The genre of travel writing has often centred around the experiences of men, so it is important to highlight the captivating and empowering travel narratives penned by women. There is no shortage of women writing historical fiction, memoir and nonfiction tomes about their own experiences or those of others. For World Book Day 2025, here is Outlook Traveller's list of seven remarkable books by women writers that will change the way you look at travel and the world.
Renowned journalist Sophy Roberts undertakes an extraordinary journey through one of the most challenging landscapes on earth, venturing into the vast wilderness to the east of the Ural Mountains. Scattered throughout this remote region are pianos from the 19th century, bearing witness to the enduring influence of piano music in Russian culture. We follow Roberts on a three-year odyssey as she traces several instruments in search of one with a definitively Siberian history. Roberts journeys across Lake Baikal, visiting isolated towns and villages and meeting vibrant characters who show how vital music is to their lives and culture. It is fascinating to discover how these individuals cherish their pianos that transport them to the farthest reaches of the earth.
Award-winning English journalist and author Alice Albinia takes a journey along the Indus, one of the oldest and largest rivers in the world, from Karachi to Tibet. Along the way, she explores the people, history and cultures of the regions through which it flows; the river has played a significant role in fostering civilisations and religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. Covering a distance of 2,000 miles through eastern Afghanistan, Pakistan, northwestern India and the Tibetan plateau, she delves into the geographic and cultural landmarks of these areas. Albinia's narrative intertwines the past and present as she navigates through the borders of four different countries.
This fascinating book explores two interconnected lakes, Ohrid and Prespa, that are located in the Balkans. Poet and writer Kapka Kassabova reflects on the complex relationship between history and geography, noting that sometimes history's pathways can be found in geography's remote areas. The lakes are about six miles apart, separated by the Galičica mountains, and Ohrid spans across Albania and North Macedonia. As a bilingual writer in English (her primary literary language) and Bulgarian (her mother tongue), Kassabova used to visit the area during her childhood holidays. The destination of the book is a tripartite political frontier, and Kassabova's journey represents a quest to reconnect with her ancestral home, which her grandmother left, but she feels a strong pull towards.
Many people perceive Kabul and Afghanistan solely through the lens of conflict and war. However, Taran N Khan offers a lyrical, personal and meditative portrayal of the city, capturing its bookstores, cinemas, glittery wedding halls, graveyards and poppy palaces. It's not every day you encounter a woman strolling around Kabul, but Khan did so daily for years. The stories begin in 2006, when she first arrived in Kabul—five years after the Taliban regime was overthrown—and conclude in 2013, when she returned to India.
Award-winning author Cal Flyn delves into the intriguing world of abandoned places, exploring ghost towns, exclusion zones and post-industrial hinterlands. The book vividly illustrates what happens when nature is given the opportunity to reclaim these spaces. Embark on a journey with Flyn to desolate and ravaged areas of the Tanzanian mountains, the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden regions of France and the mining areas of Scotland. It's surprising how these seemingly hopeless places hold our best opportunities for environmental recovery. This book is brimming with deep insights and new ecological discoveries that collectively offer a roadmap for addressing the big questions: what happens after we're gone, and how much of our damage to nature can be undone?
American mountaineer Melissa Arnot Reid has summited Mount Everest six times, and in 2016, became the first American woman to get to the top of the world’s highest peak without supplemental oxygen. Her new memoir is the story of a life in which the world’s most dangerous mountain faces became a refuge—until suddenly they, too, no longer seem safe.
From a childhood marked by conflict, betrayal and predation, Reid propelled herself to the top of the mountain climbing world, summiting and guiding on the world’s most challenging peaks and establishing herself as a woman unafraid to throw elbows in a milieu dominated by men. But, for every summit she reached, her valleys of inner turmoil—over her estrangement with the family she believed she’d destroyed as a child; over relationships that cycled through deception and infidelity—grew deeper and more self-destructive. Eventually, Reid could not keep these worlds from colliding, especially after a series of tragedies at dangerous elevations took the lives of her mentors and friends. Forced at last to face herself, she began on a new journey, this time on forgiveness and self-acceptance.
“Enough: Climbing Toward a True Self on Mount Everest” is an uplifting memoir of Reid’s account of traversing the dark crevasses of the soul. Taking readers from the rarified heights visible only at thin-air altitudes to the dark depths home to demons familiar to anyone who has struggled to find compassion for themselves, this book is sure to resonate with many people.
In a rented room outside Plymouth in 1685, a daughter is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes a decision: Mary will become Mark, and Ma will continue to collect his inheritance money. Thus begins Mary's dual existence as Mark, which leads to a role as a footman in a grand house, serving a French mistress; to the navy, learning who to trust and how to navigate by the stars; and to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, finding love among the bloodshed and the mud.
But none of this stops Mary yearning for the sea. Drawn to the water, she reinvents herself again, this time as something more dangerous than a woman: a pirate.
Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, “Saltblood” is a wild adventure for readers as it weaves an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of the real-life Mary Read, one of history's most remarkable figures.
This story was originally published on July 2, 2024. It has since been updated.
