Explore the world via the written word: 12 travel books

Travel books take my imagination on a thrilling journey, to places I want to visit, to places I´ve been, and even to places that may or may not exist. And sometimes, a travel writer even recommends you go nowhere.

Amongst these 12 travel book recommendations are journeys in Africa, Europe, the United States, Britain and a Mediterranean circuit. Many are quite humorous. Two outline seemingly anti-travel positions (The Flaneur and The Art of Stillness).

The books I call “keepers” are those I won´t give away; I treasure the insights I´ve gained from reading the author´s experiences and sometimes re-read them. But I will freely give away these recommendations to spark your wanderlust or to ponder with another cup of coffee in your armchair.

Travels with Charley in Search of America, by John Steinbeck

I absolutely loved this book! Many lists of classic travel books include it, but it’s hard to find. I searched for a while before finally buying a copy at an Indigo bookstore in Toronto.

In September 1960, John Steinbeck sets off in his truck camper, named Rocinante, with his French poodle, Charley, to circle the United States, starting in New York’s Long Island where he lived and going counterclockwise through the northern states to California and back through the south.

I love his easy writing style, his gorgeous descriptions of nature, and his many pithy points. Rocinante and especially Charley come to life with real personalities.

When Steinbeck gets to California, he encounters difficulties describing it because he grew up there, in Salinas. His memories “distorted the present scene, and every image that cropped up became a palimpsest: a picture drawn over a picture.”

This distortion had me recalling a palimpsest we´d seen in Verona’s Biblioteca Capitolare, but it was words over words. And in Portugal´s Coa Valley, we saw prehistoric rock carvings carved over previous carvings. That’s three types of palimpsests: words, carvings and memories.

In the introduction, Jay Parini wrote that Steinbeck’s travels are “a classic example of the heroic journey.” He leaves his safe home and ventures into the wilderness to test himself, discovering his own strengths and weaknesses. His return home completes the journey. “Upon returning, the hero has been immeasurably strengthened by the knowledge gained in the course of his difficult journey.”

Based on our own journeys and living abroad in Portugal, these insights rang true for me. I kept exclaiming “Yes!” in my head as I read.

This is a keeper book.  

Meet Me in Atlantis, by Mark Adams

Sci-fi search-for-lost-city stuff doesn’t generally appeal to me so I hesitated about this book. But I had really enjoyed travel writer Mark Adams´ Turn Right at Machu Picchu so I took a gamble. It paid off! It turned out to be a thought-provoking book, subtitled “Across Three Continents in Search of the Legendary Sunken City.”

Using clues from Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote about Atlantis, Adams sets off to interview and profile self-proclaimed experts who obsess about Atlantis’ location and its very existence. He visits four plausible sites, in Spain, Morocco, Greece and Malta.  

Before we went to Malta, I re-read his section about the cart ruts, which Dr. Anton Mifsud theorizes could be the canals or irrigation system for Atlantis.

There´s no evidence that the parallel grooves in the bedrock are cart ruts – that´s just the easy name given to them. Other cart-rut theories abound, that they were made by aliens or temple builders pulling the megalithic slabs of limestone. Adams concludes the ruts were too small to be canals and, since the ruts are in pairs, were “probably [made] by the constant friction of wheels or sled runners.”

After examining the ruts ourselves and visiting several Maltese prehistoric temples that were built by rolling the stone slabs atop smaller ball-bearing-like stones, we concluded (yes, unscientifically) that the ruts were made by temple builders.

This book leads to much mental pondering. Are these Atlantis afficionados wacko, or do they make valid points? Certainly, you learn about fascinating places to explore. Read the book and decide for yourself!

The Art of Stillness, by Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is a beautiful writer. His prose sings. He´s written many travel books over four decades, but this is about, as the subtitle says, “Adventures in going nowhere.”

“In an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.” He argues that the more we´re connected, the more we yearn to get away from constant e-contact with others. We need to disconnect, sit still and contemplate our inner life.

Iyer profiles people who gave up promising careers to become monks, including Canadian singer-songwriter-poet Leonard Cohen, who lived for several years as a Zen monk. Iyer interviews Cohen in his cabin retreat about his desire to “go nowhere.”     

“As Cohen talked about the art of sitting still (in other words, clearing the head and stilling the emotions) – and as I observed the sense of attention, kindness, and even delight that seemed to arise out of his life of going nowhere – I began to think about how liberating it might be for any of us to give it a try,” Iyer wrote. Going nowhere “isn´t about turning your back on the world; it´s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.”

I focused on his words “stepping away now and then.” He´s not saying, “sit still forever.” Instead, we need breaks from travel to contemplate what we´ve seen and done and find how it has affected us.

He gave a TED Talk on this concept, then expanded his ideas into the book.

I tried to put his advice into action on the airplane to Canada. What better place to do nothing? I sat still, closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind. I fidgeted, squirmed, had a brilliant thought I wanted to write down so I wouldn´t forget it, got out a pen… and my stillness was gone. Sitting still takes a lot of practice. I am equally bad at meditation.

However, I believe he speaks the truth about the importance of periodic disconnection from the world to develop the art of stillness.

Another keeper.

Sahara, by Michael Palin

Michael Palin may be known for his comedic performances in Monty Python movies and “A Fish Called Wanda,” but he is also an excellent travel writer. I´ve read other books he´s written – Michael Palin´s Hemingway Adventure and Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time. Sahara delivered an equally good read.

Since childhood, he´d nurtured fantasies about Africa, and he finally got the chance to explore. He and his film crew (there´s a four-part BBC TV series too) set off in 2001 and spent 99 days circling the Sahara. He wrote the journal-style book along the way. (It covers 9/11.)  

From Spain, they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco and continued on a clockwise course around the famous desert, through Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Spain (Ceuta) and back to Gibraltar. He drank boatloads of sweet tea, tried camel stew, examined old Islamic manuscripts in a library, and even returned to the spot where “Life of Brian” was filmed in Tunisia.

Palin seamlessly weaves facts and personal observations about the diverse cultures, long histories and fascinating people he encounters. And of course, he recounts many funny moments. Like the time he learned a board game called dhaemon (like checkers), using camel turds and little sticks as board pieces. Palin had to play the camel dung pieces, but he won!

Road Trip Rwanda: A Journey into the New Heart of Africa, by Will Ferguson

What an excellent book! I thoroughly enjoyed it, which is something to say about a book that delves into the Rwanda genocide. Will Ferguson is a humour writer, which doesn’t seem to jibe with writing about genocide, but he managed to craft a story that balances the horrors with the amusing moments during his travels in Rwanda.

He lives in Calgary and became friends with Jean-Claude Munyezamu, a Tutsi man who had escaped Rwanda just before the genocide began. He emigrated to Canada, settled in Calgary, began volunteering with many organizations, including with children’s soccer teams, and became friends with Ferguson, whose child was coached by Jean-Claude.

Twenty years after the 1994 genocide, they travel together to Rwanda and explore the green, beautiful country. They visit gorillas, the source of the Nile, genocide memorials, killing sites and prisons, refugee camps, churches, national parks, safari lodges, and soccer pitches to hand out the balls and uniforms Jean-Claude brought with him. Through all that, we learn how Rwanda has turned itself around, Jean-Claude´s escape story, and why he volunteers so relentlessly.

You´d think the book would be depressing, and there are heartbreaking and shocking moments, but Ferguson writes with hope for the future of Rwanda. I came away from it feeling positive. Highly recommended. It´s a keeper.

Death in the Long Grass, by Peter Hathaway Capstick

My friend Anne recommended Death in the Long Grass: A Big Game Hunter’s Adventures in the African Bush. She encountered the writings of Peter Hathaway Capstick while she was on safari herself in Botswana.

“We were sitting at a cooking fire near a watercourse along the tall grass with grunts of hippos in the background,” recalled Anne. “It was our first night sleeping in a canvas tent set up on the elephants’ path along the bank. Hyenas were nearby and came to visit our site later that night. As the food cooked, Shannon [friend and tour leader] brought out this old worn copy of the book set near our location. It was quite an introduction to the month-long bush-tenting experience!” 

Shannon had grown up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and escaped to South Africa on the floor of their car, driven by her game hunter-guide father, who was a friend of Chapstick. She read passages aloud about lions stalking people, grabbing them, and dragging them off into the bush.  

“I could hear the lions roar in the background, see the eyes of the hyenas if I shone my light on the perimeter of our three-tent site and could see the elephant tracks in the sand at our feet,” said Anne. “I think I slept a little.”

Their tour also took them camping in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and South Africa.

“On the last night a month later, Shannon asked us to share our feelings about our many unbelievable experiences,” said Anne. “I suggested that, for her next guests, she read the stories on the last night not the first one!”

I haven’t found a copy of the book yet, but after my experience reading The Telling Room, I know that being in the actual setting makes a story burst into life.

The Flaneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris, by Edmund White

The title alone attracted me to this book because I´ve always fancied myself a flaneur – someone who strolls aimlessly with no destination, going where her curiosity takes her. And Paris is meant to be explored by foot, “for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail. The loiterer, the flaneur, has a long, distinguished pedigree in France,” wrote Edmund White.  

But he also said Americans are not great flaneurs. “They’re good at following books outlining architectural tours of Montparnasse or at visiting scenic spots outside Paris… But they are always driven by the urge towards self-improvement.”

Alas, I feared my desire to see all the sights in a new place might cast me more like an American (I´m Canadian) than a true flaneur. For our last trip to Paris, I worked out walking tours of Van Gogh in Montmartre and many filming locations for the movie “Midnight in Paris.” We walked a lot, but it wasn´t aimless.

But then White explains that it´s easier to be a flaneur where you live. Real flaneurs are Parisians in Paris “in search of a private moment, not a lesson, and whereas wonders can lead to edification, they are not likely to give the viewer gooseflesh. No, it is the private Proustian touchstone – the madeleine, the tilting paving stone – that the flaneur is tracing down…”

I believe my husband and I are flaneurs in our adopted hometown of Alcobaça in Portugal. We regularly go for aimless evening strolls. Even though we´ve lived here for three years, we always see some new detail. Just today, we found someone had installed a simple wooden bridge across the Alcoa River in a nearby park. We scrambled down the bank and crossed it, stopping to admire the waterfall below. That sounds like a Proustian moment to me.

Discovering Ancient Greece, Ancient Greece and the Olympics, Around the World in 50 Ways

Here´s a three-for-one deal: three children´s books that provide surprisingly decent travel information in an easy-to-absorb way. In preparation for our trip to Greece, I had also started reading the book A Short History of Greek Philosophy, by John Marshall. The dullness completely bogged me down; I was lost after the first chapter. Sometimes, when you just want a good overview of a topic, children´s books fit the bill.

Discovering Ancient Greece, by Kathryn Morgan, covers daily life, myths, government, philosophy, and the arts, in just 60 pages. I picked up some interesting tidbits I hadn’t know before.

• Spartan girls learned to fight and defend themselves, whereas Athenian girls and women were relegated to the home. Spartan girls were “trained to wrestle, fistfight and handle a weapon in case they needed to protect Sparta while the men were away at war.”
• The term ‘tyrant’ was not negative; it simply meant a leader who didn’t come to the position through royalty. Usually, he promised to right the wrongs the people had suffered. “The tyrants of the seventh century were a stepping-stone to democracy, or rule by the people. It was the tyrants who taught the people their rights and power.”
• Socrates was the teacher of Plato, who taught Aristotle. I realized that the acronym “SPA” would help me remember their order. Plato’s Academy in Athens, which operated for some 900 years, became the base for today´s colleges and universities. Aristotle was a student and teacher at Plato’s Academy for 20 years. Then he returned to Macedonia and tutored the young and future Alexander the Great.    

Ancient Greece and the Olympics, a Magic Tree House Fact Tracker, by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce (sisters). When my children were young, we all loved the Magic Tree House series – about a time-traveling tree house that whisks two kids into dozens of interesting places and times. This Fact Tracker nonfiction book gives interested kids (and me!) more in-depth, yet readable and concise, facts about how and why the ancient Olympics came to be.

I learned about the brutal pankration event – a combo of boxing and wrestling in which some competitors died. I also learned the symbols of some gods, such as rustling oak leaves for Zeus. I made a note to listen for Zeus when we visited his temple in ancient Olympia.

Around the World in 50 Ways, by Lonely Planet. A fun, quick read. Kids choose their route and transportation options, including tuk-tuks, sleds, camels, steamboats and hot-air balloons. 

I hadn´t considered there were so many transportation options. I began counting my own: camel, elephant (before it was considered unethical), horse, tuk-tuk, dog sled, hot-air balloon (just a quick up and down when it was tethered; Bill says it doesn’t count!), golf cart, cable car, funicular, ski lift, train (subway, steam, diesel), boat (canoe, kayak, small fishing, small tour, motor yacht, sailboat, large ocean-crossing, ferry, Thai long-tail), airplane (small, medium, jet). Oh, plus cars, trucks and buses…

Yes, I believe I could get to 50 with a little more thought.

No-Man’s Lands: One Man’s Odyssey Through the Odyssey, by Scott Huler

Can you tell we went to Greece this year? This is another excellent book that I read in preparation for our trip.

Subtitled “One man´s Odyssey through The Odyssey,” the book tells Scott Huler´s adventure following the route Homer describes in his ancient book The Odyssey. After the Trojan War, Odysseus spent 10 years wandering the Mediterranean, trying to get home. His quest becomes Huler´s quest, except that he has just six months. Deadline: birth of his first child.

Huler follows Odysseus’s path, from the ancient ruins of Troy to his home in Ithaca. Scholars debate the actual locations of some places that Odysseus stopped, but Huler does his best to recreate the 10-year itinerary. Amongst other locations, he visits Calypso’s cave on Malta, explores the Cyclops’ cave on Sicily (no monster there today), rents a kayak to paddle between Scylla and Charybdis in the Strait of Messina, and charters a boat to chug past the isles of the Sirens off Capri (he resisted).

Lessons from the Odyssey become lessons that Huler learns, especially about the value of family and emotional homecomings.

Ripe Figs, by Yasmin Khan

What a lovely, gentle book – part narrative and part recipes, from Eastern Mediterranean countries, mostly Greece, Turkey and Cyprus but also Lebanon and Syria.

Author Yasmin Khan shares family recipes as well as those from refugees she meets and interviews in Greece and Turkey. She shares their stories through their food choices and cooking methods. Aside from writing books, Khan is human rights campaigner.  

I enjoyed her writing and have noted many recipes to try. I was especially interested in them given our April 2025 trip to Greece. When I read a book about a place I´ve been, I absorb new information that helps deepen my insights and understanding of what I had experienced there.

The Gran Tour: Travels with my Elders, by Ben Aitken

Ben Aitken´s hilarious account of his travels with a bunch of pensioners on package bus tours made me laugh out loud. Many times.

Aitken takes his grandmother on one trip, and his partner Megan on another, but otherwise travels alone. He takes six bus tours, to Scarborough in Yorkshire, St. Ives in Cornwall, Llandudno in Wales, Killarney in Ireland, Lake Como in Italy, and Pitlochry in Scotland. The package tours include dinners, free drinks vouchers, and bingo nights.

He meets dozens of seemingly dull old people, but they turn out to be much livelier and more fascinating than he´d imagined. Some like to party even more than thirty-something Aitken!

Apart from the funny predicaments and situations Aitken gets into, other moments are endearingly poignant as he paints his written portraits of fellow travellers. They may be wrinkled and slower to move, but their wisdom and experience shine through in Aitken´s wonderful depictions of his conversations with them.

A keeper.

Instructions for Traveling West, by Joy Sullivan

I missed the “poems” on the cover, thinking this was a travel book. Instead, it´s more like travel of the soul, or personal growth. I enjoyed the poems and, upon reflection, found that many are related to travel.

The last poem is called “Even If.”

“Even if foolhardy, ill-advised, or half-made. Even if you do not yet understand your own reasons and the waves are at your throat. Even if leaving guts your heart to its last thrumming fiber. Even still, go and let this life eat you to the bone.”

Good advice for so many aspects of life. Embrace the scary, the unknown, the “here be monsters” part of your soul.

What travel books have you read lately? Any you´d recommend? Let me know and I´ll include them in another travel book roundup. You can read my previous recommendations: 10 books that fuel wanderlust and Telling stories in Telling stories in telling rooms: 12 more travel books. Obrigada!

We´ve been reading travel books while living in Portugal since 2022. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.