the best travel writing books

The Best Travel Literature of All Time

Like many travellers, you may have found yourself immersed in the voyages of those who have gone before you from time to time. While living vicariously is no replacement for being on the road, there are some utterly wonderful nonfiction travel books out there, which are the next best thing.

A Time of Gifts by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

It’s quite genuinely impossible to create a comprehensive list of the best travel literature. While there’s a lot of replication of these types of lists out there, some books endure precisely because of their importance at the time or to other writers. Although some authors listed below deserve to have more than one of their books featured on this compendium of the greatest travel literature, only their finest work has been included. Consider it your gateway to that writer’s greater oeuvre, if you’ve not read any of their work previously; a reminder if you have. Similarly, non-male writers have often been unfortunately overlooked in the past and some real gems that deserve to be on the best travel literature of all-time lists have been overlooked.

The following aims to redress the balance a little. Consideration is also given to some of the works that defined people who are now better-known for their other exploits, because there’s no greater adventure than that of somebody whose travels inspired them to do something more important or lasting in the world beyond merely moving through space and time for travel’s sake. Here are twenty of the best pieces of travel literature ever written (theoretically), to guide you to your next read, to find inspiration for your next trip, or to simply use as a general reading checklist until your next journey.

A Time of Gifts (1977) – Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

Writing about Paddy Leigh Fermor in 2020, it would be easy to dismiss the great writer as a privileged individual who was fortunate to stay with royalty and the well-to-do all across Europe as he sauntered from one place to the next. But that would be an awful disservice. A Time of Gifts is the first of a trilogy of books documenting his journey, on foot, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (Istanbul). His scholarship and complete immersion in every culture he encountered helped his writing transcend mere travel literature to reach a higher level of writing. You never feel as though he’s an outside observer trying to make sense of the foreign by superimposing his own beliefs. His prose has been described as baroque, and is densely layered with a deep intelligence, understanding and, above all, passion for everything he encounters. The trip itself was undertaken in 1933/4 and the Europe that Fermor uncovers on his peregrinations is one which is beginning to spiral blindly into major conflict. Somehow this aspect makes the random acts of kindness he experiences across Germany and the rest of the continent even more bittersweet.

Publisher: John Murray, Buy at Amazon.com

Arabian Sands (1959) – Sir Wilfred Thesiger

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger (Photo: courtesy of P.S. Burton via Wikimedia Commons)

Another travel literature classic is Thesiger’s intrepid anthropological look at Bedouin culture and lifestyle in one of the remotest, most inhospitable places on earth: the Arabian Peninsula’s Rub’ al Khali. The setting for the journey is amid the embers of World War II, the repercussions of which were being felt worldwide, including among the Bedouin tribes who’d lived much in the same way they always had until the outside world intruded. In effect, this book offers a snapshot of a remarkable culture that was fast altering, which is what makes this, and many of the books written during the reign of the British Empire, fascinating historical documents. For all of the rightful condemnation of European colonialism, one thing is clear in this book: the fascination and inquisitive nature of the many British scholarly individuals sent to far-reaching corners of the globe created an immensely valuable cache of first-person accounts of cultures and peoples that may not have been recorded otherwise amid the inevitable and inescapable rise of globalisation of the time.

Publisher: Penguin Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) – Rebecca West

West’s voluminous, in-depth examination of Yugoslavia during her time travelling there in 1937 was designed to explore how the country was a reflection of its past. West spent six weeks journeying across the whole region with her husband and meeting eminent citizens along the way. Sadly, by the time the book was published, the Nazis had invaded and the country would never be the same again, which makes this yet another invaluable early-20 th -century document. What sets Black Lamb and Grey Falcon apart though is the level of exquisite detail and research dedicated to the subject. If there was any proof required that travel literature serves an invaluable purpose as a piece of primary historical evidence, then this may well be it.

Publisher: Canongate Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Border (2017) – Kapka Kassabova

Beautifully written and layered with a real sense of atmosphere, Kassabova’s haunting Border is one of the standout pieces of travel writing to be published in the last decade. Eastern Europe is one of the least explored regions of the world in travel literature. Owing perhaps in part to the secrecy and legacy of distrust brought about by the Cold War, even those who have travelled through as part of longer journeys (Paul Theroux in Pillars of Hercules or Bill Bryson in Neither Here Nor There ) scarcely shed any real light on the region. Here, Kassabova heads back to the nation of her birth (Bulgaria) to explore the fragments of political ideology, faith and race, and the blurred lines between them, that have developed around the border region separating Bulgaria from Greece and Turkey.

Publisher: Granta Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Border by Kapka Kasabova (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) – George Orwell

While much of travel literature is concerned with the voyage and seeking out the miraculous, the unique and the lesser known, Orwell took another route entirely. Down and Out in Paris and London does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a memoir of impoverished living in two of the world’s great cities, at a time when they were global beacons in terms of both power and culture. Not only does this book, in a very prescient move, eschew the superior tone of academia when examining the other, it also avoids all glamour in those cities, focussing entirely on the poor, the meek and the desperate. In Paris he lives on the edge of eviction, working the kitchens of a fancy establishment, while in London he lives the life of a tramp, moving from one bunkhouse and soup kitchen to the next, living day to day. It is to travel writing what the ‘method’ is to acting.

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) – Hunter S. Thompson

The outlier on this list (all good lists need one) is Hunter S. Thompson’s delightfully absurd, occasionally apocryphal and downright debauched novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . In it, he created a new way of writing known as gonzo journalism, a style of storytelling which is found most commonly today in some documentaries, where the lines of fact and fiction become blurred and with the journalist placed as a central character in the story. This brilliant commentary on the flexible and inconsistent nature of truth was perfectly epitomised by the increasingly hallucinogenic recollections of protagonist Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo. The road trip to Las Vegas ultimately casts important light on an American society gripped by racism and violence (partly why the story is still so powerful today is that America hasn’t yet learned to grow up). As such it remains one of the most intriguing snapshots of America out there, surpassing the work of many strait-laced travel narratives in the process.

Publisher: Random House Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (Photo: Mathieu Croisetière via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975) – Paul Theroux

A perfect example of how gonzo journalism began to seep into travel literature comes from what is arguably the most important modern travelogue: The Great Railway Bazaar . In it, Theroux travels from London all the way to Southeast Asia and Japan, via India, then back to Europe via Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway. While Theroux upholds elements of the old school travel narrative – like the scholarly, studious approach and the inquisitive air – his journey by train is as much about the growing backpacker, hippie, trail and the western counterculture that encouraged it. Occasionally the line between fact and fiction is blurred in his writing, but only to better convey his interactions with the people he met. As such, you get a fascinating look at what could be called modern colonialism, whereby the train networks that were often built by colonial rulers in non-European nations across the world, like India and Burma, were now being used by a new generation in the post-colonial era to explore these newly-sovereign nations.

In Patagonia (1977) – Bruce Chatwin

Coming hot on the tail of Theroux’s above book is perhaps the most popular and enduring travel book of all time: In Patagonia . Bruce Chatwin starts it off with a direct nod to writing and journalism’s slide into apocrypha by framing his trip loosely around the search for remains of a “brontosaurus” found in a Patagonian cave, which he first found languishing in his grandparent’s house. The doubtful story behind this find sets him on a road where he aim to unravel various other mysteries whose only connection is geographical, including the final resting place of Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid, in the wild, empty spaces of South America. It’s a brilliant book formed of loose sections that don’t directly link to one another but has greatly influenced modern travel literature today.

Publisher: Vintage Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

In Xanadu (1989) – William Dalrymple

One of the travel writers greatly influenced by Chatwin was William Dalrymple, whose own quest for his first book, In Xanadu , was framed as a search for the fabled palace of Kublai Khan, Xanadu. This type of narrative has always proven to be a ready source of inspiration for some of the better modern travel books; searching for answers to popular mysteries. It has a journalistic bent to it, and manages to sidestep the awkwardness of westerners merely travelling abroad and casting aspersions about the people and cultures they encounter through an imperial gaze, as is the criticism often lodged again some of the earlier works of travel writing. Here, Dalrymple follows in the footsteps of Marco Polo (following footsteps of somebody famous is also a common trope of travel literature) to find the palace. While Dalrymple restores elements of the scholarly, learned approach common to writers like Robert Byron and Paddy Leigh Fermor, you can feel the impact of those 70s writers as well.

Publisher: Flamingo, Buy at Amazon.com

In Xanadu by William Dalrymple (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Into the Wild (1996) – Jon Krakauer

Few gripping travel narratives manage to capture the why? of our impulse to roam quite like Jon Krakauer does in Into the Wild . The book is both harrowing and revelatory, while performing a third-person character study on a young man he never actually met. In 1992 Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never came back out. The book tries to examine what had led him there in the first place, whether he’d intended to return at all, and why he wasn’t the first to try and cut all ties with modern society. Krakauer looks to others, such as Henry David Thoreau ( Walden is the original escape from society book and a must-read for anybody fascinated by this subject), who successfully parted from the rat race, as well as the reasons McCandless initially fled from well-to-do family life years before and never contacted them again in his search for something more profound and meaningful. While most readers may disagree with McCandless’s methods, his motives seem far more familiar and relatable.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, Buy at Amazon.com

The Living Mountain (1977) – Nan Shepherd

Perhaps one of the finest pieces of nature writing ever committed to paper is The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Sadly, it’s also one of the most underrated books. The research for her book was undertaken in and around 1942, during the Second World War, which didn’t trouble the wilds of Scotland too badly. Here, the stark beauty of the Cairngorms seems to mirror the harsh reality of war. But Shepherd’s deep examination of the various microcosms of life that thrive on the region’s mountains is really a poem that exalts life. It’s a celebration of survival and endurance. Her wonderful book almost never made it to print, lying in a drawer for decades until a friend read it and encouraged her to seek out a publisher. We’re lucky it did.

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Motorcycle Diaries (1992) – Che Guevara

Even if Che Guevara never became the revolutionary and icon of a generation that he did, The Motorcycle Diaries is a fascinating first-person account of travel’s capacity to broaden the mind. The young medic Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara sets out from his home in Buenos Aires with his friend Alberto Granado sharing a motorcycle ‘La Poderosa’ and in his pointed recollections, you can almost feel Che’s ideological shift. He sees poverty and pain and beauty in the poor communities they visit, and through this, we learn a lot about how Guevara became a key player in the Cuban Revolution. But it’s also a beautiful rumination about the paths we take in life and the importance of curiosity.

Publisher: Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island (1995) – Bill Bryson

You can’t really write a top travel literature list and omit Bill Bryson. He’s one of the finest travel writers still producing books. Notes from a Small Island is particularly intriguing because, while most of the books that make any top travel literature list tend to be written by Brits, this is a book about Britain, written by an American. And it’s a delightfully observed book at that, pinpointing the eccentricities and unusual aspects of the island nation that most Brits would never think twice about, but when seen through foreign eyes suddenly become absurd. Bryson is especially gifted at making even the most mundane things seem funny. His books neatly balance thorough research and scholarship with humour and keen observation, effectively amalgamating all of the key aspects of travel literature into one inimitable style.

Publisher: Black Swan, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (Photo: Wolf Gang via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

On the Road (1957) – Jack Kerouac

Before modern travel literature’s more self-aware phase that started in the 1970s, we had what essentially kick-started the great 20 th -century American cultural upheaval: The Beat Movement. Kerouac was writing about sexual promiscuity, wanton drug use and giving the establishment the middle finger way before it was cool to do so. Well-educated and moving in New York’s literary circles, Kerouac’s thinly-veiled characters in On the Road (substituting Old Bull Lee for William S. Burroughs, Dean Moriarty for Neal Cassady, Carlo Marx for Allen Ginsberg, and Sal Paradise for himself) are painted into a quasi-fictional account of his cross-country jaunts in the late 1940s. The post-war world was much-changed; the white picket fence America with its Jim Crow segregation and uptight Bible-belt hypocrisy were no longer acceptable. Around the same time, J.D. Salinger was branding it phoney, while Kerouac was realising this in his own way, by embracing escapism and drugs. On the Road still resonates today; both the book and the Beats gave licence to a generation of youths to question the oppressive system that became all too obvious in the 60s.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Road to Oxiana (1937) – Robert Byron

Much of the Afghanistan and Iran of Byron’s writing has disappeared, making the precision of his prose all the more valuable. The Road to Oxiana has all the classic elements of earlier travel narratives in it, scholarship, keen observation but also the kind of humour and casual presentation that would become far more popular in the writing styles common to the latter half of the 20 th century. Byron’s constant use of Marjoribanks to replace the name of the Persian ruler of the time was designed to evade censure or punishment in case his notebooks were confiscated and read. The humour of this rebelliousness is not lost when read today, even if some of his style may feel a little bit dated now. His architectural descriptions may be among some of the finest in all of travel literature.

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Rome and a Villa (1952) – Eleanor Clark

Because the majority of travel writing is crafted around a voyage or quest of some sort, we expect the movement to transcend places, countries even. What Clark does exceptionally well in Rome and a Villa is offer an in-depth depiction of just one city: Rome. This book, although not particularly tied to or crafted around any one specific idea, offers a deeper understanding of The Eternal City based on Clark’s explorations, often on foot. Indeed, her scholarly treatment of the Italian capital brings the city’s rich, storied past to life in imaginative and illuminating ways that offer fresh insight on a place that we may easily think has already been well covered already. Which goes to show that places change with the times offering an opportunity for fresh perspectives. There’s nowhere that is dull or too well-known in travel writing if handled by the right scribe.

Publisher: Harper Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road (2007) – Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron’s fascination with worlds that are ostensibly closed off to westerners has often led him into places that many others wouldn’t think to go. He visited China before it had opened up to the world, and the same goes for Soviet Russia. In Shadow of the Silk Road Thubron exhibits why his books are perhaps the most masterfully crafted of all contemporary travel literature. His pacing and descriptive writing are exquisite, particularly in this book, in which he journeys from Xi’an to Antakya in Turkey following the old ways, through Central Asia, once known as the Silk Road. The worlds he uncovers and the people he meets are painstakingly woven into a rich text, much like a hand-woven Persian rug, that is one of the most evocative pieces of travel writing out there.

Publisher: Vintage, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Travels with Myself and Another (1979) – Martha Gellhorn

Even if Martha Gellhorn was writing today, she would rightly be upheld as one of the great journalists, but given that she was doing it decades ago, often better than her counterparts in a male-dominated field, is even more remarkable. The ‘Another’ that accompanies Gellhorn through much of the book was her former husband Ernest Hemingway, but the book also includes memoir from Africa in which she voyages solo. The book is presented as a collection of essays, a format that has become increasingly common in travel writing and which effectively allows the book to focus on more than one topic. Gellhorn’s writing includes keen observation, lively wit and a really sharp political outlook.

Publisher: Eland Publishing Ltd., Buy at Amazon.com

The Valleys of the Assassins (1934) – Freya Stark

Stark was an incredible human being. Fluent in numerous languages, including Farsi, she travelled the world often alone at a time when even men undertaking such journeys were considered intrepid. Stark was particularly drawn to the Middle East and was able to recount the stories of the women there, living in devout Muslim communities, in a way no man would ever have been able to do. She also discovered regions that had not been explored by Westerners before, including the Valley of the Assassins, which forms the basis of this eponymous book, receiving the Royal Geographical Society’s prestigious Back Award in the process. She continued to write books well into her 90s (releasing work over six decades) and died in Italy at the age of 100.

Publisher: Modern Library Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) – Cheryl Strayed

Some may question this popular book’s inclusion on a list of the all-time greats, but it really has all the ingredients of a classic exploration of the human psyche. The physical duress that Strayed experienced on her hike of the Pacific Crest Trail (which runs from California’s border with Mexico to Washington’s border with Canada), and the gradual loss of her toenails as a result, is depicted with visceral precision. Her self-inflicted pain mirrors the mental health and dependency issues that plagued her before embarking on the feat, and in the process, we discover the restorative power of travel, of meeting new people and of forcing ourselves to step beyond our comfortably-positioned boundaries. Like any good travel literature, this book sheds light on why travel is so addictive, powerful and pertinent. Just like all the other books on this list, you’ll finish it wanting to plan your next trip.

Publisher: Atlantic Books, Buy at Amazon.com

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Nonfiction Books » Travel

The best travel writing, recommended by colin thubron.

To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron

The much-travelled author Colin Thubron reflects on more than 40 years of writing about other cultures, and shares his own favourite travel reading with us

Interview by Alec Ash

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron

The Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

1 The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron

2 the way of the world by nicolas bouvier, 3 in patagonia by bruce chatwin, 4 a time of gifts by patrick leigh fermor, 5 invisible cities by italo calvino.

I read your book,  To a Mountain in Tibet , last night. It’s a different sort of travel book for you – a journey to Mt Kailash in western Tibet that was inspired by deaths in your family. What did you want to achieve with this book?

In your previous travel books the attention is more simply focused on where you are. But is there a theme that ties them together?

Retrospectively, the recent ones have all been about the countries that we have been brought up to be afraid of. The first one being Among the Russians in Brezhnev’s Russia in the early 1980s, then the China one [ Behind the Wall ], then central Asia [ The Lost Heart of Asia ] and Siberia [ In Siberia ]. My parents were brought up to feel that Germany was the enemy, but my generation felt that the Soviet Union was the enemy. It was very forbidding and impenetrable, much more so than Nazi Germany to my parents’ generation. The Soviet Union was kind of occluded, and there were journalistic clichés about what it was, but they didn’t conform to the other Russia I knew from reading Dostoevsky or Tolstoy – these incontinently human people, all drunk and melancholy mad. Similarly, China was pretty enigmatic. When I went there [in 1986] it had just opened up, it had only been possible for a few years to go more or less where you wanted.

And so I had the instinct to understand these two great ogres of my childhood, the great bear of Russia and the yellow peril of China . I think it is cliché that understanding dispels fear – maybe it exacerbates it – but I wanted to humanise the map. That’s why I chose those places. It wasn’t a conscious, evangelical programme. I wasn’t going in thinking, “Ah, now I’m going to explain and humanise Russia and China to the West.” It was a self-centred instinct of my own, that this is worth doing for me. I’ve always needed challenge in my books. I’ve always needed to define that what I’m doing is difficult, and therefore that what I’m bringing back has the value of something that’s extracted from difficulties of culture, even geographical difficulties.

Do you travel, and write, for your reader or for you?

For me, I’m ashamed to say. Although the reader is always in my head. I say that rather self-scathingly, but I don’t do them consciously for the reader. I’m not setting out to explain a culture. Cyril Connolly said, “It’s better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” I have to feel it’s right for me, even if it’s not a very promising book in other ways. The publishers weren’t keen on the Silk Road book [ Shadow of the Silk Road ], for instance, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it. I feel that I’m doing what I love, and what’s meaningful to me.

What then is the function of travel literature ?

The function of the travel book is not that of an academic treatise. It’s not saying, “This is how the world is, this is my theory about it.” It’s building up experience. It’s not the intellectual understanding about the subject, it’s the emotional experience of it. Experience not of any specific aspect of the culture, but a bit of everything. So you get history, landscape, chance conversations with people – a smell in the back of a train, the way people feel about their lives, even in some trivial fashion, plus a chunk of more serious politics. All of these things can follow on from one another in a travel book. By the end of it, you hope the reader has a kind of mosaic of what this country is, or what it was to you. It’s an accumulation of data of every different sort, such as no other genre is. And I think that’s what a travel book has to give, a sort of smell and feel of a culture – or how it was in one instance. It’s not going to be like that in 10 years time, or even five, but you’re catching the moment on the wing and saying, “This is how it was to me”.

Outside autobiography , travel literature is the only genre that invites the first person singular. You’re in the landscape, and dependant on the people (in my case, at least) for your survival and hospitality. You’re up for grabs. I think the personality of the writer in travel books is very exposed. And that’s good. In a way it’s an acknowledgement that this is a subjective experience. The moment you decide to write about one thing rather than another thing on your journey, it has become your account. When you talk with someone, what strikes you about the conversation is what goes down in the writing. So to pretend that it’s objective is ridiculous, more so than in most genres. Some writers write a great deal about themselves – that they had toothache and so on. To intrude yourself too much may be absurd. But personality comes through in a travel book. It’s a sort of tacit acknowledgement that we can’t be God. We can’t say, “This is how it is”. We can only say, “This is what happened to me. This is what I felt. This is what I thought. I may be wrong.”

Do you think you can really get to know a country by travelling in it?

That’s the hardest question. You mentioned you lived two years in China . I just went through it in four months. Always, I think, the travel writer feels that those who inhabit the land, the culture – whether they’re visitors or natives – know and experience things with greater depth and sophistication than we can possibly have. Travel writers can make horrible mistakes because of lack of knowledge. But often I feel that people who live there can’t see the forest for the trees. As a travel writer, you come, you see something, and it’s usually striking. You’re recording the superficials but hoping that they leak in, that they have a penetrative quality.

So someone passing through has that valuable freshness of impression.

Yes. I often find that after a few months in a country I’m already accepting so much which no longer seems strange or striking to me, so the moment I’m in a country I have to pour down impressions much faster than I can develop them later. I couldn’t write a book on London. I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I would always be interested in someone from, say, Czechoslovakia coming and spending a couple of months here, and giving their impressions.

How do you take notes on the road?

My writing is very small, it’s crammed into thin-lined notes, and the notes are very full. There are two types of notes that people take – those that jog the memory, and those that almost take the place of memory. Mine are the second. They’re very full of detail, because my memory is not particularly good, and I would forget everything within a month or two of travelling. You think you’re going to remember it and that you just need a few trigger words, but you don’t. I have to put down everything. Particularly things that give life to a detail – the texture of a rock, or the particular expression somebody used. A high percentage of the words that arrive in prose in my books are there in my notebooks.

What is travel literature, as opposed to travel guides?

Let’s get stuck into your book selection, which covers the great canonical works of travel writing. Your first choice is Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana . Where is “Oxiana”?

Oxiana is a coinage of his, and it doesn’t geographically specifically exist. It was a way of saying Persia (as it was to him) and Afghanistan. Byron’s journey starts in Venice and ends in what is now Pakistan. He went there in 1933-34, not long before he died in World War II, drowned when his ship was torpedoed. Although the book is terrifically chauvinistic – he’s appalling when he writes about the local people, almost always without sympathy and sometimes with extreme colonial arrogance – it’s full of wonderful descriptions. It’s rather like what I was saying about building a mosaic about a country. He does that marvellously, in a description of landscape, then a menu, then a conversation, often humorous or sometimes a bit mad, and then some of the finest architectural descriptions in the language. His passion was early Persian architecture.

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He strikes me as fitting the mold of traveller scholar.

That’s certainly one type of travel writer. The Paddy Leigh Fermor tradition, if you like. Byron was a serious art historian. He was a bit of a contrarian, a bit of a rebel. He hated the Omar Khayyám brigade – you know the rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the popular Persian poem translated by Edward Fitzgerald. “Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night / Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: / And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught / The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.” That sort of thing, very Georgian. And if you read the original, it doesn’t read anything like it, it’s completely different. Robert Bryon mocked this sort of orientalism, he wanted to get to the real thing. It’s an artistic and architectural pilgrimage, if you like. But the scholarship is combined with outrageous, funny interviews with people. In the Persia of the time, you couldn’t speak or write about the Shah openly, so he called him Marjoribanks, a silly name to make fun of pomposities.

Robert Byron was an old Etonian, as were you. Does this have anything to do with the notion of a “gentleman traveller”? What does that mean, anyway?

I don’t know what it means, really. I should think it means gentlemanly attention to scholarship, I dare say often too superficial. It’s the feel of a big literary tradition in the background, and of a slightly mandarin kind of writing. Paddy is certainly very rich in his style, and Byron too can be. I fear that it may suggest a certain superiority. That certainly shows in Byron – not in Leigh Fermor, he’s too generous, but Byron is typical of that post-colonial arrogance.

Do you think the tradition of travel literature is a British tradition, tied to a sense of colonial adventure?

Yes I do. I think that almost all of the travel writers we’re talking about are British public school people. And I think that system had a big effect. I was sent to boarding school at the age of seven. My parents were over in Canada, I was here 3,000 miles away. That sort of thing, for better or worse, makes you very independent ­– both psychologically and even physically. Just having to cope for yourself at that age makes a big difference, and I feel that is quite important in the tradition of travel writing being so British. There are very few other countries that produce the same travel-writing creature, and there’s an awful arrogance about the genre sometimes. But still, such writers have been given the self-confidence to feel that they’re going to be OK, so there’s not that degree of anxiety that so many people have when they’re travelling.

Do you feel that tradition is dying?

Let’s move onto the second book, Nicolas Bouvier’s The Way of the World.

Bouvier follows some of the trail of Robert Byron, travelling to the Khyber Pass in 1953-54. But the book is mostly set in Turkey and western Iran, where they get stuck. Bouvier never wrote another book comparable to this one. I loved it for its humanity, for its footloose feeling. He says somewhere, “You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you – or unmaking you.” And you feel that he’s a very vulnerable traveller. I love that sense of not having a planned journey – it might go anywhere. He travelled in this funny little car, a Fiat Topolino. I travelled in Russia in a Morris Marina, which people laughed at, and it secures your independence.

We were talking earlier about a travel writer being a travel companion. But Bouvier had his own, Thierry Vernet, an artist who ended up illustrating the book with his drawings of what they had seen.

It’s surprising how many travel writers have travelled with a companion and not acknowledged them. I think Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene both did so in the 1930s, and didn’t even mention in their books that the fellow traveller was there. I travel without, because I think you’re more sensitive without a companion. And the more the companion belongs to your own culture, the more insulated you’re likely to be in your own world. If you’re alone, you’re forced to get an understanding of where you are because you have no cultural references. If you imagine walking down the aisle of a ruined cathedral, and there’s someone with you, some of your attention is given to the companion and to their reaction. If you’re alone, the outside is pouring in on you and there’s nothing to give you comfort in the literal sense. You’re absolutely exposed. And that’s why I like to be solitary.

What I loved in this book were the quotidian moments. There are some wonderful descriptions of how bread is different in Turkey, Iran and Armenia. Or there’s a very true moment when he says hospitality is not endlessly questioning newcomers, but letting them sit down and drink their soup in quiet. How important do you think quotidian moments are in travel writing, or are they the boring bits one must leave out?

Your third pick is Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia .

This struck me as a rather different way of travel writing. It is very individual, with stark, short passages. There’s very little of him in it. This is his walking journey in lower Patagonia, split between the Argentine and Chile, published in 1977. I knew him slightly, and he wanted to do a Cartier-Bresson thing of encapsulating a society in a short, sharp photograph, as it were. And he was also fascinated by stories – especially those which are a little bit curious and sometimes grotesque. The left-over beliefs of strange spirits and suchlike. He starts the book with his childhood fascination with the skin of a giant sloth, which his remote ancestor brought back from a cave in Patagonia, and he searches for this sloth skin. He goes into the myth of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and comes up with strange little anecdotes. His research isn’t a history of that area, it’s all about the strange inhabitants of it, and the weird leftovers. Anything that was incongruous he loved – a Welsh community in southern Argentina, that sort of thing. It was a world of oddities, of leftovers, of communities that had been isolated, people that had gone there for God knows what reason. He always felt himself to be an outsider in the world, and that’s what fascinated him.

He has been accused of some fabrication in this book and others. Some of the locals have challenged his descriptions.

At one time people rather pooh-poohed In Patagonia and said he must have made it up. But when Nicholas Shakespeare did a great biography of Chatwin and followed in his footsteps, it seemed that largely it was very credible.

There are other well-known writers accused of this, though – Greg Mortenson and Ryszard Kapuściński, for instance.

In Kapuściński’s case, I think it’s true. In The Emperor , in particular, or in the Africa book, The Shadow of the Sun . I still think Kapuściński is rather wonderful, because he’s so good psychologically. It’s very interesting what he’s got to say. In The Emperor , for instance, you still get a sense of isolation in this weird, ancient, Abyssinian court, with all of its protocols, so out of touch. These books have moments of great psychological truth, even if they aren’t always literally true. But in other instances such inaccuracies are a shame. If people are not giving the actual facts you immediately mistrust their insights into the country too. In general, if you make it up, it’s got to be stated somewhere in the book. If you don’t do that, you’re sending things into historical record which are conceived to be true and which are not. And yet I can’t help feeling that Kapuściński had some line on a sort of poetic truth.

I myself have jumbled people. It’s useful in some ways. In the China book [ Behind the Wall ], I wasn’t sure if some people or myself were not being watched, so you displace them in the narrative to somewhere else. I’m fairly sure that dissidents I spoke to in the Soviet Union [in Among the Russians ] were being taped. I remember a wonderful hunchback dissident in Leningrad with a circle of followers about him, but I couldn’t possibly write about him, as he was too identifiable. And it’s futile to pretend you’re objective. If I were to recall later this conversation we are having, what I would remember about it would be different to what you would remember. Immediately it’s my choice, it’s coloured by my sensibility. You do a train journey, you decide to talk about this landscape rather than that landscape, you meet this person rather than that person. You can pick up any travel book and almost within a few sentences you know who the author is, because you sense their personality.

So it becomes not fictionalised, but framed with the same tools of fiction? Plot, perspective, characterisation.

Yes. It’s not that you create a plot, because the plot’s there, it’s the journey ahead. It’s more choice. It’s the stuff that you decide is important, and what isn’t.

Some journalists I’ve known talk about the temptation to make things up, or fudge quotes. Do you ever feel that temptation?

There’s been a temptation. But what would be difficult for me is that I don’t know the cultures well enough. I didn’t know China, or the Soviet Union, or central Asia well enough to be able to guess things. I think I’d be exposed almost at once if I did it. It also seems a very poor journey if you’ve got to make up things. Reality is so extraordinary that you really don’t have to. It’s fascinating enough what happens. If someone were to say I’ve got to make up somebody I met, I wouldn’t know where to begin – it would stick out like the most obvious fake.

Let’s move onto the fourth book. Talk a little if you will about Patrick Leigh Fermor and A Time of Gifts .

This is the first volume of his journey in 1933-34 from the Hook of Holland, as he called it, to what he insisted on calling Constantinople (Istanbul). It was to be in three volumes. This one takes him beyond Vienna. The second volume, Between the Woods and the Water , takes him through Hungary to the Balkans. The third volume was going to get him across Romania to Istanbul, but he never wrote it. There is a very modified version of it, which will probably be published – people are so longing to see this third volume that even an outline of it will suffice. But it’s not finished by his standards, which were very exacting.

Like many people, I love the idea of this young 19-year-old gypsy going off on foot on his own, with just a pound a week, footloose and fancy free, full of delight at the world and fascination at where he’s going. That’s one of the lovely things about the book. It’s beautifully written, very rich prose. Have you read it? It’s model was Norman Douglas – rich in language, vocabulary, scholarship. It’s rather an acquired taste, and may seem to a younger generation old-fashioned.

Not at all! I love the prose. He’s very good at describing people, like the postmaster’s widow whose parrot keeps interrupting her with comic songs.

Good, because I know younger people may find the writing a bit much. I love the delight in everything, with all its byways in history or folklore, and the people he meets are so marvellously and generously described. He had such a big heart, a generous spirit. You feel he must have been a delightful companion for anyone to meet on the road. Some people find it a little bit showy-offy, because of all of the stuff he quotes as having by heart – but he did, it’s perfectly true. He had an excellent memory, and into his old age he was a great raconteur.

I know that you knew him quite well. Will you tell us about his character? He died very recently, of course.

Yes, he died about a month ago. Well, he was what you would expect. In some ways, he was rather an innocent. He wasn’t an intellectual, but he loved facts and data and history and architecture. He also loved show, and a good story. He was a delightful companion, very funny, and he was a bit original. He would sometimes say something rather fanciful, he had a marvellous imagination. But there was this innocence about him. It’s as if he was in a time warp, and in rejoining his youth in these two books he was rejoining somebody he still was, in a sense, his sensibility was so young. He hadn’t changed in many ways, he hadn’t been disillusioned. They are very “illusioned” books, if you like. It’s a very wonderful idea to go back to who he was, because he could so easily enter into the spirit of that liberated delight in the world which he kept with him always. He was very frail when he died, but he still kept that with him.

Leigh Fermor wrote A Time of Gifts in 1977, when he was 62, but the travel he describes he did when he was a teenager. What does that mean for the book?

Well, the problem of memory is horrific. He had notebooks, but they were stolen, so he had notes for some of the journey but not all of it. Of course it’s possible to revisit and reimagine, but I don’t know that he did that for A Time of Gifts . I know he did it when he was trying to write the third book, but it was a disaster because it was Eastern Europe and had changed so much. So it was an extraordinary feat of memory.

I gather some of his notebooks were returned to him after many years, found in a Romanian castle where he had stayed.

Yes, he had stayed with a painter called Balasha Cantacuzene, an older woman in Romania whom he’d fallen in love with. He was with her until the outbreak of World War II. And the notebooks he had then were returned to him after the war – I think she kept them. Amazing fluke. But those notebooks for the beginning of A Time of Gifts were stolen, lost forever. And in some ways the book is more free-flowing for it, because he was less tied down to them, going more on memory and general sweep.

How does travel change a person? It’s a platitude that a physical journey is also an inner journey, but many platitudes are true.

I don’t know really. It’s supposed to broaden the mind. If I look at the travel writers I know and have known, there’s a certain breadth of knowledge. One would hope there’s a breadth of understanding or of sympathy too. In my own case, it’s very hard to say what it’s done to me. Of course, it makes you a sort of amateur. You’re a free agent, you’re the oddball. One can understand why dictators find travellers a threat – you’re not beholden to anyone and you’re doing what you want, which is a marvellous privilege. But what it does to you character-wise, I don’t know.

The title A Time of Gifts comes from a line of poetry by Louis MacNeice …

“For now the time of gifts is gone / O boys that grow, O snows that melt.”

That certainly hints at growth of character.

Yes it does. This was his great extended epiphany, to be suddenly going out travelling. That was the time of gifts for him, when the world opened to him. He was obviously ready for it. He was always on the wrong side of authority in England, and he was expelled from school. He got into a rather posh artist society in London – people like Robert Byron – and he was enormously entertaining and fun, and very handsome as a young man. But he hadn’t travelled anywhere. So suddenly to loose yourself on the world was surely his time of gifts.

When he set out on this journey, he carried with him just a few clothes, an Oxford Book of English Verse and a copy of Horace’s Odes . What do you carry with you when you travel?

Nothing of that kind. Paddy’s Horace was stolen, along with his notebooks.I don’t take anything in my luggage which is not absolutely useful, because it’s just a little rucksack and I shrivel it down to the minimal. The only book I invariably take is a language manual for the country I’m in – so if I’m stuck in a hole I can always brush up on my language. I’ve struggled with Mandarin and Russian for half my life.

I love Leigh Fermor’s motto. Solvitur ambulando .

Your final choice is something a little different. On the back cover of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities there is a wonderful quote from Gore Vidal: “Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities , perfectly irrelevant.” I found that amusing as on FiveBooks we describe the contents of books. Now I’m going to be a cruel interviewer and ask you to describe the contents of Invisible Cities .

Oh God. Well, officially it’s Marco Polo describing the cities of his travels to Kublai Khan. It’s been opined that every city he describes is a version of Venice, but I think that doesn’t really work. They seem to me to be marvellous imaginative fantasies, which sometimes reproduce states of mind. There are 40 or so cities described, all entirely imaginary I think, and that’s what’s so magical about them. But there are passages that are suggestive of something, and nearly always of the way memory works. It’s a very hard book to describe, because the cities are never just a description of a place. They all mirror states of mind and being.

Does Calvino draw on Marco Polo’s actual accounts of his travels in China in the 13th century?

Of course, Polo’s travels in China have also been questioned as to their truth, although I believe he did go. But as far as I can see, Marco Polo’s travels in the realm of Kublai Khan are not much echoed here. It’s more been felt that the cities are versions of Venice. Some of them – cities on water – very well could be, but others not at all. I think it’s purely a kind of gimmick, the structure that Calvino’s chosen, that they should be recounted in this fabulous way, from a fabulous traveller like Polo to a fabulous Khan like Kublai. It’s all in the realm of quasi-myth.

Why did you choose it? What does it say about travel literature?

I chose it for its sheer imaginative quality. I loved it almost as an extension of the travel book in the mind – the travel book that has no responsibility to where it has been because it hasn’t been anywhere real, it’s been in the realm of ideas and images.

Some of the phrases in the book would be absolutely beautiful pieces of travel writing, were they real – haunting descriptions of a city that “repeats itself so something will stick in the mind”, or of one that displays one face to the desert and another to the sea.

Yes, it’s remarkable. It does have that element of the concrete, or the illusion of it, so you do think sometimes that perhaps a city is out there somewhere, although clearly most of them can’t possibly be. As far as I know, Calvino didn’t travel widely or have any great fascination with the further world. It’s entirely an interior journey.

Part of the fun of the book is that Kublai Khan never quite understands what Marco Polo is describing, because of the language barrier between them, but also because it’s difficult to describe places you’ve been to. Do you sympathise with the troubles Polo has of describing locations to an audience which hasn’t seen them?

It’s terribly difficult to express something you’ve experienced, and get it down onto the page. And I don’t know any travel writers who don’t find it terribly difficult. I’m always very suspicious of a person who says “this poured out of me”. It’s a great romantic fantasy, but it doesn’t happen. They’re all hard worked at. Leigh Fermor’s manuscripts are covered in corrections, it’s nothing but corrections. And I know I have to struggle like hell. You start with the notebooks, and they seem to make sense. Mine are always very impressionistic, and you think that will probably do. But it doesn’t – it’s not in sentences, it doesn’t convey what you want sequentially.

How has the nature of travel writing changed in the 21st century, where every corner of the world is now accessible? I can look at Mt Kailash on Google Earth. I can read anecdotes of backpackers in Afghanistan on a travel forum. And I can travel to these places quickly and cheaply.

Huge question. It would be ridiculous to suppose it hasn’t changed. The era of geographical exploration has clearly gone. Travel writers can’t bring back, or imagine they are bringing back, knowledge that’s of any empirical use for the society where they have come from. You can’t pretend that you’re exploring, or finding the new, in any old-fashioned or Victorian sense. All that has been denied the modern travel writer, in the sense that the modern world is so accessible – you can Google up whatever and see the same things, up to a point, that the travel writer has seen.

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It does throw back the onus on the writer himself. On his perception, his ideas, his experience. Travel writing increasingly has to be well-written by a person you want to travel with, to see things through their eyes rather than through your own. And there’s nothing that replaces experience on the ground. You can look at a screen forever, but nothing replaces what you are receiving when you’re actually there. That can’t be duplicated. There’s no virtual stuff for that. And it’s that experience which you’re transmitting onto the page. Also, it’s true that most of the world is accessible to easy travel, but quite a lot of it isn’t. I did a journey in the early 70s which is virtually impossible to do now – in eastern Turkey and Iran, then northern and southern Afghanistan, and around Kashmir, northern Pakistan. We’re not conditioned very well for the dangerous, maybe less well than the Victorian who had that explorer mentality. We don’t have that mentality, partly because things are so easy to Google up. There’s a reluctance to acquire them by any harder way.

The other thing is that the world’s changing all the time. It’s never seen once and for all, it has to be interpreted again and again, like Dante’s Divine Comedy . One of the possibilities for the modern travel writer is to look under the surface, interpreting what you find. You can Google up the image, but you can’t explore for yourself the society that is inhabiting the area. And increasingly, with a superficially Westernised world, a travel writer can find what is real under that superficial Westernisation. As you know, in a way China hasn’t been Westernised, it’s sort of sinicised the West. And one finds that again and again – things that look superficially like us are not, underneath, like us at all. That’s one of the great benefits of a travel book. It exposes what seems apparent to be just a veneer.

July 22, 2018

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Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron is a British travel writer and novelist. He has written more than 20 books, and been translated into as many languages. He has won many awards for his writing, and was named one of the 50 greatest British postwar writers by The Times of London . Thubron is Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and President of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a collateral descendant of the poet John Dryden, and lives in London

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LOOSE CANON

LOOSE CANON The 100 Greatest Travel Books of All Time

As we get back to traveling again, let’s get inspiration from these masterpieces!

Today literally every square inch of the planet has been mapped out, if not every inch identified (for various reasons) by Google. But that was not always the case and even as late as the 1960s and bleeding into the early 1970s, National Geographic was publishing articles about places and people no one had ever seen or heard of before. Before now and the ubiquity of all information, we relied on the adventurers and explorers, and even just the wanderers, to tell us about life beyond our horizons. Their magical and inspiring books illuminated and animated small and large corners of the Earth, from as little as one street in Midaq Alley , to everywhere in The Atlas of the World . Some were first, and best, experienced as a child, and widened our eyes even further. Some soothed and dissipated our cynicism and world-weary selves as adults. Some just exhilarated us, some sobered us. The best always fed our souls.

There are many thousands of worthwhile travel books, and probably tens of thousands of crap ones, but here, with the Divine Authority invested upon us by ourselves, are the best 100 ever written. Our criteria for selecting them was that they transformed the experience of traveling and exploring and witnessing, or so captured a sense of place, that we have been profoundly moved and our understanding of the world and humanity expanded.

There are seven Nobel Literature Prize winners on this list. Five authors have two books included: Freya Stark, Eric Newby, Jan Morris, Edward Hoagland and E.M. Forster (that’s not counting Gerald Durrell for his Corfu Trilogy, which is one entry). 

Here are 100 fantastic voyages.

1     DON QUIXOTE / MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Originally titled The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha and better known simply as Don Quixote , it is regarded as the first novel ever written, published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615. First modern novel, if you want to split hairs, since Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur preceded it by more than a century, but that was a re-telling of the passed-down myth of King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table, whereas Don Quixote was an original tale and realistic fiction — storytelling based on real people, times and places, with imagined adventures. Previously, epic stories released as books were written as extremely long poems. Anyway, now you know more about the history of literature than you did a few moments ago.

It’s also the highest selling novel of all time, having sold 500 million copies. For context that’s 100 million more than all the Harry Potter books combined. (As you know, all literature, if not all human endeavor, is referenced off of Harry Potter). You know the story, even if you haven’t read it — Nobleman Alonso Quixano, his mind soaked in the romance of chivalrous knights delivering justice and reclaiming wronged women’s virtues, decides to recast himself as a knight, rebrand himself as Don Quixote, and with his more or less randomly drafted trusty sidekick Sancho Panza, embarks on his own such travels and adventures across Spain. They are delusional and poignant and very real to Quixote, who sees dragons in windmills and poses the first existential question of the Arts: Who is to say whose version of the world is right?

It’s a journey of madness and truth and gave us the timeless concept of tilting at windmills, perhaps the most accurate and enduring metaphor for humanity’s infinitely foibled arc.

Bob Guccione, Jr.

2    ATLAS OF THE WORLD / OXFORD UNIVERSITY

The world at your fingertips. Updated annually, the “Atlas of the World” provides a masterclass on World Geography. From tables and graphs that provide insight on the most ambiguous places on the planet to a plethora of satellite images and even discourse on the future of our planet. It was once the only way people knew where countries and great cities were.

Marcus Harewood

3    ARABIAN SANDS / SIR WILFRED THESIGER

In 1945, after serving in the second world war in Sudan, he was hired to locate locust breeding grounds in Southern Arabia, since swarms of locusts were destroying crops and causing famines in the region. This led to him twice crossing the fabled Empty Quarter, the largest contiguous sand desert in the world, at 250,000 square miles, with the Bedu nomads, who he lived with for two years. (Interesting fact of the day: the largest desert is Antarctica, not a sand desert…) Thesiger was a reluctant scribe who said for him travel was personal and that writing or even talking about it diminished the achievement, which travel like this most certainly was in those days. Nonetheless he wrote the ultimate narrative of the vast desert and the last period of a lifestyle unchanged for thousands of years, as western intrusion and oil exploration began in earnest. He evoked the barren but sensual life of the desert, and the behavior and traditions of the Bedouins. He suffered and he exalted. No one ever wrote a better account. And now no one ever can.

4    CORFU TRILOGY / GERALD DURRELL

Corfu Trilogy ( My Family and Other Animals , Bird’s Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods ), written by lifelong explorer and naturalist Durrell, in that oddly familiar smiley-humorous way. It’s in essence the perfect translation of just about anyone’s childhood — the constant amazement, the forever wonder, the endless promise of possibility, the eccentric friends your parents had (add their pets too) plus the sure sense of the value of the present moment. These three books, best read in tandem, are wickedly funny (even if you’re a stalwart) and Corfu presents itself as the perfect travel representation island for a fantasia that adulthood erases.

Daniel Scheffler

5    THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: KING OTTOKAR’S SCEPTRE  / HERGE

The Balkans! It never occured to me to look in an Atlas for them, I was too spellbound. Somewhere out there, beyond the end of my street, was a mystical land of people, timelessly clothed in traditional costumes and held in place and solely animated by the dynamics of the binary conflict of good and evil. Tintin was a boy-man, a Belgian reporter (so he must have been an adult….) rendered as an ordinary adolescent, insuperable and romantic. Accompanied by his dog Snowy, who talks, Tintin can’t help but land in trouble/adventure, and travels as effortlessly to distant, improbable and hitherto unheard of destinations as I took the bus to school, football, or the cinema.

In this book, Tintin and Snowy journey to Syldavia to foil a plot to overthrow the country by neighbouring Bourduria. Of course those places don’t exist, and, of course, they do .

6    ALL GOD’S CHILDREN NEED TRAVELING SHOES / MAYA ANGELOU

In 1962, the goddess and poet Maya Angelou moved to Ghana to reconnect with her African roots and explore what it means to be on the “mother continent”. Color no longer mattered for her, but her Americanness kept showing itself in unexpected and often heartbreaking ways. This is her longform poem about her amazing journey.

Emily Gatlin

7    A MOVEABLE FEAST / ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Possibly no book ever captured Paris so perfectly, even though the city he wrote about is almost 100 years removed from us. It’s a testament to how remarkably he did capture it, that the impression we have of the City of Light a century later is greatly if unconsciously filtered through his depictions. In 1947, Hemingway, by then world famous, started writing this memoir of his time in Paris as an impoverished writer in the years immediately following the First World War, and of the so-called “Lost Generation” of some of the greatest artists and writers of the 20th Century, who congregated there. The book is immaculately written in self-contained chapters, like a book of short stories. His simple, poetic prose is as vivid and consciousness-staining and immortal as one of Van Gogh’s paintings of the same city. It was published in 1964, three years after his suicide.

8    EUROPE ON FIVE DOLLARS A DAY / ARTHUR FROMMER

When this came out in 1957 it was an instant hit, as Frommer put together a guide on how to travel across the Continent pleasantly, knowledgeably and economically, aimed at post war Americans who had mostly only been there in combat. He only wrote about 11 cities in eight countries, but it was enough, and, at the time, just about covered functional and essential Europe. The book remained the travelers’ touchstone for decades, until a new generation expanded the notion of what travel meant, and it receded into quaint artifact. Incredibly, it was possible (just) to travel around Europe on 5 dollars a day when he compiled the book. It is not realistically possible today (on an inflation-adjusted approximately 45 dollars).

9    A WINTER IN ARABIA / FREYA STARK

If only we had many many more female travel writers from the last century, their far flung excursions sparse because of the mores of the times, but their perspectives so unique and unfussy. In 1937-38, Stark traveled with two companions across what is now Yemen, a land that was then so exotic and removed from most people’s experience as to be mythical. She articulates the breathtaking landscape, archaeology and history of a place she described as “nakedness is clothed in shreds of departed splendor,”, where rival tribes fight mortally and women engage in elaborate beauty rituals, as they had for millenia.

10    POINT TO POINT NAVIGATION / GORE VIDAL

The title refers to the way one would steer a ship, without navigation. Ah the beauty of Vidal, to dub his memoir something so mystical and humble. Adroitly a travel book, this is perhaps the greatest travel book of all — a life lived across the world (Italy, Hollywood, strangest America and more) with reflections no single mind would be able to conjure up — bar Gore Vidal. What makes this both worthy of a travel book — one with wit no less — is the observations from the road, reminding even the freest. most frequent traveler to pay better attention. That’s the very point of travel is it not, to put away your arrogant knowledge and to stand hands unclenched, arms open to the wind as it teaches you to let go, and live?

11    TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY / JOHN STEINBECK

It’s 1960, John Steinbeck is 58 and ailing with heart disease so decides to rediscover his beloved America and connect with the land and its people…. And he’s driving. He leaves his wife for a few months, takes her large French Poodle named Charley and heads out from Maine in his pick-up truck which he’s turned into a camper and named Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse. He drives through forty states, 10,000 miles and by the time he makes his way to the South he’s horrified by the racial tensions he sees, such as white women screaming at young black girls trying to go to school. Sprinkled with personal philosophies and beautifully written, Steinbeck, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature two years later, immortally sketches various parts of the US and its diverse population, and presciently brings up his concern about the destruction of the planet, our obsession with packaged products and the advancement in technologies that he felt would lead to families ultimately alienating each other. A timelessly poignant piece of travel literature. He passed away six years later.

Lucia Gillot

12    SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM / JOAN DIDION

Didion, one of America’s greatest living writers, has the best journalist’s eye for the vital detail and the artist’s divinity for breathing life into clay. Published in 1968, a year before the Summer of Love, this is an invaluable collection of her magazine pieces to date, at the dawn of New Journalism. Chief among them are her observations of California, and particularly San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district in the sixties’ crescending Hippie movement. Unlike most coverage at the time, hers also saw the murkier side, epitomized in the title essay where she questions the wisdom of a mother giving her child, not yet old enough to go to school, LSD.

13    A PASSAGE TO INDIA / E.M. FORSTER

Many of English novelist E.M. Forster’s works examine the hypocrisy of class differences in British society at the turn of the 20th century, for example A Room with a View and Howard’s End . A Passage to India came later, published in 1924. Written with a native understanding of India, it depicts a time towards the end of colonialism still under the influence of the British Raj. A dramatic story of a woman traveling to India to meet the man whom she may marry, a study of friendship and whether cultural differences can really be overcome and how we may be shaped by our circumstances. As one character laments, “Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we’re still no nearer to understanding one another.” Hear, hear!

14    THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE / CHARLES DARWIN

Evolution wasn’t the only thing globe traveler Darwin would pioneer. In contrast to his groundbreaking Origins of Species this tale recounts his journey and adventures aboard the HMS Beagle as it travels across a newly opened world full of untold wonder and discovery. A pioneering naturalist, Darwin tells a tale of uncharted lands and creatures, and boundless intrigue.

Jay McClure

15    ROUGHING IT / MARK TWAIN

This is the hysterically funny account of Twain’s early travels west, in 1860 and 1861, through Utah, Nevada, California, and onto what was then the Kingdom of Hawaii. On the way he worked as a civil servant, miner, prospector, and a journalist, never successfully (if you count “continued employment” as success). He made up parts of a lot of the stories, to brilliant effect. It doesn’t matter! Roughing It entertains absolutely, and elucidates and records a period of American history and youth, less than five years before the loss of its cocky innocence, bludgeoned by the Civil War.

16     BURMESE DAYS / GEORGE ORWELL

The decline  of the British empire through the eyes of a great dystopian writer, all set and as seen in Burma, which is today Myanmar. Part of travel is the understanding that colonialism created so much of what we love and loathe on the road, and here Orwell scratches hard at, and writhes with, this very human conflict.

17    DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA / Alexis de Tocqueville

Tocqueville was a 25 year old French aristocrat studying to become a judge when he came to America in 1831 with a friend, a public prosecutor named Gustave de Beaumont. Their purpose was to learn about the American prison system, to see what they could apply to the French one. But that original mission evaporated as they traveled the still forming, certainly still gelling new country. They talked to the great and common, from farmers and laborers to framers of the Constitution and Presidents. Tocqueville’s shrewd observations illuminated America and set the book, and himself, in literary stone. Almost 200 years later he could write many of the same lines again, including marveling at the prodigious amount of food Americans ate and their diversity and passion of opinions and innate stubbornness, borne then, no doubt, out of the hardiness it took to found, fight for and nurture a new nation. He wrote: “The United States enjoys immense actual power together with a power of opinion that is almost as great. And once it has made up its mind about a question, there is nothing that can stop it or even slow it long enough to hear the cries of those whom it crushes in passing.”

He then presciently added: “The consequences of this state of affairs are dire and spell danger for the future.” Good spot.

18    DEATH IN VENICE / THOMAS MANN

19    THE AGE OF INNOCENCE / EDITH WHARTON

The Age of Innocence , which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, is a passionate love triangle that lingers for years, and ebbs and flows with desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York. Wharton knows 1870s New York City intricately; she knows its habits, its social traditions, its expectations. She encapsulates the etiquette of the time, its duties, its loyalties, its passions and a scandal. First published in 1920, there are revised editions. At heart, it’s a tragic love affair….. “Each time you happen to me all over again,” her character sighs.

20    VIDEO NIGHT IN KATHMANDU AND OTHER REPORTS FROM THE NOT-SO-FAR EAST /  PICO IYER

Veteran and masterful traveler Pico Iyer gives a quirky and personal account of how he learned where East meets West, and how pop culture and imperialism penetrated the world’s most ancient civilizations.

Ana Martinez

21    THE TRAVELS / MARCO POLO

Marco Polo recounts his amazing explorations to the east, and how he introduced spices and silks from then unimaginably distant places, as well as precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts. This book is monumental history told in the first person by the man making it.

22    EAT PRAY LOVE / ELIZABETH GILBERT

Hate it or love it. This travel memoir through eating in Italy, praying in India and finding love in Indonesia sent millions of women on their own journeys. Mostly predictable, that really isn’t the point of this book. The fundamental desire to be happy, in such blatant form, is just what the world needs. And therefore, possibly one of the most important books yet.

23    STATES OF DESIRE / EDMUND WHITE

How did the gays live in the late seventies? Edmund White will tell you. It’s an all male entourage of promiscuous deliciousness and finally a real picture of Gay America before Gay marriage and Gay liberation.

24    VENICE / JAN MORRIS

Venice is nearly gone. Morris, who found her personal Venice decades ago, shows the glory of one of the greatest cities in the world. It’s a love song to a dying darling. Venice, along with Paris, London, Istanbul, is the idea of travel wrapped in perfect bows of expectation. Morris bestows it with her deep love for it, and you forget all about your preconceived ideas of this watery little touristy town.

25    ODYSSEY / HOMER

The Odyssey , the epic prose poem and sequel to The Iliad , has to be one of the oldest travel books, if not the oldest, and it of course way predates the Bible, itself a pretty good travel book, come to think of it. It is the part myth, part historical tale of Odysseus’s ten year journey to get home from Troy to Ithaca, taking him and his men all over the Mediterranean from Turkey to Tunisia to Spain to Sicily and stopping at several islands in between, encountering hostile and friendly inhabitants, gods, and mystical creatures.

Camilla Paul

26    CLOUD ATLAS / DAVID MITCHELL

Spanning five centuries, Mitchell’s most ambitious work is complex and fantastical. Don’t try too hard to follow the narrative, which arcs from 19th century South pacific to a post apocalyptic future (is there ever any other kind, by the way? Doesn’t someone think the future will be nice?) Instead, live inside the madness and the beauty of what is in front of you. The impact of your life, on the next life, and so forth, becomes the greatest story ever told without ever telling you so.

27    SMILE WHEN YOU’RE LYING / CHUCK THOMPSON

28    THE HEART’S INVISIBLE FURIES / JOHN BOYNE

From Ireland, to Holland, all the way to New York, this account of love and finding and losing true love transcends borders — but remains so rooted in the ages and hearts of these three iconic places on the globe. You will laugh, you will sob and at some point you will throw the book against the wall and probably scream.

29     A  SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING, I’LL NEVER DO AGAIN / DAVID FOSTER WALLACE

Travel is hell. Fatally troubled genius Foster Wallace’s “essays and arguments” on the Illinois State Fair and a Caribbean cruise, among other sojourns, are the essence of belly-laughter travel writing. Oh the joys of satire… And maybe hope for hell.

30    ON THE ROAD / JACK KEROUAC

Published in 1957 this second novel is a classic must-read for the WONDERLUST mind. Based on Kerouac and his friends Allan Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady as they traverse the United States for three years, you can imagine! Set against a backdrop of jazz and poetry, a bunch of characters and a feeling of the time, bus-rides, hitchhiking adventures, drugs, Buddhism, drama and love. It sticks in your mind. “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

31    DESTINATIONS / JAN MORRIS

These superb essays, which originally appeared in Rolling Stone , capture the essence of places as diverse as Washington just after Watergate, Delhi under Mrs. Gandhi, Panama on the eve of the U.S. treaty debate, and Cairo at the time of the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks.

32    THE VOYAGE OUT / VIRGINIA WOOLF

Woolf’s first novel, this journey of self discovery by boat to South America is every trip you’ve ever been on that’s stayed with you. A melange of characters all mixed up to make things interesting, an ode of joy to youth and adventure, with a tang of awful sadness.

33    MY WAR GONE BY, I MISS IT SO / ANTHONY LOYD

That wouldn’t have been what Loyd was thinking though, when he left for the first of two  excursions into Bosnia, and one that was — hard to imagine — worse, into Chechnya. In fact, when he first went to Bosnia in 1993, as a photographer on assignment for the British Sunday Times , it was, by his admission, to die. 26, suicidal and an alcoholic, he hoped he would be killed covering the wildfire of a war raging in several directions across the former, fractured Yugoslavia, thus saving himself the ignominy of self termination. Something providentially changed when he got there — first, he realized he wasn’t much of a photographer but then, as he wrote down what he saw, realized he was a special writer, as did the Times , which instructed him to keep reporting his vivid, emotional dispatches. He took himself to Chechnya as it was being milled into not just rubble but dust by the Russians crushing the rebellion, and filed the best and most intimate accounts of what truly was hell on earth.

This book of those trips is a memoir of two unfathomably cruel wars prosecuted on mostly helpless and mostly innocent people. He memorializes two regions in the absolute darkest, saddest times of their history, and encapsulated the people who endured the atrocities as real, relatable, unforgettable human beings, not just statistics, snapshots. And the life he saved really was his own.

34    MIDAQ ALLEY / NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

This Cairo backstreet, which exists, is here fictionalized as a living, pulsing, artery of Egypt and Arabic culture. Virtually all the action takes place on this one, typical, working class street, and most of that in one cafe, owned by the odious Kirsha, who is king of his tiny kingdom and likes young boys. The only travel is basically from one end of the alley to the other, but this is a complete world, populated by angry, bitter, happy, optimistic, gold-digging, fat and ascetic characters, including a fake dentist who sells cheap false teeth, which he can afford to because he steals them from corpses.

35    LOCAL COLOR / TRUMAN CAPOTE

Of course Capote’s third published book is a collection of honest, vivid, and romantic travel essays – from Hollywood to Spain, Italy, Morocco, Haiti and all the way back to New Orleans. But the caveat here is, that most avid readers believed that the book was simply a myth, and never actually existed. In truth, simply 200 copies were ever printed. If you can get your hands on this rare find it’s Capote pomp, it’s Capote ceremony, with, of course, the perfect hint of Capote bitchiness before he found his real wit-filled voice.

36    OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! / DR. SEUSS

This was his last book published in his lifetime, in 1990. It remains a chart-topping bestseller perennially, because every year it’s a traditional gift for high school and college graduates. So, it’s an adult book for the perpetual child. Which is the way we should all remain.

37    THE ATLAS / WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN

He oddly constructed the book so that the first chapters, numbered one through 26, mirror the last 26 chapters, numbered 26 to 1, with a 53rd story in the middle, called “The Atlas”. Supposedly the mirrored chapters reference each other, but, although it must make some profound sense, it ultimately doesn’t matter, at least to the reader and fan. The stories are just so incredibly powerful and beautifully written, and, even the darkest, so life affirming and indelible.

38    CARAVANS / JAMES MICHENER

What distinguished James Michener’s books were that they were meticulously researched, to the dizzying altitude where a lesser novelist would simply have stalled and fallen out of the sky, but which breathed holistic life into his stories. Caravans is a simple story set in po st Second World War Afghanistan, of an American Embassy attache given the assignment to find an American woman who married an Afghan and has disappeared. But the infinite richness of the book is the three dimensional depiction of Afghanistan, a country as foreign as the moon to the readership in 1963 when it came out. On Michener’s breath Afghanistan is overwhelming, implacable, eternal. It is dust and slowness and tragic. It’s an immortal portrait of a vast country, rendered here not with the lightness of impressionism, but as a colorful and exotic mosaic.

39    A COOK’S TOUR / ANTHONY BOURDAIN

If you have an appetite for adventure, and a hunger for the strange, A Cook’s Tour will be the read for you. Recounting his travels to eleven countries, Bourdain didn’t just explore the strangest local cuisines , such as still beating cobra hearts, he immersed himself into the culture, cultivating a narrative deeper than his apparently lead lined stomach. The book became his first TV series, which aired on The Food Network, and led eventually to CNN’s Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown , the best travel TV show ever made.

40    AN AREA OF DARKNESS / VS NAIPAUL

A travelogue detailing Trinidadian Naipaul’s travels in India, the land of his heritage, during the late sixties. It’s a brilliant but not feel good book about the depthless continent, as Naipaul was disillusioned by what he saw there, especially the resignation to the appalling poverty and subjugation of the lower classes. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, and this is one of his most poignant works.

Sergio Gutierrez

41    THE VALLEY OF THE ASSASSINS / FREYA STARK

One of the 20th century’s great pioneers of travel writing, Freya Stark brings to life a region of the Middle East that’s seen better days for safe travel. And was never that safe for a woman. At least reading this is safe.

Jason Stahl

42    THE SHADOW OF THE SUN / RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI

Unparalleled Polish war correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski, one of the rare people behind the Soviet Curtain allowed to travel outside the Communist Eastern Bloc, covered innumerable wars across the world over his lengthy career, and always, no matter how dense the darkness, found the humanity and often humor that defined a place and its people. Any — perhaps all — of his books belong on this list (definitely check out The Soccer War ). His  extraordinary depiction of Africa in The Shadow of the Sun is a firsthand account of life at the beginning of the end of colonial rule, when he arrived in 1957. He also fought a king cobra to the death and survived cerebral malaria, so there’s that. FYI, the man was bulletproof.

43    THE CITY OF FALLING ANGELS / JOHN BERENDT

The title comes from a sign warning passersby of falling marble statues of Angels from crumbling building facades. Rarely a good omen.

44    LET’S GO EUROPE 2018 / LET’S GO EDITORS

Probably the heaviest thing in your backpack, Let’s Go Europe (or any Let’s Go book) lets you go, well anywhere. For me it was in 1999, studying in London and traveling nearly every weekend all over Europe. The entire book was dog-eared and highlighted. It made it through Oktoberfest in Munich, the coffeeshops in Amsterdam, millenium New Year’s in Paris and that one hostel everyone stayed at in Interlaaken, among other travels throughout the continent.

45    SEA AND SARDINIA / D.H. LAWRENCE

“This land resembles no other place. Sardinia is something else. Enchanting space and distances to travel — nothing finished, nothing definitive. It is like freedom itself.” So wrote D.H. Lawrence on his journey to this large Mediterranean island off of Italy in 1921 from Sicily. He and his wife traversed Sardinia and stopped and meandered at Cagliari, Mandas, Sorgono, and Nuoro.

46    THE SHORT WALK IN THE HINDU KUSH / ERIC NEWBY

Some of the most impulsive travel decisions may prove to be the most rewarding. Abandoning his fashion career in London and venturing to a remote corner of Afghanistan, Eric Newby found an adventure to be recounted in the most defining book of his career. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush tells the story of Newby’s spontaneous mountain climbing expedition in north-eastern Afghanistan.

47    NOTHING TO ENVY / BARBARA DEMICK

Follows the lives of six North Koreans over a fifteen year, chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-Il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

48    A FIELD GUIDE TO GETTING LOST / REBECCA SOLNIT

Once in a while you need a break from maps, right? Life doesn’t have one anyway. Solnit’s autobiographical essays remind us that in order to find yourself, you may have to lose yourself first.

49    LONELY PLANET’S FIRST EDITION: ACROSS ASIA ON THE CHEAP / TONY WHEELER

It offers just the right amount of nostalgia — telling you where to mail your postcards — and was at the same time the best and most enjoyable kind of first hand, experiential reporting, like waiting on the Afghan Border for the authorities to return and let them in, and meeting a group of Americans also killing time. (When Wheeler asks them what they’ve been doing, one replies “blowing a little dope with customs”.)  And it’s also a reminder that the Internet can easily be the travel buzzkill if you’re not careful. A worthy throwback — let it just lay in the back of your mind and stew quietly.

50     AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS / JULES VERNE

Can it get any more classic than Jules Verne’s 1873 hit novel? Two guys circumnavigating the world in 80 days on a £20,000 pound wager (approximately $2.8 million today).  Who wouldn’t get on a bunch of sweaty trains and steamers for that kind of cash? Actually, who wouldn’t go on that trip just for the fun of it?

51   IN TROUBLE AGAIN / REDMOND O’HANLON

What would you do to hang out with the most violent people on Earth? Redmond O’Hanlon only had to travel the uncharted Amazon River for four months to meet the Yanomami tribe. And lived to tell.

52    WAUGH ABROAD:  COLLECTED TRAVEL WRITING / EVELYN WAUGH

A collection of Evelyn Waugh’s travel stories from 1928 to 1958 through South America, Africa, West Indies, the Holy Land and Mexico. Waugh is consider to have pioneered modern travel writing, with an eye for folly and a touch of comedy. Alright, a large, really wonderful grasp of comedy. Sadly little read today, he was a Master of Literature, and this is a primer, for reading him and for travel writing.

53    HEAT / BILL BUFORD

Bill Buford’s gastronomic memoir that takes you to New York and London and Italy, is at least partly responsible for the surge in culinary travel experiences. Oh, and everything Buford said about Dario Cecchini, that Dante-quoting, Sinatra-blaring-into-the-streets butcher in Tuscany, is all true.

54    IN THE SOUTH SEAS / ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

In 1888 Scottish novelist, essayist and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson, most known for Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , decides that he needs to sail around The South Seas for two years with his wife, stepson, mother and a nurse, due to his own ill health. He records the adventure in his journals which become an autobiography mixed with the anthropology of the Pacific Islanders he encounters across French Polynesia. Settling in his found paradise of Samoa, where he died in 1894, In The South Seas was published posthumously, and some critics call it one of the best travel books published in the 19th century.

55 THE SEARCH FOR THE PINK HEADED DUCK / RORY NUGENT

56    A YEAR IN PROVENCE / PETER MAYLE

After vacationing along the Mediterranean every summer, the Mayles decided to leave London for a gentler life: To live in a 200-year-old farmhouse in much need of repair, for a year. Mayle recounts he and his wife’s experiences being immersed with locals in the Luberon Mountains, with tales of attending goat races, donating blood, visiting vineyards…and every meal in between.

57    THE EXPLORER / W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

British novelist W. Somerset Maugham, who was orphaned by the age of ten, went on to study medicine, dropped out, then became the highest paid author in the 1930’s. He’s a wonderful storyteller. His novel The Explorer tells of love and its bonds, and a British explorer on a trip to Central Africa in 1907. A bold romance and drama, with a murder thrown in.

58     SLOWLY DOWN THE GANGES / ERIC NEWBY

Newby, a self proclaimed river fanatic, a phrase you rarely hear, sets off for adventure down the Ganges with his wife. 

Newby, inspired by India during an army deployment decades before, decided to return to this enchanted land and drift down its sacred waters. This would be no easy trip as within the first six days alone the boat beached 67 times. However, over the course of this 1200 mile journey in a succession of mostly ill equipped vessels, the couple become entranced with the River and its history, and so will you.

59    A SENSE OF DIRECTION / GIDEON LEWIS KRAUS

Part memoir, part travelogue about the three pilgrimages taken by Kraus, after his self-realization of overt freedom takes him from Berlin to, first, an ancient pilgrimage across Spain, then Shikoku in Japan, and finally Ukraine.  

60    GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL / JARED DIAMOND

The factors in which the modern world came to be shaped has always been a hot button topic. In Guns, Germs, and Steel , Jared Diamond argues Eurasian dominance came about as a product of gaps in power and technology that arose from environmental and geographical differences. Civilization itself was molded and hardened by the things that traveled from one corner to the other, and the influence their introduction subsequently had. Diamond’s book forces a powerful meditation on how the power structures of our modern world came to be.

61    RUNNING IN THE FAMILY / MICHAEL ONDAATJE

Ondaatje travels to his native Sri Lanka to retrace the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family in an exceptional travel narrative about ancestry and discovery.   

62    MANI / PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR

As a companion volume to Fermor’s Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece, Mani is about a small section of the southernmost Peloponnese, one of the most isolated regions in the world. Its people live in the past, which is very much the present in Mani, and Fermor takes the reader through the mountains exploring these time-honored Greeks.

63   EASTERN APPROACHES / FITZROY MACLEAN

Aaron Hicklin

64    A ROOM WITH A VIEW / E.M. FORSTER

Referred to curiously as the “literary equivalent to hot buttery mashed potato,” by the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens, author Lucinda Hawksley,  A Room With A View is based on a trip E.M. Forster took to Florence in 1901. In the story, which evokes Florence and European travel of a certain time and kind perfectly, Lucy Honeychurch goes to Italy with her cousin Charlotte and they’re given a room with a view…of a courtyard, not of the river. Mr. Emerson and his son offer to switch rooms. Now when have you heard a story like this on TripAdvisor?

65   MY COLOMBIAN DEATH / MATTHEW THOMPSON

ney Morning Herald and went to Colombia, the most dangerous country in the western hemisphere at the time, to find out what was going on there. This included regular near-death experiences at the hands of drug cartel members, who, perhaps because he wouldn’t go away, came to like and embrace him, and an amateur bullfighting contest, among other precarious adventures. The lighter fare involved kidnappings, interactions with paramilitaries, Medellin’s counter-culture and mind-shredding Andean death-trips on yage (AKA ayahuasca). The result is a superbly written, very powerful book, about places sane folks, rightly and sanely, stay away from, and people we now have a clearer, deeper sense of, because Thompson, gloriously, is not that sane.

66   WILD / CHERYL STRAYED

Cheryl Strayed lost her mother, her marriage and her mind (a little bit), and since she had nothing left to lose, she decided it would be a really great idea to hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail… by herself. With no experience. Pretty smart, huh? In the end, this travelogue memoir led us to Strayed’s wonderful advice column and subsequent book Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar . Reese Witherspoon got an Academy Award nomination for Wild , for throwing her boots off a cliff. (And obviously, her superb acting.)

67    UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING / MILAN KUNDERA

The story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places; brilliant and playful reflections; and a variety of styles to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.

68    ISTANBUL / ORHAN PAMUK

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy — or hüzün — that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from the lives of his glamorous, unhappy parents, to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness, to the writers and painters, Turkish and foreign, who would shape his sense of his city.

69    THE MONK OF MOKHA / DAVE EGGERS

A nonfictional tale, told skillfully by Eggers, about a young man’s journey to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee making and follow the American dream. 24 year old Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a US citizen and Muslim and at the time a doorman in San Francisco where he grew up, one of seven children of Yemeni immigrants, embarks on an adventure to Yemen after discovering the country’s role in the the history of coffee. He goes to learn about the coffee culture and collect samples, but civil war breaks out, he is kidnapped twice and he has to escape and hire a skiff to take him and his precious samples across the Red Sea.

70    JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS / GRAHAM GREENE

In 1935 Graham Greene embarked on a walking trip with his cousin Barbara and a chain of porters. People did that sort of thing then. They got about 350 miles into the interior of Liberia with two maps showing the borders but a blank interior. Journey Without Maps tells the tale of his being in one of the  few regions in Africa unblemished at the time by western colonization, and, of course, the internal journey inside himself.

71    IN PATAGONIA / BRUCE CHATWIN

A journey through a land remote and mysterious, of dinosaurs, bandits and white settlers, and Butch Cassidy, who was arguably all three. The 97 chapters, some just one page long, dance back and forth through the region’s history and describing the people met along the way, and the landscape and wildlife resting at the foot of the world.

72    THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY / PATRICIA HIGHSMITH

Italy in the sexiest way you could imagine. Everything you love about Italy — and then some — including sex, more sex, food, the sea, handsome men, gorgeous wooden yachts, glamorous cars and equally fabulous fashion. It’s sickening and delicious, as it forces you to unwrap and unclothe your own lies about yourself.

73    THE TRAVELS OF IBN BATTUTA / IBN BATTUTA

In Islam it is expected of Muslims to commit to a pilgrimage to Mecca, called the Hajj. However, this simple trip would take Ibn Battutah across the modern equivalent of forty four nations, 75,000 miles, and over thirty years as he travelled around the Muslim world of Africa and into Asia making it as far as east as China. During the time of Ibn’s travels, Europe was in its Dark Ages, but the Muslim world was bursting with innovation, thought, and adventure, captured unforgettably here as Ibn recounts his journeys across a world in its prime.

74    THE SNOW LEOPARD / PETER MATTHIESSEN

The extreme altitudes and low temperatures and crystal clear air of the Himalayan range provides the perfect home for unique animals like the Himalayan blue sheep and its nearly mythical predator, the Snow Leopard. Peter Matthiessen documents a two month journey there with George Schaller, a naturalist, to search for the rare leopard in the Dolpo region, high atop the Tibetan Plateau. Maybe it was the rarified air, but the book delves so insightfully into existentialism and mental peace through the prism of travel and nature.

75    WRONG ABOUT JAPAN / PETER CAREY

A heartfelt journey as father and son visit Tokyo to explore their obsession for manga and anime. Carey’s many observations, although provocative, lead him to the idea that he was wrong about Japan. The duo not only develop awe for Japanese culture, but learn from each other in their journey as well. Awwww….

76   THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES / ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA

Forget about the martyrdom that transpired once he became the virtually mythical revolutionary Che, Motorcycle Diaries is the rebellious travel diary of a 23-year-old medical student riding a motorcycle with his amigo from Buenos Aires into Chile, across the Andes into the Peruvian Amazon. And some of the most striking writing of that region ever.

77    THE ROAD TO OXIANA / ROBERT BYRON

Zany British travel writer Robert Byron has had a vast influence on travel writing. Sadly he was killed by a torpedo that hit his ship on the way to Egypt during the Second World War. Probably not a good time to travel, in retrospect. This is his entertaining travelogue of a ten-month journey through the Middle East to northern Afghanistan, in 1933. A great lover of architecture and a historian, he goes into great detail over some of the ancient buildings, which sadly now, due to the incessant wars, are no longer standing.

                                   LG

78    THE RINGS OF SATURN / W.G. SEBALD

A walking tour of the east coast of England — Norfolk and Suffolk counties to be precise — Sebald goes on a personal journey uncovering, both factual and fictional, World War II bombings, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, and a skull. The reason for Sebald’s walk? “…in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.”

79    ATLAS OBSCURA / EDITED BY JOSHUA FOER

Revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden and the mysterious. Every page expands the sense of how strange and marvelous the world really is. With its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts and maps for every region of the world, it is a book to enter anywhere, and will be as appealing to the armchair traveler as the die-hard adventurer.

80   JOURNEY TO PORTUGAL / JOSE SARAMAGO

A delightful and eccentric tale by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago of his journey covering the length and breadth of the country he loves. Portugal comes alive through the perceptive eyes and ears of a traveler and craftsman fascinated by the ancient myths and history of his people.

81    COMPASS POINTS / EDWARD HOAGLAND

Hoagland’s memoir is stranger than fiction to say the least, but isn’t that a mark of a life well-lived? The reformed Vermont hippie worked for the circus, fought forest fires, went temporarily blind and couldn’t speak, and of course, has the writing chops to make it a beautiful portrait of the human condition.

82    NOTES FROM THE CENTURY BEFORE / EDWARD HOAGLAND

Published in 1966, this is the narrative of a three months spent in the deep wilds of British Columbia, Canada, a region alien to most of us, detailing the life of earthy prospectors, traders, explorers and missionaries, and chronicling a world and lifestyle evaporating before his eyes. Hoagland brings to life the wonderful characters and their disappearing society.

83    THE ART OF TRAVEL / ALAIN DE BOTTON

They say it’s not about the destination, but the journey, and that aptly sums up the wittily spectacular The Art of Travel . Describing every detail from the anticipation of the journey at Heathrow to the glistening seas of Barbados, De Botton carries you with him throughout his adventure, even quoting famous travelers, as he sojourns in the exotic and embraces the ordinary.

84    THE GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO GETTING LOST / RACHEL FRIEDMAN

A tale of travel and some youthful debauchery, roaming three continents as a 20 year old woman, traveling alone and with friends she made along the way. Inhaling the freedom to discover how she could become the person she was meant to be.

85    PETERSBURG / ANDREY BELY

Some regard this as one of the most important Russian novels of the 20th century. Published in 1913 and translated into English forty years later. It gives a kaleidoscope of Russian history, character, culture and politics. A humorous and philosophical recreation of the underbelly of the capital of Imperial Russia, straddling reality and the absurd at the turn of the century.

86    THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS / CHARLES A. LINDBERGH

Picture it: A transatlantic flight. From New York to Paris. In a single-engine plane. In 1927. Written by the pioneering hero himself. Those were the days. It was, at the time, almost as earth-stopping as Apollo 11 going to the moon.

87    THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS / ERIC WEINER

One must have a sense of humor if you’re a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio. Eric Weiner globe-trotted the world in search of the path to contentment. He discovered: the Swiss relish in boredom. Being happy in Bhutan is government mandated. Thinking in Thailand is not necessary. And smoking hashish in Morocco certainly helps. Enjoy your search.

88    TO A DISTANT ISLAND / JAMES MCCONKEY

A retelling of Anton Chekhov’s journey through the Russian wilderness to the island of Sakhalin, a penal colony off the coast of Siberia. Chekhov went as a physician to observe medical conditions, but McConkey reflects that his motivation was likely escape from fame and fortune to a place where no one was free.

89    NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND / BILL BRYSON

A lighthearted, funny account of a colonist’s travels around England after calling it home for 20 years, before moving back to America. Using only public transport, an accomplishment in itself, ever more so in England, and hiking, Bryson captures the essence of the island and its inhabitants.

90    TRAVEL AS A POLITICAL ACT / RICK STEVES

The Steves Empire may be large and you may get lost in all that patronizing jazz. However, this book (now in its 3rd edition) is a reminder that most people in the world aren’t natural travelers — most people don’t actually travel at all. And so Steves is that reminder for the Mcdonald’s eating tourist in France, and the Starbucks guzzler in Asia, that the reason we travel is to expand our minds and range of experiences.

91    IRON & SILK / MARK SALZMAN

Salzman captures post-cultural revolution China of the mid 80s, through his adventures as a young American teaching English in China, and his shifu-tudi (master-student) relationship with China’s foremost martial arts teacher.

92    MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS / AGATHA CHRISTIE

93    INTO THE WILD / JON KRAKAUER

Christopher Johnson McCandless was from a well to-do family, and after a quarter-life crisis (like John Mayer warned us about), he gave his $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his family and friends, his car, and most of his possessions, and went off-grid to create a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found in an abandoned bus by a moose hunter. Krakauer retraces McCandless’s footsteps with breadcrumbs he left along the way, resulting in one of the most impactful and life altering stories of the 90s.

94    HERE IS NEW YORK / E.B. WHITE

Before Charlotte’s Web , and before telling us how to write properly (he is the White in Strunk & White’s iconic Elements of Style ), E.B. White sat down in a sweltering Manhattan hotel in the summer of 1949 and wrote a love letter to New York, taking the reader on a tour with every page. Nearly 70 years later, this nostalgic and elegiac essay will make you wish you could go back in time to that New York City. At least here it is preserved forever as it once was.

95    CHASING THE MONSOON / ALEXANDER FRATER  

For two months, Alexander Frater chased a summer monsoon through India, from the southernmost tip to the Bangladeshi border. That’s some water-logged traveling.

96    BOUND FOR GLORY / WOODY GUTHRIE  

Legendary American folksinger’s autobiography, that vividly brings to life both his vibrant, brave personality, and a hopeful vision of America we cannot afford to let die, if we haven’t already. He traversed the country by foot and train freight car, and some hitching, and remembers the Depression era he lived and struggled through. This is the man who wrote the song “This Land Is Your Land”, something we routinely seem to forget.

97    THE GREAT RAILWAY BAZAAR / PAUL THEROUX

The great and lauded American travel writer Paul Theroux takes a railway odyssey from London, through Europe, across Asia to Japan and back in 1973, with small air and sea deviations. Published in 1975 the book recounts his adventures on The Orient Express, The Mandalay and The Trans-Siberian, amongst other trips. Theroux’s fascination with people more than the incredible places he visits comes through. His observations of the characters he runs into are often hilarious, but he starts losing it on the journey home and becomes contemptuous with the locals, intoning wisely “Travel is flight and pursuit in equal parts.”

98    THIS IS PARIS / MIROSLAV SASEK

This children’s book, written in 1958 and the first in Sasek’s This Is series (New York, San Francisco, Rome, London, to name a few) is so simply illustrated and written so very matter of fact. It takes readers — regardless of age — on a lovely tour of Paris during a sparkling, glamorous era juxtaposed against its rich and thick history. Even 60 years after it was published, Hungarian-born Sasek convinces you time has stopped in the City of Lights, and that this is how the city should look today and forever.

99    HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE WORLD  / FRANKLIN FOER

This is an unintentional travel book, because it was supposed to be much more about its subhed, An Unlikely Theory of Globalization , but instead actually delivered on its title. By immersing himself in the distinct, deep rooted, almost completely working class subculture of soccer tribes around the world, from Serbia to Brazil to England and Scotland, Foer more adroitly and indelibly gives a sense of place than most travel writers ever could. He infiltrates the violent Serbian Ultras in Belgrade, who epitomized (and many probably participated in) the atrocities of the wars in the Balkans, and he captures the ludicrous, generations-inured, often family-splitting antipathy/Holy War between the Protestants and Catholics who support Rangers and Celtic respectively.

100    ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE / ROBERT M. PIRSIG

From Minnesota to Northern California by motorcycle. What could possibly go wrong? Or right, for that matter? The ultimate travel by thinking and philosophizing book, set in an America that now feels a little distant. It’s not about zen or motorcycles, but that’s the whole point really. And you knew that.

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Top travel reads for 2024, from memoirs to nature writing

From epic travelogues and nature writing to a pioneering travel publisher’s memoir, these titles will inspire adventure this year.

The natural world continues to inspire travel writers. Standout books for the year ahead include a collection of stories, illustrations and poems that explore our connection with nature, plus a travelogue inspiring us to discover the small green spaces on our doorstep. Walking remains a popular topic for authors, as evidenced by a pair of upcoming travelogues that hit the trail in rural Spain and Istanbul, respectively, plus a collection of literary works that asks the question: why explore on foot? And to celebrate Bradt Travel Guides reaching its 50 th anniversary this year, founder Hilary Bradt is set to release a memoir about her pioneering journeys both in print and around the lesser-explored corners of the planet.

1. Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wilderness

World explorer Alastair Humphries spent a year examining every square metre of a 12-mile radius around his home in suburban England and found wonder close to hand. A former National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Humphries has cycled around the globe, rowed across the Atlantic Ocean and even walked a lap of the M25 in one of his pioneering ‘microadventures’. His latest book is a celebration of slowing things down and discovering a small wild world right on your doorstep – it’s also a rallying cry to revitalise Britain’s depleted natural spaces and our right to roam in them. £12.99, Eye Books.

2. Taking the Risk: My Adventures in Travel and Publishing

Trailblazing travel publisher, Hilary Bradt’s eponymous guidebook company celebrates its 50 th anniversary this year. The first Bradt Travel Guide was born on an Amazon river barge in 1974: Backpacking Along Ancient Ways Peru & Bolivia which included some of the very first descriptions of the Inca Trail geared for travellers. Since then, Bradt has published guidebooks to the remotest parts of the planet – Eritrea, Mongolia and Madagascar among them. Championing slow and low-impact travel before the concepts were widespread, this memoir looks at back at a lifetime of trials, triumphs and following the lesser-known trail. £20.00, Bradt.

3. To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul

A deep dive into the Turkish capital, framed by the crumbling walls of its Byzantine fortifications. Journalist, Alexander Christie-Miller journeys on foot in and around Istanbul’s ancient city walls, piecing together a jigsaw puzzle of its identity on the fringes of Europe and Asia. The imperialist rhetoric of current Turkish president Erdoğan still holds Istanbul in the image carved out by Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, who captured then-Constantinople in 1453. But between the ancient minarets that punctuate Istanbul’s skyline, the author seeks out the real soul of the city in its diverse peoples, past and present, raising up voices rarely heard. £25, Harper Collins.

4. Wilder Journeys: True Stories of Nature, Adventure & Connection

Environmental writer Laurie King and bestselling author Miriam Lancewood have gathered a collection of original non-fiction stories, illustrations and poems examining the human connection with nature, penned by travellers, wildlife lovers and adventurers from across the globe. Take a walk across the desert with American explorer Angela Maxwell, discover how hermit Gregory Smith survived for 10 years in an Australian forest and learn how activist David Malana set up a surf school for people of colour in California. These bold stories aim to inspire you to find your wild animal soul and rethink your relationship with nature. £14.99, Watkins Publishing.

5. Vagabond

For anyone who loved Laure Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning , this tale of one man’s 761-mile hike across the Iberian Peninsula should appeal. Mark Eveleigh brings the pioneering spirit of adventure previously seen in his travel books on Southeast Asian to the back roads of Spain. The author spent five weeks walking from Gibraltar to Punta de Estaca de Bares in the country’s northernmost tip, taking in blistering sun-beaten planes, grey stone villages hung with mist and vast chains of mountains, in homage to the disappearing lifestyle of the vagabundo , as well as a celebration of rural Spain and its remote communities. £10.99, Summersdale.

6. Globetrotting: Writers Walk the World

Take a literary stroll, from the streets of London to the pilgrim paths of Japan, the jungles of Ghana and beyond. Author Duncan Minshull brings together writing from explorers and adventurers, scientists and missionaries, pleasure-seekers and literary drifters in a new collection of over 50 travelogues that aims to answer the question: why explore on foot? Spanning seven continents, stories date back to as early as the 1500s, and take in lesser-known writers along with the likes of Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Isabella Bird and William Boyd. £15.99, Notting Hill Editions.

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9 Books to Spark Your Wanderlust in 2023

Armchair travel. We’ve all indulged in it via daydreams and  Parts Unknown,  with weekly trips to  The White Lotus and afternoons spent leafing through the pages of this very magazine. But our editors, avid readers that they are, know that the most transportive (and transformative) stationary adventure is often to kick back with a good book. And we read a lot of those in 2022—from immersive  travel writing  that challenges the reader to breezy beach reads designed to be read on the sand. Here, we’ve rounded up the fiction and non-fiction books that sparked our wanderlust over the past year. Whether you are an accomplished bookworm yourself, or have simply resolved to crack even just one book in the New Year, we’ve got you covered.

All products and listings featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you purchase something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

My lack of familiarity with Italy’s modern literature, combined with my interest in novelist Jhumpa Lahiri’s immersion in the country’s language and literary traditions, motivated me to order this collection of 40 tales from 20th-century Italian writers, which Lahiri edited. The Pulitzer Prize winner curated a super sharp collection from authors who were both known to me (Italo Calvino, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa) and those unfamiliar (I enjoyed discovering Natalia Ginzburg), translating many of them herself, to telegraph an Italy you don’t see through travel: The dusty backroads of  Sicily in the early 1900s; hardscrabble towns beyond  Florence ; male and female protagonists struggling through banal life choices. More than a varied journey that jumps between eras and places in an often-overlooked Italy, this collection demonstrates the power of fiction to enlighten audiences on cultures and histories that are not their own (nearly half of the stories had never been translated before), mostly thanks to the stewardship of Lahiri herself. — Erin Florio , executive editor

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

“It’s nothing to come to Europe … It doesn't seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay at home; this is much more important.” I found a weathered and water-damaged copy of this masterpiece sitting alone on a  Brooklyn stoop this spring and began devouring it immediately—it is by far the longest and most difficult spontaneous read I’ve ever embarked on, and my found edition quickly became mine as I underlined passages more than I did not. Protagonist Isabel Archer is a young American woman, one less in control of her own desires than she is aware, visiting distant relatives in England. Her aunt takes her as a companion on a tour of Europe, and as she traipses from  Paris to  Florence  Archer makes a suitor out of just about every man she encounters. Firmly declining proposal after marriage proposal, Isabel is determined  to accomplish the abstract and impossible: to know everything about the world and about herself before she can marry. What better way to do so than to travel?— Charlie Hobbs , editorial assistant

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

I was already planning a trip to  Savannah when I picked up the non-fiction novel by journalist John Berendt, which is a page-turning murder mystery and a human interest masterpiece all in one. But it inspired me to make sure I experienced all the smallest nooks and crannies of Georgia’s oldest city—from subterranean antique shops to Flannery O’Connor’s historic childhood home, the Spanish-moss-strewn cemeteries, and an beloved drag show (yes, Club One) that lived up to the hype. Berendt lived the remote-work life, well before we all caught on to it, in order to live out his dream of transplanting to Savannah in the 1980s. The Southern Gothic tale that unfolds shortly after his arrival is one that strings together the small community’s dark past and its many eccentric personalities to paint a colorful picture of a Low Country gem that you can only experience through its people. — Shannon McMahon , editor, destinations

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

In her poetic prose, Maggie Nelson writes a personal exploration of her encounters with the color blue in life and love, and misery and pain. Catching sight of fragments of blue in my own life, Nelson has inspired me to count the colors in all my adventures. Navigating and experiencing travel through the lens of color opens up new and exciting emotions, connections, and realizations. I now find myself asking questions like: Which other city have I seen with this palette before? What does the color of this food remind me of? I jot down my answers and it becomes a story of its own. — Jessica Chapel, editorial assistant

Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

I fell for the somewhat hapless, super awkward, but rather relatable Arthur Less in Andrew Sean Greer's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2017 novel  Less during a jaunt around Europe, not unlike the protagonist. This fall, Less entered my life once again with Greer's sequel  Less is Lost . The novel—at times laugh-out-loud funny, deeply heart warming, and an apt portrayal of the current state of America—sees Less once again on a journey; this time on an unexpected  road trip across the United States where he finds himself in unpredictable situation after unpredictable situation. From beginning to end, I found myself armchair traveling through Greer's metaphors and vivid-yet-quirky descriptions from California to New Mexico to Georgia. I was ultimately left with an optimistic view of humanity—and an itch to rent a camper van, grab my dog, and get lost. — Scott Bay , associate editor

Lizzie and Dante by Mary Bly

This summer, when it seemed like everyone was traipsing around Europe, I was reading  Lizzie & Dante , a delicious rom-com about a woman who vacations at a seaside resort on Elba, an island off the  coast of Italy . The titular character, Lizzie (a Shakespeare scholar, because of course), meets a handsome Italian chef and his precocious daughter, and romance ensues. There are yachts,  secret ocean coves, and mouthwatering accounts of a crabby chef’s set menu that’ll have you ready to plan a trip to Elba (or at the very least, make a reservation at a very expensive Italian restaurant). The main character is on holiday with her best friend and his movie star boyfriend, giving it a touch of  The White Lotus  energy, but with far more likable characters. — Madison Flager , senior commerce editor

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

This year, I revisited a book I was assigned in high school when it caught my eye on a shelf in New York 's McNally Jackson Nolita, showcased with a group of “eerie” titles in the month of October. In the 1966 novel  Wide Sargasso Sea , Dominican-British author Jean Rhys gives the infamous madwoman in the attic from  Jane Eyre a story, and a life. The feminist, post-colonial prequel is set in the Caribbean, part one in  Jamaica during the protagonist’s childhood, and part two in Dominica during her toxic honeymoon with Mr. Rochester. The descriptions of these islands are at once beautiful and haunting. Take, for example: “The road climbed upward. On one side the wall of green, on the other a steep drop to the ravine below. We pulled up and looked at the hills, the mountains, and the blue-green sea. There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understand why the porter had called it a wild place. Not only wild but menacing. Those hills would close in on you.” These locations are not romanticized—they’re integral to the story Rhys tells about race, power, and assimilation—and in that way, this read will prompt your interest in them in more ways than one. — Alex Erdekian , travel bookings editor

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

I was utterly transported by the epic sweep of this beautiful, terribly sad historical novel about the Korean experience in  Japan over the course of the 20th century. (I read it right around the time Apple TV+ released its miniseries based on the book, and while I know many people who have enjoyed the screen version, this might be a case where the book hit me so hard I’ll never want to see the adaptation.) The vividly wrought locales are essential to Lee’s storytelling, especially the spartan but pristine world of Yeongdo, a fishing village on a tiny island off the coast of Busan more than a hundred years ago, and the rough-and-tumble milieu of Osaka at mid-century, with its squalid Korean ghetto, crowded markets, and illicit pachinko parlors. There are also gripping forays into Tokyo, Nagano, and the Japanese countryside. I found it to be such an illuminating portrayal of the fraught interlaced history of these two wonderful countries, and a reminder of how deeply I want to spend time in both. — Jesse Ashlock , deputy global editorial director and head of editorial content, U.S.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I read Madeline Miller’s  Circe years ago, and was blown away by how she brings Greek mythology to life in a totally fresh format. I finally got around to reading her debut novel,  The Song of Achilles  (2011), about that Achilles—and  that heel—this year, and it reminded me just how transportive mythology can be. It inspired me to buy a book on Sicilian mythology  while on the island over the summer , and my 2023 resolution is to read up on local stories before future trips. (Currently accepting recommendations of books tied to Kenyan and Peruvian folklore for my winter travels.) — Megan Spurrell , senior editor

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10 of the best travel books

We may not be able to venture far right now, but these travel books, from classics to comic travelogues, take us on journeys around the world Share your favourites in the comments below

Venice by Jan Morris

Recent reports suggest the now-quiet canals of Venice are at their clearest for 60 years, with swans spotted in recent days. The city, of course, has always had a touch of fantasy about it. “Venice is a cheek-by-jowl, back-of-the-hand, under-the-counter, higgledy-piggledy, anecdotal city,” writes Jan Morris in this 1960 masterpiece . “She is rich in piquant wrinkled things, like an assortment of bric-a-brac in the house of a wayward connoisseur, or parasites on an oyster-shell.” The book pens a portrait of a city thick with atmosphere and stuffed with history, conjuring an intoxicating sense of place with Morris’s trademark wit and wisdom. Faber

Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by Guy de Lisle

Canadian cartoonist Guy de Lisle is no standard travel writer – and his books are far from standard travelogues. Using simple, unfussy, comic-strip illustrations, he recounts his first-hand experiences of living in some of the world’s knottiest destinations, from Myanmar to North Korea. The result is a series of graphic memoirs that brilliantly juggle the subtleties and oddities of being a stranger in a strange town. Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City is the product of a year-long stay in the region and, over the course of more than 300 pages, tries to make sense of somewhere rarely less than complex. Jonathan Cape

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy

Few travel writers of any era compare to Dervla Murphy. Now in her late 80s, she’s been responsible for dozens of travel books , dwelling on destinations as varied as Cuba, Laos, Romania and Cameroon. Her 1965 debut remains her best known work, and tells the account of an astonishing solo bicycle expedition to Delhi. “Within a few weeks my journey had degenerated from a happy-go-lucky cycle trek to a grim struggle for progress by any means,” she writes, before encountering wolves, broken ribs and heat exhaustion. She also packs a .25 pistol, and has more than one cause to use it. Eland

The Crossway by Guy Stagg

This searingly honest account of an on-foot, 10-month journey from Canterbury to Jerusalem found its way onto more than one awards shortlist following its publication in 2018, and for good reason. Guy Stagg, a self-proclaimed non-believer and non-hiker, undertakes the trek as a form of self-healing, following years of coping with depressive thoughts that “stung and reeled”. If the pretext is downbeat, the journey itself is an odyssey, encountering memorable characters and a rippled patchwork of different cultures and beliefs. Almost unbelievably, he sets off from Kent in the dead of winter, requiring a crossing of the Alps in snow. And he writes like a dream. Picador

Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America with Interruptions by Jenny Diski

After spending three weeks crossing the Atlantic on a cargo ship (“at night, the rabble of stars demanded to be watched”), Jenny Diski travels around the perimeter of the USA by rail . The joy of the book lies as much in her portrayal of characters she encounters en route as the immersive detail of the country she’s passing through. Or, as she writes, “it is much more as if America is passing through you, what you are, what you’ve known”. Part-memoir, and written around 20 years ago, Stranger On A Train captures an America that still feels familiar – albeit with cigarettes in place of smartphones. Virag

French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France by Tim Moore

Few writers since Bill Bryson have nailed the comic travelogue as well as Tim Moore. Dogged in pursuit of an adventure, he’s pedalled the former Iron Curtain on an East German shopping bike, walked the Camino de Santiago with a donkey and, most recently, crossed the USA in a breakdown-prone Model T Ford. He’s also properly, consistently funny, as evidenced in 2001’s French Revolutions , which sees him attempt to cycle the entire course of the Tour de France. The acknowledgement in the title pages (“The Tour de France press office, without whom none of this would have been difficult”) sets the tone for a hugely entertaining read. Yellow Jersey

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia by Rebecca West

Readers get evangelical about this vast book, originally published in two volumes, which ostensibly describes Rebecca West’s travels through what was then Yugoslavia in 1937 . It is, however, far more than just a keen-eyed journal. Gathering up centuries of history and blending them with her own often piercing observations, West uses the book to paint a deep and intricate picture of a region on the brink of the second world war. The New York Times has called it a “masterpiece of history and travel”, while Time magazine would later describe West as “indisputably the world’s number one woman writer”. Canongate

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux

“All news out of Africa is bad. It made me want to go there…” So run the opening words of Paul Theroux’s 2002 classic, Dark Star Safari . Written more than two decades after his first long-distance travelogues, and some four decades after living in Africa as a young teacher, the book follows Theroux on a compelling, north-to-south journey down the continent. The narrative doesn’t shy away from harsh judgements – in Kenya “tourists yawned at the animals and the animals yawned back”, while aid workers also come in for some barbed criticism – but the people and landscapes he encounters are portrayed so vividly you can almost feel the equatorial heat from the pages. Penguin

Around the World in 80 Trains: A 45,000-mile Adventure by Monisha Rajesh

Monisha Rajesh has form when it comes to rail travel. This globe-straddling journey is the follow-up to 2010’s well received Around India In 80 Trains , and sees her undertake a 45,000-mile (72,000km) journey through Europe, Asia and North America. Her gift for detail means characters, as well as places, are brought to life. And from a high-altitude ride into Tibet to a trans-Canadian epic – not to mention a homecoming trip on the Venice Simplon Orient Express – the book does a fine job of affirming the things, large and small, that make rail travel such an absorbing way of seeing the world. Bloomsbury

A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush Eric Newby

“CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?” With this 1956 telegram – sent by disillusioned London fashion executive Eric Newby to a diplomat friend – begins an engrossing, at times comical, mountaineering journey into Afghanistan. The pair lack anything like the requisite climbing experience, but undergo a brief training period in Wales before travelling to the unforgiving peaks of Asia, with the aim of conquering the 5,800-metre Mir Samir. Newby’s prose is sharp and lively throughout , drawing the reader into remote villages and the “spiky and barren-looking” Hindu Kush, where hardships (and a chance hillside encounter with steely adventurer Wilfred Thesiger, who sneers at their air-beds) await. HarperCollins

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100 Must-Read Travel Books

Rebecca Hussey

Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations. Newsletter: Reading Indie Twitter: @ofbooksandbikes

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Real travel is awesome when we can manage it, but sometimes we just have to travel from our armchairs, right? When armchair travel is the most we can do, it’s good to have many reading options from which to choose. So I put together a list of 100 of the best travel books that will take you around the world without requiring any more effort than lifting your hand to turn the pages.

I did my best to organize these by geographical region, although sometimes that’s tricky since there are many ways to divide up the regions of the world. And I had to include a large category of “various locations” since some travel books really do take you everywhere. Within the geographical region, the books are organized chronologically.

I hope you will find some books on this list that pique your interest and can help you find adventures from the safety of your own home. Or maybe they will inspire you to go on a journey, or prepare you for an upcoming trip. Maybe you will read one of these on an airplane. Whatever the case, if travel is something that interests you, I hope this list helps you find new books to love.

Best Travel Books Set In Europe

Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)

“ Originally published in 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft’s account of her trip to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, is compelling both in its picture of countries rarely visited in Regency times and insights into Mary’s personal life. ”

Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879)

“ Ever hopeful of encountering the adventure he yearned for and raising much needed finance at the start of his writing career, Stevenson embarked on the120 mile, 12 day trek and recorded his experiences in this journal.”

Edith Wharton, A Motor-Flight Through France (1908)

“ Shedding the turn-of-the-century social confines she felt existed for women in America, Edith Wharton set out in the newly invented ‘motor-car’ to explore the cities and countryside of France.”

D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia (1921)

“ Written after the First World War when he was living in Sicily, Sea and Sardinia records Lawrence’s journey to Sardinia and back in January 1921. It reveals his response to a new landscape and people and his ability to transmute the spirit of place into literary art.”

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)

“ This unusual fictional account – in good part autobiographical – narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-out of two great cities. ”

Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941)

“ Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West’s classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern .”

Mary McCarthy, The Stones of Florence (1956)

“ Mary McCarthy offers a unique history of Florence, from its inception to the dominant role it came to play in the world of art, architecture, and Italian culture, that captures the brilliant Florentine spirit and revisits the legendary figures Dante, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and others who exemplify it so iconically.”

Jan Morris, The World of Venice (1960)

“ Often hailed as one of the best travel books ever written, Venice is neither a guide nor a history book, but a beautifully written immersion in Venetian life and character, set against the background of the city’s past. ”

Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts (1977)

“ In 1933, at the age of 18, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on an extraordinary journey by foot – from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary.”

Tété-Michel Kpomassie, An African in Greenland (1981)

“ Tété-Michel Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland—and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. ”

Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence (1989)

“ In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. ”

Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun (1996)

“ Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—opens the door to a wondrous new world when she buys and restores an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. ”

Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon (2000)

“ Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner–in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.”

Lori Tharps , Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain (2008)

“ Magazine writer and editor Lori Tharps was born and raised in the comfortable but mostly White suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she was often the only person of color in her school and neighborhood. At an early age, Lori decided that her destiny would be discovered in Spain. ”

Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor, Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story (2009)

“ Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel throughout Greece and France. Sue, coming to grips with aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her grown daughter, struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel. Ann, just graduated from college, heartbroken and benumbed by the classic question about what to do with her life, grapples with a painful depression. ”

André Aciman, Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere (2011)

“ From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner,  Alibis  reminds the reader that Aciman is a master of the personal essay. ”

Sarah Moss, Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland (2012)

“ Novelist Sarah Moss had a childhood dream of moving to Iceland, sustained by a wild summer there when she was nineteen. In 2009, she saw an advertisement for a job at the University of Iceland and applied on a whim, despite having two young children and a comfortable life in an English cathedral city.”

Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012)

“ In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. ”

Best Travel Books Set In  Latin America

Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938)

“ Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experience in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of ceremonies and customs and superstitions of great cultural interest. ”

Sybille Bedford, A Visit to Don Otavio (1953)

“ In the mid-1940s, Sybille Bedford set off from Grand Central Station for Mexico, accompanied by her friend E., a hamper of food and drink (Virginia ham, cherries, watercress, a flute of bread, Portuguese rosé), books, a writing board, and paper. Her resulting travelogue captures the rich and violent beauty of the country as it was then. ”

V.S. Naipaul, The Middle Passage , (1962)

“ In 1960 the government of Trinidad invited V. S. Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his impressions. In this classic of modern travel writing he has created a deft and remarkably prescient portrait of Trinidad and four adjacent Caribbean societies–countries haunted by the legacies of slavery and colonialism .”

Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (1977)

“ An exhilarating look at a place that still retains the exotic mystery of a far-off, unseen land, Bruce Chatwin’s exquisite account of his journey through Patagonia teems with evocative descriptions, remarkable bits of history, and unforgettable anecdotes.”

Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas (1979)

“ Beginning his journey in Boston, where he boarded the subway commuter train, and catching trains of all kinds on the way, Paul Theroux tells of his voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts and Illinois to the arid plateau of Argentina’s most southerly tip. ”

Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987)

“ In this brilliantly focused and haunting portrait of the people, the politics, the land, and the poetry of Nicaragua, Salman Rushdie brings to the forefront the palpable human facts of a country in the midst of a revolution. ”

Mary Morris, Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone (1987)

“ Traveling from the highland desert of northern Mexico to the steaming jungles of Honduras, from the seashore of the Caribbean to the exquisite highlands of Guatemala, Mary Morris, a celebrated writer of both fiction and nonfiction, confronts the realities of place, poverty, machismo, and selfhood. ”

Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (1988)

“ Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright, A Small Place magnifies our vision of one small place with Swiftian wit and precision. Jamaica Kincaid’s expansive essay candidly appraises the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up, and makes palpable the impact of European colonization and tourism. ”

Isabel Allende, My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile (2003)

“ Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country; a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and an indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth, and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today. ”

Best Travel Books Set In  North America

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)

“ Widely admired for its vivid accounts of the slave trade, Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography — the first slave narrative to attract a significant readership — reveals many aspects of the eighteenth-century Western world through the experiences of one individual. ”

Isabella Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879)

“ Bird was born in 1831 in Cheshire, England, and became one of a distinguished group of female travellers famous in the nineteenth century–a time when it was considered that a lady’s place should be confined to the home. Isabella travelled and explored the world extensively and became a notable writer and natural historian.”

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962)

“ In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people.”

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968)

“ This is a rare view of a quest to experience nature in its purest form — the silence, the struggle, the overwhelming beauty. But this is also the gripping, anguished cry of a man of character who challenges the growing exploitation of the wilderness by oil and mining interests, as well as by the tourist industry. ”

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974)

“ A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. ”

Edmund White, States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

“ In this city-by-city description of the way homosexual men lived in the late seventies, Edmund White gives us a picture of Gay America that will surprise gay and straight readers alike.”

William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982)

“ William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity … His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.”

Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces (1984)

“ Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. ”

Jonathan Raban, Bad Land: An American Romance (1985)

“ In towns named Terry, Calypso, and Ismay (which changed its name to Joe, Montana, in an effort to attract football fans), and in the landscape in between, Raban unearths a vanished episode of American history, with its own ruins, its own heroes and heroines, its own hopeful myths and bitter memories. ”

Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (1996)

“ In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. ”

Jenny Diski, Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions (2002)

“ Using two cross-country trips on Amtrak as her narrative vehicles, British writer Jenny Diski connects the humming rails, taking her into the heart of America with the track-like scars leading back to her own past. ”

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005)

“ A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit’s own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery. ”

Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation (2005)

“ With Assassination Vacation, [Vowell] takes us on a road trip like no other—a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage. ”

Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012)

“ At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life.”

Suzanne Roberts, Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (2012)

“ It was 1993, Suzanne Roberts had just finished college, and when her friend suggested they hike California’s John Muir Trail, the adventure sounded like the perfect distraction from a difficult home life and thoughts about the future. But she never imagined that the twenty-eight-day hike would change her life. ”

Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road (2015)

“ Gloria Steinem—writer, activist, organizer, and one of the most inspiring leaders in the world—now tells a story she has never told before, a candid account of how her early years led her to live an on-the-road kind of life, traveling, listening to people, learning, and creating change. ”

Best Travel Books Set In  Asia

Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1689)

“ In later life Basho turned to Zen Buddhism, and the travel sketched in this volume reflect his attempts to cast off earthly attachments and reach out to spiritual fulfillment. The sketches are written in the ‘haibun’ style–a linking of verse and prose. ”

Alexandra David-Néel, My Journey to Lhasa (1927)

“ In order to penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, she used her fluency of Tibetan dialects and culture, disguised herself as a beggar with yak hair extensions and inked skin and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the World.”

Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958)

“ No mountaineer, Newby set out with a friend to explore the formidable peaks of the Nuristan Mountains in northeast Afghanistan. His witty, unorthodox report is packed with incidents both ghastly and ecstatic as he takes us where few Western feet have trod.”

Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1978)

“ When Matthiessen went to Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and, possibly, to glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard, he undertook his five-week trek as winter snows were sweeping into the high passes. This is a radiant and deeply moving account of a ‘true pilgrimage, a journey of the heart.'”

Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family (1982)

“ In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that ‘pendant off the ear of India,’ Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. ”

Vikram Seth, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkian and Tibet (1983)

“ After two years as a postgraduate student at Nanjing University in China, Vikram Seth hitch-hiked back to his home in New Delhi, via Tibet. From Heaven Lake is the story of his remarkable journey and his encounters with nomadic Muslims, Chinese officials, Buddhists and others. ”

Christina Dodwell, Traveller in China (1985)

“ Christina Dodwell s wanderlust, combined with her inventive and unorthodox methods of travel and her unquenchable curiosity about people, make her the ideal guide to the remoter parts of China’s vast territory. ”

Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu (1988)

“ Why did Dire Straits blast out over Hiroshima, Bruce Springsteen over Bali and Madonna over all? The author was eager to learn where East meets West, how pop culture and imperialism penetrated through the world’s most ancient civilisations. Then, the truths he began to uncover were more startling, subtle, and more complex than he ever anticipated. ”

Pankaj Mishra, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1995)

“ From a convent-educated beauty pageant aspirant to small shopkeepers planning their vacation in London, Pankaj Mishra paints a vivid picture of a people rushing headlong to their tryst with modernity. ”

Andrew Pham, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (1999)

“ Catfish and Mandala is the story of an American odyssey—a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland.”

Ma Jian, Red Dust: A Path Through China (2001)

“ In 1983, at the age of thirty, dissident artist Ma Jian finds himself divorced by his wife, separated from his daughter, betrayed by his girlfriend, facing arrest for ‘Spiritual Pollution,’ and severely disillusioned with the confines of life in Beijing. So with little more than a change of clothes and two bars of soap, Ma takes off to immerse himself in the remotest parts of China. ”

Suketu Mehta , Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004)

“ The book combines elements of memoir, travel writing as well as socio-political analysis of the history and people of Mumbai. Mehta writes as a person who is at one level outsider to this magnificent city and on the other hand is the one who is born here and has lived his childhood in the city then known as Bombay. ”

Faith Adiele, Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun (2004)

“ Reluctantly leaving behind Pop Tarts and pop culture to battle flying rats, hissing cobras, forest fires, and decomposing corpses, Faith Adiele shows readers in this personal narrative, with accompanying journal entries, that the path to faith is full of conflicts for even the most devout. ”

Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009)

“ Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years–a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. ”

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012)

“ In this brilliant, breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. ”

Best Travel Books Set In  Africa

Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (1897)

“ Upon her sudden freedom from family obligations, a sheltered Victorian spinster traded her stifling middle-class existence for an incredible expedition in the Congo. ”

Beryl Markham, West with the Night (1942)

“[Markham’s] successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the ‘soul of Africa’—are all chronicled here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed by National Geographic as one of the greatest adventure books of all time, West with the Night is the sweeping account of a fearless and dedicated woman. ”

Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986)

“ Once again, the poet casts her spell as she resumes one of the greatest personal narratives of our time. In this continuation, Angelou relates how she joins a “colony” of Black American expatriates in Ghana–only to discover no one ever goes home again. ”

Eddy L. Harris, Native Stranger: A Black American’s Journey into the Heart of Africa (1992)

“ Recounting his journey into the heart of Africa, an African American describes his encounters with beggars and bureaucrats, his visit to Soweto, a night in a Liberian jail cell, and more. ”

Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (1998)

“ Philip Gourevitch’s haunting work is an anatomy of the killings in Rwanda, a vivid history of the genocide’s background, and an unforgettable account of what it means to survive in its aftermath. ”

Colleen McElroy, Over the Lip of the World: Among the Storytellers of Madagascar (1999)

“ McElroy’s tale of an African American woman’s travels among the people of Madagascar is told with wit, insight, and humor. Throughout it she interweaves English translations of Malagasy stories of heroism and morality, royalty and commoners, love and revenge, and the magic of tricksters and shapechangers. ”

Charlayne Hunter-Gault, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance (2006)

“ In New News Out of Africa , this eminent reporter offers a fresh and surprisingly optimistic assessment of modern Africa, revealing that there is more to the continent than the bad news of disease, disaster, and despair.”

Noo Saro-Wiwa, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (2012)

“ She finds [Nigeria] as exasperating as ever, and frequently despairs at the corruption and inefficiency she encounters. But she also discovers that it is far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, with its captivating thick tropical rainforest and ancient palaces and monuments.”

Best Travel Books Set In The  South Pacific

Robyn Davidson, Tracks: A Woman’s Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback (1980)

“ Robyn Davidson’s opens the memoir of her perilous journey across 1,700 miles of hostile Australian desert to the sea with only four camels and a dog for company with the following words: ‘I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there’s no going back.'”

Dea Birkett, Serpent in Paradise (1997)

“ Acclaimed British travel writer and journalist Dea Birkett, obsessed like many with the island’s image as a secluded Eden and its connection to the mysterious and intriguing Bounty legend, traveled across the Pacific on a cargo ship and became one of the very few outsiders permitted to land on Pitcairn. ”

Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (2000)

“ Despite the fact that Australia harbors more things that can kill you in extremely nasty ways than anywhere else, including sharks, crocodiles, snakes, even riptides and deserts, Bill Bryson adores the place, and he takes his readers on a rollicking ride far beyond that beaten tourist path. ”

Kira Salak, Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua, New Guinea (2001)

“ Traveling by dugout canoe and on foot, confronting the dangers and wonders of a largely untouched world, [Salak] became the first woman to traverse this remote country and write about it. ”

Best Travel Books Set In The  Middle East/North Africa

Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters (1716)

“ Her lively letters offer insights into the paradoxical freedoms conferred on Muslim women by the veil, the value of experimental work by Turkish doctors on inoculation, and the beauty of Arab poetry and culture. ”

Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana (1937)

“ In 1933 the delightfully eccentric Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana -the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. ”

Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt (1987, written in late 19th century)

“ Eberhardt’s journal chronicles the daring adventures of a late 19th- century European woman who traveled the Sahara desert disguised as an Arab man and adopted Islam.”

Sara Suleri, Meatless Days (1989)

“ In this finely wrought memoir of life in postcolonial Pakistan, Suleri intertwines the violent history of Pakistan’s independence with her own most intimate memories—of her Welsh mother; of her Pakistani father, prominent political journalist Z.A. Suleri; of her tenacious grandmother Dadi and five siblings; and of her own passage to the West. ”

Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler’s Tale (1993)

“ Interspersing his quest with accounts of his stay in ‘Masr’ and the people he met, Ghosh weaves together a narrative packed with exuberant detail, exposing ties that have bound together India and Egypt, and Hindus and Muslims and Jews, from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm.”

Rory Stewart, The Places in Between (2004)

“ In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan–surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers … Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. ”

Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road (2007)

“ Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey and explored an ancient world in modern ferment. ”

Gertrude Bell, A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of the Queen of the Desert (2015, written in early 20th century)

“ This is the epic story of Bell’s life, told through her letters, military dispatches, diary entries, and other writings. It offers a unique and intimate look behind the public mask of a woman who shaped nations. ”

Lynsey Addario, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (2015)

“ Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a young photographer when September 11 changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call to return and cover the American invasion.”

Best Travel Books Set In  Arctic/Antarctic

Ernest Shackleton, South: The Story of Shackleton’s Last Expedition, 1914-1917 (1919)

“ In an epic struggle of man versus the elements, Shackleton leads his team on a harrowing quest for survival over some of the most unforgiving terrain in the world.”

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (2001)

“ Lopez offers a thorough examination of this obscure world-its terrain, its wildlife, its history of Eskimo natives and intrepid explorers who have arrived on their icy shores. But what turns this marvelous work of natural history into a breathtaking study of profound originality is his unique meditation on how the landscape can shape our imagination, desires, and dreams. ”

Sara Wheeler, Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica (1996)

“ Terra Incognita is a meditation on the landscape, myths and history of one of the remotest parts of the globe, as well as an encounter with the international temporary residents of the region – living in close confinement despite the surrounding acres of white space – and the mechanics of day-to-day life in extraordinary conditions. ”

Gretchen Legler, On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (2005)

“ Sent to Antarctica as an observer by the National Science Foundation, Gretchen Legler arrives at McMurdo Station in midwinter, a time of -70 degree temperatures and months of near-total darkness. ”

Various Locations

Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta , (14th century)

“ Ibn Battutah—ethnographer, bigrapher, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist—was just 21 when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgramage to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco for another 29 years, traveling instead through more than 40 countries on the modern map, covering 75,000 miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far east as China, and as far south as Tanzania. ”

Martha Gellhorn, Travels With Myself and Another (1979): “ Out of a lifetime of travelling, Martha Gellhorn has selected her ‘best horror journeys.’ She bumps through rain-sodden, war-torn China to meet Chiang Kai-Shek, floats listlessly in search of u-boats in the wartime Caribbean and visits a dissident writer in the Soviet Union against her better judgment.”

Barbara Savage, Miles from Nowhere: A Round-The World Bicycle Adventure (1983)

“ This is the story of Barbara and Larry Savage’s sometimes dangerous, often zany, but ultimately rewarding 23,000 miles global bicycle odyssey, which took them through 25 countries in two years.”

Elaine Lee, editor, Go Girl!: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure (1997)

“Globe-trotting attorney Lee assembled 52 travel pieces presenting the uncommon perspective of black women, mostly African Americans. Assembled under the headings ‘Back to Africa,’ ‘Sistren Travelin’,’ and ‘Trippin’ All Over the World,’ many initially appeared in popular women’s or travel magazines.”

Cheryl J. Fish, editor, A Stranger in the Village: Two Centuries of African-American Travel Writing (1999)

“ Dispatches, diaries, memoirs, and letters by African-American travelers in search of home, justice, and adventure-from the Wild West to Australia. ”

Caryl Phillips, The Atlantic Sound (2000)

“ Liverpool, England; Accra, Ghana; Charleston, South Carolina. These were the points of the triangle forming the major route of the transatlantic slave trade. And these are the cities that acclaimed author Caryl Phillips explores–physically, historically, psychologically–in this wide-ranging meditation on the legacy of slavery. ”

Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (2002)

“ Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why … de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow.”

Geoff Dyer, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It (2003)

“ As he travels from Amsterdam to Cambodia, Rome to Indonesia, Libya to Burning Man in the Black Rock Desert, Dyer flounders about in a sea of grievances, with fleeting moments of transcendental calm his only reward for living in a perpetual state of motion. ”

Susan Orlean, My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere (2004)

“ In this irresistible collection of adventures far and near, Orlean conducts a tour of the world via its subcultures, from the heart of the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois–and even into her own apartment, where she imagines a very famous houseguest taking advantage of her hospitality. ”

Ryszard Kapuściński , Travels with Herodotus (2004)

“J ust out of university in 1955, Kapuscinski told his editor that he’d like to go abroad. Dreaming no farther than Czechoslovakia, the young reporter found himself sent to India. Wide-eyed and captivated, he would discover in those days his life’s work—to understand and describe the world in its remotest reaches, in all its multiplicity.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

“ Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. ”

Tahir Shah, Travels with Myself (2011)

“ Travels with Myself is a collection of selected writings by Tahir Shah, acclaimed Anglo-Afghan author and champion of the intrepid. Written over twenty years, the many pieces form an eclectic treasury of stories from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and beyond.

Elisabeth Eaves, Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents (2011)

“ Spanning 15 years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’s insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. ”

Paula Young Lee, Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat (2013)

“ What happens when a Korean-American preacher’s kid refuses to get married, travels the world, and quits being vegetarian? She meets her polar opposite on an online dating site while sitting at a café in Paris, France and ends up in Paris, Maine, learning how to hunt. ”

Emily Raboteau, Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora (2013)

“ On her ten-year journey back in time and around the globe, through the Bush years and into the age of Obama, Raboteau wanders to Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and the American South to explore the complex and contradictory perspectives of Black Zionists. ”

Amanda Epe, A Fly Girl: Travel Tales of an Exotic British Airways Cabin Crew (2014)

“ A Fly Girl gives insight to the highs and lows in the world of a former BA cabin crew, in an intriguing travel writing memoir. In the global landscape the memoirist meticulously documents personal adventures, social structures and political history throughout her daring and exciting expeditions.”

Robert Moor, On Trails: An Exploration (2016)

“ Throughout, Moor reveals how this single topic—the oft-overlooked trail—sheds new light on a wealth of age-old questions: How does order emerge out of chaos? How did animals first crawl forth from the seas and spread across continents?”

What do you think are the best travel books? Check out even more recommendations for travel memoirs here !

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14 Best Travel Authors of All Time

Here are some of the best travel authors that you will want to read to gain inspiration about the art of traveling.

There are times when we simply want to escape the mundanity of everyday life and explore an exotic location like Arabia or Mexico. Yet when travel is not possible, a book can take us where we want to go. Exploring the world through the writing of travel authors can give us a sense of wonder, even when we have to stay at home.

If you are hoping to learn more about the world, put down the guidebook and pick up a more engaging work by one of these top travel authors . You will read a great story while also gaining some travel experience. These 14 authors are ones you will want to grab from Amazon to read today.

1. Bill Bryson

2. paul theroux, 3. bruce chatwin, 4. eric newby, 5. ernest hemingway, 6. graham greene, 7. jack kerouac, 8. freya stark, 9. jan morris, 10. john steinbeck, 11. peter mayle, 12. anthony bourdain, 13. elizabeth gilbert, 14. pico iyer, best travel authors ranked.

Bill Bryson  is an American and British author whose book Notes from a Small Island, showcasing travel in Britain, brought him to prominence among travel writers. His travel books include works about travel in America, England, Australia, Africa, and other countries in Europe.

Bryson started his adult life as a student at Drake University, but he dropped out to backpack in Europe after two years. Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe chronicled these adventures. This trip caused him to move to Europe permanently, settling in Britain in 1977.

Early in life, Bryson worked as a journalist and copy editor. In 2014, he took the citizenship test to earn dual citizenship in the UK and America. Bryson’s extensive work earned him several honorary doctorates from schools in America and the UK.

• Bryson, Bill (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 324 Pages - 05/15/2001 (Publication Date) - William Morrow Paperbacks (Publisher)

Paul Theroux was born in Massachusetts in 1941, and he earned his acclaim as a novelist and travel writer. The Great Railway Bazaar is one of his most famous works in the travel genre. 

Throughout his career, Theroux experienced some controversy. For example, Singapore banned his novel, Saint Jack, for over 30 years because of its content.

Throughout his life, Theroux lived in several countries, including Uganda, Singapore, and England, in London specifically. He returned to the United States in the 1990s and continues to write today. Looking for more books to binge on a weekend? Check out the best books for beach reading . Or you can also search for our best book guides using our search bar.

• Theroux, Paul (Author)
• 352 Pages - 06/01/2006 (Publication Date) - Mariner Books (Publisher)

Bruce Chatwin considered himself a storyteller, not a travel writer, but his first book, In Patagonia, solidified him in the genre. He got to travel much of the world working as a reporter for The Sunday Times Magazine, interviewing political figures. This helped him gather more tales for his travel books.

Chatwin was born in England and went to Marlborough College. He worked for a time at Sotheby’s, where he gained knowledge of and appreciation for art. 

Throughout Chatwin’s body of work, the theme of human restlessness is clear. He believed humans had a genetic predisposition to wanderlust, and his works helped fuel that. You might also be interested in these essays about traveling and essays about journeys .

• Bruce Chatwin (Author)
• 240 Pages - 03/01/2003 (Publication Date) - Penguin Classics (Publisher)

Eric Newby was an English travel writer known for A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Last Grain Race, and A Small Place in Italy. He was born in London in 1919 and died in 2006 at 86. His famous travel work The Last Grain Race chronicled his experience on a Finnish ship that took part in a voyage from Australia to Europe past Cape Horn. 

Newby was a prolific writer, with 25 books to his name. His travel writing included some of his stories from being captured as a prisoner of war in the Adriatic during World War II, which he wrote about in Love and War in the Apennines. 

Newby continued writing until 2003, three years before his death. Many of his works included his own photography.

• Newby, Eric (Author)
• 288 Pages - 08/13/2024 (Publication Date) - HarperPress (Publisher)

Ernest Hemingway was a  Nobel Prize-winning author  who wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, which spoke of the Civil War in Spain. His travel books include Green Hills of Africa, which talks about his time on safari.

Hemingway grew up in Illinois and joined the military during World War I. He got his first taste of international travel on the Italian front of the war. He also served during WWII, working as a journalist and foreign correspondent. 

He fell in love with Paris and chose to live there as an ex-pat for some time. His time there was the story behind The Sun Also Rises, another of his famous works. In addition to traveling and writing, Hemingway was a keen sportsman.

• Hemingway, Ernest (Author)
• 480 Pages - 07/01/1995 (Publication Date) - Scribner (Publisher)

Graham Greene was a British writer who lived from 1925 to 1991. He often brought conflicting moral and political issues into his writing, and he earned the Shakespeare Prize and the Jerusalem Prize for his works. 

Greene traveled extensively to find subject matter for his books, which led him to get recruited for MI6, the British espionage agency. As a result, many of his works, including The Comedians and his memoir My Silent War, include settings pulled from his travels. 

Greene often wrote about remote places, which earned him a spot as one of the best travel writers, but he was more prominently known as a thriller and political writer. 

• Greene, Graham (Author)
• 320 Pages - 01/25/2005 (Publication Date) - Penguin Classics (Publisher)

Jack Kerouac was an American poet and novelist known for Big Sur and The Dharma Burns. His prose is known for its spontaneity, and he covers a wide range of themes in his writing. Though he grew up in Massachusetts, his home was French-speaking, so he often spoke with a French accent. 

Like many travel writers, Kerouac got his taste for international travel during World War II, where he served as a Marine. He published a total of 14 novels during his lifetime and also several volumes of poetry. 

On the Road is one of his most famous travel works. It chronicles a road trip Kerouac once took with Neal Cassady. A heavy drinker, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage at the age of 47. 

• Jack Kerouac (Author)
• 293 Pages - 06/01/1999 (Publication Date) - Penguin Classics (Publisher)

Freya Stark was an explorer and travel writer who lived in the early 1900s. She had dual British and Italian citizenship and lived in many parts of Europe, including Italy and France. The book One Thousand and One Nights, which she received for her ninth birthday, inspired a love for Asia and the Orient, which later fueled her passion for exploration. 

Stark took many excursions into the Middle East, including dangerous countries like Lebanon, Baghdad, and Iraq, and these became part of her writings. The Valleys of the Assassins, which she published in 1934, is one of her famous works, and it describes some of her early travels. 

Throughout her life, Stark continued to travel extensively. She helped the British in both World War I and World War II. Her adventure travel writings earned her the Founder’s Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.

• Stark, Freya (Author)
• 320 Pages - 07/24/2001 (Publication Date) - Random House Publishing Group (Publisher)

 Yet another English travel writer, Jan Morris, lived in Great Britain and Wales. She was born James Morris, and while living as a male, she was part of the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition – the first time the mountain was traversed. 

Last Letters from Hav was one of Morris’s most engaging travel novels. She described it as an imagined travelogue and political thriller. She also published several books on travel to Trieste and Venice. 

Morris died in 2020 at the age of 94. She was famous for being one of the first high-profile individuals to make a gender transition. She traveled to Morocco for the necessary surgery when British doctors refused to perform it. 

• Morris, Jan (Author)
• 203 Pages - 02/18/1989 (Publication Date) - Vintage Books / Random House (Publisher)

American author John Steinbeck is most famous for his novels The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940. The Grapes of Wrath sold 14 million copies in just the first 75 years of publication. 

Not all of Steinbeck’s works are travel works, but in 1943 he became a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. A role that took him overseas. This gave him new settings for his stories beyond California, and some of his works became known as travel books. For example, his A Russian Journal included photographs and first-hand accounts of his visit to the Soviet Union in 1947. 

In 1960 Steinbeck embarked on a road trip with his dog, Charley, which created the scenes for Travels with Charley: In Search of America. This piece of travel literature is a travel memoir that perfectly captures what it means to be American, even the different flavors of America seen across the country. 

• Steinbeck, John (Author)
• 277 Pages - 01/31/1980 (Publication Date) - Penguin Books (Publisher)

Peter Mayle  is the author of the New York Times bestseller A Year in Provence. He has 14 books to his name, including both non-fiction works and travel novels. A Year in Provence was his first book, and it has six million copies in forty languages to date. 

Mayle was born in 1939 in England, and he started his literary career writing educational books, not travel stories. However, he eventually moved to southern France as an expatriate, which served as fodder for his most famous works. In 1989 the British Book Awards called A Year in Provence the Best Travel Book of the Year.

Mayle died in 2018 at the age of 78. He was still living in Provence at the time. In addition to his work as an author, he also worked as an advertising copywriter. 

• Great product!
• Bourdain, Anthony (Author)
• 312 Pages - 01/09/2007 (Publication Date) - Ecco (Publisher)

Anthony Bourdain is a chef who also traveled the world. He writes on both cooking and travel, and A Cook’s Tour is one book that combines both into one interesting tour of the dining and culture of the world. 

Bourdain’s books are known for their whit, and his book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2000. Many of his works tied in with his television series. 

In addition to writing, Bourdain hosted several travel shows for television. His work for these shows fueled some of his great travel and cooking books. Are you searching for books to give to someone? Check out our round-up of the best books to give ! Or you can also search for our best book guides using our search bar.

In Eat, Pray, Love,  Elizabeth Gilbert  takes the reader to Italy, Indonesia and India. The book’s theme is finding self-love and inner devotion, but it fits the travel genre because of its exploration of these locations. 

Gilbert was born in Connecticut in 1969 and grew up on a Christmas tree farm. She started writing short stories while in college, and she traveled throughout America during her young adult years, which provided some ideas for her books.

The popularity of Eat, Pray, Love, and the movie based on the book earned her a spot on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

• Gilbert, Elizabeth (Author)
• 400 Pages - 01/30/2007 (Publication Date) - Riverhead Books (Publisher)

Pico Iyer was a close friend of the Buddhist leader Dali Lama, which comes into play in his book The Open Road. In this book, he encourages readers to look into the themes of Buddhism as they relate to life. 

Iyer traveled to Cuba, Ethiopia, and Kathmandu throughout his life, and those places influenced his writing. Though he was born to Indian parents and raised in California, he currently resides in Western Japan. His Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World showcases his travel writing style as he explores places not often found in travel guidebooks.

Because of the Buddhist influence in his life, Iyer’s works are very introspective. Often causing the reader to think about human nature just as much as they inspire thought about travel. If you liked this post, you might also be interested in these authors like Bill Bryson .

• Iyer, Pico (Author)
• 288 Pages - 03/10/2009 (Publication Date) - Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Publisher)

The Top Ten Most Influential Travel Books

Even before there were armchairs, voracious bookworms traveled the world just by reading

Tony Perrottet

Contributing writer

William H.H. Murray's guidebook to the Adirondacks “kindled a thousand camp fires and taught a thousand pens how to write of nature,” inspiring droves of American city-dwellers to venture into the wild and starting a back-to-nature movement that endures to this day. Of course, Murray's slender volume was part of a great literary tradition. For more than two millennia, travel books have had enormous influence on the way we have approached the world, transforming once-obscure areas into wildly popular destinations.

A detailed selection would fill a library. So what follows is a brazenly opinionated short-list of travel classics—some notorious, some barely remembered—that have inspired armchair travelers to venture out of their comfort zone and hit the road. 

1. Herodotus, Histories (c.440 BC)

Homer's Odyssey is often referred to as the first travel narrative, creating the archetypal story of a lone wanderer, Odysseus, on a voyage filled with mythic perils, from terrifying monsters like the Cyclops to seductive nymphs and ravishing sorceresses. As may be.  But the first real “travel writer,” as we would understand the term today, was the ancient Greek author Herodotus, who journeyed all over the eastern Mediterranean to research his monumental Histories. His vivid account of ancient Egypt, in particular, created an enduring image of that exotic land, as he “does the sights” from the pyramids to Luxor, even dealing with such classic travel tribulations as pushy guides and greedy souvenir vendors. His work inspired legions of other ancient travelers to explore this magical, haunted land, creating a fascination that reemerged during the Victorian age and remains with us today. In fact, Herodotus qualifies not just as the Father of History, but the Father of Cultural Travel itself, revealing to the ancient Greeks—who rarely deemed a foreign society worthy of interest—the rewards of exploring a distant, alien world.

  2. Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo (c.1300)

When the 13th-century Venetian merchant Marco Polo returned home after two decades wandering China, Persia and Indonesia, the stories he and his two brothers told were dismissed as outright fiction—until (legend goes) the trio sliced open the hems of their garments, and hundreds of gems poured to the ground in a glittering cascade. Still, Polo's adventure might have remained all but unknown to posterity if an accident had not allowed him to overcome his writer's block: Imprisoned by the Genoans in 1298 after a naval battle, he used his enforced leisure time to dictate his memoirs to his cellmate, the romance writer Rustichello da Pisa. The resulting volume, filled with marvelous observations about Chinese cities and customs and encounters with the potentate Kublai Khan (and including, admittedly, some outrageous exaggerations), has been a bestseller ever since, and indelibly defined the Western view of the Orient. There is evidence that Polo intended his book to be a practical guide for future merchants to follow his path. The vision of fabulous Chinese wealth certainly inspired one eager and adventurous reader, fellow Italian Christopher Columbus, to seek a new ocean route to the Orient. (Of course, Islamic scholars will point out that the 14 th -century explorer Ibn Battuta traveled three times as far as Polo around Africa, Asia and China, but his monumental work Rihla , “The Journey,” remained little known in the West until the mid-19th century).

3. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)

When the author of Tristram Shandy penned this extraordinary autobiographical novel, the Grand Tour of Europe as a rite of passage was in full swing. Wealthy young British aristocrats (almost invariably male), took educational expeditions to the great cultural sites of Paris, Venice, Rome and Naples, seeking out the classical sites and Renaissance artworks in the company of an erudite “bear leader,” or tour guide. Sterne's rollicking book suddenly turned the sober Grand Tour principle on its head. The narrator deliberately avoids all the great monuments and cathedrals, and instead embarks on a personal voyage, to meet unusual people, seeking out new and spontaneous experiences: (“'tis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of NATURE, and those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each other—and the world, better than we do.”) His meandering journey across France and Italy is filled with amusing encounters, often of an amorous nature (involving assorted chamber maids and having to share rooms in inns with member of the opposite sex), which prefigures the Romantic era's vision of travel as a journey of self-discovery. Even today, most “true travelers” pride themselves on finding vivid and unique experiences, rather than generic tourist snapshots or lazy escapes.

4. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

Writers of the Gilded Age (a term Mark Twain incidentally coined) produced thousands of earnest and tedious travel books, a tendency that Twain deftly deflated with Innocents Abroad. Sent as a journalist on a group cruise tour to see the great sights of Europe and the Holy Land, Twain filed a series of hilarious columns to the Alta California newspaper that he later reworked into this classic work. With its timely, self-deprecating humor, it touched a deep chord, lampooning the naïveté of his fellow Americans (“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad”) and the modest indignities of exploring the sophisticated Old World (“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”) The result was to embolden many more of his fellow countrymen to fearlessly cross the pond and immerse themselves in Europe, and, hardly less importantly, to begin a new style of comic travel writing that echoes today through hugely popular modern authors such as Bill Bryson. Today, Innocents Abroad is one of the few 19th-century travel books that is still read eagerly for pleasure. (Its perfect companion is, of course, Roughing It , Twain's account of his misspent youth as a miner in the wild American West).

5. Norman Douglas, Siren Land (1911)

The Italian island of Capri began its proud reputation for licentiousness in ancient Roman times, and by the mid-19 century was luring free-living artists, writers and bon vivants from chilly northern climes. (It was even said that Europe had two art capitals, Paris and Capri). But its modern reputation was sealed by the libertine writer Norman Douglas, whose volume Siren Land offered an account of the carefree southern Italian life “where paganism and nudity and laughter flourished,” an image confirmed by his 1917 novel South Wind , where the island is called Nepenthe, after the ancient Greek elixir of forgetfulness . (Siren Land gets its title from Homer’s Odyssey; Capri was the home of the Sirens, ravishing women who lured sailors to their deaths by shipwreck with their magical voices). Millions of sun-starved British readers were captivated by the vision of Mediterranean sensuality and Douglas' playful humor. (“It is rather puzzling when one comes to think of it,” he writes, “to conceive how the old Sirens passed their time on days of wintry storm. Modern ones would call for cigarettes, Grand Marnier, and a pack of cards, and bid the gale howl itself out.”) Douglas himself was flamboyantly gay, and liked to scamper drunkenly around Capri’s gardens with vine leaves in his hair. Thanks largely to his writings, the island in the 1920s entered a new golden age, luring exiles disillusioned by post-war Europe. The visitors included many great British authors who also penned travel writing classics, such as D.H. Lawrence (whose marvelous Etruscan Places covers his travels in Italy; Lawrence also showed drafts of the torrid Lady Chatterly’s Lover to friends while on holiday in Capri in 1926), E.M Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene and W.H. Auden. (The renowned poet wrote a travel volume on Iceland, of all places). The collective vision of Mediterranean freedom has inspired generations of travelers to those warm shores ever since.

6. Freya Stark, The Valley of the Assassins (1934)

The Victorian age produced a surprising number of adventurous women travel writers—Isabella Bird, for instance, wrote about exploring Hawaii, the Rocky Mountains and China—but the authors were regarded as rare and eccentric exceptions rather than role models by female readers. In the more liberated era of the 1930s, Freya Stark's tome revealed just how far women could travel alone and live to write about it. Her breakthrough book, The Valley of the Assassins , was a thrilling account of her journey through the Middle East. Its highlight was her visit to the ruined stronghold of the Seven Lords of Alamut, a medieval cult of hashish-eating political killers in the Elburz Mountains of Iran whose exploits had been legendary in the West since the Crusades. (The singular escapade made her one of the first women ever inducted into the Royal Geographical Society.) The bestseller was followed by some two dozen works whose freshness and candor inspired women to venture, if not by donkey into war zones, at least into exotic climes. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world,” she enthused in Baghdad Sketches . “You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it.”

7. Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)

This thinly veiled autobiographical novel, about a group of young friends hitch-hiking and bumming their way across the United States, has inspired generations of restless readers to take a leap into the unknown. Although the publisher made Kerouac change the actual names (Kerouac became Sal Paradise, the wild driver Neal Cassady became Dean Moriarty and poet Allen Ginsberg became Carlo Marx), its episodes were almost entirely drawn from life, qualifying it as a classic of travel writing. It was also a cultural phenomenon: Kerouac legendarily hammered out the whole lyrical work on a giant scroll of paper (possibly on one speed-induced binge), and carried it about in his rucksack for years before it was published, becoming an instant icon of the rebellious “beat” era, thumbing its nose at the leaden conformity of the cold war era. Today, it is still a dangerous book to read at an impressionable age (at least for younger males; women tend to be left out of the boyish pursuits, except as sex objects). The delirious sense of freedom as Kerouac rides across the wheat fields of Nebraska in the back of a farm truck or speeds across the Wyoming Rockies toward Denver is infectious.

8. Tony and Maureen Wheeler, Across Asia on the Cheap (1973)

It was one of history's great self-publishing success stories. When two young travelers roughed it in a minivan from London to Sydney, they decided to write a practical guide about their experiences. Working on a kitchen table, they typed out a list of their favorite budget hotels and cheap restaurants from Tehran to Djakarta, stapled the copied pages together into a 90-page booklet and sold it for $1.80 a pop. Their instincts were correct: There was a huge hunger for information on how to travel on a budget in the Third World, and the modest booklet sold 1,500 copies in a week. The hit became the basis for Lonely Planet, a vast guidebook empire with books on almost every country on earth. The young and financially challenged felt welcomed into the exotic corners of Nepal, Morocco and Thailand, far from the realm of five-star hotels and tour groups, often for a few dollars a day. The guidebooks' power quickly became such that in many countries, a recommendation is still enough to make a hotelier's fortune. (Having sold 100 million copies of their guidebooks, the Wheelers finally sold Lonely Planet for £130 million in 2010 to the BBC. (The BBC recently confirmed plans to sell the franchise to NC2 Media at a loss for just £51.5 million. Nobody ever claimed Across Asia was high literature, but the Wheelers now help fund a literary institution, The Wheeler Center, in their home city of Melbourne, Australia, to promote serious fiction and non-fiction). 

9. Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (1977)

Along with Paul Theroux's wildly entertaining Great Railway Bazaar , Chatwin's slim, enigmatic volume became widely credited with the modern rebirth of travel writing. A former Sotheby's art auctioneer, the erudite Chatwin famously quit the London Sunday Times Magazine via telegram to his editor (“Have gone to Patagonia”) and disappeared into the then little-known and remote tip of South America. In a stylistic first for the genre, In Patagonia weaves a personal quest (for a piece of prehistoric skin of the mylodon, which the author had seen as a child) with the region's most surreal historical episodes, related in a poetic, crisp and laconic style. Focusing on god-forsaken outposts rather than popular attractions, Chatwin evokes the haunting ambiance with deftly drawn vignettes from Patagonia's storybook past, such as how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lived in a cabin in southern Argentina, or how a Welsh nationalist colony was begun in the windswept town of Trelew. And thus the quirky travel pilgrimage was born.

  10. Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence (1989)

Mayle's breezy account of his mid-life decision to escape dark and sodden England to renovate a farmhouse in Ménerbes, a village in the south of France, created an entire sub-genre of do-it-yourself travel memoirs filled with charmingly quirky locals. It also inspired thousands to physically emulate his life-changing project, flooding Provence and other sunny idylls with expats in search of a rustic fixer-upper and supplies of cheap wine. Aided by the relaxed residency laws of the European Union, discount airlines and France's super-fast TGV trains, the once-impoverished southern France quickly became gentrified by retirees from Manchester, Hamburg and Stockholm, until it is now, in the words of one critic, a “bourgeois theme park for foreigners.” (Tuscany became equally popular, thanks to Frances Mayes' beguiling books, with the shores of Spain and Portugal following suit). Things got so crowded that Mayle himself moved out – although he has since returned to a different tiny village, Lourmarin, a stone's throw from his original haunt. In recent years, Elizabeth Gilbert's wildly successful Eat Pray Love (2007) offered a similar spirit of personal reinvention, inspiring a new wave of travelers to follow her  path to the town of Ubud in Bali in search of spiritual (and romantic) fulfillment

A Smithsonian Magazine Contributing Writer, Tony Perrottet is the author of five travel and history books, including Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists and The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe; www.tonyperrottet.com

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Tony Perrottet | READ MORE

Tony Perrottet is a contributing writer for Smithsonian magazine, a regular contributor to the New York Times and WSJ Magazine , and the author of six books including ¡Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution that Changed World History , The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games and Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped . Follow him on Instagram @TonyPerrottet .

The 38 Best Travel Books for Readers with Wanderlust

If you like to read and you like to travel, you’re my people and you’ve come to the right place. Get ready to discover the 38 best travel books for readers with wanderlust!

As a lifelong reader and traveller, my favourite thing is when my two passions collide. Since 2019, I have read 50+ travel books and would love to introduce some of my favourites to you.

To me, the best travel books are engaging and evocative. They have a story throughout about a person or family I can connect to, rather than just nice descriptions of pretty places. The writing is sharp and funny – never too high-brow, poetic or overly-exclamatory.

My favourite travel stories are true tales (so mostly memoirs about travel) that span multiple countries (around the world trips are my favourite) completed by ordinary people (not athletes or expeditioners). Not all of the books below fit into this category, but it is my go to!

On this list of my favourite travel reads you won’t find:

• Anything historic . I prefer more modern books where the adventures happened in the last 20-ish years.
• Epic adventures or survivor tales . While I believe all of the trips below are adventurous, I’m not drawn to stories of people summiting mountains or surviving shipwrecks. I’m sure those books are great, but they’re not for me.
• Books I read a long time ago . All of the books below I’ve read between 2019 and 2023, so these are my recent thoughts on them (though many were published before then).
• Books I disliked . Obviously, since this is a list of the best travel books, I’ve left off about a dozen books about travel that I’ve read recently, but can’t honestly recommend.

With that out of the way, let’s get to my recommendations and find you your next best book about travel!

Need more reading inspiration? Check out 27 Travel Books that Will Inspire You to See the World , 32 Beach Reads for Every Summer Reading Mood , my favourite non-fiction books , my favourite true crime books , and 12 Memoirs You Should Read .

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning if you click through and make a purchase, I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Table of Contents

Best books about travel around the world trips

Below are some of my favourite books that feature around the world trips. If you love the idea of setting off on a huge RTW trip, traveling the world for a year or seeing every country on earth, these adventurous travel stories are for you!

Not Afraid of the Fall by Kyle James

Review : I enjoyed following Kyle and Ashley’s travels around the world in this diary-style book. Though I think it lacked a narrative theme, the diary-style does make it feel like you’re out on the road with them through Europe and Asia.

• The Catch Me If You Can by Jessica Nabongo

Review : This might be the best book for traveling the world since Jessica has literally been to every country! I’ve been following Jessica Nabongo on Instagram for years and loved hearing about her travels, as a Black woman and African woman, to every country in the world, especially the less touristed ones. While I loved listening to this as an audiobook to hear directly from Jessica, I want to check out the print version to see her beautiful photography!

World Travel by Anthony Bourdain & Laurie Woolever

Review : Sadly, Anthony Bourdain was only involved in the outline of this book before his passing. However, it’s filled with his words and beautiful essays from his friends on travel, life and food with Tony. I wish the book had been exclusively these essays and Bourdain’s quotes, instead of also trying to be a guidebook. It felt really out of place, and frankly boring, to also read about how to get from the airport to the city centre and what websites to check out to book airfare.

Home Sweet Anywhere by Lynne Martin

Review : I loved hearing about this adventurous couple in their 70’s who decide to sell it all and live home-free. Their excitement jumped off the page and I loved the little travel stories they shared. At times the book felt a bit dated and dull, but overall their motto of “postpone nothing” was very empowering.

Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh

Synopsis : Packing up her rucksack – and her fiance, Jem – Monisha embarks on an unforgettable adventure that will take her from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, North Korea, Canada, Kazakhstan, and beyond. The ensuing journey is one of constant movement and mayhem, as the pair strike up friendships and swap stories with the hilarious, irksome and ultimately endearing travellers they meet on board, all while taking in some of the earth’s most breathtaking views.

Review : I will admit that I have been listening to the audio version of this book on and off for what has now been years. Every time I listen, I really enjoy it! Monisha does a great job of making train ride after train ride interesting and weaves in the history and culture of the places she’d riding past. But, much like riding a train, I do find my mind wanders which maybe explains why I haven’t finished it yet.

Best memoirs about travel

My favourite genre of book is probably memoirs about travel. I love hearing directly from the traveller all about their adventurous highs and lows. I specifically selected the below true travel reads as each of these life stories is particularly emotional, impactful and inspiring.

• From Scratch by Tembi Locke

Review : I read this book back in 2020 and remember absolutely bawling during the early chapters. I know it’s on Netflix now but I’m almost too nervous to watch it because I know I’ll be emotional. While tissues are necessary, I highly recommend the book. It almost reads like poetry and Tembi’s love for her husband, her family and his, her daughter, Italy, Italian food and finally, herself, jump off the page.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Review : This memoir was both hilarious, as we’d expect from a late night comedian, and incredibly personal and serious. It was a beautiful tribute to Trevor’s mom and a hard look at life in South Africa. My only complaint is that the book bounced around so much chronologically that I was sometimes confused about where we were.

A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout & Sara Corbett

Review : This was one of the first and only books I stayed up late to finish – closing my e-reader at 4:30am! While it started slow, I was immediately drawn to Amanda’s love of travel. Once she’s kidnapped, the book is brutally honest and, apologies for the pun, incredibly captivating.

What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman

Review : This was a funny and sweet read, perfect for solo travellers who are sick of being asked when they’re going to settle down. While it was an enjoyable read, I wish it was a bit more about travel than relationships.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Review : I couldn’t write a post about the best travel books and not include Eat, Pray, Love now could I? I know it’s a cliche but I would be lying if I didn’t say I really enjoyed this book (and the movie!). I think it’s a powerful read and Liz beautifully tells her story through Italy, India and Indonesia.

A Trip of One’s Own by Kate Wills

Review : Kate is a brilliant storyteller. Whether it’s dealing with the aftermath of her divorce in London, getting back out on the road, reflecting on past travels or telling the stories of female travellers before her, I’m drawn to it all, inspired and engaged!

The Bookseller at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw

Review : This was an amazing look at Ruth Shaw’s life, full of loss and adventure, throughout New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands. Each chapter ends with a tale from her bookstore that just prove how charming small town life is, how kind Ruth is and how much she loves books and the humans who buy them. PS: We’re planning to visit Ruth’s bookstore when we’re in New Zealand this month!

Best books for traveling food lovers

Looking for the best book about travel AND food? Then this next section is for you! So often a love of travel inspires a love of food or vice versa, as we travel the world eating the best meals . Try not to drool all over these recommendations!

Somebody Feed Phil the Book by Phil Rosenthal

Review : If you’re a fan of the travel TV show Somebody Feed Phil (and you should be!) this is the perfect companion book. Personally, I found the recipes to be pretty advanced for your average home chef but loved all of the photos and essays. Caution: Don’t read while hungry!

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Review : This memoir was a tough read but really resonated with me as a mixed-Asian person. A beautiful exploration of grief, the power of culture and food, and travel from the US to Korea.

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi

Synopsis : As a young chef, Onwuachi was forced to grapple with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color, and his first restaurant, the culmination of years of planning, shuttered just months after opening. Notes from a Young Black Chef is one man’s pursuit of his passions, despite the odds.

Review : I really enjoyed Chef Kwame’s story and everything that influenced his cooking, from growing up in the Bronx with Southern US heritage to moving to Africa to live with relatives. He also includes recipes in his memoir, which was a fun touch! And there’s a YA version of Notes from a Young Black Chef which I think younger readers would enjoy.

• Chop Suey Nation by Ann Hui

Review : I loved learning about the culture of Chinese restaurants across Canada, as well as Ann’s family history. It was incredibly empowering for me, as a Chinese Canadian, to recognize so many places and dishes from this book. It felt like home!

Taste by Stanley Tucci

Review : Stanley Tucci (or The Tuc, as he’s known in our house) is a great storyteller and his love for food, from his childhood home in New York to moving abroad to Italy with his parents to recreating dishes in his London home during lockdown, shines through in this yummy book.

Best books about traveling the world with kids

While I don’t have kids myself, I love the idea of families travelling together and I hope to do an epic trip with my future family one day. In hopes of inspiring you too, I’ll introduce my contenders for best book for traveling the world with kids!

One Year Off by David Elliot Cohen

Review : As someone who hopes to travel around the world with a future family one day, I’m a sucker for anyone who has done a big trip with their kids. I really enjoyed hearing about the Cohens’ adventures around the world though the book did feel quite dated, as their trip happened in 1996.

Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

Review : This was the first book I ever read (or listened to, actually) in one sitting. I loved the idea of Anthony moving his family to Rome for a year while he worked on a book. Sometimes the book focused too much on art or nature for my liking, but the sections on daily life in Rome worked well for me.

At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider

Synopsis : At Home in the World follows Tsh and her family’s journey from China to New Zealand, Ethiopia to England, and more. And all the while Tsh grapples with the concept of home, as she learns what it means to be lost—yet at home—in the world.

Review : I resonated most with this book when Tsh said, “I was infected by an incurable case of wanderlust but I was also a homebody.” That’s so me! I was so inspired by this family’s journey around the world with their kids and how they didn’t let having kids stop them from travelling. There is quite a bit of spirituality and religion throughout the book (including a smidge of white saviour-ism), but it’s mostly tolerable.

• We Came, We Saw, We Left by Charles Wheelan

Review : Another inspiring family adventure! I really enjoyed how this book not only documented the Wheelans’ travels but also why they wanted to go, how they made the trip possible and the family dynamics throughout.

Falling for London by Sean Mallen

Synopsis : Veteran journalist Sean Mallen was ecstatic when he unexpectedly got the chance he’d always craved: to be a London-based foreign correspondent. Falling for London is the hilarious and touching story of how he convinced his wife and daughter to move to London with him, how they learned to live in and love that wondrous but challenging city, and how his dream came true in ways he could have never expected.

Review : It was really interesting to hear Sean’s take not only on moving to London for a year but also as a foreign correspondent reporting news from around Europe. The only part I couldn’t wrap my head around was his wife and daughter not wanting to come (and boy did they complain about it!). Who wouldn’t want to live in London?

How to Be a Family by Dan Kois

Review : I loved following along as the Kois family lived in four different places over the course of a year, learning how to set up life, parent and become a family in each one. Sometimes the story felt a bit bland but I did like how Dan pointed out both the failures and the wins. His realistic approach (“This trip didn’t change our lives, it was our lives”) really resonated with me.

How to Survive Family Holidays by Jack Whitehall, Hilary Whitehall & Michael Whitehall

Review : If you’re a fan of comedian Jack Whitehall or his travel series, Travels with My Father, you’ll definitely want to pick up this book. It’s a fun listen where the Whitehalls swap family travel stories and lighthearted advice. I recommend listening to the audiobook as each person reads and they even include bloopers and reactions.

Best books on traveling Europe

I think because I lived in Europe and have spent a lot of time travelling there, I’m drawn to travel stories set in Europe. Below are some of the best travel books on traveling Europe – with quite a few dedicated to Paris and France for my francophiles!

Paris in Love by Eloisa James

Review : In this book about a family who moves to Paris for a year, Eloisa shares snapshots from their daily life. While slightly romanticized, I liked the idea of just being dropped into their real life and reading the vivid descriptions of mundane things like buying groceries or walking to school.

The Temporary European by Cameron Hewitt

Review : I really enjoyed this one! Cameron shares essays from his travels through Europe (he’s spent a third of each year there since the 1990’s), as well as stories about working for travel legend Rick Steves, running tours, writing guide books, producing his TV show or being back in the Seattle office. While some essays interested me more than others, I really liked Cameron’s overall travel ethos and enjoyed being transported to Europe with him.

For the Love of Europe by Rick Steves

Review : I couldn’t mention Cameron’s book and not include one by Rick himself! If you’re a fan of Rick Steves or just need some more wanderlust inspiration on all things Europe, this is a great read. However, if you’ve seen every episode of his TV show, you may find yourself reading some of the same stories.

Do Not Go Gentle. Go to Paris. by Gail Schilling

Synopsis : Rattled by fears that she is losing her keys, her looks, her job, and her sweetheart, Gail, 62, rashly announces that she will go to Paris, a dream postponed for 40 years. By the end of her journey, Gail recognizes the joie de vivre beneath the wrinkles of bygone beauty in French women. Now she awakens to her own joy of living and finds that it has no expiration date.

Review : I loved the lesson Gail shared about it never being too late to change your life and go after your dreams, but also to go now because you don’t know how long you have. It was so nice to experience her joy in visiting Paris and travelling through France, even if she had to wait until her 60’s to make it happen.

Paris Letters by Janice MacLeod

Review : In this “American moves to Paris” (yes, that’s a genre!) book, Janice shares how she wrote herself out of her boring office job and made it to Paris. I loved hearing how she made the most of her time abroad and leapt into her new life.

No Baggage by Clara Bensen

Review : I was both horrified and inspired by this story of a brand new couple travelling the world with only what they could fit in a fanny bag. While the premise was cool, some of the book felt a bit dull to read. I did, however, enjoy how they represented mental health.

My Good Life in France by Janine Marsh

Review : This time we have a Brit moving to France! While I didn’t love the writing itself, I did enjoy hearing about Janine’s trials and tribulations with expat life in rural France. I have no desire to renovate my own French barn but I like hearing about it!

Eat, Pray, #FML by Gabrielle Stone

Review : Consider this the millennial version of Eat, Pray, Love, but not as cringe-inducing as the title might make it seem. I really appreciated Gabrille’s honesty as she travelled through Europe to try and heal her broken heart. This reads like you’re sitting down with a girlfriend to chat relationships and travel. Note: There are a few fatphobic lines.

Best fiction travel stories

While memoirs about travel and other non-fiction travel books are my favourite, I know that travel fiction is a great genre too. So if you’re a novel reader, check out these adventurous, fictitious and often romantic travel tales!

• One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle

Review : Rebecca Serle is probably my favourite fiction author so this was a must-read for me! I find her writing to be so good – the perfect mix of evocative and smart without being too pretentious or heavy, but also without going the other way and being too cheesy and cringe-inducing. While a love story, this book is also about the love between a mother and daughter and the love for a beautiful place in Italy.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Review : If you’re looking for a fun and light rom com with a few fun travel stories throughout, this is the novel for you!

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman

Review : This book hooked me right from the start and I stayed up all night to finish it. It’s all about love, family and Italy. While I did find some of the dialogue a bit cheesy, I loved the descriptions of Italy, the flashbacks and how all of the characters grew.

The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary

Review : This was a really enjoyable read! I was a bit worried about the dual narrators, as I usually end up preferring one voice over the other, but liked both. While some of the characters bugged me, it was overall a very fun road trip!

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Review : I loved this book, told mostly through letters and the daughter’s perspective, all about a mom who disappears and the adventure to find her. It was super engaging with great writing and a fun mystery element.

His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie

Review : I loved learning more about Ghana and especially the divide between city life in Accra and rural life in Afi’s hometown, Ho. While I liked Afi’s feminist journey, I wish we saw more of it, as some of her feelings seemed to come out of nowhere. But overall a great read!

Final thoughts: My top 5 best travel books

Out of all of the books about travel I’ve shared above, I decided to narrow it down to my top five best travel books. After much deliberation, my top five (in no particular order) are:

I hope my list of travel reads has inspired you and you have a few new books to add to your TBR. I’d love to know, what’s your favourite travel-related book? 

Looking for more book recommendations? Check out my reading lists:

• What to Read Based on Your Latest Netflix Binge
• 10 True Crime Books for a Truly Spine-Chilling Time
• 15 Books to Help You Escape
• 27 Travel Books that Will Inspire You to See the World

Riana Ang-Canning is a travel writer who has been sharing her global adventures as the founder of Teaspoon of Adventure since 2012. In that time, Riana has travelled to almost 50 countries on 6 continents, including interning in Eswatini, working in Tokyo, road tripping New Zealand and living abroad in Prague. Riana helps everyday travellers discover the world on a mid-budget, proving that you don't have to be athletic, wealthy or nomadic to have an adventure!

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Love this list! I’ve read a few, but certainly not all. Thanks for the recs.

Thanks for checking it out, Saskia! Hope you find a good new read!

Great list, Riana! I need to get busy.

Thanks so much, Kellye!

Thank you for the great recommendations! I found this post through a search (…a quest, at this stage, really!) for travel fiction and your “not on my list” books made me read the rest. Exactly what I was looking for, thank you 🙂

Thanks so much, Juliette. Glad to hear the list was helpful. I plan to update it soon with even more recommendations!

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Top 10 Travel Writing Books

Travel Writing 2.0: Earning Money from your Travels in the New Media Landscape – A well-written and easy to understand guide for aspiring travel writers that covers today’s digital environment as well as traditional publishing, both of which are vital for a truly successful career in travel writing. With plentiful and generous advice, and numerous interviews with successful travel writers and authors, Mr. Leffel offers a comprehensive learning tool that should be a part of every writer’s library.

» Read our full review of Travel Writing 2.0

Lonely Planet Travel Writing (How to) – The definitive guide for both aspiring and experienced travel writers. What Lonely Planet is to millions of travelers around the world, this guide is to those who want to write about their travels. Whether you want to become a professional Travel Writer or are already a Travel Writer and just to improve your skills, we highly recommend this book. Limited budget and can only afford one book? This is the one.

The Writer’s Handbook Guide to Travel Writing – Full of good advice and a number of very interesting interviews with leading Travel Writers, The Writer’s Handbook is one you’ll refer to often as you build your own business and reputation. Learn how to avoid many common mistakes and get started on the right path to becoming a successful (or more successful) Travel Writer.

Travel Writer’s Guide – a solid basic guide that is better suited for beginning Travel Writers, particularly those who have not traveled extensively in the past, the Travel Writer’s Guide has a lot of great tips for planning and organizing a trip, along with good advice on how to interview others, how to structure your writing, and how to market your articles.

» Read our full review of Travel Writer’s Guide .

The Travel Writer’s Handbook: How to Write – and Sell – Your Own Travel Experiences – A unique perspective and solid tips on some of the smaller details (such as record-keeping), as well as a good focus on basics (like researching your destinations) make this book a useful and illuminating read, worth your time even if you’re an experienced travel writer. The newest edition covers relevant topics missing from previous versions, such as the opportunities bought about by the internet, as well as the advantages (and disadvantages) of digital photography.

» Read our full review of The Travel Writer’s Handbook .

The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing: A Professional Guide to the Business, for Nonfiction Writers of All Experience Levels – filled with great suggestions and valuable tips, each of this book’s 26 chapters was written by a different member of the American Society of Writers and Journalists. Although you’ll find a lot of good nuggets of advice, the book’s focus is on writing , something that can get overlooked in the quest to become a professional writer. The best way to ensure your success as a writer is to make sure your writing skills are of a professional caliber, and this book will definitely help with that.

The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success – Unconventional is definitely the singular descriptive for this book. While full of common sense and good advice, this book turns most of the conventional rules of freelance writing upside down and breaks a few along the way, while still proving that success can often be found by not following the rules. Additionally, this book offers a unique value by providing readers with an online Wiki for writing markets, and access to successful query letters to help you with your own. The authors also offer online courses taught by successful freelancers on a wide variety of writing topics, including travel writing.

How to Make a Living As a Travel Writer – A well-organized primer on the industry of Travel Writing in general, with a number of good examples of different types of travel writing styles and articles. Nothing new here for experienced professional travel writers, but it’s a good starting point for those looking to become a travel writer.

Travel Writing: See the World. Sell the Story. – A thorough, comprehensive, and well-structured guide that includes exercises to reinforce it’s lessons, written by an experienced and successful travel writer. Included is a well-written explanation of the various classifications of travel articles, and a number of additional resources, such as writing examples, marketing directory listings, organizations, and more. This book stays focused with just nine chapters, so there is not a lot of wasted fluff here – a good read with good sound advice, perfect for beginners, but all travel writers can pick up a thing or two here.

» Read Our Full Review of Travel Writing: See The World, Sell The Story

Get Paid to Write! The No-Nonsense Guide to Freelance Writing – This book is unique amongst all others in this genre in that its author was also an editor and publisher, and he shares his experience and insights into the other side of the travel writing partnership – getting published. You may have wonderful writing skills, but getting published is about giving readers what they want, and this book will help you to do just that. Packed with good advice and insider tips and success secrets, this book is a “must-have” for any serious freelance travel writer.

» Read our full review of Get Paid To Write!: The No-Nonsense Guide to Freelance Writing

The Best Travel Writing 2008: True Stories from Around the World – Reading this collection of some of the very best articles from Travel Writers is a great way to get a feel for what makes a great story. Learning from these examples may just help you find your own style if you’re brand new at Travel Writing, or to improve your style if you’re already an experienced, if not already successful, Travel Writer. Some of these stories are so good you’ll feel like you were there – Travel Voyeurism at it’s finest!

Bonus! A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration – Not a “travel writing guide book” – you won’t find how-to’s or getting-started advice here – but what you will find is an entertaining and illuminating look at the literary genre of Travel Writing from the perspective of some of the best in the business – writers whose words paint pictures and whose stories have drawn tourists from all over the world to the places they’ve written about. This book won’t teach you, but it will inspire you and encourage you, and you’ll likely find yourself reading it many times over.

All material on this site is subject to Copyright © 2008 - 2019. All Rights Reserved. No reprint/republication of any materials from this site without written permission from TWE.

Become a Travel Writer: The Best Books on Travel Writing

Do you want to become a travel writer? The job sounds alluring, doesn’t it?

The following books are the best travel writing books currently available. They cover topics ranging from craft to careers, from pitching to press-trips, and from blogging to breaking into the business. The books cover much of the same information, but each one offers a unique perspective to help you better understand the realities of travel writing in the early 21 st century.

If you’re looking for resources on how to write a travel book, check out our free Travel Book Guidebook .

The Travel Writing Tribe by Tim Hannigan

We’re not including Tim’s book on this list because he’s a friend of the show . The book stands on its own. Tim plunges headfirst into critical debates in travel writing today, neatly packaged into a narrative quest to interview some of Britain’s greatest travel writers.

A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration by Michael Shapiro

What better way to learn than from the masters? Not so much a how-to guide than the stories and advice of successful authors, A Sense of Place is a who’s-who list of the world’s greatest travel writers interviewed by Michael Shapiro. Among the writers Michel interviewed are Jan Morris, Bill Bryson, Pico Iyer , and Paul Theroux (the two latter authors I interviewed on the Travel Writing World podcast).

How to Be a Travel Writer by Don George

Don George is one of the most revered travel writers today. A writer for more than 40 years, editor for some of the top travel magazines, and founder of one of the best travel writing conferences , Don knows a thing or two about the business. In How to Be a Travel Writer , Don George distilled his more in-depth guide to travel writing (see below) and updated it for the new media landscape. 

Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Writing  by Don George

This is the second Don George book on the list. While his other book is billed as an “updated version,” Don’s Lonely Planet’s Guide to Travel Writing (2013) dives much deeper into discussions on the art and craft of travel writing. It might be a good idea to read both books.

A Field Guide for Immersion Writing by Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley is a prolific writer, professor of English at the University of Iowa, and former director of the Nonfiction Writing Program. This handy (and snarky) book will help you think about injecting yourself into your stories, be they memoir, journalistic, or travel-related. It is also handy in helping you conceptualize various forms of travel books and stories. Highly recommended and unlike any other book on this page.

The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map: A Step-by-Step Guide to Pitching Your Way to Better Pay  by Gabi Logan

Gabi Logan is the founder of the helpful website “Dream of Travel Writing,” which includes a magazine database designed to help travel writers pitch articles to editors. Her book, The Six-Figure Travel Writing Road Map , instructs would-be travel writers on how to cultivate the mindset of a travel writer, get clips in magazines, pitch to editors, and establish an online presence. 

The Travel Writer’s Way: Turn Your Travels into Stories by Jonathan Lorie

The most recent book on this list and perhaps one of the prettiest, Jonathan Lorie’s The Travel Writer’s Way is also one of the most in-depth when it comes to the craft of travel writing. Like a good teacher, he gives assignments to help you sharpen your travel writing skills.

Travel Writing (The New Critical Idiom)  by Carl Thompson

Less of a how-to guide on travel writing than an academic and critical treatment of the genre, Carl Thompson’s Travel Writing will help you understand the nature, problems, and history of travel writing. A must-read! 

Travel Writing 2.0 by Tim Leffel

Last updated in 2016, Tim Leffel’s Travel Writing 2.0 is one of the best as it relates to leveraging online and digital opportunities in the new media landscape. It is also packed full of down-to-earth advice on making a career out of travel writing. Listen to Tim Leffel talk about travel writing in a Travel Writing World podcast interview.

Have you read any of these books? Which ones are your favorites? Also, if we missed any other obvious books on the subject, please let us know in the comments.

Last Updated on 19 May 2021 by Travel Writing World

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Travel Writing World

With an emphasis on travel books and long-form travel literature, host Jeremy Bassetti talks with the world’s most inspiring travel writers about their work and about the business and craft of travel writing in this award-winning podcast and website. In addition to the podcast, the site also features travel writer profiles, book reviews, and articles.

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Thank you Jeremy, great newsletter, packed full of useful information! I also enjoyed your interview about the demise of the best American travel writing book, the way you guys interacted was very engaging.

Dear Pat, thank you for listening to the podcast and for subscribing to the newsletter. I hope you (and your memoir) are doing well.

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The Top Travel Ebooks for Your Next Adventure

When you're planning to set off on an adventure, browsing through photos on Instagram or YouTube clips can only get you so far. Reading a book or a guide written by someone who's been there and done that can be much, much more helpful.

There are so many travel ebooks to choose from, so how do you which ones are worth both your time and your money? Good news: there are plenty of fantastic options out there.

Travel books can give you tips on everything from budgeting to packing economically, to navigating local customs if you're traveling somewhere culturally different. You can learn a lot by absorbing the experiences of someone who knows what they're talking about! 

In this article, we'll take a look at the best travel books on the market. They'll help ease your travel nerves with plenty of handy tips, tricks and advice, and also immerse you in the culture and customs of where you're headed before you've even left the house. 

Books or Ebooks: Which is the Best Option When Traveling?

If you're contemplating buying physical travel guides instead of ebooks, we're here to tell you to think twice. 

We know—there's nothing more satisfying than cracking the spine of a new hardcover book and jumping in. But sometimes, ebooks are just the better choice. For travel guides, this is most certainly the case. 

Ebooks are, above all, more convenient. You can carry a hundred different travel guides on a single tablet without breaking a sweat, while the physical version would require checking an extra bag with the airline. 

Ebooks weigh nothing, take up no space, and let you find everything you need easily. With an ebook , you can just search for the specific thing you're looking for—there's no need to sift through hundreds of pages. 

A lot of ebooks also come with interactive features, like maps and more up-to-date area guides. After all, it's a lot easier to insert a new or updated chapter into an ebook than a physical one. 

Physical books may look great on a shelf, but if you need it on the go then you're better off going digital. 

Top 15 Travel Ebooks for Every Traveler

We've scoped out all of the most popular travel ebooks and come up with a list that has something for everyone. These 15 ebooks explore the range of travel literature, whether you need budget-conscious tips or want advice on the best countries to explore next. 

Digital nomad, world traveler, first-time explorer—there's something in here for everyone. Let's dig in.

1. Take More Vacations: How to Search Better, Book Cheaper, and Travel the World 

There are a lot of noteworthy ebooks on this list, but this one just happens to be a USA Today bestseller! Written by Scott Keyes (founder of the Going, formerly Scott's Cheap Flights), this book specializes in flights and how to not overpay for them. 

"Take More Vacations" encourages you to get out and appreciate the world by outlining tips and tricks that make the process both easier and cheaper. This involves going into the history of airline prices and leads you through the process of understanding why airfare pricing is so volatile. 

The moral behind the book is that being able to take more vacations for less money will make you a happier person, but there's room for introspection as well. Keyes devotes an entire chapter to over tourism and considering the impact emissions have on the world.  

Topics covered:

• History of airline pricing
• Flight booking myths debunked
• Searching for a flight
• Advanced flight-booking tactics

2. Lonely Planet: The Digital Nomad Handbook 

Lonely Planet's "Digital Nomad Handbook" is the perfect travel companion for anyone who's done clocking into their office job and wants to hit the road. This is a 400-page guide split into two sections. The first one is a digital nomad lifestyle guide, and the second one covers how to maintain that lifestyle once you're on the road. 

This handbook helps anyone wanting to get started by answering questions like what kind of job should a digital nomad do, how to sort out taxes while traveling, and personal safety in a foreign country.

The source couldn't be more trustworthy, either. Lonely Planet has been putting out resources for travelers since 1973, making them an industry staple. They consider themselves "agents of positive change" and the community of travelers they've fostered supports that goal. 

Another great way to get involved in a community built around a shared interest is Whop ! Creators on Whop often create communities for their members, and there are digital nomad communities with actionable tips for you. 

Topics covered: 

• Loneliness on the road
• Visas and paperwork
• Tech-safe travel
• Learning the lingo 

3. World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever 

"World Travel: An Irreverent Guide" is written by one of the most irreverent and beloved chef travelers in history. Anthony Bourdain, along with Laurie Woolever, weaves biographical tidbits through this travel guide in a way that will leave you as charmed as you are informed. 

The book is divided by country and then city, starting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and traversing the globe all the way to end in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Given Bourdain's passion for food and wine, the book spends equal focus on the hard facts of a place as the food culture of it. 

This guide is less about maps and itineraries and more about understanding why Bourdain loved certain places. It's also about absorbing enough of his passion that you just have to go there yourself. This is the perfect guide for anyone who wants to walk in his shoes and experience some of the best food the world has to offer. 

• Bourdain's first-hand opinions on places he traveled
• Behind the scenes from restaurant owners
• Essays from Bourdain's friends and family as they traveled with him

4. Fodor's Travel Guides

Fodor's Travel guides are another staple of the travel industry, and Fodor's "Essential" guide series earned the organization's accolade for Best Travel Guide Series in 2020. 

This series covers all of the essentials you need to know about a city or a country before you head off. This includes the best of where to stay, eat, and shop. It also guides you through various natural wonders, beaches, what you should know about a place before you travel, and how to plan your trip to make it as action-packed as possible. 

Fodor's Travel Guides have been in existence for over 80 years, with guides published guides for more than 8,000 locations. If you want something straightforward that won't let you down, definitely search for a Fodor's Travel Guide for your destination. 

• Trip planning tools
• Recommendation features from local writers 
• Multiple itineraries per location 
• Rating system for sights, shops, dining, and attractions

5. So You Want To Be A Travel Influencer? by Rachel V Hill

This is a different kind of book for aspiring travelers—it's for those who want to not just travel, but turn it into a lifestyle and a job. Becoming an influencer requires its own guidebook, and self-proclaimed "travelpreneur" Rachel V. Hill offers you that along with her advice on traveling. 

Travel influencers are known for making big bucks and having free opportunities and accommodations tossed at them. Hill explains how it isn't always that simple.

Along with some hard truths on what is and isn't great about being a travel influencer, Hill gives strategic advice to anyone who wants to follow in her footsteps. Read this travel guide if you want to learn how to market yourself, stand out in an industry full of wanderers, and enjoy every opportunity you get. 

• Travel industry brand deals
• Monetizing travel content
• Creating a travel blog
• Social impact of being a travel influencer

6. Rough Guides

Where Fodor's may be the series for someone who enjoys fine dining, casual walks around the top attractions, and a shopping spree, Rough Guides is the exact opposite. The Rough Guides series focuses on the traveler who appreciates sightseeing off the beaten path. 

Rough Guides do still share the basics you need. You'll find itinerary suggestions, recommendations of can't-miss sights and activities, and where to get the best lunch. The "fact file" inserts will also keep any trivia-loving brain satisfied. 

You'll also find more practical information, including visa requirements, tips on the culture and etiquette, and even how to best travel with kids. You'll also get an overview of the local culture and even a few tips on how to communicate with the locals in their language.

• Best seasons to travel in
• Practical location information
• Insider recommendations
• Sustainable travel

7. How to Travel on a Budget by Aventuras De Viaje

Not everyone has a bank account that will allow them to drop mad cash on the trip of a lifetime—but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to take amazing trips. This is a guide all about how to travel even if your wallet is leaner than you'd like. 

In this guide, author Aventuras De Viaje gives 50 tips to help you travel on a budget. These will help you find the best place to stay without paying an arm and a leg and plan an itinerary full of sightseeing that doesn't cost you a penny. This book even shows you how you might be able to get paid to travel.  

This book won't bore you with fillers. If you want a straight-to-the-point guide with practical tips, you're in luck—this is it.

• Booking cost-effective airline tickets
• Cheap or free accommodations
• Attractions that don't cost money
• How to get paid for booking trips

8. DK Eyewitness Guides

The DK Eyewitness is a series of travel guides written by Dorling Kindersley, spanning over 200 locations. If there's one thing this series is known for, it's striking a balance between beautiful visuals and useful tips. 

The detailed maps are one of the highlights of the DK Eyewitness books. Destination guides always include overall maps of the area, in addition to specific walking maps that will take you through the best scenery or attractions. 

There are gorgeous photos on every single page of a DK Eyewitness guide; sometimes, there are more pictures than actual text. If you want a travel guide that's pretty to look at, or one that's heavier on maps and visuals than information, this series may beat out the rest.  

• History of landmarks and attractions
• Maps and walking guides
• Destination photography

9. International Travel Secrets: Take Shorter Trips, More Often, for Less by Michael Wedaa

Here's one for the international travel crowd. Michael Wedaa's guide is packed with tricks for traveling outside your home country, covering everything from vaccinations and where the water is safe to the best options for currency conversion. 

Wedaa offers his wisdom on how to avoid the fees that most travelers are plagued with, like baggage fees, ATM fees, and paying for wi-fi. He also has a lot to say on what types of insurance are worth it when you travel, and which ones are just an unnecessary expense to line someone else's pocket. 

If you're a savvy traveler who wants to know the ins and outs of everything the travel industry will try and sell you, don't miss this one. You'll learn a few things and save a few dollars!

• Common travel scams
• Travel and medical insurance
• Avoiding common fees
• Cell phones abroad

10. Culture Smart!

Culture Smart! is another travel guide series, this time focusing on—you guessed it—the culture and customs of your dream destinations. Understanding the local culture before you travel is important to a lot of people, and Culture Smart! delivers exactly what you'll want to know before you touch down. 

Each guide covers a history of the land and the people, summarizes local politics, and teaches you all about the values and attitudes upheld by the people. The section on customs and traditions covers local holidays and celebrations, clothing choices you might need to make, and even things like superstitions and omens.

Studying the culture of a country or city is a great way to impress the locals, too. Even if you can't quite nail the accent, people will understand the effort you make in not just visiting a place but appreciating it, too. 

• Local sports and entertainment
• Common greetings and humor
• How to make friends
• Cultural activities

11. Budget Travelers, Digital Nomads & Expats: The Ultimate Guide by Levi Borba 

Levi Borba is a 5-star airline specialist with a book series in which he offers his expertise on working abroad, becoming a digital nomad on a budget, and how to run a business from another country. 

The second of these books is the one that made our list. This guide is all about travel hacks before and during your trips. Borba also offers resources to make living abroad easier, including his top tricks for scoring some freebies during your hotel stays. 

Throughout the practical advice sections, you'll also learn more about Borba himself and the many adventures he's been on. From trouble with the cops in the Middle East to five-star hotels in Istanbul, this one is full of advice with a side of humor.  

• Avoiding baggage fees
• How to get hotel upgrades
• Get Airbnbs for less
• Low budget tips

12. A Weekend or the World: A Complete How-To Travel Guide by Andre Watson

"A Weekend or the World" is a travel guide for the person who wants to get up and go, but doesn't quite know where to, or how they want to get there. It's full of practical experience from author Andre Watson, who did exactly that by spending seven months on the road in his mid-twenties.

He describes his guide as the answer to the questions everyone asked him once he got home. Watson will help you get rid of the anxious what-ifs by recounting his own experiences while loading you up on practical advice. 

This guide will go with you from the first spark of a desire to see somewhere new, all the way to coming back. Side by side with practical advice like dealing with health and financial issues, it offers a more psychological approach to coping with loneliness, burnout, and feeling alienated when you arrive home. 

• Traveler archetypes
• How to pick a destination
• Day-to-day time management
• Travel psychology

13. How to Live a Life of Travel by Derek Baron

"How to Live a Life of Travel" may not be the most recent book on this list (it was written in 2012), but it's full of timeless wisdom for any traveler. Author Derek Baron spent three months traveling Asia at the turn of the millennium. From that experience, Baron created a reference book for anyone wanting to travel the world. 

Baron's book offers practical advice on supporting yourself while traveling, veering toward those who want to be a little more hands-on with their surroundings. The book has a heavy focus on finances and how to achieve travel even if you're in debt or don't have a steady stream of income .

This is a great option if you're nervous about traveling solo or about various expenses since it walks you through all the reasons not to wait. There's even a chapter on how to deal with people who think you're irresponsible for wanting to travel! 

• How to earn money around the world
• Eating and sleeping for free
• Best immunization and health insurance options
• Ways to stay connected while traveling

14. The Art of Slow Travel by Bhavana Gesota

For some people, travel is all about the adrenaline rush and seeing how much you can get done in as little time as possible. Packing the memories in and making sure you live every moment is certainly worth it for those people—but it's not for everyone. 

"The Art of Slow Travel" offers a different kind of travel perspective. Author Bhavana Gesota emphasizes a type of travel that focuses more on slowing down and deepening your understanding of the world as you make your way across it. 

In the author's own words: "Slow travel is an offbeat, slow, and responsible manner of travel in which everyday life unfolds within the framework of a different culture." If the idea of traveling with a stacked itinerary and embodying Bhavana's mantra of "doing less is more" sounds great to you, then this is one travel eBook you should pick up.

• Cultural immersion
• Cybersecurity
• Packing checklist
• Unplugging from home

15. Specter's What NOT To Do Travel Guides 

Sometimes you don't need a guide to tell you what to do when you travel; you need a guide to do just the opposite! Specter's "What NOT To Do" series of travel guides will help you avoid some of the most common travel mistakes.

These mistakes range from ways to prevent being ripped off to how to avoid crowds and what not to eat. While there is some initial background on where you're traveling to, the majority of the guide centers around these helpful do's and don'ts. 

Published by Specter, these guides are written by seasoned multi-decade traveler Sarah Brekenridge. Brekenridge has a special interest in sustainable travel and an appreciation for preserving this planet we love to make our way around. 

• Culture and cuisine
• Year-round attractions
• Sacred and historical sites
• Mistakes to avoid making

Looking For Travel Advice? Why Not Join An Online Travel Community?

Travel ebooks can teach you a lot, but sometimes, there's nothing better than having a conversation with someone who's already had the experiences you want to have. A book, while helpful, can't answer your questions, provide tailored tips, or encourage you if you're feeling unsure.

But where do you get all those useful tips if you're still hundreds or thousands of miles away from your destination? It's simple—join a travel community and talk to fellow travelers.

Joining a travel community unlocks a wealth of advice and experience that no book will ever be able to replicate. You'll be able to chat with people who have been where you're planning to go. You might even meet some locals!

Here are some of the benefits of finding a space online where you can connect with other travelers: 

• Connections can lead to friendships and travel partners
• Trade money-saving travel advice
• Give each other security tips and support for emergencies
• Learn from each other's mistakes 
• Get real-time feedback on your questions or concerns
• Stay tuned when it comes to deals and best ways to avoid overpaying

One prime example of such a community is Girl Boss Abroad.

Girl Boss Abroad is a community for digital nomads. The community connects you with other like-minded women, helping to 'connect with a supportive network of fellow digital nomads and cultivate meaningful relationships across the globe'. If you want to delve deeper into digital nomad life, you can pay for the Girl Boss Abroad course - but the community itself is completely free.

Such travel communities are usually run by seasoned travelers who have been there and done that. You might be able to score some expert advice or inside information. Whether you want to know the best local restaurants or learn which airlines are the safest, there's no better place to ask.

Find Travel Ebooks, Communities, and More on Whop

We hope you enjoy the travel ebooks we've recommended—they're certainly a strong start. But to learn even more and make sure that your trips are a smashing success, browse Whop for actionable advice from world travelers.

Whop is home to content creators, travel influencers, and passionate travelers who all come together to share their vast experiences. You'll find travel ebooks, helpful communities filled with your kind of people to hang out with, and useful advice that's always up to date with current trends. You'll even score exclusive deals spotted by the members of the community, saving you money in ways an ebook can never achieve.

And don't forget—you aren't limited to just joining a Whop community. There's also nothing stopping you from starting your own travel-based community or writing an ebook about your travels.

Enjoy the empowerment of taking your own experiences and using them to improve someone else's future travels. What's more, you'll get paid for it and turn your passion into a fantastic income stream. You can do all of this through your own whop hub.

Making your own whop only takes a few minutes, so sign up and start sharing your adventures today.

Monica J. White

Make your first dollar on the internet.

Start your business for free, no credit card required.

Related posts

How to Become a Luxury Travel Agent (and why you should)

20 Ways to Make Money While Traveling

What are the Benefits of Using a Travel Agent? Pros, Cons, and Alternatives

How to Start a Travel Blog (and Earn Money With It!)

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9 best travel books to inspire your next adventure

From eco-minded adventures to coffee-table tomes, these travel books left us totally transported, article bookmarked.

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Book sales rocket during periods when we’re most likely to jet off on holiday (there’s always room in the suitcase for just one more), be that during school summer break or Easter weekend. However, the best travel books can (and should) be read year-round, whether you’re heading off on your own adventure or relaxing at home.

There are myriad travel books to dive into, from books designed to fuel our sense of wanderlust with stories about far-flung places to those that focus on how certain aspects of history shaped destinations we know and love. Owing to the sheer number, it can be tricky to know which tomes to plump for and which should be left on the shelf.

Here, I’ve rounded up my favourite travel titles, including guidebooks (the two Lonely Planet entries will make for brilliant gifts ), memoirs and more. One thing all of these books have in common is their ability to provide insights into not only specific destinations but the wider world, albeit in very different ways.

Keep scrolling for our full review and to get your daily dose of wanderlust.

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How I tested

I selected a range of travel books to suit different tastes. Some were enjoyed at home while others were read during a jaunt across the US, on internal flights, train journeys and at airport check-in desks. I considered not only the written content but, where relevant, the images and added extras. Although I’ve listed the prices for physical copies, ebooks are also available for all of my recommendations.

The best travel books for 2024 are:

• Best overall –  Why We Travel by Ash Bhardwaj, published by Bedford Square Publishers: £15, Amazon.co.uk
• Best coffee table book – Best In Travel 2024 , published by Lonely Planet: £9.98, Amazon.co.uk
• Best children’s book – Little People, Big Dreams: Tenzing Norgay by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, published by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books: £9.15, Amazon.co.uk
• Best for holidays – The Guests by Nikki Smith, published by Penguin: £4.50, Amazon.co.uk
• Best UK-specific travel book – All Boats Are Sinking by Hannah Pierce, published by Summersdale: £9.85, Amazon.co.uk

‘Why We Travel' by Ash Bhardwaj, published by Bedford Square Publishers

• Best : Overall
• Pages : 272
• Includes fascinating facts

As a travel writer, I’ve always respected Ash Bhardwaj’s work. The title of this book initially left me wondering whether it would be a speculative look at the benefits of travel or an autobiographical look at the author’s globe-spanning explorations to date. As it turns out, it’s both – and much more. Bhardwaj’s memories of his childhood in Windsor and a school rugby tour double as deep dives into the reasons for our wanderlust, but I also learned a lot (for example, the mind-boggling fact that Hinduism had 330,000 gods).

For me, the most fascinating bits related to Bhardwaj’s adventures – joining friend Levison Wood for stints of his walk along the Nile; forays through far-flung corners of the world (as a fan of Japan, the section focusing on Hokkaido was a favourite), and adventures closer to home. Most importantly, in an era when many travellers are simply keen to simply scratch off another section on a foil-backed map, it’s a call to action to consider the benefits of thinking about what we want to achieve from our travels, too.

‘Best In Travel 2024', published by Lonely Planet

• Best : Coffee table travel book
• Pages : 224
• Fantastic photography
• Information goes beyond the obvious

Wondering where to go for your next holiday? Start with this tome, which is part guidebook, part listicle (albeit a very in-depth one). The perfect book to have on hand for when you’re wondering where to go next, but you can also simply sit and peruse it, for a bit of escapism.

The photographs are gorgeous and the information relating to the destinations listed in each top 10 (countries, cities, regions, best for value and best for sustainability) goes well beyond the obvious, highlighting lesser-known areas and attractions in popular destinations. It also makes a great case for why often-overlooked areas (Saalfelden Leogang in Austria is now on my hit list for 2025) are worthy of being on your radar.

‘Slow Trains to Istanbul' by Tom Chesshyre, published by Summersdale

• Best : For train enthusiasts
• Pages : 352
• Entertaining anecdotes

I was rather excited to get my hands on this book. The insights into the destinations Chesshyre passes through are fascinating, and his obvious interest in the histories of these places meant I learned a lot too.

What I enjoyed the most, though, were the anecdotes that illustrate the unexpected joys that are part and parcel of off-the-beaten-path travel – whether it’s random encounters in bars in Bratislava or a tour led by a guide who starts her urban exploration by saying: “Feel free to leave if you are bored or hungry.” Brilliant.

‘Little People, Big Dreams: Tenzing Norgay' by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, published by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books

• Best : Children’s book
• Inspirational for younger readers (and adults)

The late, great Tenzing Norgay is the kind of person we could all learn a lot from. A Nepalese-Indian mountaineer, he was one of the first two people to summit Mount Everest (he was Edmund Hillary’s sherpa). However, you don’t have to dream of following in Hillary’s footsteps to appreciate this children’s book, with its colourful, awe-inspiring depictions of the Himalayas.

The book not only focuses on the all-important climb of 1953 but also the obstacles Norgay overcame beforehand, including the 20 years he spent climbing Himalayan peaks before he was selected (out of 200 people) to be Hillary’s sherpa.

It’s a book that teaches the importance of a never-say-die attitude, as well as an inspirational tale about quite possibly the greatest mountaineer who ever lived.

‘A Ride Across America' by Simon Parker, published by September Publishing

• Best : Non-fiction book
• Pages : 386
• Fascinating insights into USA tourism

Let’s face it, there are more than enough books about epic bike rides/hikes/unicycles across various countries, but what sets Simon Parker’s book apart is his motivations, more specifically his desire to see whether the America he envisioned as a teen really exists. This makes it so much more than a merely observational book – he’s genuinely determined to take a deep dive into today’s USA. In doing so, he also provides a fascinating insight into the workings of tourism across the pond. Who knew, for example, that 0.1 per cent of overseas tourists made it to Arkansas in 2022, while Florida bagged 29.8 per cent of incoming tourists? Well, I do now, but I also know that even underrated Arkansas has some hidden gems – Subiaco Abbey, I’m coming for you.

‘Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe' by Sathnam Sanghera, published by Viking

• Best : Informative book
• Pages : 464
• Thought-provoking

As a travel writer, I found this book fascinating. Yes, it’s hard-hitting and brutally honest, but one could argue it’s about time (indeed, the writer points out Britain should have been more honest with itself about the realities of the empire long before now).

The book takes a no-holds-barred look at Britain’s colonial and imperial history – not just how the darkest periods continue to shape the world we live in, but how acknowledging the horrors of colonialism and imperialism is essential if we’re to move forward.

A side note – don’t be too intimidated by its 464 pages, as the main book finishes on page 247 and the rest (somewhat shockingly) is dedicated to an index and references.

‘The Guests' by Nikki Smith, published by Penguin

• Best : For holidays
• Pages : 336
• Quick and easy holiday read

We’ve always got time for some fiction in our suitcase. We don’t want to give the game away, but some basics: this book (which I suspect was heavily influenced by the White Lotus TV series) is set in the Maldives and focuses on the guests staying at a luxurious resort. In addition to the secrets they’re keeping, there are plenty of (unwanted) surprises in store for them, too.

The Guests is never going to win the Booker Prize, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously (as a keen diver who spends a lot of time in the Maldives, the clichés and inaccuracies almost drove me around the bend at times) but, for a quick and easy read, it does the job. Just make sure you pack some other books, too.

‘Offbeat North America', published by Lonely Planet

• Best : For fuelling wanderlust
• Pages : 328
• Full of useful tips
• Spectacular photos

I’m a huge fan of offbeat destinations (my favourite trip will always be North Korea – a destination I was desperate to get to and finally visited around 15 years ago), so this book had instant appeal.

It’s another title that ticks multiple boxes – it’s brilliantly informative, but it’s also seriously stylish, putting my other dog-eared coffee table books to shame.

It goes well beyond being a simple list of places, too – for each entry, there’s in-depth information about where to stay, how to explore the destination and endless useful tips, whether you’re a first-timer or a repeat visitor. The sections about the best times to go were especially thorough (and useful) and the clear maps – alongside spectacular photos – make these places seem somehow less remote.

‘All Boats Are Sinking' by Hannah Pierce, published by Summersdale

• Best : UK-specific travel book
• Pages : 368
• Light, easy read for holidays

This memoir follows Hannah Pierce’s decision, following a break-up, to purchase a narrowboat named Argie Bargie and take to Britain’s waterways. Full disclosure: narrowboats move very slowly, as does this book at times, due to the mundane nature of some of the observations. However, it’s also unexpectedly informative and its slow pace is strangely calming – we don’t just learn about the history of Great Britain’s canals and navigations, we also learn about narrowboats (more specifically, how hard they are to maintain).

There’s plenty of humour, particularly relating to the more unfortunate incidents (such as when Hannah damages her hand mooring up her boat and meets a plastic surgeon strangely obsessed with her ring finger), and slightly random encounters (including one with boxer Tyson Fury). In summary, this is a light, easy read perfect for holidays – although, a passing interest in UK waterways helps.

The verdict: Travel books

Ash Bhardwaj’s speculative contemplation about why we travel is a fantastically written book that provides plenty of food for thought but is also full of colour, anecdotes and fascinating insights into the destinations in question. For an instant coffee table upgrade, you can’t go wrong with Lonely Planet’s Best In Travel 2024 . While Tom Chesshyre’s story of an epic adventure to Istanbul didn’t just provide plenty of humour, it left us with a burning desire to visit the countries he describes so brilliantly, strange bars in Bratislava and all.

Want more recommendations? Find out what the IndyBest team are reading this summer

Family Friendly Travel News & Reviews!

The best american travel books ever written (usa), a collection of usa travelogues, guide books, tales of adventure and the great outdoors..

We bring you a selection of the best American travel books ever written.

Land of the free; home of the brave; the land of milk and honey; the melting pot; los Estados Unidos; or as we Brits say “The land across the pond”; whatever you may call the land of opportunity you will surely agree with the Chinese name for the U.S.A: “Mei-Guo” which literally means – beautiful country.

Probably the worlds only real super power (Vladimir Putin’s words, not mine), it is also an incredibly super country, with especially lovely people. Fifty exceedingly diverse states, could just as easily be fifty individual countries with their own separate cultures.

From a travel writers perspective the ‘States’ has everything you can imagine or ever need. From mountains to beaches; some of the biggest cities and urban metropolises, to quaint rural towns and villages; epic geology and landscapes, a wealth of flora and fauna, and food and drink across the spectrum. It may lack the age of its Europeans cousins, but it has certainly crammed a lot into such a short period. A wealth of material, for any type of travel book.

Without further ado lets crack on with our list of the best American travel books –

Note: Travel Mono may receive a small commission from any affiliate link used to make a purchase, but there is no extra cost to the customer. We use the funds to help keep the site running.

Best American Travel Books –

Travels with Charley: In search of America by John Steinbeck

“To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck’s goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and the unexpected kindness of strangers.”

Available in Hardcover, Paperback & Audible Formats

• Buy this book on Amazon

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

“Inspired by Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady,  On the Road  tells the story of two friends whose cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Written with a mixture of sad-eyed naiveté and wild ambition and imbued with Kerouac’s love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz,  On the Road  is the quintessential American vision of freedom and hope, a book that changed American literature and changed anyone who has ever picked it up.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

“This cult classic of gonzo journalism is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.”

Available in Hardcover, Paperback, eBook & Audible Formats

I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson

“After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens — as he later put it, “it was clear my people needed me”). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.”

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

“Life on the Mississippi” (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War, and also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans many years after the War.”

Available in Hardcover, Paperback & eBook Formats

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In Search of Nice Americans by Geoff Steward

“Turning his back on the British legal profession and the requirement to account for every six minutes of his time, Geoff Steward ventures off-grid and on the road across America. From New York to Alaska, he tries to fend for himself without his trusty PA, the unflappable Charmaine, for whom contentment lies in Jesus Christ and custard creams.”

Available in Paperback & Kindle Formats

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

“In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.  How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of  Into the Wild .”

A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

“I started out searching for myself and my country,” Peter Jenkins writes, “and found both.” In this timeless classic, Jenkins describes how disillusionment with society in the 1970’s drove him out onto the road on a walk across America. His experiences remain as sharp and telling today as they were twenty-five years ago — from the timeless secrets of life, learned from a mountain-dwelling hermit, to the stir he caused by staying with a black family in North Carolina, to his hours of intense labor in Southern mills. Many, many miles later, he learned lessons about his country and himself that resonate to this day — and will inspire a new generation to get out, hit the road and explore.”

Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America’s Wild Frontier by Stephen E. Ambrose

“This was much more than a bunch of guys out on an exploring and collecting expedition. This was a military expedition into hostile territory’. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains and into the Rockies. It was completely uncharted territory; a wild, vast land ruled by the Indians. Charismatic and brave, Lewis was the perfect choice and he experienced the savage North American continent before any other white man. UNDAUNTED COURAGE is the tale of a hero, but it is also a tragedy.”

In the Temple of Wolves: A Winter’s Immersion in Wild Yellowstone  by Rick Lamplugh

“This Amazon best seller is written by a wolf advocate who spent three winters living and working in a remote corner of Yellowstone National Park, home to some of the best wolf watching in the world.”

Available in Paperback & eBook Formats

Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom   by  Ken Ilgunas

“In this frank and witty memoir, Ken Ilgunas lays bare the existential terror of graduating from the University of Buffalo with $32,000 of student debt. Ilgunas set himself an ambitious mission: get out of debt as quickly as possible. Inspired by the frugality and philosophy of Henry David Thoreau, Ilgunas undertook a 3-year transcontinental jour¬ney, working in Alaska as a tour guide, garbage picker, and night cook to pay off his student loans before hitchhiking home to New York.

Debt-free, Ilgunas then enrolled in a master’s program at Duke University, determined not to borrow against his future again. He used the last of his savings to buy himself a used Econoline van and outfitted it as his new dorm. The van, stationed in a campus parking lot, would be more than an adventure—it would be his very own “Walden on Wheels.”

Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada  by John Muir Laws

The most comprehensive field guide to the natural wonders of the Range of Light! The Sierra Nevada.

Available in Hardcover, Paperback Format

Driving Miss Norma: One Family’s Journey Saying “Yes” to Living by Tim Bauerschmidt

“When Miss Norma was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she was advised to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But instead of confining herself to a hospital bed for what could be her last stay, Miss Norma—newly widowed after nearly seven decades of marriage—rose to her full height of five feet and told her doctor, “I’m ninety years old. I’m hitting the road.”

And so Miss Norma took off on an unforgettable around-the-country journey in a thirty-six-foot motor home with her retired son Tim, his wife Ramie, and their dog Ringo.

As this once timid woman says “yes” to living in the face of death, she tries regional foods for the first time, reaches for the clouds in a hot air balloon, and mounts up for a horseback ride. With each passing mile (and one educational visit to a cannabis dispensary), Miss Norma’s health improves and conversations that had once been taboo begin to unfold. Norma, Tim, and Ramie bond in ways they had never done before, and their definitions of home, family, and friendship expand. Stop by stop, state by state, they meet countless people from all walks of life—strangers who become fast friends and welcome them with kindness and open hearts.”

The United States of Laughter: One Comedian’s Journey Through All 50 States by Andrew Tarvin

“At the age of 31, Andrew Tarvin made the very practical decision to rid himself of most of his belongings, leave his Midtown apartment in NYC, and travel the country out of two carry-on bags. In 12 months, he traveled 92,358 miles, did 215 events, and spoke or performed in all 50 states (yes, even Wyoming).

Along the way, he collected 50 stories from 50 states. Stories of adventure, like fending off a bear in Alaska, stories of deliciousness, like eating a Chicken Fettuccini Alfredo Burrito in Montana, and stories of people, like meeting his newest fan in Pringle, South Dakota, population: 112.

Through his journey, he discovered that, despite what we may see on the news or read on the internet, there is one thing that unites all Americans: laughter. As he traveled around the country, he found connection through comedy and realized we are all more alike than we are different, no matter what state we call home.”

Available in Paperback, eBook & Audible Formats

In Search of America’s Heartbeat: Twelve Months on the Road by Robert H Mottram

“They lived the secret dream of countless American couples; a year on the road that took them more than 30,000 miles into the far-flung corners of the nation. Along the way they came face-to-face with grief, but also with the warmth and humanity of America and its people. A grandson of Russian immigrants and award-winning journalist celebrates America in a wonderful, upbeat story chock-full of Americana. It will tell you things about your country that you probably didn’t know.”

Live It: Riding the Highs and Lows of a Cross Country Dream by Tracy Draper

“Long sidelined from any kind of athletic endeavors in order to manage the demands of motherhood, Tracy Draper quietly harbored a dream to ride her bike more than 3,000 miles across the country. Every year, hundreds of cyclists ride register with private touring groups to travel by bike from coast to coast.

But instead of taking a credit-card tour, this longtime supporter of a myriad of causes recruited and organized her own team of cyclists to tackle the continental challenge in support of America’s wounded veterans. Her story perches readers on the front lines of a monumental challenge that tested everything from the rubber on desert-scorched tires to the group dynamics of herding sometimes-exhausted cyclists across a continent. In a voice both humbling and inspiring, she tells a story of hardships and life-defining moments.

Her trek takes readers across the country and introduces them to a cast that includes selfless Navajo Indians, unsung heroes of military sacrifice, and middle-class Americans who opened their homes and checkbooks to a band of strangers. It is also a story that takes us from a comfortable spot on the couch to place where we can envision what is possible when you have a bike and a dream.”

One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey by Sam Keith

This best-selling memoir from Richard Proenneke’s journals and with firsthand knowledge of his subject and the setting, Sam Keith has woven a tribute to a man who carved his masterpiece out of the beyond.  To live in a pristine land unchanged by man . . . to roam a wilderness through which few other humans has passed . . . to choose an idyllic site, cut trees by hand, and build a log cabin. . . to be self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available…to be not at odds with the world, but content with one’s own thoughts, dreams and company.  Thousands have had such dreams, but Richard Proenneke lived them. This book is a moving account of the day-to-day explorations and activities Dick carried out alone….alone in the wilderness…and the constant chain of nature’s events that kept him company.

Temperance Creek: A Memoir by Pamela Royes

In the early seventies, some of us were shot like stars from our parents’ homes. This was an act of nature, bigger than ourselves. In the austere beauty and natural reality of Hell’s Canyon of Eastern Oregon, one hundred miles from pavement, Pam, unable to identify with her parent’s world and looking for deeper pathways has a chance encounter with returning Vietnam warrior Skip Royes. Skip, looking for a bridge from survival back to connection, introduces Pam to the vanishing culture of the wandering shepherd and together they embark on a four-year sojourn into the wilderness. From the back of a horse, Pam leads her packstring of readers from overlook to water crossing, down trails two thousand years old, and from the vantages she chooses for us, we feel the edges of our own experiences. It is a memoir of falling in love with a place and a man and the price extracted for that love.

Hawaii The Big Island Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook by Andrew Doughty

“The finest guidebook ever written for the Big Island. Now you can plan your best vacation ever. This all new eighth edition is a candid, humorous guide to everything there is to see and do on the Big Island.

Best-selling author and longtime Hawaii resident, Andrew Doughty, unlocks the secrets of an island so vast and diverse that many visitors never realize all that it has to offer. Explore with him as he reveals breathtaking trails, secluded beaches, pristine reefs, delicious places to dine, relaxing resorts, an active volcano and so much more. Every restaurant, activity provider, business and resort is reviewed personally and anonymously. This book and a rental car are all you need to discover what makes the Big Island so exciting.”

Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways by Jamie Jensen

“Jamie Jensen was immersed in road trip culture from an early age. He grew up in Southern California, back when freeways were new, cheeseburgers cost a quarter, and every beach had a beachfront amusement park. After a three-year stint bumming around the country, making hay in Kansas, and ghostwriting a book for the Grateful Dead, Jamie set to work researching and writing Road Trip USA. Since then he’s traveled more than 400,000 miles in search of the perfect stretch of two-lane blacktop.”

Available in Paperback Format

Off the Beaten Path: A Travel Guide to More Than 1000 Scenic and Interesting Places Still Uncrowded and Inviting by Reader’s Digest

Off the Beaten Path  spotlights over 1,000 of the United States’ most overlooked must- see destinations.  Plan an unforgettable vacation with this best-selling travel book-a super-easy reference that shows you where to go, how to get there, and what you need to know before you begin your adventure.

Available in Hardcover Format

Roadfood – 10th Edition: An Eater’s Guide to More Than 1,000 of the Best Local Hot Spots and Hidden Gems Across America by Jane Stern

“A cornucopia for road warriors and armchair epicures alike,  Roadfood  is a road map to some of the tastiest treasures in the United States.

First published in 1977, the original  Roadfood  became an instant classic. James Beard said, “This is a book that you should carry with you, no matter where you are going in these United States. It’s a treasure house of information.” The 40th anniversary edition of  Roadfood  includes 1,000 of America’s best local eateries along highways and back roads, with nearly 200 new listings, as well as a brand new design.”

Available in Paperback, eBook and Spiral-Bound Formats

Your Guide to the National Parks: The Complete Guide to all 59 National Parks by Michael Joseph Oswald

“This award-winning guide, completely updated for the 2017 edition, includes more than 450 new photographs, 160 revised maps, and 50 hiking tables, making it the only guidebook you’ll need to explore the United States National Parks.”

We hope you found our list of the best American travel books useful. If you have any feedback or suggestions please let us know in the comments section below.

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Nicholas Kristof

My Travel Tips for Seeing the World’s Best Places

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

’Tis the season for vacations, so let me make my pitch that the best travel is not lounging at a beach resort but rather journeying into a different world. We all need relaxation at times, but nothing beats the thrill of a trip of discovery and the education that comes with it.

Mark Twain once observed that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” In that spirit, I’ve long urged young Americans to take gap years before college or junior years abroad . (One high school reader of such an essay, Spencer Cohen , ended up taking a gap year partly in Japan, became an Asia hand and is now a colleague at The Times.)

Still, there are risks, less of violence (the U.S. has more guns than other countries) than of having your passport and credit cards stolen. So I preach both travel and prudence, and on a recent book tour , I found myself often asked about travel advice I had mentioned in my memoir. So let me share a few tips for the vacation season:

1. The most memorable travel often involves encountering something unfamiliar, so consider escaping the herds parading through Paris. Indonesia, Ghana, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia are generally safe, far cheaper than Europe and offer indelible experiences. I’ll never forget venturing deep into the Potosí silver mines in Bolivia, exploring a grim slave castle in Ghana that dispatched prisoners to slavery in America, learning how to use a blowgun while staying with families in their longhouse in Indonesia’s Borneo rainforest. The world awaits us!

2. Some of the places that you find most culturally distant may be right here in the United States. A teenager from an affluent family in the New York or Boston areas would step into a different world by taking a ranch job in Wyoming. And this is the kind of travel that is not only affordable but actually pays for the experience.

3. Be spontaneous. As a law student in 1982, I spent five weeks backpacking through the Middle East and met a couple of Palestinian students on a West Bank bus; I jumped off at their stop and spent a memorable day with them in their refugee camp hearing about their frustrations and dreams (I wrote about reuniting with them last fall). And while on a bus in the Sahara, I accepted an Algerian man’s invitation to visit his village — which turned out to be a warren of underground burrows to protect families from the extreme heat, the most unusual residential architecture I’ve ever seen. In each case, I was with a couple of friends, which made it seem safer to put myself in the company of people I’d just met, and obviously one should be as judicious as one is spontaneous.

4. One occasionally hears that adventurous travel is just for men, but some of the most accomplished foreign correspondents and overseas photographers are women, as are a majority of Peace Corps volunteers. As a man, I don’t face the same risks that women face, but I have seen female travelers — disproportionately from Australia and New Zealand — thriving as they backpack through the most remote places. Some have suggested the purchase of a cheap wedding ring; a $20 band and a fabricated husband can help keep pests away.

5. Carry a decoy wallet. If pickpockets grab it, let them run off — only to discover that it contains just a bit of cash for street purchases, a day pass for the subway and an expired credit card. But do remember to let the pickpockets escape. Years ago, in Lima, Peru, I instinctively jumped a pickpocket who was trying to grab my friend’s decoy wallet, forgetting that he had nothing much in it; next thing I knew we had a melee and a gun was being fired.

6. Carry your passport and valid credit cards and cash in a pouch that loops on your belt and is tucked inside your pants. Travelers often carry travel pouches round their necks under their shirts, but these are visible and sometimes get stolen. While I’ve had bandits make me take off my shoes and socks while searching for cash, nobody has found my pouch in my pants (I dare mention this only because I assume robbers are not big readers of my column).

7. Carry a small cable lock (those for skis are perfect) to lock your bags together so one doesn’t run off while you’re sleeping in a train or on a bench at the train station.

8. Never check a bag for a flight because then it will get lost. That means packing light and taking quick-dry clothes suitable for washing in a hotel sink. I’m fond of travel clothing from a company called Clothing Arts , and I also rely on ultralight backpacking gear such as a tiny Black Diamond or Petzl headlamp that is invaluable when the power goes out.

9. If you’re getting into a taxi or other car in a location that seems at all dubious, use your phone to photograph the license plate before you get in. The driver may wonder if you’ve texted it to a friend. And women can look for female drivers if they exist.

10. My editor doesn’t want me to say anything that might encourage readers to try something dangerous, so I won’t suggest that there is nothing like the view while riding on the top of a train in Sudan . (That was in my dissolute youth, and today I definitely disapprove of riding on top of trains.)

11. People worry about terrorists, but the most likely serious risk is probably a vehicle accident. Motorcycle taxis common in low-income countries can be perilous, while buses and trains are safer (inside trains only!).

12. Now forget all the fears this article has conjured. Go have fun. Travel should be as enjoyable as it is eye-opening. If you take precautions it will be.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “ Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life .” @ NickKristof

More From Forbes

These hotels are offering literary-themed getaways for book lovers.

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Read on to learn more about where to book your next literary-inspired trip.

Loews Hotels & Co guests will have access to a handpicked Summer Reading List curated by Today ... [+] Show's Jenna Bush Haeger.

While set-jetting continues to be one of the biggest travel trends of 2024, bibliophiles now have a chance to book a vacation based on an emerging trend in literary themed trips.

Every year, National Book Lovers Day is celebrated on August 9, and according to recent data from the website Explore, the surge in literary inspired google searches including "secondhand bookstores near me," has skyrocketed by 4,750% over the last month, as readers seek out book-inspired activities when they travel.

As the trend in literary-themed getaways has been making its way into hotels across the country, guests at The Loutrel in Charleston are now invited to book a “Blind Book” package. Upon booking, guests who are interested in this unique experience will share their genre of choice from romance and historic fiction to children’s books, culinary adventures, or arts and culture, and from there, the hotel will place a suggested surprise “blind book” curated by local bookstore Buxton Books in your room upon arrival.

“Coming out of the pandemic, nostalgic experiences were gaining popularity – and with that, digital detoxing,” Karl von Ramm, General Manager, The Loutrel tells Forbes .

Catering to the demand in literary travel, Charleston hotel The Loutrel is creating a bookable ... [+] package tied to this emerging trend.

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“This past year more than ever, data has shown that travelers want to ‘unplan’ when traveling, detoxing from social media and really diving into all their favorite nostalgic activities away from the screen, like destination tours, outdoor picnics, or reading a book.”

To sweeten the hotel’s “Blind Book” deal, The Loutrel will also include an itinerary to go along with the book that includes suggested experiences around Charleston tied to the books theme. For example, a book about romance will include restaurants, waterfront locations, and colorful gardens ideal for a romantic Charleston getaway. The package concludes with a complimentary round of drinks on the hotels rooftop Veranda Lounge.

In Key West, Florida, The Marker Key West Harbor Resort now offers guests a deeper dive into the city’s rich literary history through ‘The Ernest Hemingway Package. Inclusive of a bottle of Papa’s Pilar Rum and tour of Papa’s Pilar Distillery, the new literary themed package also comes with tickets to The Hemingway Home where the famous author lived with his wife, Pauline Pfeiffer as well as a sunset sail or fishing charter.

Not a Hemingway fan? No problem. Guests of The Marker are also invited to experience a unique reading experience through the hotel’s aptly named ‘Literary Haven.’

Prior to your arrival, guests can describe their “perfect reading environment,” and from there, the concierge team will re-create that atmosphere in your guest room with everything from aromatherapy diffusers, earplugs, pillows and extra cuddly blankets to creating a cozy reading corner. An in-suite comfort food dining menu is also available, the hotel said.

In July, Loews Hotels & Co. announced an exclusive summer celebration with Jenna Bush Hager of The Today Show to help guests indulge in literary escapes at each of their 25 hotels and resorts across the United States and Canada.

Part of Lowes’ Local by Loews Hotels program, guests can now purchase books through Shop TODAY, or select from their choice of ebooks and audiobooks during their stay. The initiative, also includes curated kids’ reading lists and access to Hager’s summer travel picks, along with a hand-selected Summer(fest) Reading List curated by Hager herself.

Back at The Loutrel in Charleston, General Manager Karl von Ramm says there’s never been a better time to immerse yourself in the world of literary travel.

“We thought this could be a unique activity to integrate into our experiential programming to allow guests to detox with a book, which is in some form related to Charleston, but also allow them to explore the city even further by including a suggested itinerary with each book,” von Ramm said. “We’re hopeful guests can spend their time connecting with themselves and with Charleston on a deeper level.”

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