As a self-confessed air fiend, Paul Theroux has travelled more widely than even his travel books suggest - and he takes pleasure in roughing it. In this collection of Theroux's shorter travel writings, he writes of sweat shops in Dongguan, massage parlours in Kowloon, jellyfish in Palau and bomb craters on Christmas Island. He visits the King of the Lozis at a bend in the Zambezi river, and the precious Stone Castle on the Yangtze. He explores the remote island of Palawan in the Philippines, crosses the States in a private railway car, and camps in the snow in the woods of Maine.