The FT published its list of the best books of this year on Saturday. The paper's critics hand selected the following top travel books: great fodder for your Christmas list.

Empires of the Indus: From Tibet to Pakistan - The Story of a River - Alice Albinia

A compelling account of the Indian continent's longest river. Lauded for her almost foolhardy courage, Albinia's adventures include a highly illegal burqa-clad journey through the tribal badlands of Waziristan.

Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future that Disappeared - Andrew Brown

Journalist Brown returns to Sweden after living there as a boy and young man. Fishing in the lakes and reflecting on his blue-collar job in a sawmill in the 1970s, he discovers a society that is both more dysfunctional and more conformist than its usual utopian image.

The Semi-Invisible Man: A Life of Norman Lewis - Julian Evans

A huge and comprehensive biography of one of the finest travel writers of his generation, Lewis is revealed as a man of extraordinary energy, modesty and interest. An ideal introduction to Lewis as a charter of arcane, forbidding places with a growing conviction that the noblest of human societies are the simplest.

Divine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America - Timothy O'Grady

After a 30-year absence, novelist O'Grady takes two road trips across his home country, discovering modern America through chance encounters in bars. Politically astute and poetically observed.

The Man Who Invented History: Travels with Herodotus - Justin Marozzi

An unabashed fan of the 5th century BC historian, Marozzi travels around Greece and the Middle East in the company of his charming but possibly mendacious hero, comparing his modern experiences of this troubled region to the ancient accounts.

The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba - Dervla Murphy

The tough-as-old-boots septuagenarian takes on a country that has polarised opinion for half a century, first with her daughter and three grandchildren, then alone. Benign on the subject of Castro, she nevertheless experiences the hard side of Cuban life, joining bread queues and sleeping outside.

Connemara: The Last Pool of Darkness - Tim Robinson

The second volume in a trilogy, this is an intense love song to the bleak and troubled wilderness of north-western Connemara. With his inimitable eye for character and landscape, Robinson manages to steer clear of romanticism and raise universal questions as he goes in search of the region's "quintessence".

A Year in Tibet - Sun Shuyun

When Chinese filmmaker Sun spent a year living in a small village in Tibet, the ensuing BBC series excited much controversy. This anthropological account of her year leaves politics aside and focuses on the degree to which faith and tradition underpin the lives of ordinary Tibetans.

Ghost Train To the Eastern Star - Paul Theroux

Nearly 40 years on, Theroux retraces the epic railway journey he made for The Great Railway Bazaar, from London through Europe to Asia. Laced with reflections on his broken marriage and meetings with literary friends, it's as much an emotional as a physical pilgrimage.