Every traveller has a horror story to tell: lost luggage, bad weather, illness or worse. In this lively collection of travel disaster tales, Lonely Planet writers - Tony Wheeler among them - share their worst moments of life on the road.

From Kenya to Sri Lanka, from Brazil to Finland, from the Australian outback to India, these travellers have encountered hurricanes, road accidents and nasty parasites. Suzanne Possehl finds there is life in the KGB yet, Tim Nollen discovers the kindness of strangers and Anthony Haywood survives a taxi ride through Siberia. Dani Valent walks away from a desert car crash, and Ryan Ver Berkmoes is stranded in the Arctic Circle. Reading these funny and frightening stories from the dark side of the road will make you think twice about a career as a travel writer, but the best thing about them is the knowledge that it all happened to somebody else.