The Royal Road to Romance: American's Most Dashing Adventurer Explores 1920s India (Adventure Travel Classics)

The Long Riders' Guild Press, 2001. Trade Paperback. 399 pages. B/W photographs.

He was the most dashing, handsome adventure travel writer America ever had! During the roaring 1920s and 30s Richard Halliburton crossed the world like a whirlwind, all the while risking his life by performing stunts during the course of his travels like diving into the accursed Mayan Well of Death, not once but twice. He was welcomed by royalty, lived on Devil's Island, and enlisted in the Foreign Legion. Born in the USA, Halliburton called the world his home. "The Royal Road to Romance" was Halliburton's first book and doesn't include a dull page. It details how the young Princeton university student cast aside any notions of a serious career, choosing instead to visit a vast array of countries from England to Japan. During the course of these travels he undertook every sort of madcap adventure that he could find, including swimming the famed Hellespont, exploring the jungles of India, and becoming the first foreigner to astonish Japan by climb snow-covered Mount Fujiyama in midwinter. "Let those who wish have their respectability - I wanted the freedom to search the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous and the romantic," he wrote. This is the exciting, and charming, story of how this famed traveler found all those dreams, and more.