Book excerpt: You have to go back to the 1980s and Granta's bestselling travel issue to find a book that compares to OxTravels. Introduced by Michael Palin, OxTravels features original stories from twenty-five top travel writers, including Michael Palin, Paul Theroux, Sara Wheeler, William Dalrymple, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Lloyd Jones, Rory Stewart, Jan Morris, Dervla Murphy, Rory MacLean, and others. Each of the stories takes as its theme a meeting - life-changing, affecting, amusing by turn - and together they transport readers into a brilliant, vivid atlas of encounters. This extraordinary collection is published in aid of Oxfam and all royalties from the book will support Oxfam's work.