The best travel books will take you there, even if you’re stuck here

How out-there are your holidays? Do you go up a mountain, into a jungle, or just lie on a beach? If you prefer to relax, the best travel books can do adventure for you: flop by the pool, order a drink, and crack the spine of a tale of high adventure in comfort. If you’re out of holiday for the year, you can live vicariously through travel books.

There’s more to them than just accounts of faraway places, thrilling as those are. Some will have you seeing a familiar destination differently. Some take a thematic approach rather than sticking to a single location. But the genre’s classics have the brilliant writing and insight that ranks them alongside the greatest novels in terms of quality. Here are some very best travel books around.

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart

Way back, back before Rory Stewart was a podcaster – back, even, before he was a Tory MP – he was a young man with an obsession with walking. The more dangerous the walk, the better. When he decided to walk the length of Afghanistan in 2002, only months after the Taliban had been deposed, many assumed he would be killed somewhere along the way. Despite a couple of very close shaves, he survived to write up his experiences of a country in chaos, much of which was governed only by local tribes – tribes that, despite their poverty, were generally happy to feed and house Stewart during his epic trek.

Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuściński

Ryszard Kapuściński was, for many years, communist-era Poland’s only foreign correspondent. He was sent all around the world to cover coups and revolutions. His book-length accounts of those trips are considered some of the best works of literary journalism in history – at one point, Kapuściński was a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of his best works is Shah of Shahs, about Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The structure is somewhat experimental – the book begins with Kapuściński in his messy hotel room, trying to make sense of his notes and tapes – but combines his first-hand reportage, stories from interviewees, and Iran’s wider history to powerful effect.

High Caucasus by Tom Parfitt

Russia is a very big country, and a lot of it is inhabited by people who aren’t ethnically Russian. One area is the North Caucasus, a mountainous area just north of Georgia and Azerbaijan with a large Muslim population. In High Caucasus, the British journalist Tom Parfitt recounts his walk across the entire width of the region, from the Black Sea in the west to the Caspian Sea in the east. The journey passes through a patchwork of ethnicities, and some of the bloodiest sites in Russian history, as well as sublime natural beauty.