The Battle for Room Service: Journeys to all the Safe Places

These days, the average travel book records a journey across the desert on a pogo stick, through a crocodile lagoon in an inflatable canoe or into the jungle with only a tube of mints and a copy of Homer for company. The courage of such travellers is admirable, but their search for the exotic and the perilous has left parts of the world uncharted by the genre.