This is both a travelogue in the European tradition and a trenchant meditation on what it means to be a tourist. xiii, 170pp, USA/UK. CHICAGO UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Always game to venture where many before him have feared to tread, Kingsley and his entourage have set out to honour those tough, courageous early explorers of the African continent. David Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley, Frederick Courtney Selous, John Hanning Speke and others all faced starvation, fever and often death to open up Africa to the Western world. The Holgate party tackle the Nile, Congo, Rovuma and Rufiji, negotiating angry rapids, thrashing with crocodiles and startling territorial hippos. Circumnavigating Africa's greatest lakes, Niassa, Victoria and Tanganyika, they battle high winds and water, and endure the blistering furnace of the desolate lava-bouldered Jade Sea's shores. 304pp, SOUTH AFRICA. STRUIK.

Recollections of thirty years as a business traveller in Africa. 132pp, UK. ARIMA PUBLISHING.

An illustrated collection of travel essays by one of South Africa's most accomplished travel writers. Some of the journeys he undertakes include following in the footsteps of David Livingstone, wandering around Zanzibar, crossing Central Sahara, canoeing in the Okavango Delta, motor biking in South Africa and exploring Tristan Da Cunha. 224pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY BOOKS, 191993040X

The author's tenth collection of humorous travel writing describing his experiences as a businessman in over 180 countries. In this volume, Biddlecombe experiences Kigali, Kampala, Lilongwe, Port Louis, Dar Es Salaam, Bissau, Conkary, Nouakchoutt, Banjul, Praia and Victoria in the Seychelles amongst others. 362pp, UK. ABACUS, 0349116962

Cycling an average of 90km a day, often in extreme conditions on badly-maintained gravel and sand roads, being thrown into jail in Equatorial Guinea by aggressive and drunken border police, and facing possible death when taken hostage by drugged Liberian teenage rebels may not be a conventional idea of truly 'living', but, in November 2003, Riaan Manser rode out of Cape Town, determined to become the first person to circumnavigate Africa by bicycle. He thought it would take him a year - it took him over two. At the end of 2005, he cycled back into Cape Town, 14kg lighter and having covered 36 500 km through thirty-four countries. 705pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JONATHAN BALL.

An another irreverent global tour in which the author describes power players in Milan, storm trooping language police in Toronto, working through the Good Food Guide to Ouagadougou and general chaos in Kinshasa. 378pp, UK. ABACUS, 0349106843

Unusual travel literature in that the independently minded author draws most of her stories from her experiences walking. Refs, index, xi, 394pp, UK. BeaGay Publications, 0954117905

A travelogue of African life, adventure and wildlife experienced as the author travelled across the continent in order to see Chimpanzees in the wild. Bib, map, 279pp, USA. UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS, 0820324892

A candid account of the author's journey in Africa. BNS, 240pp, USA. UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS, 0820325007

Contemptuous of Europe's 'civilising mission' in Africa, Mary Kingsley's (1862-1900) extraordi-nary journeys through tropical west Africa are a remarkable record, both of a world which has vanished and of a writer and explorer of immense bravery, wit and humanity. Paddling through mangrove swamps, fending off crocodiles, climbing Mount Cameroon, Kingsley is both admira-ble and funny. 128pp, UK. PENGUIN BOOKS.

Travel writing was amongst the most widely read branches of literature in the decades between 1770 and 1840, the years which witnessed European expansion on a global scale. The author studies the Romantic obsession with the lands of Ethiopia, Egypt, India and Mexico looking in particular at manifestations of the exotic and idioms of the elite. Index, bib, notes, b/w illus, x, 338pp, UK. OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 0199269300

Now available in Paperback. Theroux's overland journey from Cairo to Cape Town takes him across Sudan and Ethiopia to Kenya and beyond to South Africa. It's a journey of discovery through lands he has known and through countries changed by four decades of independence. Map, 494pp, UK. PENGUIN, 0140281118

A former correspondent with the Cape Times, Drum, Reuters, Daily Mail, Newsweek and the Washington Times, among others, Younghusband recounts his experiences pursuing stories across the continent, and his relationships with other foreign correspondents. 347pp, SOUTH AFRICA. Ball, Jonathan.

An another account of a myriad of international travel delights and trepidations from Minsk to Madrid and Luxembourg to Abu Dhabi. 474pp, UK. ABACUS, 034911062X

An account of an epic journey of a family along the Tropic of Capricorn from Mozambique, through Southern Africa to South America and Australia. Written and illustrated in the style of a travel journal. Includes a CD ROM. Gloss, 208pp, SOUTH AFRICA. STRUIK, 1868727815

2003 Hardback

The story of two women's six-month travels in Africa. 352pp. AUSTRALIA. NEW HOLLAND, 1864367792

2003 Paperback

A humorous look at the perils of business travel in twenty cities from Beirut to Budapest. Biddlecombe travels through North Africa, Asia, Europe and South America negotiating airport security, luggage conveyor belts, post Cold War politics and the restaurants of developing nations. 421pp, UK. ABACUS, 0349108129

Presents unpublished material from the environmental leader John Muir. BNS, maps, illus, index, 352pp, USA. ISLAND PRESS, 1559636408

Now in paperback. Account of a journey through remote parts of North and West Africa so geographically and culturally isolated that their frontiers have rarely been breached by Western-ers. The Sahel region of the lower Sahara - whipped by ferocious winds, shrouded in secrets and home to a vast Muslim population - is the southernmost outpost of Islam's spread in Africa. Author of Facing the Congo, Jeffrey Tayler, crossed 2,500 miles across this region by truck, taxi, bus and boat, uncovers this area as beset by ethnic rebellion and sectarian violence, rife with Islamic fundamentalism, yet home to people of extraordinary hospitality and fortitude. 274pp, UK. ABACUS.

Following on the success of his book Natural Selections, the well-known travel writer has drawn once again on his passion for Africa and his experience as a journalist for Getaway magazine to write yet another entertaining and engrossing book of short essays on natural history, full of humour, interest and speculation. 224pp, SOUTH AFRICA. DOUBLE STOREY BOOKS.

Surrounded by startling contradictions, South African poet and critic Robert Berold finds ways to capture the voices of ordinary people, embarks on publishing ventures, follows the tracks of ancient writers and graphically depicts a vast country's galloping economy. He spent a year teaching creative writing in China, and this is his poetic and delightful record of that year. 246pp, SOUTH AFRICA. JACANA MEDIA.

The author's eighth collection on international escapades. Biddlecombe lets off steam about the perils of business travel from Peshawar to Belize. 442pp, UK. ABACUS, 034911448X

In the 1970s Shiva Naipaul travelled to Africa, visiting Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia for several months. Through his experiences, the places he visited and his various encounters, he aimed to discover what liberation, revolution and socialism meant to ordinary people. Map, 349pp, UK. PENGUIN BOOKS LTD(UK), 0140188266

New in paperback. This anthology, stretching from the fifth to the nineteenth centuries, introduces an entirely different tradition of travel writing - the work of travellers from the world beyond Europe. Other Routes collects important primary work by travel writers from Asia and Africa in English translation. Encompassing spiritual journeys, the personal, ethnography, natural history, geography, cartography, navigation, politics, history, religion and diplomacy, it shows that Africans and Asians also travelled the world and left travel writing worth reading. 421pp, UK. SIGNAL BOOKS.

In the summer of 1795 a 24-year-old Scot began one of the most extraordinary journeys of exploration in West Africa. Tackling fever, starvation, wild beasts and curious indigenes, Mungo Park soldiered on to his prize, the Niger, finally proving that the great river flowed to the east. The young explorer returned home a hero, his journal an instant bestseller. Over 200 years after this ground-breaking trip, Tom Fremantle, long been inspired by Park, decided to follow in his doughty hero's wake. And so with a dugout canoe, a slothful ox, a donkey called Che and various motorised jalopies, began his own haphazard trail down the Niger. En route he visits Timbuktu and Dogon country. His journey ends in the heart of Nigeria where Mungo Park lost his life on an ill-fated return expedition to Africa. B/w photos, 313pp, UK. ROBINSON.

The humorous account of the author's chaotic journey from Cairo to Cape Town. 342pp, UK. BANTAM, 0553814524

Now in paperback. A personal journey through the tropics of the world. Covering eighty eight different countries and almost a third of the world, the author sees the tropics as not only a geographical phenomenon, but a state of mind. In this travelogue he makes his way across tropical Africa and two civil wars, delivers a church bell to a remote Oceanian island and dines with a Tongan queen. Bib, x, 380pp, UK. PICADOR.

New in paperback. His last book, it records how Kapuscinski set out on his first forays - to India, China and Africa - with the great Greek historian constantly in his pocket. He sees Louis Armstrong in Khartoum, visits Dar-es-Salaam, arrives in Algiers in time for a coup when nothing seems to happen (but he sees the Mediterranean for the first time). At every encounter with a new culture, Kapuscinski plunges in, curious and observant, thirsting to understand its history, its thought, its people. He reads Herodotus so much that he often feels he is embarking on two journeys - the first his assignment as a reporter, the second following Herodotus' expeditions. 275pp, UK. PENGUIN BOOKS.

The Hindu Kush, the Amazonian Jungle and the Kalahari desert hold no fears for those who have faced the Tokyo underground in the rush hour. In this humorous travel memoir, the author introduces the world of the business traveller, describing his travels from Addis Ababa to Lagos and Nairobi to the Far East and Europe. 314pp, UK. ABACUS, 0349105839

A selection of the famed war correspondent and travellers' worst journeys through countries in the former Soviet Union, Africa and China. Funny and well written. 292pp, UK. ELAND, 0907871771

New in paperback. Account of the hardships and hilarity Fran Sandham experienced during his epic solo journey on foot across Africa, from the Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean through Namibia, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. 288pp, UK. DUCKWORTH.

An account of overhearing secret arms deals in Montevideo, being driven around by a directionless taxi driver in Istanbul, viewing the tortuous instruments of the Ecuadorian Structural Development Programme and landing in South Africa, the only country in the world where people love their president. 400pp, UK. ABACUS, 0349109699

An anthology of writing spanning four hundred years of travel in and around the southern tip of Africa. Includes extracts by soldiers, statesmen, circus showmen, fossil hunters, a San shaman, and escaping slaves. Illustrated with b/w images. Map, 377pp, SOUTH AFRICA. 0624041654

The author discarded his middle-class existence in Johannesburg and begins walking, watching, thinking, laughing and dancing across Africa as he searches for remote people and forgotten places in the continent of his birth. Illustrated with colour photographs. Gloss, 222pp, SOUTH AFRICA. NEW HOLLAND, 1868728854