Journey to Xanadu

Journey to Xanadu PDF Author: Tim Cronley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781728367446
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
The book you are about to read is an account of my own personal wayfaring in two dimensions. It's the story of a physical trip that my wife and I took to the Far East in 2006. It is also an account of what I was thinking as I went exploring beyond the boundaries of my National and Cultural existence. It has a strange provenance. I wrote a first draft of it several months after the trip ended using the notes from my journal. I then filed it away as simply a record of a personal trip. I did not consider it for publication because I could not place it in any recognizable publishing niche. It is therefore reasonable to ask why I am now publishing a manuscript that was created as far back as 2006. Oddly enough, I am doing so because of the Covid-19 pandemic. I decided to take advantage of the enforced isolation brought about because of the virus by cleaning out old files and folders that were taking up space. When I came across the folder of this manuscript I took another look at it, and decided that it might have merit for publication after all - in the same way that wine can achieve merit if we wait long enough. In this case, the wait has ended in a worldwide pandemic that has forced the entire world to go exploring beyond the boundaries of its troubled existence. I think that some of my observations recorded in 2006 may now have relevance. It will be up to the reader to prove me wrong.

In Xanadu

In Xanadu PDF Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780143031079
Category : Asia
Languages : hi
Pages : 354

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Book Description
In Xanadu is, without doubt, one of the best travel books produced in the last 20 years. It is witty and intelligent, brilliantly observed, deftly constructed and extremely entertaining& Dalrymple s gift for transforming ordinary humdrum experience into something extraordinary and timeless suggests that he will go from strength to strength Alexander Maitland, Scotland on Sunday

Xanadu

Xanadu PDF Author: John Man
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409045641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
**A SOURCE FOR MARCO POLO, A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES** Marco Polo's journey from Venice, through Europe and most of Asia, to the court of Kublai Khan in China is one of the most audacious in history. His account of his experiences, known simply as The Travels, uncovered an entirely new world of emperors and concubines, great buildings - 'stately pleasure domes' in Coleridge's dreaming - huge armies and imperial riches. His book shaped the West's understanding of China for hundreds of years. John Man travelled in Marco's footsteps to Xanadu, in search of the truth behind Marco's stories; to separate legend from fact. Drawing on his own journey, archaeology and archival study, John Man paints a vivid picture of the man behind the myth and the true story of the great court of Kublai Khan.

Voyager from Xanadu

Voyager from Xanadu PDF Author: Morris Rossabi
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520262379
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
In Voyager from Xanadu, a distinguished historian tells the little-known story of the life and travels of the first person from China ever to reach Europe. Portraying one of the most remarkable early encounters between East and West, Morris Rossabi also brings to life the intriguing and turbulent era of the Mongol Empire and the last Crusades. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, at about the time Marco Polo arrived in China, a Christian monk, Rabban Sauma, left it, embarking on a journey that would prove more momentous than he could have dreamed. What began as a religious pilgrimage to the Middle East (supported by the Mongol Emperor, Khubilai Khan) ultimately became an extraordinary diplomatic mission. After several years' eventful stay in Persia, Sauma was dispatched to Europe by Persia's Mongol ruler, the Ilkhan. The monk's task: to persuade the Pope and the Kings of France and England to ally with the Ilkhan and launch a Crusade against their common enemy, the Muslim dynasty that controlled the Holy Land. The mission was a striking early instance of geopolitics on a modern scale. Voyager from Xanadu vividly conjures up the places Sauma visited as he crossed two continents, meeting with monarchs and prelates and seeing everything from a battle to a volcanic eruption to countless grisly relics of long-dead saints. It provides a clear and penetrating analysis of the volatile international situation of the era and its impact on Sauma's embassy. And, of course, Voyager from Xanadu traces the life of an exceptional man, from his comfortable youth, through his unique adventures, to his death far from the land of his birth.

Beyond the Sky and the Earth

Beyond the Sky and the Earth PDF Author: Jamie Zeppa
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
ISBN: 0385674155
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
In the tradition of Iron and Silk and Touch the Dragon, Jamie Zeppa’s memoir of her years in Bhutan is the story of a young woman’s self-discovery in a foreign land. It is also the exciting début of a new voice in travel writing. When she left for the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan in 1988, Zeppa was committing herself to two years of teaching and a daunting new experience. A week on a Caribbean beach had been her only previous trip outside Canada; Bhutan was on the other side of the world, one of the most isolated countries in the world known as the last Shangri-La, where little had changed in centuries and visits by foreigners were restricted. Clinging to her bags full of chocolate, hair conditioner and Immodium, she began the biggest challenge of her life, with no idea she would fall in love with the country and with a Bhutanese man, end up spending nine years in Bhutan, and begin a literary career with her account of this transformative journey. At her first posting in a remote village of eastern Bhutan, she is plunged into an overwhelmingly different culture with squalid Third World conditions and an impossible language. Her house has rats and fleas and she refuses to eat the local food, fearing the rampant deadly infections her overly protective grandfather warned her about. Gradually, however, her fear vanishes. She adjusts, begins to laugh, and is captivated by the pristine mountain scenery and the kind students in her grade 2 class. She also begins to discover for herself the spiritual serenity of Buddhism. A transfer to the government college of Sherubtse, where the housing conditions are comparatively luxurious and the students closer to her own age, gives her a deeper awareness of Bhutan’s challenges: the lack of personal privacy, the pressure to conform, and the political tensions. However, her connection to Bhutan intensifies when she falls in love with a student, Tshewang, and finds herself pregnant. After a brief sojourn in Canada to give birth to her son, Pema Dorji, she marries Tshewang and makes Bhutan her home for another four years. Zeppa’s personal essay about her culture shock on arriving in Bhutan won the 1996 CBC/Saturday Night literary competition and appeared in the magazine. She flew home to accept the prize, where people encouraged her to pursue her writing. Her letters from Bhutan also featured on CBC’s Morningside. The book that grew out of this has been published in Canada and the United States to ecstatic reviews, followed by British, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish editions. Although cultural differences finally separated Jamie and Tshewang in 1997 while she was writing the book and she returned to Canada, she will always feel at home in Bhutan. Zeppa shares her compelling insights into this land and culture, but Beyond the Sky and the Earth is more than a travel book. With rich, spellbinding prose and bright humour, it describes a personal journey in which Zeppa acquires a deeper understanding of what it means to leave one’s home behind, and undergoes a spiritual transformation.

Journey to Xanadu

Journey to Xanadu PDF Author: Tim Cronley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781728367446
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
The book you are about to read is an account of my own personal wayfaring in two dimensions. It's the story of a physical trip that my wife and I took to the Far East in 2006. It is also an account of what I was thinking as I went exploring beyond the boundaries of my National and Cultural existence. It has a strange provenance. I wrote a first draft of it several months after the trip ended using the notes from my journal. I then filed it away as simply a record of a personal trip. I did not consider it for publication because I could not place it in any recognizable publishing niche. It is therefore reasonable to ask why I am now publishing a manuscript that was created as far back as 2006. Oddly enough, I am doing so because of the Covid-19 pandemic. I decided to take advantage of the enforced isolation brought about because of the virus by cleaning out old files and folders that were taking up space. When I came across the folder of this manuscript I took another look at it, and decided that it might have merit for publication after all - in the same way that wine can achieve merit if we wait long enough. In this case, the wait has ended in a worldwide pandemic that has forced the entire world to go exploring beyond the boundaries of its troubled existence. I think that some of my observations recorded in 2006 may now have relevance. It will be up to the reader to prove me wrong.

Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism

Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism PDF Author: Ruth Gamble
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019069078X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism examines how the third Karmapa hierarch, Rangjung Dorjé (1284-1339) transformed reincarnation from a belief into a lasting Tibetan institution. Born the son of an itinerant, low-caste potter, Rangjung Dorjé went on to become a foundational figure in Tibetan Buddhism and a teacher of the last Mongolian emperor. He became renowned for his contributions to Buddhist philosophy, literature, astrology, medicine, architecture, sacred geography and manuscript production. But, as Ruth Gamble demonstrates, his most important legacy was the transformation of the Karmapa reincarnation lineage to ensure that, after his death, subsequent Karmapas were able to assume power in the religious institutions he had led. The inheritance model of reincarnation instituted by Rangjung Dorjé changed the Tibetan Plateau's power relations, which until that time had been based on family associations, and created a precedent for later reincarnate institutions, including that of the Dalai Lamas. Drawing on Rangjung Dorjé's hitherto un-translated autobiographies and autobiographical songs, this book shows that his reinvention of reincarnation was a self-conscious and multi-faceted project, made possible by Rangjung Dorjé's cultural, social, and political standing and specific historical and geographical circumstances. Exploring this combination of agency and historical coincidence, this is the first full-length study of the development of the reincarnation institution.

Writing Travel

Writing Travel PDF Author: John Zilcosky
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442692715
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Interest in travel writing has grown rapidly within the disciplines of postcolonial and cultural studies; however, recent scholarship has failed to place travel writing within the larger literary tradition. Writing Travel assembles a superb collection of essays that demonstrate how travel attempts to reconfigure the world and, in so doing, to become a metaphor for imagination, subjectivity, and representation itself. Examining a broad range of texts and travellers from across the world, the contributors discuss canonical authors such as Homer, Goethe, and Baudelaire, alongside lesser known writers such as Theodor Herzl, Hans Erich Nossack, and William Gibson. This theoretically rich volume draws connections between travel and narrative, and provides powerful insights into the relationship between travel and the spoken act of storytelling, as well as the more ambivalent act of story writing. An engaging collection of essays by first-rate scholars, Writing Travel is an illuminating exploration of the history of travel writing, its influence on other literary genres, and the origins of narrative.

Writing Travel Poetry

Writing Travel Poetry PDF Author: Hs Toshack
Publisher: WordSmith
ISBN: 0975670913
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 66

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Book Description


Divergent Visions, Contested Spaces

Divergent Visions, Contested Spaces PDF Author: Jeffrey Hotz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000448266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This multicultural project examines fictional and non-fictional accounts of travel in the Early Republic and antebellum periods. Connecting literary representations of geographic spaces within and outside of U.S. borders to evolving definitions of national American identity, the book explores divergent visions of contested spaces. Through an examination of depictions of the land and travel in fiction and non-fiction, the study uncovers the spatial and legal conceptions of national identity. The study argues that imagined geographies in American literature dramatize a linguistic contest among dominant and marginal voices. Blending interpretations of canonical authors, such as James Fenimore Cooper, Frederick Douglass, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., and Herman Melville, with readings of less well -known writers like Gilbert Imlay, Elizabeth House Trist, Sauk Chief Black Hawk, William Grimes, and Moses Roper, the book interprets diverse authors' impressions of significant spaces migrations. The movements and regions covered include the Anglo-American migration to the Trans-Appalachian Valley after the Revolutionary War; the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and Anglo-American travel west of the Mississippi; the Underground Railroad as depicted in the fugitive slave narrative and novel; and the extension of American interests in maritime endeavors off the California coast and in the South Pacific.

Origins of Olympus

Origins of Olympus PDF Author: Kate O'Hearn
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1442497173
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Emily and her winged horse, face an ancient challenge of Olympic proportions in this fourth book of the exciting Pegasus series. A deadly plague has struck Olympus. While the Olympians fade one by one, Emily’s heart breaks as she watches, particularly when Pegasus begins to slip away. Determined to save him, she embarks on an investigation that takes her back in time to the origins of Olympus and to the deadly battle between the Olympians and the Titans. In the present, she must face the force of the CRU. In the past, she must confront Cronus, the father of the gods and leader of the Titans, who is intent on destroying his offspring. When Emily encounters the full power of the flame and a discovery that could change the face of history, will she make the right decisions? And in the race against time to save Pegasus, will Olympus find its true hero?