Travel Memoir

Laura was in her early twenties and directionless when she quit her job to backpack in Bolivia. Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life.

A Peace Corps Volunteer's Adventures In Russia! In a radio broadcast on October 1st, 1939, Winston Churchill referred to Russia as, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” During my tenure as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Russian Far East, I found Churchill’s words to be accurate, as my limited knowledge about Russia stemmed from Dostoevsky and Pushkin novels. From the summer of 1994 until late 1995, I lived and worked in the Russian Far East as a Peace Corps Volunteer managing a small business center; only a few miles from both the Chinese and North Korean borders. I ...

When Richard Lucchesi invites his mom to join his young family on a whirlwind tour through Italy, he’s hoping for quality time and postcard memories. What he gets is a full-blown comedy of errors involving lost passports, multiple police units, pickpockets, missed trains, ancient ruins, caffeine-induced breakdowns, and one absolutely unforgettable trip across Italy from Milan to Tuscany, Napoli, Pompeii, and beyond. In this side-splitting travel memoir, Grandma Backpacks Italy chronicles the chaos and charm of three generations navigating trains, tantrums, and tiramisu. From unbelievable ...

Tales of a Female Nomad is the story of Rita Golden Gelman, an ordinary woman who is living an extraordinary existence. At the age of 48, on the verge of a divorce, Rita left an elegant life in Los Angeles to follow her dream of connecting with people in cultures all over the world. In 1986, she sold her possessions and became a nomad, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico, sleeping with sea lions on the Galapagos Islands, and residing everywhere from thatched huts to regal palaces.

An exciting, hilarious, and thoughtful travel memoir about one man's adventurous two and a half years on the road, backpacking through 40+ countries on a shoestring budget. From the back cover: Until his midlife crisis arrived, Chris Gattanella always played it safe. He spent two decades sinking into a nice cozy life and career in Los Angeles. Now in his forties and newly single, he suddenly feels unfulfilled and bored. Is it because he never ventured out to see the world? Impulsively, Chris burns years of saved vacation time on a six-week “test run” through Europe to see if he enjoys ...

A BOOK THAT TAKES YOU ON A JOURNEY On the eve of her 30th birthday, Pauline leaves behind her fast-paced Parisian life and career as a banking executive. With a backpack on her shoulders, she sets off alone from her native Alsace, France, heading toward Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Her goal: to slow down, reconnect with nature, forge meaningful connections, and rediscover herself. In this travel diary, Pauline shares the depths of her inner journey—grappling with fatigue, loneliness, and anxieties about the future, as well as questioning the very meaning of her pilgrimage. Yet, step ...

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.

Despite her success setting a self-supported Fastest Known Time record on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2013, Heather “Anish” Anderson still had such deep-seated insecurities that she became convinced her feat had been a fluke. So two years later she set out again, this time hiking through mud, rocks, and mountain blazes to crush her constant self-doubt and seek the true source of her strength and purpose. The 2,189 miles of the Appalachian Trail, from Maine to Georgia, did not make it easy.

A year and a half into our marriage, I found out my husband had been having an affair with a 19-year-old for six months. I filed for divorce and left. Two weeks later I met a man, and we fell madly in love. It was a fairy-tale romance for a month and a half, and he convinced me to join him on a romantic month-long vacation in Italy. Forty-eight hours before we were supposed to get on a plane, he told me he needed to go by himself. I was devastated. So, I had a decision to make. Either stay home and be heartbroken, or go travel Europe for a month by myself.

Walking with Buddha is a moving-meditation set along Japan's stunning Shikoku 88-Temple Trail. The ancient 1,200-kilometer path around the island of Shikoku serves as a reflective backdrop for cultural immersion and introduction into the Buddha-Nature. - Wearing her heart on her sleeve, Lockhart sets off on a walking-pilgrimage to nourish her soul and contemplate her next fifty years. While learning to embrace her own Buddha-nature, she discovers the wisdom, courage, and grace to accept change and re-create a life she truly desires.

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. —Mark Twain After selling their Minnesota home, Travis and Wendy plan an elaborate departure from the United States before repatriating themselves to the UK. Buying a second-hand RV, visiting states unknown, and selling the campervan after reaching Florida seems like the perfect exit. So they pack their lives and blind Shih Tzu into a once-luxurious thirty-one-foot RV and hit the open road. As they roll through the Midwest, heading for the Deep South, they soon discover “RV” doesn't mean “Reliable Vehicle...

This gripping true story follows a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure—perfect for fans of Cheryl Strayed.​ During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of...

Enjoy a fun, laugh-provoking travel book with a swampy Louisiana gal who romps through the Northern Hemisphere, allowing her destiny to become her guide! Marie France, who planned a two month jaunt through Europe, finds herself on the pulsating Hippie Trail in Kathmandu. As a seeker, she has a two-fold quest; discovering the world and discovering herself. She studies Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism and Hedonism, with a bit of yoga. Her rollicking adventures cover 16 countries; including crossing the Sahara Desert, playing a lead role in a Spaghetti Western film and modeling on the catwalks of ...

What happens when a young woman’s spontaneous trip turns into a lifelong adventure in Japan? At just 24, Suzy left behind her familiar life in Israel, chasing the allure of the Far East. What began as a brief escape to Thailand—quickly turned into a bold leap into the unknown. There, she became a hostess in Tokyo, married a local businessman in a traditional Oriental marriage, and bravely adapted to Japanese culture, balancing stark contrasts between Israel and Japan. This autobiography offers more than a tourist’s view of Japan, revealing the real challenges of cultural adaptation, ...

THE ROAD TO RIO TINTO PIER is the entertaining account of a mature Englishman’s journey from Bilbao in the north of Spain to Huelva in the southwest. Alex Lord, recently retired insurance executive, soon finds that golf, fishing and gardening aren’t enough to fill his new-found leisure time. Having long wished to revisit the city where he lived and taught English almost forty years ago, his daughter Helen persuades him to embark on a bold cross-country journey, using only public transport and his legs to cover at least a thousand kilometres in up to ninety days. After a baptism of fire ...

There are many sensible ways to travel around the world. This is not one of them. This is a book about sailing around the world in the most inefficient, illogical, and thoroughly British way imaginable—by making one catastrophic mistake after another, and then calling it “a plan.” Around the World in 20 Mistakes is a painfully honest and extremely funny step-by-step account of what happens when one stubborn human tries to circumnavigate the planet in spite of bad weather, broken gear, seasickness, suspicious customs officers, and a boat that seemed determined to self-destruct at every...

A close encounter with a ghost in Scotland and a gun in Mexico. A request to meet a fortune-teller in Varanasi, who correctly predicts the future. Entering Tibet the hard way and meeting the Dalai Lama the easy way. Living in Japan for 13 years, and experiencing life as an ex-pat, and seeing Japan through the eyes of an ESL teacher. This is a collection of stories and travels over several years and through several countries. Vicariously experience these and other misadventures when you travel to parts of Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, China, and the Middle East. Many ...

About the Book In his latest book, Paul Amess braves cold rain, hot tea, a leaky tent and a heroic old bike through a countryside crammed with stories. This laugh-out-loud, oddly uplifting ride across the Pennines proves that everything can go wrong in the most entertaining way and still end exactly right. When a knackered cyclist points his wheels from Peak Forest to Street, he expects hills. He does not expect randy hedgehogs at 3 a.m., duels with homicidal goats, cliff-edge “paths” that feel like practical jokes, or a greatest-hits tour of Britain’s strangest history. Along the way...

By age 25, Heather Anderson had hiked what is known as the "Triple Crown" of backpacking: the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail - a combined distance of 7,900 miles with a vertical gain of more than one million feet. A few years later, she left her job, her marriage, and a dissatisfied life and walked back into those mountains. In her new memoir, Heather shares her distinct message of courage - her willingness to turn away from the predictability of a more traditional life in an effort to seek out what most fulfills her.

What do you do when everyone around you is embracing parenthood or focused on their careers, and you're not sure either path is right for you? Lisa Jansen decided to find out. At 33, Lisa had everything she ever wanted; A successful career in marketing, amazing friends, and the great outdoors of New Zealand as her playground. She was happy. Until one day, doubts started creeping in, and Lisa found herself at a crossroads. Unsure about whether she wants to embrace a career-focused life or follow in her friends' footsteps and start a family, she began to wonder what else there is. Desperate ...