This book found me, not the other way around. Tucked between a hat from the Karen region in the north of Thailand, an Indian pashmina and a pile of silk and cotton shawls plucked from market stalls across Indonesia. I pulled a long, tie dyed piece from the depths of the cardboard box, draped it...

"Pilgrimage seems to be a means of reinforcing certainties of faith. Independent travel can be about challenging one's idea of living." --Rory MacLean, Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India (2006)

Rory MacLean's ' The Oatmeal Ark ' is part travel memoir, part historical fiction. Or maybe it's part history book, and part travel fiction. It's hard to pin this book down: it blurs the line between fact and fiction, past and present. The book follows the fictional Beagan Gillean as he travels the world in...