When British journalist Andrew Eames set off from a London suburb to Baghdad via train in 2002, he wasn’t merely following in the tracks of Paul Theroux and Michael Palin, he was tracing the life-changing journey of one of the world’s most beloved writers. His book, The 8:55 to Baghdad: From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie, is part Christie biography, part travelogue and part history of the many regions through which Eames and his famous fore-traveler pass en route to the Middle East.

In 1928, with her daughter away in boarding school, the 38-year-old divorcŽe set off for Baghdad, lured by the Orient Express and the tales of her dinner companions. Iraq was a British protectorate at that time and fairly crawling with expats; nevertheless, with stops like Trieste ( the last full stop in western Europe before the alphabets begin to change ), Belgrade, Zagreb, Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus and Ur, this was not a journey for the trepid. Christie coped well, falling in love with both the scenery and her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan.

The two would later buy a house in Iraq, living a lifestyle reminiscent of Karen Blixen’s in Kenya, in which Christie dressed for dinner and instructed her cooks in producing Žclairs made with cream from water-buffalo milk. She also acquired a knowledge of ancient pottery, dispensed medicines to the locals and became an accomplished photographer chronicling her husband’s digs. For her fans, however, the most important outcome from her Middle Eastern adventures was the inspiration to write stories like A Murder in Mesopotamia and Murder on the Orient Express.

The history of that train is just one of the topics covered in The 8:55 to Baghdad, which means the book sometimes feels like it’s veering off the tracks. For the most part, however, Eames is able to connect the disparate elements for a smooth-flowing narrative. By journey’s end, he’s made insightful comments on the changing fortunes of countries once under European imperial rule, tracked down people who knew Christie and managed to get out of Baghdad just as the war starts.

The mental connection one makes with a travel writer can sometimes be quirky. The author is (unless you have serious armchair time) an inconstant companion on an often imaginary or vicarious journey; his opinions or observations are immune to your debate and your personal curiosities frequently go unsatisfied. So it is the writer’s humor, rhythm, prejudice or even preoccupation that becomes his personality as the reader experiences it. In this case I refer to two male writers who both take to the road, so to speak, but whose styles and attitudes are almost comically unalike. Tim Moore, an English travel journalist whose peculiarly Anglocentric manner is nearly a caricature of the Punch-drunk pompous satirist, has retraced what was once almost an Anglo-American ritual in The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter. Tiziano Terzani, a cosmopolitan of the old school (born in Florence and educated in both Europe and the U.S.) and a veteran Asia correspondent now living in New Delhi, recalls a year he spent rediscovering Asia in A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East.

Moore starts out by wondering who actually invented the Grand Tour, the luxurious sojourn through France, Italy and Germany that was supposed to broaden the minds of young British gentlefolk. He discovers not only that the modern vision of its cultural high-mindedness is exaggerated tours frequently turned out to be drunken debauches but that its inspiration was a memoir by a voluble gentleman wannabe named Thomas Coryat. Coryat sailed, rode carts and went primarily by foot, but Moore, determined to ponce about Europe, purchases a purple velvet suit that Oscar Wilde might have raised an eyebrow at and a not-too-well-kept 1990 Rolls Royce for his own tour. The book careens between Moore’s gentle poking at cultural flatulence and his almost grudging admiration for the still-impressive cathedrals and landscapes, neglected cemeteries and odd and often fascinating historical throwaways of Europe. Moore, of course, comes home with somewhat more sympathy than he started and sells the Rolls at a profit.

Terzani’s book, published earlier abroad and now available for the first time in America, is a true journal that uses his visits to various fortune-tellers as a framework for his observations on the many cultures, political movements and spiritual convictions he experiences on his own tour, ranging from Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia to Mongolia, Russia, Poland and Italy. In 1976, a Hong Kong seer told him that he must not fly in 1993 or he would be killed, and in fact, a helicopter he would have been on does go down, injuring his replacement. Terzani, who for more than 20 years had been blowing in and out of Asian war zones and cities in crisis and having one airport blur into another, decides to follow the advice and spend the year traveling only by train, ship, car and so on.

It’s no surprise when he discovers that each country has its own character. While in Laos, which continues politely to decline European ideas of development, he exclaims, What an ugly invention is tourism! [reducing] the world to a vast playground, a Disneyland without borders. The time he spends listening to the people in the streets is richly repaid with mystery. In Bangkok, he discovers the body-snatchers, who must put together the pieces of corpses who have died violently in order to bring release to their souls and whose work has become so profitable that these charitable institutions now vie for the business. In Burma, he finds the giraffe women of the Padaung, whose necks are lengthened by big silver rings until they are 16 or 20 inches above their shoulders.

Terzani’s thoughtful progression provides great pleasure because he is more open to the people, and people are always the real journey.

Picking the right wine As for a wine, I rarely issue warnings, but only one recent import can do justice to Moore in the Wildes taking aim at pseudo-culture: Luna di Luna, a cheap ($10 or so) Italian sparkling blend of 60 percent Chardonnay and 40 percent Pinot Grigio. Lurid is the word that comes to mind: sugary, grapy and not so much floral as scented. It even has a little shepherdess type on the trendy, cobalt-blue label. It should be used only for punches (very 17th century) or for christening your own journey’s vehicle. Not even Terzani could find a future in this one.

Eve Zibart is the restaurant critic for The Washington Post’s weekend section.

The mental connection one makes with a travel writer can sometimes be quirky. The author is (unless you have serious armchair time) an inconstant companion on an often imaginary or vicarious journey; his opinions or observations are immune to your debate and your personal curiosities frequently go unsatisfied. So it is the writer’s humor, rhythm, prejudice or even preoccupation that becomes his personality as the reader experiences it. In this case I refer to two male writers who both take to the road, so to speak, but whose styles and attitudes are almost comically unalike. Tim Moore, an English travel journalist whose peculiarly Anglocentric manner is nearly a caricature of the Punch-drunk pompous satirist, has retraced what was once almost an Anglo-American ritual in The Grand Tour: The European Adventure of a Continental Drifter. Tiziano Terzani, a cosmopolitan of the old school (born in Florence and educated in both Europe and the U.S.) and a veteran Asia correspondent now living in New Delhi, recalls a year he spent rediscovering Asia in A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East.

Moore starts out by wondering who actually invented the Grand Tour, the luxurious sojourn through France, Italy and Germany that was supposed to broaden the minds of young British gentlefolk. He discovers not only that the modern vision of its cultural high-mindedness is exaggerated tours frequently turned out to be drunken debauches but that its inspiration was a memoir by a voluble gentleman wannabe named Thomas Coryat. Coryat sailed, rode carts and went primarily by foot, but Moore, determined to ponce about Europe, purchases a purple velvet suit that Oscar Wilde might have raised an eyebrow at and a not-too-well-kept 1990 Rolls Royce for his own tour. The book careens between Moore’s gentle poking at cultural flatulence and his almost grudging admiration for the still-impressive cathedrals and landscapes, neglected cemeteries and odd and often fascinating historical throwaways of Europe. Moore, of course, comes home with somewhat more sympathy than he started and sells the Rolls at a profit.

Terzani’s book, published earlier abroad and now available for the first time in America, is a true journal that uses his visits to various fortune-tellers as a framework for his observations on the many cultures, political movements and spiritual convictions he experiences on his own tour, ranging from Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia to Mongolia, Russia, Poland and Italy. In 1976, a Hong Kong seer told him that he must not fly in 1993 or he would be killed, and in fact, a helicopter he would have been on does go down, injuring his replacement. Terzani, who for more than 20 years had been blowing in and out of Asian war zones and cities in crisis and having one airport blur into another, decides to follow the advice and spend the year traveling only by train, ship, car and so on.

It’s no surprise when he discovers that each country has its own character. While in Laos, which continues politely to decline European ideas of development, he exclaims, What an ugly invention is tourism! [reducing] the world to a vast playground, a Disneyland without borders. The time he spends listening to the people in the streets is richly repaid with mystery. In Bangkok, he discovers the body-snatchers, who must put together the pieces of corpses who have died violently in order to bring release to their souls and whose work has become so profitable that these charitable institutions now vie for the business. In Burma, he finds the giraffe women of the Padaung, whose necks are lengthened by big silver rings until they are 16 or 20 inches above their shoulders.

Terzani’s thoughtful progression provides great pleasure because he is more open to the people, and people are always the real journey.

Picking the right wine As for a wine, I rarely issue warnings, but only one recent import can do justice to Moore in the Wildes taking aim at pseudo-culture: Luna di Luna, a cheap ($10 or so) Italian sparkling blend of 60 percent Chardonnay and 40 percent Pinot Grigio. Lurid is the word that comes to mind: sugary, grapy and not so much floral as scented. It even has a little shepherdess type on the trendy, cobalt-blue label. It should be used only for punches (very 17th century) or for christening your own journey’s vehicle. Not even Terzani could find a future in this one.

Eve Zibart is the restaurant critic for The Washington Post’s weekend section.

If the rising price of airline tickets has you spending your summer vacation on American shores instead of jetting off to the Cote d’Azur, Stephen Clarke’s hilarious new book is the perfect antidote. (Readers too relaxed to turn the pages can check out the audio version.)

As you might have guessed from its irreverent title, A Year in the Merde doesn’t follow in the worshipful footsteps of such travelogues as A Year in Provence or Under the Tuscan Sun. Instead, Clarke’s roman à clef (loosely based on his own experiences as an Englishman working in Paris) is a laugh-out-loud comedy of errors as the hapless anglais Paul West moves to Paris to open an English tearoom. Language and customs are immediately an issue Paul struggles with his French co-workers’ ideas about what is English, tries to find a decent place to live in pricey Paris and juggles liaisons with his boss’ daughter and a French photographer.

The appeal of A Year in the Merde (the title comes from Paul’s unfortunate propensity for stepping in the dog droppings that litter Parisian sidewalks) isn’t its sometimes slapstick plot but its droll observations on everyday life for a foreigner in France. Paul’s difficulty ordering a normal-sized cafe au lait and his amazement at the lengthy list of French greetings (not limited to good morning good afternoon or good night, they also include the very specific have a nice rest-of-the-afternoon, among others) will strike a chord with anyone who’s ever tried to get by in a foreign country. Clarke, who originally self-published his book in France, clearly knows the country inside and out, and his unvarnished but affectionate portrait is escapism at its best.

Trisha Ping spent a year as an English assistant in Mulhouse, France.

You want some insights? Kerkeling’s book has them sprinkled throughout, like little Easter eggs scattered along a 475-mile path. Some are simple and obvious: wear comfortable shoes; drink plenty of water. Others, particularly as the journey progresses, are more spiritual, nuanced and plain insightful. Despite occasional (well, actually more or less constant) carping about sore feet and bad food, of which there is much along the way, Kerkeling is a highly amiable traveling companion, interested in both the external and internal phenomena that accompany a voyage of exploration. And even if your pilgrimage extends only to your local bookstore, Kerkeling has provided a rich reward at journey’s end.  

At an age when most journalists are just starting to excel at their craft, 28-year-old Jake Halpern has already scored writing credits in The New Yorker and The New Republic. Now he has his first book as well, which, in its esoteric little way, attempts to reconcile the increasingly vagabond spirit of Americans with the deeply held human need to call someplace “home.” In Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales, Halpern’s year-long, in-the-field investigations take him to five disparate places in the U.S. that share a common bond. In North Carolina, Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana and California, places where despite extreme, often tragic climatic, elemental and ecological upheaval stalwart and courageous (some might say very eccentric) individuals stay put out of loyalty to the land, he discovers some remarkable stories. A few of the characters Halpern encounters: Thad Knight, of Princeville, North Carolina, a place that’s reputed to be the oldest all-black town in the country. Despite continuous, devastating floods, Knight tenaciously hangs on to what’s left in Princeville. In snow-encrusted, claustrophobic Whittier, Alaska, a community comprised largely of a single, 14-story building, Halpern hangs out with Babs Reynolds, a woman on the run from her past, who savors the isolation Alaska offers. Jack Thompson is the last inhabitant of Royal Gardens, Hawaii, a town now practically encased in lava from the volcano Mount Kilauea. In Grand Isle, Louisiana, 90 miles south of New Orleans, Ambrose Bresson has endured violent rainstorms for nearly 70 years. What makes folks stay on in these out-of-the way, often dangerous places? Is it simple stubbornness? A twisted sort of loyalty? A determination to remain rooted in a rootless society? Halpern pursues these questions with a curiosity and keen sense of adventure that permeate his wonderfully readable profiles. The author’s off-the-beaten-path stories will keep readers turning the pages of this unusual book.

People are already making comparisons between A Year in Provence and Manana, Manana. But, at the risk of committing travel writing heresy, some readers may like Manana better. It’s often funnier, grittier and more textured than Mayle’s best-selling book.

Scottish sheep farmers Ellie and Peter Kerr decide to risk their financial future on a citrus orchard in Mallorca, a beautiful resort island off the coast of Spain. Peter Kerr paints a precise and compelling portrait of his adopted home, from the postman’s morning cognac to the row of olive trees on the hillside, to the family fishing boats dwarfed by the yachts of affluent expats. With a few judiciously chosen details, he captures the Mallorcan landscape and character. Kerr’s reports on the specialties of Mallorcan cuisine will make your mouth water. But his greatest achievement may be his ability to convey the quirks and nobility of his neighbors. A hilarious scene involves a neighbor dubbed "Se–ora Breadteeth." She shows up at the Kerr’s farm one day with her niece and tries to get the Kerrs to hire the girl as a housemaid. She also offers them her sturdy nephews as farm hands. The Kerrs have some trouble convincing Breadteeth that they are not wealthy just because they are foreign, that they are used to doing their own farm work, and that they can’t afford to do it any other way. At last, Breadteeth sighs with comprehension and says, "So you’re really just peasants, too?"

It’s the fact that the Kerrs do have to make their own living off the land that truly connects them to the Mallorcan community. They experience the same risks and fears as their neighbors, which takes them deeper into rural Spain than most travel writers and rich vacationers will ever go.

Don’t be misled by the title of Paul Theroux’s newest travel book. Dark Star Safari is about neither hunting nor the dark-hearted white hunter made mythic by Joseph Conrad. “The word ‘safari,’ in Swahili, means ‘journey’; it has nothing to do with animals,” Theroux writes.

Theroux lived and taught in Africa in the late 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer. In Dark Star Safari, he returns to a very different continent after an absence of 30 years one that’s been ripped apart by AIDS and violent political upheaval, and mercilessly stripped of its natural beauty. In search of the real Africa, Theroux takes his readers on a trek down unpaved roads. He rides on ferries that are prone to sink. He doesn’t believe in making reservations, which lands him in smelly, mosquito-infested, three-dollar-a-night hotels. And he frequently has to wait days for a visa.

In the process, this deservedly acclaimed travel writer gives us an eye-opening view of Africa. Tribesmen murmur that elections are rigged. In some countries, almost every grown man has served time as a political prisoner. Though it is illegal, the trade in ivory is thriving, and Theroux predicts the imminent extinction of the Ethiopian elephant.

What makes his report even more heart-breaking is that Theroux sees all this with a sort of dual focus. He revisits the haunts of his youth, remembering the optimism of a newly independent Africa in the ’60s. Where there were forests and exotic wildlife, now there is desert. Where there were lovely stucco and tile houses, now there is urban sprawl characterized by make-shift shacks. Poverty has no pride and begging is routine. Theroux is the thinking man’s travel writer; in a seemingly casual, wandering fashion, he delivers a complete portrait of a continent’s people, politics and economy. And what he finds in Africa is a continent in crisis. Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

Andalusia, a region of southern Spain, is a land of contrasts. Its dusty summer days seethe with intense heat and gradually fade into balmy, scented, star-filled nights. The silent, hot Andalusian afternoons, especially in the gypsy towns of Sevilla and Granada, tremble with the whispers of shimmering sun. The streets and cafes brim with the staccato rhythms and incendiary cries of flamenco dance and song. Jason Webster captures the essence of this culture in his passionate new memoir, Duende: A Journey into the Heart of Flamenco. Choked by the bleak drabness of an academic life in Oxford, he succumbs to the mesmerizing flame of the flamenco life. Unsure of his ultimate direction but starved for life experience, he escapes to Spain, to the eastern coastal city of Alicante, where he studies flamenco guitar and begins an earnest quest to understand duende, that elusive, organic essence of soul connection and emotion conjured by the power of flamenco.

After an intense, destructive love affair with a married flamenco dancer, the author flees to Madrid, friendless and broken-hearted. There he ingratiates himself with outlaw circles of gypsy flamenco musicians. Practicing the guitar endlessly and performing for hours with bleeding fingers, Webster leads a life that is manic and raw, ravaged by drugs, alcohol, crime and poverty. After his treacherous compatriots abandon him, he is bewildered and no closer to grasping duende. Webster goes next to Granada where he recalls a friend’s first words upon his arrival in Spain, “You will go there one day . . . and it will change you forever.” In the magical serenity of the Alhambra’s Generalife gardens he meets an eccentric, older British woman who, ironically, brings him closer to the grail of duende than his gypsy teachers ever could.

Soul odysseys often demand that we lose our way before finding any important truths, and it is a bit painful following the author on his dangerous travels toward self-awakening. But Webster’s evocative descriptions of place blended with his wry, honest, inner narrative seduce readers, as do his exotic glimpses of gypsy ethos and flamenco culture. As for enlightenment achieved, Webster returned, after a five-year absence, to settle in Valencia with a flamenco dancer, still in thrall to the mystery of duende, still “fascinated by Spain, perhaps the only country, as Hemingway suggested.” Alison Hood writes from San Rafael, California.

It should come as no surprise that writer and former hunter James Kilgo, terminally ill, facing that most universal of fears, would leap at the chance to go to Africa as an observer on a big game safari. Literature is filled with stories of what the dark continent does to men and women, from Conrad to Hemingway, from Gordimer to Dinesen. Kilgo was an eager follower in their footsteps, seeking reaffirmation of life, and perhaps redemption. Some people believe there are no coincidences, so maybe some sort of synchronicity was at work when a casual acquaintance asked Kilgo to accompany him on safari. Having fought prostate cancer for almost a decade, the writer’s one regret was that he had never seen Africa. Now, at the age of 58, he immediately accepts the offer. Kilgo’s journey into another world starts from the moment his plane touches down. After dealing with corrupt customs officials, he is on his way into the bush. The safari makes daily hunting forays, for food as well as for trophies: Hippo, leopard, zebra and several kinds of deer none endangered are on the hunting list, as well as that most dangerous of game, the African lion. Though Kilgo has come along merely as a photographer, when he is given the opportunity to stalk the elusive Kudu deer, he wonders if he is up to the same challenge conquered by his literary forebear, Ernest Hemingway.

Colors of Africa is more than a travelogue it is part literary exploration, part personal journey. The hunters’ camp is near the area where missionary David Livingstone died, and the deeply religious Kilgo finds his faith coming into play, whether it be his unease at distributing bags of shoes and crosses to the local population, talking with a Muslim guide named Karim or dealing with the reality of his cancer. An encounter with a lion marries faith with deeper, primal emotions, setting the stage for the Kudu hunt.

James Kilgo, who died in December 2002, was an exceptional, starkly honest writer. This literate, moving, unsentimental book his last will take you to a world you may have only imagined.

Ah, Paris! “Like a hauntingly alluring and exacting mistress, Paris has never quite left me,” reveals eminent British historian Alistair Horne in a prelude to his new Gallic oeuvre, The Seven Ages of Paris. The author of numerous epic volumes of French military history, Horne now trains a fond and omniscient eye on his tempestuous muse, crafting a superb study of a street-wise seductress, in all her glorious and atavistic guises.

This luminous, compelling portrait of Paris, her culture and her citizens is a masterful work of chiaroscuro. Horne’s fine, fluid prose gradually reveals the startling, Janus-like nature of la belle Paris, a city with the siren power to beguile and repel, shock and amuse. The author chooses an idiosyncratic approach: This is not an all-embracing history of Paris, but “a series of linked biographical essays depicting seven ages in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful . . . turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman.” First come the conquering dynasties of monarchs, then the storms of revolution, the autocratic Napoleonic Empires and the 20th century rise of a New Republic.

The streets and monuments of Paris come vividly to life. We witness horrific witch burnings in the Place de Greve, cower with tyrannized kings in the Tuileries Palace, and shiver in the deadly conflagration of Nazi bombs.

Horne has created a worthy reference work and an enlightening traveling companion for those who plan to stroll the venerable boulevards of Paris. Though the author, rather enigmatically, ends this history with de Gaulle’s final exit in 1969, there may be, eventually, an analysis of Mitterrand’s Paris and beyond. But for Horne, this attempt might be premature; perhaps, in the words of Mao’s Prime Minister Chou En-lai, speaking about the impact of China’s Great Revolution, it is “too early to tell.” Alison Hood writes from San Rafael, California.