Journey

Simon Reeve is an adventurer and New York Times bestselling author who has travelled to more than 120 countries making award-winning documentaries for the BBC. They include Caribbean, Indian Ocean, Tropic of Cancer and Equator. Simon has received a One World Broadcasting Trust Award for "an outstanding contribution to greater world understanding", and the prestigious Ness Award from the Royal Geographical Society. His unique brand of documentaries, combining travel and adventure with environmental, political, and conservation issues, has taken him across jungles, deserts, mountains and oceans, through some of the most remote and beautiful regions of our planet.

1: The Ancient World


1: Introduction
2: Journeys from the cradle
3: Minoan seafarers
4: Travel in ancient Egypt
5: The expedition to Punt
6: Polynesian navigators
7: Around Africa
8: Persian couriers
9: The Greek world
10: The travels of Odysseus
11: Alexander the Great
12: The travels of Zhang Qian
13: Across the Alps
14: Strabo
15: The Roman Empire
16: The Tabula Peutingeriana
17: The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
18: Ptolemy’s Geographia


2: Trade and Conquest


1: Introduction
2: Xuanzang’s journey to India
3: Journey to the West
4: Kingdom of Heaven
5: The spread of Islam
6: Arab exploration
7: The astrolabe
8: Voyages of the Vikings
9: The Crusades
10: Prester John
11: Medieval pilgrimages
12: Medieval travel accounts
13: The Silk Road
14: The travels of Marco Polo
15: On wheels
16: Caravanserai
17: Trans-Saharan salt caravans
18: Ibn Battuta
19: Medieval maps


3: The Age of Discovery


1: Introduction
2: Zheng He
3: Ships
4: Around Africa to India
5: A new world
6: After Columbus
7: First map of the New World
8: Circumnavigating the globe
9: Cortés and the conquest of the Aztecs
10: Pizarro’s conquest of Peru
11: The discovery of the Amazon
12: The Columbian Exchange
13: New France
14: Samuel de Champlain
15: Early missionaries
16: The Northwest Passage


4: The Age of Empires


1: Introduction
2: The spice trade
3: Wonder cabinets
4: New Holland
5: Settling America
6: Evliya Çelebi
7: Coffee
8: Slave ships in the Atlantic
9: A life of piracy
10: Travels in the Mughal Empire
11: The stagecoach
12: The frozen east
13: The Great Northern Expedition
14: Calculating longitude
15: The voyages of Captain Cook
16: The new naturalists
17: Artist in the rainforest
18: The Grand Tour
19: First flight
20: Bound for Botany Bay


5: The Age of Steam


1: Introduction
2: Alexander von Humboldt
3: Rediscovering Egypt
4: Painting the East
5: Charting the American West
6: Go west, young man!
7: Full steam ahead
8: The Romantics
9: The voyages of the Beagle
10: Travellers’ tales
11: Shooting the world
12: Into Africa
13: The Railway Age
14: Trains
15: The Gold Rush
16: Thomas Cook
17: Spas
18: Going by the book
19: Souvenirs
20: The works of all nations
21: Across Australia
22: Charting the Mekong
23: Ocean to ocean
24: The grand hotel
25: Luggage labels
26: Measuring India


6: The Golden Age of Travel


1: Introduction
2: Central Asia
3: On skis across
4: Greenland
5: The bicycle craze
6: Zeppelin fever
7: The airline of empire
8: Travel posters
9: The Long March
10: Planes
11: The roof of the world
12: The open road
13: Route 66
14: No-frills flying
15: Into the abyss
16: Flight to the Moon
17: The Hippie Trail
18: Concorde
19: New horizons
20: Exploration today
21: New frontiers


8: Index
9: Picture credits and acknowledgments