Inspiring Travel Writing from Rory MacLean
Rory MacLean was born and educated in Canada. His six books, including best-sellers Stalin's Nose and Under the Dragon, have - according to the Financial Times - challenged and invigorated travel writing, and are among works that - wrote John Fowles in the Spectator - "marvellously explain why literature still lives".
He has won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work prize and an Arts Council Writers' Award, was twice short-listed for the Thomas Cook Travel Book prize and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award. His latest book "Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India" is published by Penguin. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radios 3 and 4, writing and presenting for eight years the travel programme Itchy Feet. He divides his time between Dorset and Berlin. His latest travels can be followed on his website at www.rorymaclean.com
He has won the Yorkshire Post Best First Work prize and an Arts Council Writers' Award, was twice short-listed for the Thomas Cook Travel Book prize and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award. His latest book "Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India" is published by Penguin. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radios 3 and 4, writing and presenting for eight years the travel programme Itchy Feet. He divides his time between Dorset and Berlin. His latest travels can be followed on his website at www.rorymaclean.com
Articles by Rory MacLean
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Before You Die: The Haunting Call of the Loon
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Rory MacLean
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Canada
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Ontario
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Lake Superior
Canada: Hear at dawn the solitary, haunting call of the loon, Canada's Great Northern Diver. Quetico is an 1800 square mile wilderness park of 600 lakes and a thousand tangled rivers to the west of Lake Superior. I love to canoe across the water's...
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Before You Die: Cross Italy from Alps to toe
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Rory MacLean
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Italy
Italy: Cross Italy from Alps to toe, with fork and spoon in hand, in search of the perfect pasta dish. I may be gone some time.
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Before You Die: Go Climb a Rock
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Rory MacLean
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United States
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California
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Yosemite National Park
California, Yosemite National Park: "Go Climb a Rock," as they say in California's Yosemite National Park. I'd find my way to the top of Half Dome, though not up its sheer cliff-face. There's an awesome, nine mile trail leading up from Yosemite...
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City of Mermaids
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Rory MacLean
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United States
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Florida
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St. Petersburg
In America if you want to meet a mermaid you can. Just up the coast from St. Petersburg on U.S. 19. For $14.95. Three times a day, behind a wall of four-inch-thick plate-glass, half a dozen mermaids - and the occasional merman - jive and pirouette...
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The Garden of Eden, Florida
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Rory MacLean
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United States
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Florida
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Bristol
Forget what they taught you in Sunday school. The Garden of Eden isn’t in Mesopotamia. It’s off Highway 20, in northern Florida. Drive 43 miles west of the state capital Tallahassee and you’ll reach Bristol, Liberty County. It’s a small, dusty town...
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Near-death experience
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Rory MacLean
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Russia
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Central Russia
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Moscow
They embalmed Lenin the day after he died, Styopa told us, "with disinfecting liquid - a mixture of formalin and medical spirit - via the aeorta. His brain was removed and preserved in the Lenin Museum. It weighed, as I recall, 1340 grams, a little...
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All Roads Lead to Mickey
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Rory MacLean
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United States
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Florida
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Orlando
Walt Disney World is twice the size of Manhattan. Its parks - the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT Center, Disney-MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom - cover 43 square miles. Every year 32 million people visit them, drink half a billion Cokes, eat five million hot...
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Aussies? Sophisticated?
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Rory MacLean
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Australia
It's official. According to the Sydney Morning Herald Australians have become sensualists; their tanned bodies bronzing in the sun, sipping vibrant wines, savouring innovative Mod Oz cuisine, indulging in the sweet physicality of life in their...
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Byron Bay: From Hippie to Chichi
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Rory MacLean
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Australia
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New South Wales
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Byron Bay
“The only trouble with paradise,” a ‘blow-in’ Sydney surfie told me as she picked up her longboard, “is that everyone wants a piece of it.” Paradise Australian-style is miles of pristine sand, whipbirds at dawn...
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Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India (an extract)
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Rory MacLean
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Turkey
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Marmara
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Istanbul
As the sun sets beyond the Hindu Kush we are fed Whoopers and Personal Pan Pizzas. Then for a nightcap the two dozen international aid workers and I troop under escort across the North Camp to the Cat's Meow. We open a screen door and step into...