Hall of a Thousand Columns

Born in 1304, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier as a young scholar of law; over the 30 years that followed he visited most of the known world between Morocco and China. In this enchanting travelogue, Tim Mackintosh-Smith retraces one leg of the Moroccan's journey: the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of his Indian career as a judge and hermit, courtier and prisoner, ambassador and castaway. From the plains of Hindustan to the plateaus of the Deccan and the lost ports of Malabar, an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Rajglittering and grotesque but genuineis revealed here.

Tim Mackintosh-Smith is the author of Travels with a Tangerine and Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, winner of the 1998 Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award.