Alastair Sawday's love of adventure began as a teenager in the 1960s, when he set sail on the RMS Queen Mary for Massachusetts. Then came teaching in St Lucia, and on to Trinidad and Guyana. A passion for exploration and a fierce commitment to the environment were set in motion. The lifeblood of Sawday's work is a relentless pursuit of authenticity, of natural home-grown resources, of the joy and humour in quirks of humanity, culture and landscape - beyond bland comfort and anonymity. He writes of the eccentricities of guests, hotels and their owners: the Lutyens-style house near Delhi named Tikli Bottom; the chaotic old Spanish farmhouse, with fitful electricity and life-affirming conversation; a Parisian café-theatre whose elderly waitresses provided the can-can as after dinner entertainment - and an ingenious Essex cabin floating on old fertiliser barrels. We meet the fellow guest whose phobia of draughts meant she dined swaddled in plastic bags; and an Irish hotelier who insisted her guests accompany her to a most unusual burial. From the majesty of Venice, Turkey and Greece, to the 'Baroque flourish' of Sicily, the lush, unspoiled valleys of Ty-Mynydd in Wales, and the rugged beauty of Porthcurno, Cornwall - Travelling light celebrates the qualities that have made Sawday's quidebooks unique: rich peculiarity of location and warm, eclectic hospitality.