A flat fast road where the journey is the point
932519
If you're looking for a start, middle and happy ending, keep on looking. This is a hitchhiker's ride on a flat fast road where the journey is the point; the destination is inconsequential. If you're not afraid to suck in the sweet breath of earth or mescal or blossoms or sweat, you'll walk away energized. Bitter and sweet, heartless and poignant, this book confronts like a feral dog. What you get from this encounter depends on where you've been - or more importantly - why you've been there.
1988832
The Way is an enjoyable walk through the difficult relationship between fathers and sons.
When Tom (Martin Sheen) learns that his son Daniel (Estevez) died along the 'camino de Compostela', he decides to fly to Eu from the States to retrieve the body, but once there he steps into Daniel's shoes and undertakes the 800km long pilgrimage. This is initially to honor his son's memory and to scatter his ashes along the stops of the camino, but ultimately it will serve to understand himself in a deeper way.
The young man's last adventure gives life to the older character, which in a sense will owe to his son this gained freedom. The title of my review is a quote, a phrase Tom says to his secretary once he learns that Daniel is somewhere in Eu without a working phone. I thought it was paramount, since in order to be on his son's terms, the man will lose his professional schedule and eventually will find his path to happiness.
Here is at play a generationally inverted concept that touches the heart and is well rendered.
Emilio Estevez does quite a good job, and I enjoyed the nostalgic fragments where Tom sees him among the peregrinos in different moments of his journey.
Not worth 5 stars imo because it can be felt a bit naive and a bit slow at times, but definitely a good movie worth watching.
4508871
It's a nice easy read, the author develops paths that come to a fork in road and you're not quite sure which fork the story will take.
3923250
I was looking for a good read that might take me back to my own life changing travels in Egypt and across the world and this book was channel for that reliving. This book takes the ordinary experiences and shows them diffused through a prism of a spiritual self expiriment on her own muslim belief system. She takes a good look at the hidden sides of the clash between old muslim culture and modern liberations. I wouldn't use this book as a travel guide for the middle east; but I wouldn't use Kerouac's - On The Road as a guide for the USA either. The writing is often metaphoric, sometimes overly, but the filter of a young woman on a mythical adventure of self discovery shines in the descriptions of the people she meets and the sense of alchemy in the coincidences of her journey.

It's a tale of innocence abroad as she get herslef into, and out of, one sticky situation after another. I enjoyed this book as a recount of introspection as is only possible though the magic of travel, but there's a few scenes of block buster action as well.
4097807
Fodor's Guides have traditionally been long on narrative and short on visuals.  No longer.  The "Fodor's See It Scotland" is a guide for the modern traveler, combining lots of color photography with maps, city diagrams, descriptions of attractions, and short punchy narrative.  Fodor's traditional strengths in listing places to stay and to eat are here enhanced with web site listings to enable further research.  The guide comes in a compact, easy-to-carry size.

This guide begins with a brief survey of Scotland and some practical information on how to get there and how to get around.  The big cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, with their culture and shopping, easily get their share of attention.  The coverage of the Highlands and Islands is a little thinner, but the narrative does suggest some excellent automobile tours that take enterprising tourists on the various castle, golf course and whisky distillery circuits.  Scotland is blessed with a marvellous combination of old and new.  Its very ancient history is still visible in many places, competing with its vibrant present.  Scotland also offers some of the most spectacular undeveloped areas left in Northern Europe.

A compact guide means not very interesting roadside attraction in Scotland will be included.  However, this "See It" guide does cover a broad range of interesting places and things to do.  It is very highly recommended to the first time visitor to Scotland as a planning resource and as a guide for the trip.
142765
Broken Open offers readers a front seat on Lesser's soul searching journey.  The ride is a meaningful adventure and, as with most travel to new places, it leaves one with new perspectives and insights.  I encourage clients who are going through crises and major life transitions to read it.  It serves almost like a trip advisor - each person's individual trip is always unique but the book can help the reader contemplate the challenges of uncertainty to be encountered along the way.
4635324
I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of being on the road to remote Kansas, or other places without map reference.  This story of a boy with "wisdom" well beyond his years, catches the spirit of growing up tough with unbridled innocence. I enjoyed the read.
1372085
A new philosophy for riding
Mr. Schiereck takes the reader on an astounding, yet personal journey of our great nation. While reading, it's as if one is seeing, feeling and experiencing the journey with the author. For those of us who have taken long motorcycle treks, we can certainly empathize. While justifiably annoyed at times, whether due to road obstructions or inconsiderate drivers, his gratitude and joy is quickly rekindled at the stunning beauty and unexpected kindness of strangers. It is easy to feel alone when one is a hundred miles from any apparent civilization. Happiness, frustration and being lost in one's thoughts is all part of this voyage. Don't be fooled by the roads challenges. Many may be in fact, a blessing in disguise. They will reshape you. Mr. Schiereck has an amazing talent for sharing his deepest emotions and thoughts with the reader. I absolutely loved this book. Please keep writing Mr. S.
2194563
If you have driven along Route 20 in Weston or Sudbury you may have noticed the name of the road is "Boston Post Road". Most people probably ignore it as merely a moniker tapped to prevent you from getting lost. Perhaps you, like me, thought there might be more of a story behind it. There is a bigger story and Eric Jaffe tells it in The King's Best Highway.

Jaffe's interest started in New York, questioning why there was a road called Boston in the Bronx. I traveled the Charles River in my red kayak; Jaffe drove the Boston Post Road in his red Mini Cooper.

The Post Road started out in colonial times as a rugged trail, barely passable by horse. As the colonies united and the revolutionary fires grew, the link between Boston and New York became even more important. Intrepid riders would ride from tavern to tavern with wax-sealed letters. The trek would take at least a week.

The Boston Post Road was actually two separate routes. There was the inland route that ran west from Boston to Springfield, then south to Hartford and New Haven, before turning to New York City. The coastal route ran southwest from Boston to Providence, then hugged the coast as it met up with the inland route in New Haven.

The linking of cities was initially not about transportation. It was about communication. It was a key route for communication between two important hot spots of the revolution.

The road eventually improved in places and coaches began moving passengers, slowly, between the cities and points in between. Then roads moved back towards disrepair as railroads blossomed. Even today, the Amtrak lines follow the paths of the Old Post Road, with an inland route through Springfield and the coastal route through Providence.

It was bicycles that revived the roads. Recreational riders were looking for the best roads to reach the countryside. The Good Roads movement was supported by the bicycle riders groups and bicycle manufacturers.

Then, the manufacturers tried putting engines onto bicycles and the age of the automobile began and its thirst was roadways was insatiable. By the 1940s the Boston Post Road was an illustration of the inadequacy of road-building. The expressway era was about to begin and emerge as the national system of interstate highways.

The King's Best Highway is a great tale of transportation in the Boston-New York corridor. Jaffe wanders off the road a bit when he over-emphasizes the importance of the road. I found the segment on President Lincoln's pre-election travels to be a traffic jam. The books ends with Jaffe's delightful telling of his own travels on the old road. It was no longer the "narrow slit of poorly groomed earth" from the colonial times. It was mostly a "gluttonous commercial wild."
726487
It was the sub-title of this book that first intrigued me - a Buddhist walking a Catholic path. The author's resolve to travel the length of Northern Spain as a pilgrim however, was made in a flash and religion did not seem a key factor in this initial decision. It seemed more a case of do or die, sometimes called mid-life crisis. But as the book progresses, as her body is challenged and memories surface, she begins an exploration of two faiths in a search for meaning of both self and self in relationship.

It is, in many ways, a quest to find the common ground of Catholicism and Buddhism and how daily life, the dreams, desires, disappointments and the mundane, fit into the equation. The approach to this big subject is deftly woven into the author's experiences along the way, always fresh, exceedingly readable and never resorting to judgement.

The Way is a River of Stars is a gentle paced book, as it should be. Each chapter begins with a new day. The terrain crossed, unfolded for me as if I was there, such is this writer's command of lyricism and language.

This is a journey that takes the well worn path beneath the stars of The Milky Way but it is also offers much more. For a Caminophile, an aspiring pilgrim or a reader simply curious to know how one woman arrives at the heart of what really matters in life; this is a book that delivers. Highly recommended.
585801
The beauty of a road trip is the opportunity to reflect, veg and ultimately evaluate as the miles go by. I thought I was going on a road trip with Shawn and his family, but this book took me on my own personal trip. I 'came home' excited, worn out, and having been given the space to reflect on my own journey.

I can't find the adequate description for the style -- it's not pure travelogue nor memoir, yet there is a reflective aspect to it I hadn't expected. Shawn has created a new category: road trip. This is one to be saved, savored, and revisited.

(p.s. I rarely give four stars. This is high praise from me. High.)
4145109
Much has been said about travel broadening vision, and the journal of a traveller who has a universal view of life makes a rich reading experience. From Heaven Lake is more than a travel book that traverses the length and breadth of a place with smatterings of history, geography and local culture - It is a verbal album of direct images that personify the soul of the areas.
The book contains relatively little on the culture, civilisation or customs of China or Tibet. Rather it is the personal account of an economics student's experiences while returning home to Delhi from Beijing, via Tibet and Nepal, the novelty of the journey being that it is almost entirely hitchhiked, relying on luck and optimism alone against all odds.
The idea of hitchhiking to Lhasa comes as a sudden inspiration to Mr. Seth while touring Turfan with fellow non-Chinese students. In serendipitous circumstances, he gets a travel-permit to Lhasa -The indirect repercussion of his singing 'Awara Hoon' (I'm a wanderer) at the students hostel. The song is symbolic of Mr. Seth's wanderlust impulses that make him embark on this fantastic journey. The rest of the book narrates his experiences that has many such co-incidences and fortuitous events that indicate life imitating art, as in an action-packed adventure story.
The journey also has a more than fair share of obstacles, from dealing with a suspicious mosque doorkeeper or a slightly eccentric truck driver, to major ones like trying to get a lift on a truck to Lhasa, going on an impromptu chase of lost luggage or being stuck indefinitely on deserted, muddy roads. But these not-so-enticing situations are handled comfortably by Mr. Seth who simply refuses to give up. With remarkable candour and a liberal dash of his characteristic humour, he talks about his frustration, anger and minor irritations during the journey and how he got over them eventually.
Mr. Seth also focuses a great deal on the unexpected gestures of kindness that he encountered in course of the journey - Friendly policemen, amiable officials, store managers, tailors and citizens who helped him.
Mr. Seth seems to be at home in any part of the world - Climbing into lost caverns in Chinese temples or wading in underground canals, playing basketball with officials or frisbee with waiters, assimilating the quietude of a Chinese shrine and a mosque alike, enjoying a picnic with a Tibetan family he had just met and above all, conversing on all kinds of topics with an assortment of strangers. Not so surprisingly, the people he describes also begin to come alive, like many of the characters in his fiction.
Reflections and musings on various aspects of China, India and life in general are diffused throughout the book, along with an occasional verse. There is a great attention to detail like the descriptions of Heaven Lake, the Lhasa mosque with its amalgam of Chinese and Arabic styles, the interior of a common truck and even the unpalatable soup served on the way, that suggest Mr. Seth's potential as a superior writer, this being one of his early works.
To quote Tolkien, not all those that wander are lost, and "From Heaven Lake" conveys that there is indeed much to be found for potential wanderers, besides ideas and ways of thought, experiences, insights and interactions with peoples and cultures - a greater understanding of themselves and the world around them.
2298443
This is a nice small GPS that gets you where you want to go.
1199133
Road trip books are very popular these days, both as memoirs and settings for novels.  So hats off to author Merullo for presenting a journey into America's heartland as background for what otherwise could have been a rather dull story of spiritual discovery.  Otto, a food book publisher, husband and father of two teens, as a favor to his sister drives Rinpoche, a robed guru, from the East coast to the family farm in North Dakota.  With stops at a bowling alley, Notre Dame, and Wrigley Field. The end result being that both Otto and Rinpoche are both enlightened.  Rinpoche claims not to be a Buddhist, or rather not just a Buddhist but a Buddhist, and a Catholic, and a Sufi, and a Protestant, and a .......He gives Otto some answers to his questions on The Meaning of Life but of course Otto is expected to eventually discover many of the answers to his own questions from deep within.  The messages are very nice, and I would imagine most readers will pause and reflect on some of the points made.  It's a good book though I didn't find it life changing.  I am not about to join an ashram, but I probably will  read at least the Lunch sequel and maybe the Dinner one.
1922499
If you want to know how to get out on the road quickly without all the details this is the book. My daughter and I are in the process of cycling around the world. Peter sent me a message about his book. It is a quick and informative read that I wish was available when we started touring in 2011. I was surprised how Peter was able to pack so much information in a small size. And he really is right - with the information provided you too can get started on your tour. Through experience we have learned that the smaller details can and will take care of themselves. Some books really get bogged down in details and lists. Thanks Peter for making it plain and simple.
1694450
It doesn't matter how you get to where you're going ... what matters is that you arrived.  This book is the story of arriving.
4335461
Real, imagined, or a bit of both...it is a journey worth taking with Paulo as he makes his way along the road to Santiago de Compostela.
Bon voyage.