Photo credit: Georgia MIR
What World-bestseller Books Say about MIR Destinations
Georgia, Uzbekistan, Oman, & the Balkans Through the Words of Great Writers
The finest travel books do more than describe a destination. They help us understand how a place lives and breathes and what shapes its identity. The authors featured here capture that sense of place in the regions MIR has explored for years. We’ve selected four world best-selling books about MIR destinations, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Oman, and the Balkans, that deepen our understanding of their history, culture, and daily life. Read on to see these remarkable places through the eyes of world-class writers.
Georgia, the Cradle of Wine
Alice Feiring, described by The New York Times as “the first and most assertive American champion of natural wines,” writes in her book For the Love of Wine: My Odyssey Through the World’s Most Ancient Wine Culture about Georgia, where wine is inseparable from everyday life. She shows how clay qvevri jars buried beneath the earth keep alive traditions that reach back 8,000 years, demonstrates how the supra – the traditional feast – binds family, faith, and friendship, and how “grape hunters” are bringing old Georgian grape varieties back into the vineyards.
MIR has long introduced wine enthusiasts and gastronomic travelers to this culture. Our small group journey, A Taste of Georgia, grew from those encounters with vintners, cooks, and table hosts, offering travelers an insider’s view of Georgia’s vineyards and villages. Beyond wine, MIR helps uncover Georgia’s monasteries, mountains, and folk music, all shaped by that same spirit of hospitality.
Uzbekistan, the Heart of the Silk Road
In his bestseller The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Peter Frankopan highlights how places such as Uzbekistan once stood at the center of global exchange, home to the scholars and traders who carried ideas in mathematics, medicine, and philosophy across continents. He reminds readers that Central Asia was never a backwater, but the pivot on which history turned.
In Uzbekistan, travelers can still see traces of that era – the tiled domes, the madrassahs, the open squares where knowledge and commerce once thrived. MIR has guided travelers here for decades, connecting them to Uzbekistan’s living traditions while exploring the Silk Road cities that shaped the world.
Oman, Desert and Caravans
Wilfred Thesiger’s classic Arabian Sands recounts his crossings of Oman’s Empty Quarter, where he found both hardship and deep companionship. “We who went into the desert were a vanishing breed,” he wrote, describing the silence, the harsh beauty, and the bonds formed in that vast wilderness. His words remain one of the most enduring portraits of Oman’s landscapes and people.
Travelers with MIR can still feel that same quiet vastness in Oman’s deserts and mountains. From the souqs of Muscat to the stillness of the dunes, from mountain villages to forts overlooking the sea, Oman reveals a world where old rhythms and modern life sit side by side.
The Balkans, Stories Across Borders
Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is often called one of the greatest travel books of the 20th century. Traveling through Yugoslavia before the Second World War, she wrote: “I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.” In her pages, the Balkans come across as a place where history is part of the present. You see it in the way people gather in markets, in the mix of churches and mosques that share the same skyline, and in the architecture of towns that have changed hands many times. West’s writing captures a region shaped by both continuity and change. Here, culture and belief continue to echo through daily life.
MIR’s Balkan Odyssey: Crossroads of Cultures follows the stories across the borders of the Balkan nations. From Sarajevo to Skopje, travelers encounter the layers West described. It is a region that reveals not only complexity but also the resilience and creativity of its people.
