Five and a half decades of adventure travel, mostly on a bike, often alone. Tales from the Road is a compilation of the best of Bransby’s writing. If you are toying with the idea of embarking on an adventurous journey, preferably on a motorcycle, be warned: Your comfortable lifestyle will, in all probability, be disrupted by this book.

If you are a couch traveler, enjoying the exploits of others from the comfort of your living room, be prepared for exciting and challenging tales that will take you from the Russian White Sea coast where “Killer” the Black Bears’ fixer shows the blood on his hands to high, snow-covered passes of the Pamir Mountains and an abandoned bike; from the Ho Chi Min trail of Vietnam to soft-sand desert crossings in Morocco and Mauritania; from the Simian Mountains of Ethiopia to the far north of Canada and an accident just north of the Arctic Circle; from the Road of Bones in far eastern Siberia to a 14-year-old bicycling through lion country in the Gorongossa Game Reserve in far northern Mocambique to crossing a section of the western Sahara in an old Ford Fiesta...

Lawrence Bransby’s love of adventure travel probably began when, at the age of 12, his father suggested a “walk” from Durban in South Africa to Lourenco Marques in Mocambique. Then followed a trans-Africa journey with his 17-year-old son on old XT500s. Bransby has written 10 travelogues that cover journeys across Russia, Central Asia, Morocco, Vietnam, and Africa.

“These books are the sole reason I started riding bikes,” one reader wrote. Tales from the Road is a selection of 27 articles and excerpts, many of them published in adventure motorcycle magazines, and collects them into one handy book, a cornucopia of adventure stories and reflections from the long, hard road that have taken him to places most would-be adventurers can only dream of.