Traveling is not merely going from one place to another, and writing about it is more than recording what happens, as Alexander Frater artfully demonstrates while conjuring a lifetime of tropical travels in "Tales from the Torrid Zone." It is a travelogue with dashes of memoir framed by studied musings on changing cultures; the result is an intimate, affectionate exploration of the region that bears the weight of both hemispheres.

Frater isn't just any travel writer (though he was chief travel correspondent for The Observer in London) — he's a local. The book begins on Iririki, his birthplace, one of 80 islands of Vanuatu, formerly known as New Hebrides. For 39 years his grandfather, Maurice, converted souls to the Presbyterian faith, and Frater's father later ran a hospital while his wife opened the island's first school. But like many raised on tropical, or even subtropical, islands, as a young adult Frater left. In his case he went to Europe to pursue writing, a career that led to visits to at least 70 tropical countries, assuaging his case of what in Vanuatu is known as le coup de bamboo: "a mild form of tropical madness for which, luckily, there is no cure."

This book then, is a meandering account of remembered journeys, not only through small South Pacific islands, but also the Sudan, Oman and Burma — truly spanning the globe. Its eclectic tales include an Amazon boat trip, eating magic mushrooms in Thailand, and dining with the Queen of Tonga in a leper colony. But the intention is not to survey the exotic — for Frater aligns himself with Levi Strauss' assertion that "the tropics weren't so much exotic, as out of date" — but a real man's communion with his climactic and cultural origins.

We are his captive audience, following his anecdotes in whatever order they happen to appear, usually dictated by an evocative detail arising in a previous story. The people he meets along the way are most appealing, from heads of state to fellow travelers, as well as scions of exploration and Maurice, Frater's unexpected metaphorical guide. Their descriptions illustrate his precise yet ebullient style, from depicting a woman as having "the plumpness that comes from a surfeit of sugared almonds," to a man with "the delicate features and wide, luminous eyes of some arboreal leaf-eating creature, a bushbaby or marmoset."

This descriptive legerdemain extends to his closely observed reflections on the natural world. Many are as exquisite as the scenery described, and too numerous to be recounted here, save for this restrained yet pungent remark while on the Irriwaddy River: "Under way again, we drank our rum neat and watched the dusk turn the river into the colour of lemons."

His voyage on Burma's Irriwaddy and his visit to the Ilha de Mozambique are among the highlights, though the former is one of the more linear and enjoyable, perhaps because Frater sees rivers as "perfectly calibrated to the requirements of travel writing; each, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, had its own narrative flow."

The rest of the narrative has scant discernible organization, yet at the same time it's delicately encircled by the metaphor of a bell, beginning with his formative lessons by a "traveler in bells" who recuperated from malaria with Frater's family, and continuing with his procurement of a new bell for his grandfather's church. In between is a fascinating avalanche of exhaustive detail; whether on tropical disease, politics or religion, Frater moves dexterously from a tiny object of memory to its global, scientific and historical significance. His chapter on the coconut is a prose ode that any islander will appreciate, especially his elevating conjecture that Eve should have bypassed the apple for the palm's fruit.

Frater's stories are expansive without being indulgent, spare without being confusing — it's difficult to complain even of wanting a stronger narrative spine. Because though the temporal and contextual connections are often adrift, Frater himself is the book's anchor — it is his mental expedition we follow more than any physical one. If trusted, the destination eventually materializes, the path punctuated by empathic reverence for all aspects of tropical existence. What's important isn't the timeline, but knowing and appreciating the land you visit, for what it is.

Christine Thomas' travel writing appears in Spirit of Aloha and Hemispheres magazines.