rolling Stones or Patti Smith.
In the same editorial, Arturo San Agustín offers us a sentimental Passport that crosses distant borders; in such a way that the vital experience and the reader merge, allowing us to perceive the silence of the African night or the mythology of Torshaven, in the Faroe Islands, whose port pays homage to Thor, god of Thunder.
And speaking of islands, it is worth mentioning Redescobrint the Catalan Malta (Librooks ), by Jordi Bilbeny. This text, halfway between a travel guide and an essay, examines the Catalan imprint that has remained today in this small country to the south of Sicily, in the fields of toponymy and vocabulary, cooking, folklore , architecture or religion.
A little further east lived Charmian Clift, who in Siren Songs (Gatopardo) recounts that in 1954, she and her husband left their London home and moved with their two children to the Greek land of Kalymnos. The place was populated by sponge fishermen and superstitious and poor women, in an environment of wild and very beautiful nature.
From this point in the Aegean Sea let's jump to an area more or less close, that of the Voyage to the Near East in 1868 (Constantinople, Egypt, Suez, Palestine) (Press of the University of Zaragoza), by Alfonso de Borbón Austria-Este. It is a diary that the brother of the Carlist pretender kept when he was eighteen; a testament to both the end of European absolutist regimes and the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
Once all this area that connects Northeast Africa with the Middle East is known, let's continue on African soil through No news from Ithaca. A trip to both sides of the Sahara (Laertes), by Enrique Vaquerizo Domínguez. From Ceuta, 3,500 kilometers are traveled with the aim of reaching the Tindouf camps by a route that is discouraged by both the Moroccan and Saharawi authorities.
Let us now turn to Central Africa, thanks to Viatge to the center of the tribe (Red Circle), in which Núria Serra Alsina recounts her adventure in different areas of Cameroon; Her prism is full of emotions, from a deep sense of communion with the people who accompany her. And it is also a compendium of very personal experiences that Jordi Llompart proposes in Viatges d'en Kabbo (Column): a series of chronicles as a result of the author's documentary work, in lands irrigated by the Nile, the savannah or Namibia.
Let's change continents again with a specialist in touring Asia like Erika Fatland. The third great journey of hers has resulted in the Himalayas. A journey through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China (Tusquets), in pursuit of experiencing the vast mountain range that meanders through five countries where Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are practiced. Countless languages and cultures coexist on the roof of the world, and around Mount Everest we will feel the spirituality of Buddhist monasteries or the legends about the yeti.
On the border with the Chinese giant is a place to which Leoncio Robles has dedicated his book Journey to the Kingdom of Ava. A Burmese Chronicle (The Horizon Line). It is the opportunity to immerse yourself in a nation that has suffered while pursuing freedom, in such a way that the traveler sees how the population has learned to live in constant instability and in a local conflict that involves some fifteen ethnic groups.
But if we have to think of extremely remote places, let's think of a couple that can be reached through a long journey; places that seem to exist in the middle of nowhere. On the one hand, we are referring to what is told in Lost in the Arctic (Books of the Wind), by Ejnar Mikkelsen; this Danish explorer, in 1910, set out on a voyage in search of the journals of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition which he had set out to prove that Robert Peary's mapping of the east coast of Greenland was a complete mistake.
On the other hand, we have creators like Josep Maria de Sagarra, Zane Grey, Victor Segalen or Henri Matisse, who reached the South Seas and Polynesia. That is what The Dream of Tahiti shows. Travelers in search of the last adventure (Fórcola), by Alejandro J. Ratia. A place in the middle of the Indian Ocean that for the aforementioned visitors represented an exotic and sensual Arcadia, but which was once synonymous with intrepid adventure.
Much less known but an interesting figure to discover is the one who stars in The Grand Tour of Josep Anton de Cabanyes i Ballester (1797-1852): Travels and collecting hobby in the light of Europe (Publications and Editions of the University of Barcelona ). Francesc Miralpeix tells the travel experience of a young Catalan who, based in Amsterdam, went to see Spain, England, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy between 1816 and 1824.
And let's close this tour without leaving home, with Literary Trips. Cartography of fictitious routes through the world of literature (Blume). In it, John McMurtrie presents 75 works of fiction from Homer to 2021. There are, however, no travel books per se here; each book treated contains a journey that is based on real places, and not imaginary, although those places are not mentioned explicitly. For those who, today, prefer to resort to their imagination rather than travel the world.
