Travel Survival

Michael Brein's Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 2 for August 2014 contains 10 among the best travel stories from Michael's huge collection of travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of his own travels to more than 125 countries throughout the world.

In 1856 Paul Du Chaillu marched into the equatorial wilderness of West Africa determined to bag an animal that, according to legend, was nothing short of a monster. When he emerged three years later, the summation of his efforts only hinted at what he'd experienced in one of the most dangerous regions on earth. Armed with an astonishing collection of zoological specimens, Du Chaillu leapt from the physical challenges of the jungle straight into the center of the biggest issues of the time.

Wilderness survival? With nothing but a knife and hatchet? When you're alone, and the wilderness is Earth at the end of the ice age? Not all the dangers come from predatory animals.

This riveting collection of adventure writing includes the work of The Perfect Storm author, Sebastian Junger. Listen as men and women battle the elements, and often each other, to stay alive, confronting sharks, savage storms, rogue waves, mountainous icebergs, starvation, and their own fear and suffering.

Journalist Susan Casey was in her living room when she first glimpsed this strange place and its resident sharks, their dark fins swirling around a tiny boat in a documentary. These great whites were the alphas among alphas, the narrator said, some of them topping 18 feet in length, and each fall they congregated here off the northern California coast.

With the help of Uncle Archie, this time they travel back to the 16th century. To begin with, all goes smoothly, but then a series of dramatic events means they become separated - then stuck! Robert, James, and Lucy are resourceful children and have to learn to adapt to their circumstances and work both individually and as a team to find a solution to their difficulties. Along the way, they meet several historical figures from the Elizabethan period, including the most famous and important person of them all.

The fate of the USS Flier is one of the most astonishing stories of the Second World War. On August 13, 1944, the submarine struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Sulu Sea in less than one minute, leaving only 14 of its crew of 86 hands alive. After enduring 18 hours in the water, eight remaining survivors swam to a remote island controlled by the Japanese. Deep behind enemy lines and without food or drinking water, the crewmen realized that their struggle for survival had just begun.

Cade Carter and his friends have survived the qualifying round of the mysterious overlords' twisted games, decimated by the loss of so many of their comrades during the fight. But they have no time to mourn, for the next round of trials is about to begin. When the group discovers that their next foe will be even more ferocious than the last, Cade leads them on a quest out into their strange new world to find anything that might give them an edge. But what they find in the wilds could prove to be even more dangerous than the impending battle....

Two boys and two girls are best friends. They have skied and snowboarded together into every corner of Jagged Peak in search of adventure, but always within the safety of that ski area's boundaries. Until now, when they follow the tracks of a strange snow-sliding creature into the volcanic out-of-bounds. And vanish into another world. Three land deep in an eerie jungle, and one falls high on an icy cornice - all of them ditched by a tricky, rogue wormhole, which disappears over distant snow-covered peaks.

Mein Feuer der Reiselust......wurde fruh entfacht, seither muss es genahrt werden.Zusammen mit meinem Partner folge ich – manchmal mit Rucksack, meist mit eigenem Expeditionsmobil – einem inneren Kompass. So entdecken wir Berggorillas und Lowenrudel in Afrika, erkunden den Regenwald Costa Ricas, besuchen eines der letzten Naturvolker Indonesiens und bewundern den Sternenhimmel uber der Wuste des Iran.Ich habe Momente des Schreckens und des großten Glucks erlebt, habe unterwegs die Liebe verloren und innere Starke gewonnen.

Mungo Park was an explorer of the real kind. In 1795, only aged 24, he left Gambia for the uncharted interior of Africa, in a journey that would be filled with tragedy, heroism, and adventure. Park was the first European to ever reach the river Niger and the legendary city of Timbuctoo, thus resolving, once and for all, a century-old geographic debate. He travelled with local guides and later entirely alone, through warring kingdoms, robberies, imprisonment, and extreme duress. By the time he returned to Gambia, he had long been given up for dead.

The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. On December 5, 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton, along with 27 men aboard the ship Endurance, departed South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean for Vahsel Bayon the northeast coast of Antarctica with the intent of trekking across the continent. On August 20, 1916, Shackleton on the Yelcho picked up 22 men on the northeast coast of Elephant Island.

Imagine visiting another time in history and getting stuck there! The first book in the Stuck series, Stuck (In Time) blends adventure, history, and time travel. The three Baxter children - twins Robert and James and their sister, Lucy - use their individual strengths to work together and get themselves out of a string of scrapes.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

As Frank Kusy turns 27, he is unexpectedly put in charge of an old people's home in Clapham, South London. Driven to distraction by a crazy cast of characters, he seeks solace in Buddhism, only to find himself up to his ears in plasticine pigs and marathon chanting sessions. Will he make his mum happy by holding down a 'proper' job? Will he make her unhappy by becoming a writer? Will he get to share cheese sandwiches with Kevin in Kathmandu? And will he be forced to exchange his underpants in Japan?

The adventure continues when Abby and Derick begin their second semester at Cragbridge Hall, the most prestigious secondary school in the world. But when Grandpa Cragbridge admits them to the Council of Keys - a secret group of people who have keys to travel back in time - strange things begin to happen. One by one, members are found unconscious and unable to wake, their keys stolen. Now Abby and Derick must scramble to figure out who is behind the attacks before they become the next victims, which would give their enemy the power to change the past forever.

In 1911, Captain Robert Falcon Scott went back to the huge frozen wasteland of the Antarctic with the intention of reaching the South Pole, by a long and terribly arduous trek across the ice. On finally reaching the pole, Scott and his comrades were devastated to find that they had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen. With temperatures of minus 30, they began their slow journey back to their base.

Published in Rock and Ice Magazine in 1986, this essay, co-written by John Long and Dwight Brooks, tells the story of a hair-raising caving adventure in Papua New Guinea.

In 1979, Ursula Westmacott impulsively left London and her modelling career to join her boyfriend Chris Crocker on board Spero, a 42-foot sailing boat built in 1909 and never modernized - no engine and just a sextant for navigation. The two intrepid sailors headed south for Gibraltar, then Africa, finally crossing the Atlantic to reach Brazil.

Living on a Russian base next door to angry sea lions, Karen finds herself living and working in remote conditions surrounded by stunning scenery as she discovers the courage to find a different way of living which will change her life forever and inspire others to do the same.