Continental Drifting in Central Asia

EXTREME CONTINENTAL: Blowing Hot and Cold Through Central Asia by Giles Whittell (Trafalgar Square Publishing, $35).

Whittell’s excuse for visiting the Central Asian republics of the former USSR was to retrace the footsteps of Englishman Stephen Graham, a journalist who traveled in central Russia just before World War I. Graham turned his journeys into a series of dispatches for the London Times and later a book entitled, “Through Russian Central Asia.” After a chapter or so, Whittell pretty much dumps the Graham gimmick, however, to embark on his own extremely idiosyncratic journey across the tongue-twisting countries of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

With little Russian and not many rubles, Whittell manages to dance rather deftly across the tyrannosaurian bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure of the one-time Soviet states. Waving dubious credentials and throwing himself on the mercy of strangers, he proves time and again that disorganization favors the resourceful.

His adventures are grand, banal, funny, silly and often uncomfortable. He sleeps in a yurt in Kyrgyzstan, watches a Russian space launch, helicopters to glaciers along the Chinese border, journeys to the vanishing Aral Sea, visits the depressingly Russianized cities on the great Silk Road. In between, he meets a cast of characters who survive by scrounging parts of the collapsed Soviet empire.

Sprightly first-person travelogue is Whittell’s metier; he’s not much on historic or social context. But, ultimately, the cultural and ecological destruction he describes--especially as he nears the Soviet nuclear test zone of eastern Kazakhstan--makes the trip surreal. And when he starts traveling around in a motorcycle with a sidecar, it’s hard not to think of Mad Max in post-apocalypse Australia.

BEER HERE: A Traveler’s Guide to American Brewpubs and Microbreweries by Stuart A. Kallen (Citadel Press, $16.95, paperback). BEER TRAVELERS GUIDE: The Best Places in America to Find Good Beer by Stan Hieronymus and Daria Labinsky (Chautauqua, $14.95, paperback). ON TAP NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: The Essential Guide to Brewpubs and Craft Breweries by Steve Johnson (Chronicle Books, $11.95, paperback).

Three guides for the new golden age of American beer. “Beer Here” outlines nearly 500 brew pubs (where beer is both made and sold) and microbreweries (small, regional breweries). “Beer Travelers Guide” rates (up to two stars) 1,700 places where good beer is served (by “good” they don’t mean something from cans). “On Tap” is the latest in a series by Johnson that includes “On Tap New England” and “On Tap: The Guide to U.S. Brewpubs.”

“Beer Here” has a broad outlook, including chapters on beer history and manufacture. “Travelers,” from “All About Beer” magazine, is a practical, pared-down, no-nonsense list. “On Tap,” with its niche focus, has much more fulsome descriptions of each of its 68 breweries. For beer purposes, Johnson breaks Northern California down into the Bay Area, Central Coast and Valleys, North Coast and Wine Country, and Sacramento Valley and the Sierra.

JAVA: A Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit by Peter Turner (Lonely Planet, $14.95, paperback maps, photos). SLOVENIA: A Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit by Steve Fallon (Lonely Planet, $13.95, paperback, maps, photos).

Two more holes filled in Lonely Planet’s global bookshelf. It’s a bit surprising that a separate Java book hadn’t been done before. After all, LP was born in Australia, and its all-encompassing Indonesia guide has passed through numerous editions. In any event, the Java book seems complete and authoritative with a formidable introductory section that touches on everything from politics and religion to puppet theaters and batik designs.

On the other hand, LP jumped on Slovenia very quickly. The northernmost shard of shattered Yugoslavia has only been a separate nation since 1991. It’s a tiny central European country of alpine scenery, medieval towns and Lipizzaner horses. LP makes it sound like an inexpensive, untouched Switzerland.

LP has also released two new travel atlases: Vietnam (27 maps) and Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia (29 maps).

Quick trips:

THE TEMPLES OF KYOTO by Donald Richie, photos by Alexandre Georges (Charles E. Tuttle Co., $29.95). Kyoto was Japan’s imperial city for more than 1,000 years. It contains hundreds of Buddhist temples, and this book focuses on 21 of them (somewhat arbitrarily selected). There is a cogent opening essay on Buddhism’s introduction to and impact on Japan. This is valuable pre-trip reading for those interested in the meeting of architecture and religion.

ADVENTURE VACATIONS: A 50 State Guide by Stephanie Ocko (Carol Publishing Group, $14.95, paperback). Fifty categories listed alphabetically, from Airplane and Airship Adventures to Women’s Adventures. In between are such activities as kayaking, caving, dog sledding, house building and survival training. Each section includes a list of outfitters and/or guides.

Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.