This is not your grandfather's, or even your father's, idea of a travel book. It is, in fact, the most unlikely travel itinerary you'll probably ever read. Some of the destinations in these pages have rarely, if ever, made it to those high-gloss volumes of global travel literature. And for a good -- or at least logical -- reason: most people in so-called 'advanced' countries looking for 'exotic' locales to spend time in, normally wouldn't want to go here. These are places that we might consider deep in poverty and hopelessness, where civil wars rage, where dictators confiscate land for their...