As a full-time traveler, it’s no surprise that I also love a good book about travel. Immersing myself into parts of the world I have yet to explore, learning through the experiences of others, and adding to my ever-growing list of places to visit are frequent occurrences while reading tales of wanderlust, but travel-porn isn’t all these books have to offer.
Reading their stories, I feel a sense of connection to these authors. While we have never met, and probably never will, we have shared experiences. We’ve gone through similar struggles and successes on the road, and speak a common language known to those who identify as travelers.
Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or just looking to transport yourself to another world for a few hours, the list below is chalk-full of inspiring tales of travel. I’ve included the book’s description, as well as a few quotes that stuck out to me. Let me know if you’ve read any of the below or if you have additional suggestions of travel favorites!
With their thirtieth birthdays looming, Jen, Holly, and Amanda are feeling the pressure to hit certain milestones: the big promotion, find a soul mate, have 2.2 kids. Instead, they make a pact to quit their jobs, leave behind everything familiar, and embark on a yearlong round-the-world search for inspiration and direction.
Traveling 60,000 miles across four continents, Jen, Holly, and Amanda push themselves far outside their comfort zones to embrace every adventure. Ultimately, theirs is a story of true friendship: a bond forged by sharing beds and backpacks, enduring exotic illnesses, trekking across mountains, and standing by one another through heartaches, whirlwind romances, and everything in the world in between.
- I had been dropped into a world of claustrophobic apartments, exorbitant rents, fourteen-hour workdays, mandatory media events, and gospel preachers predicting doomsday on the subways. I quickly learned that [New York] City had spawned a new kind of Darwinian struggle: only the most career-driven and socially adaptable would survive. In order to cope with the pressure, people generally took one of two paths: the first lined with Xanax, therapists, and cigarettes, and the second with Bikram yoga, feng shui, and green tea.
- You know you’re an overly seasoned globe trekker when you (a) have six outfits to choose from, but you wear the same two, (b) forget what day or even what month it is, (c) carry several currencies but have long since forgotten their dollar value, and (d) have to remind yourself what country you’re in when you wake up in the morning.
After Kim and her husband decide to quit their jobs to travel around the world, they’re given a yellow envelope containing a check and instructions to give the money away. The only three rules for the envelope: Don’t overthink it; share your experiences; don’t feel pressured to give it all away.
Through Ecuador, Peru, Nepal, and beyond, Kim and Brian face obstacles, including major challenges to their relationship. As she distributes the gift to people she encounters along the way she learns that money does not have a thing to do with the capacity to give, but that giving―of ourselves―is transformational.
- Back home, our decision to travel had seemed so counterculture, so extreme. And on a few occasions, we’d had to defend our decision to acquaintances and colleagues—even family—who accused us of being irresponsible and selfish. But here we were sitting around a table with a whole group of people who were doing the same thing. Outside of our daily bubble, long-term travel seemed like the most normal thing in the world.
- My life felt like it dangled from a pendulum, swinging through every emotion: joy, trepidation, back to happiness, and then on to pure terror.
- Something big had happened to me there, an inner shift from one way of being to another. India had forced me to surrender, I realized, to uncurl my fingers, loosen my grip, and let go. And the world had not crumbled around me—just the opposite. The world had come to my aid and shown me that I could be so much more if I let my guard down and revealed myself.
- Every time we left a place I felt nostalgic because I did not know if we would ever return again. Each new country, city, or island we traveled to taught me something new, and I always felt a deep sense of gratitude upon leaving. This was true even of the places I did not love and especially true of the ones I did.
In 2011, Joyce & Daryle were approaching 40 and had been married for almost ten years. From the day they met, they’d been talking about “travelling more”, but in ten years they hadn’t advanced very far toward that dream and it had become more of a nagging dissatisfaction than an inspiring goal. Every time they returned from one of their brief yearly vacations, Joyce would spend weeks depressed, thinking there had to be a way to do more than this. They gradually came to the somewhat obvious realization that “travelling more” wasn’t just going to happen, they would need to decide what exactly they wanted, make a plan and commit to a lot of work. In early 2012, they made a decision to go all in on their travel dream, sell everything, and hit the road for an open-ended period of time. On March 31, 2013, they locked up their house one last time and left on a tour that would take them to 23 countries and 23 U.S. states over the next 14 months. This book is the chronicle of the first six months, spent in Central America and Africa, as they learned to slow down, look around and embrace wherever the heck they were. Alternately funny, frustrating and inspiring, their journey proves that anyone can travel more and that you don’t have to be rich, young or all that brave to get out and see the world.
- I learned that surfing, like life, is about being where you need to be, recognizing the right opportunities and working like hell to grab hold of them…and in between, chilling out and enjoying the moment.
- I felt wildly free and incredibly blessed and a bit afraid that I may never be able to stop this crazy traveling adventure.
If Your Dream Doesn’t Scare You, It Isn’t Big Enough
In honor of her 40th birthday, Kristine K. Stevens sold her house, quit her job and traveled solo around the world. Carrying a backpack and the naïve belief that the trip was nothing more than a six-month-long vacation, she hit the road. She braved a monsoon in Zanzibar, a safari in Kenya, trekking in Nepal, kayaking in Thailand, caves in Laos, red plaid fish and lava in Hawaii, and grizzly bears in Alaska. Little did Kristine know that she was completing a pilgrimage that would change her life forever.
- East Africa was surreal, perplexingly different and familiar at the same time. It was such a raw, energetic mass of extremes in poverty and wealth, pollution and natural landscape, agriculture and wildlife. And it ran on a distorted clock built by artist Salvador Dali.
Have you read any of the above? Do you have travel favorites I forgot to include? Feel free to shoot me an email with any travel book related feedback or suggestions!
**Descriptions pulled from Amazon**
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