10 books that fuel wanderlust

Which comes first? Love of reading travel books or hitting the road? It’s a chicken-and-egg problem that, in my case, doesn’t have an answer. Travel books fuel my wanderlust and vice versa.

The first travel book that I recall reading was Neither Here nor There, in which author Bill Bryson takes readers on a hilarious romp through Europe. I had been skeptical when my friend Kathleen suggested it (several decades ago) but, after the first page, I was hooked – on Bryson’s excellent writing in particular and the genre in general.

A good travel book gets my heart thumping and my mind planning a trip to wherever that writer has been. Stories or photos about other people’s journeys and experiences trigger my imagination. And I learn a lot: how to see places in a new light, how to be a more conscientious and respectful traveler, how to connect with people from a different culture, and how to place myself and my home in the greater context of the world.

Some of my favourite authors include Bryson, Paul Theroux, Rolf Potts, Rick Steves (who writes more than just guidebooks), Mark Twain, Pico Iyer, and even Che Guevara.   

I love reading travel guidebooks too, of course. But I also get wanderlust from books that aren’t officially part of the genre. Not too long ago, I re-read When We Were Very Young, by A.A. Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame. It’s a poetry book and “Spring Morning” felt like a travel poem as it repeatedly asks, “Where am I going?”

“Where am I going? I don’t quite know.

What does it matter where people go?

Down to the wood where the bluebells grow –

Anywhere, anywhere, I don’t know.”

Which only goes to prove that you can find travel inspiration just about anywhere.

I recommend to you 10 travel books that I love for arousing wanderlust. They are in no particular order and are not even necessarily my top 10 of all time, since I’ve enjoyed many others and there are still more to be read…

1. Turn Right at Machu Picchu, by Mark Adams

Subtitles usually give away the coverage of travel books: “Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time.” I really enjoyed Adams’ writing, research, and the entertaining way he combined current and historic travels. He retraced the steps of Hiram Bingham, who is credited with “discovering” Machu Picchu in 1911, plus other ancient Incan places. Adams had worked for a travel magazine but had never actually travelled much or even slept in a tent before this adventure.

I appreciated his self-deprecatory style and could relate easily to some of his anecdotes. For example, when his guide, a rugged Australian adventurer, complimented him on being well-prepared by virtue of his small knife, his heart swelled with pride at the offhand remark.

The names of all the Incan leaders, cities and temples got a bit confusing. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover the glossary at the end of the book until I finished reading; it would be better to move it to the front. However, the book made me want leap off the couch, stuff my backpack, and jump on the next plane to Peru – a mark of good writing and storytelling.

2. Maphead, by Ken Jennings

“Charting the wide, weird world of geography wonks.” As a kid, Jennings had loved maps and geography and spent a lot of time with his Hammond world atlas. He thought he was the only one who loved maps so much, but gradually discovered he was not alone.

I loved this book from start to finish, since it inspired several “Aha” moments. It enlightened me about why I have always loved maps as well, and how it’s tied to my wanderlust.

Here was one “Aha” moment: “Systematic travelers use jet planes and geocachers use GPS satellites and Google Earth fans use 3D-rendered aerial photography, but the impulse is the same one that’s led people to pore over atlases for centuries: the need to place our little lives in the context of the Earth as a whole, to visualize them in the context of a grander scale. To this day, when we outline some ambitious plan, we still speak of how it will put us ‘on the map.’ We crave that wider glory and perspective. We also crave exploration, and that’s a thrill that’s become scarcer as technology has advanced.”

At the opening of chapter 12, he quoted T.S. Eliot:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

That fits with my view that travel helps us know our own home better, by allowing us to compare and contrast and know what makes us stand out in the world. How do we know that poutine and politeness are uniquely Canadian if we haven’t seen their absence elsewhere?

3. Chop Suey Nation, by Ann Hui

“The surprising history and vibrant present of small-town Chinese restaurants from Victoria, BC, to Fogo Island, NL.”

I welcome travel book recommendations from anyone, and this one came from my friend Emmett. Author Ann Hui, a Globe and Mail reporter, drove across Canada seeking answers to two questions: Why is there a Chinese restaurant in every small town? And who are the families who run them? She published a newspaper story and only then discovered that her parents had run a Chinese restaurant before she was born. Further exploration led her to write Chop Suey Nation.

“It gave me an insight into the hardships and challenges suffered by the first generations of Chinese folks who arrived in Canada after the various long-standing historical bans and impediments that the Canadian government had placed in their way were eventually removed, as recently as the 1960s and ‘70s. (!)” Emmett wrote in his recommendation email to me.

I concur.

4. Indians on Vacation, by Thomas King

Fiction can be a huge inspiration for wanderlust. I’m an avid reader of murder mysteries, especially those set in Britain (by authors such as Ian Rankin, Elizabeth George and P.D. James) and have used those stories to set my travel itineraries. When we took our teenage daughter Rachel to England and Scotland, we visited places where the Harry Potter books and movies had been set. And who hasn’t craved Florence, Italy after reading E.M. Forster’s Room with a View?

Indians on Vacation is set mainly in Prague, as Bird and Mimi trace the travels of Mimi’s late Uncle Leroy, who had taken the family medicine bundle to Europe where it disappeared. The story moves back and forth between the present and past vacations to Venice, Amsterdam, and Paris, where they had searched earlier for the bundle. Bird, like author Thomas King, has Greek and Cherokee heritage and in between seeing tourist sights, serious issues are covered, with many funny moments in between.

King, an English professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, has written many fiction and non-fiction books about Canada’s Indigenous people, including The Inconvenient Indian.

5. The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen

The Snow Leopard is a day-by-day journal kept by the author who travelled with field biologist George Schaller to Nepal in 1973 to study Himalayan blue sheep and hopefully see a snow leopard, which feed on the sheep. They left on Sept. 26 and finally arrived at the Crystal Mountain on Nov. 1, where they studied the sheep for several weeks. Matthiessen is a Zen Buddhist, so he wanted to meet the Lama of Shey at the shrine there.

I recommend this book, even though it took a while for me to get into it. I slogged through confusing descriptions of the various types of Buddhism and their histories, with many names for the same thing. However, about a third of the way through, it got much better and captured my interest from then on. Matthiessen is quite introspective and honest about his emotional ups and downs, recording his feelings, frustrations, and joys on this tough journey.

I learned a lot – always a selling point for a travel book – about the Himalayas and their people. For example, Sherpas are a cultural group from Tibet, not a synonym for ‘porter.’ Matthiessen and Schaller were helped by Sherpas and porters, with the Sherpas having higher status. The book also features many memorable and instructive passages; for example: “…the sense of having one’s life needs at hand, of traveling light, brings with it intense energy and exhilaration. Simplicity is the whole secret of well-being.”

6. The Temporary European, by Cameron Hewitt

“Lessons and Confessions of a Professional Traveler.” Cameron Hewitt has worked for travel guru Rick Steves since 2000, researching and writing and updating guidebooks, leading tours, and writing a travel blog, which I follow. During Covid, Hewitt turned his blog into this book.

Readers learn what it’s like to travel around Europe updating guidebooks. It sounds tedious, but I think I’d be good at it since it involves attending to detail and ferreting out the key facts that will help travellers. The best chapters are how and why to dive as deep as you can into the local culture so that you become a temporary European, somewhat the same as how Steves describes himself as a cultural chameleon.

7. You are Awful (But I Like You), by Tim Moore

“Travels Through Unloved Britain.” Tim Moore took the results from surveys, polls, reviews and “lazy personal prejudice” to create his itinerary, and then visited all the awful, ugly, scary, ridiculous places he could find. He sampled horrible food, stayed in sketchy hotels, drove a Bulgarian-built Austin Maestro, and listened to music rated the worst.

Moore is a hilarious writer ala Bill Bryson. For example, he got a haircut in a place voted Britain’s Worst Hairdresser and described the result: “What had until recently been a head of hair was now something else – a helmet made out of old cats.” Then the stylist offered to put ‘product’ on it. “Five minutes later I walked outside wearing a crested grebe plucked from an oil slick.”

I still laugh out loud when I read such witty descriptions. Oh, to write so well! This book underlines that there’s value in even the most awful places you find yourself. At the very least, you can laugh about it later with friends.

Moore also wrote the uproarious Travels with My Donkey: One Man and His Ass on a Pilgrimage to Santiago, which I laughed over while dreaming about tackling the Camino.

8. Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts

“An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.” Excellent! I read this in 2018 and asked myself why I’d never read it before. Published in 2002 – as we were either planning or on our round-the-world trip – it would have been a valuable resource to me then. But it’s still enormously useful now, not only for planning purposes, but also for dreaming purposes.

Vagabonding is described as taking a break from your normal life to discover and experience the world, whether that be six weeks or two years or anywhere in between. That’s exactly what our retirement plan is, hence my love for this book.

Author Rolf Potts, a veteran of the travel writing genre, explains how to finance your travels, figure out where to go, adjust to life on the road, work and volunteer abroad, handle the travel mishaps that are unavoidable, and re-assimilate back into your ordinary life. (I definitely experienced reverse culture shock after we returned from our round-the-world trip.) Overall, Potts teaches you how to harness vague feelings of wanderlust so they can drive you forward into action.

9. I’m a Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson

“Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away.” I bought I’m a Stranger Here Myself on a trip to California and started reading it on the plane home, which is dangerous. Other passengers look askance when you start giggling, then stifling outright guffaws until the tears leak out. Bryson does that to you.

I’ve loved all his travel books: In a Sunburned Country took me to Australia while I’m a Stranger Here Myself illustrated his weird feelings about moving his family back to the United States after living in Britain for 20 years. A Walk in the Woods, about hiking the Appalachian Trail, was in part responsible for my later inspirations to tackle long-distance routes, including climbing Kilimanjaro, cycling the Portuguese Camino, and canoeing the Rideau Canal. Notes from a Small Island detailed his trip around Britain in 1995; 20 years later, he repeated the trip and wrote about the changes in The Road to Little Dribbling. That great title alone tells you it’s going to be a funny book. Bryson never disappoints.

10. Incontinent on the Continent, by Jane Christmas

“My Mother, Her Walker, and our Grand Tour of Italy.” Like Bryson’s, the title alone promises an entertaining read and Jane Christmas delivered. Anyone who is a mother, or has a mother, can relate to the mother-daughter relationship that she explores through the vehicle of a trip to Italy.

“Show me a mother who says she has a good or great relationship with her daughter, and I’ll show you a daughter who is in therapy trying to understand how it all went so horribly wrong,” wrote Christmas, who is a Canadian from Hamilton, Ontario.

Christmas and her arthritic, incontinent, domineering mother, both love ancient art, architecture and history, so they hope those commonalities will keep them together as they explore Italy and review their relationship.

I also smiled through another of her books – What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Midlife Misadventure on Spain’s Camino de Santiago de Compostela.

So many motivating books to read… and more reviews to write.

What are your favourite travel books? Let me know, in the comments below, what gets your wanderlust flowing and why.

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