Travel Writing Memoirs

When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco.

Shane K. Bernard's Teche examines this legendary waterway of the American deep south. Bernard delves into the bayou's geologic formation as a vestige of the Mississippi and Red Rivers, its prehistoric Native American occupation, and its colonial settlement by French, Spanish, and eventually, Anglo-American pioneers. He surveys the coming of indigo, cotton, and sugar; steam-powered sugar mills, and riverboats; and the brutal institution of slavery. He also examines the impact of the Civil War on the Teche.

Does the geographic cure actually work? Through a fast-paced journey of saying yes to the unfamiliar, pack your bags and set out into the world with a gay Jew determined to answer that universal question of Seriously...What Am I Doing Here?

The listener travels through time and space to when Aly has little-to-no money, works in tourism, learns how to garden, lives on a commune, dumpster dives, discovers herbal medicine, and falls for all the wrong men and women. In her heartfelt travel memoir, Unpacked, Aly Coy goes into raw detail about her sexually charged, sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing, life abroad.

A chronicle of life on the resplendent island. Adele Barker and her son, Noah, settled into the central highlands of Sri Lanka for an 18-month sojourn, immersing themselves in the customs, cultures, and landscapes of the island: its elephants, birds, and monkeys; its hot curries and sweet mangoes; the cacophony of its markets; the resonant evening chants from its temples. When, having returned home to Tucson, Barker awakes on December 26, 2004, to see televised images of the island's southern shore disappearing into the ocean, she decides she must go back.

Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil’s years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but her subsequent travels to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard, culminating in a strange event in Cape Town, South Africa, where she journeyed to make what was to be her final trip to the southernmost continent. In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science, and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice.

In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais's in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha's Vineyard for the exorbitant sum of $80,000. Two-point-two miles down a poorly marked, one lane dirt road, the house was better termed a shack - it had no electricity, no modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. Sitting on Tisbury Great Pond - well-stocked with oysters and crab for foraged dinners - the house faced the ocean and the sky, and though it was eventually replaced by a sturdier structure, the ethos remained the same.

Jennifer Coburn has always been terrified of dying young. So she decides to save up and drop everything to travel with her daughter, Katie, on a whirlwind European adventure before it's too late. Even though her husband can't join them, even though she's nervous about the journey, and even though she's perfectly healthy, Jennifer is determined to jam her daughter's mental photo album with memories - just in case.

This is the true story of a young, native Irish woman who embarked on a path of "most resistance" and danced/survived her way around seven different countries. Her very descriptive, dramatic, and often humorous Celtic Road Home takes you on a journey of constant life adventures. Despite her many up and down struggles along the way, she never gives up hope on the very next outcome becoming more successful than the one before.

In 1976, after graduating from Harvard College, Mike Jacker embarked on a year-long voyage aboard Rhiannon with two friends named Louis and Clark. The three Midwestern boys had never experienced ocean sailing. Mike's captivating narrative takes you along on his remarkable adventures at sea and on land.

Lost in time for generations, the story of a 19th-century English gentleman in British India - a family mystery of love found and loyalties abandoned, finally brought to light. In 1841, 20-year-old Nigel Halleck set out for Calcutta as a clerk in the East India Company. He went on to serve in the colonial administration for eight years before abruptly leaving the company under a cloud and disappearing in the mountain kingdom of Nepal, never to be heard from again.

Before he grew up and became one of Washington's most respected reporters and editors, Andrew Ferguson was, of all things, a Lincoln buff, with the photos hung on his bedroom wall to prove it. Decades later, Ferguson's latent buffdom is reignited. In Land of Lincoln, he embarks on a curiosity-fueled coast-to-coast journey through contemporary Lincoln Nation, encountering everything from hatred to adoration to opportunism and all manner of reaction in between.

Named one of Time Magazine International's 30 most important people of 2005, Maud Fontenoy presents us with a terrific, entertaining adventure story on the high seas as she challenges the Pacific Ocean - a feat no woman before her ever accomplished. Already the first woman to row alone across the North Atlantic, Maud raised the bar to defy the elements, the daunting solitude, and the circling sharks of the South Pacific on her second solo voyage.

The color of one's skin and passport have long dictated the conditions of travel. For Shahnaz Habib, travel and travel writing have always been complicated pleasures. Habib threads the history of travel with her personal story as a child on family vacations in India, an adult curious about the world, and an immigrant for whom roundtrips are an annual fact of life. Tracing the power dynamics that underlie tourism, this insightful debut parses who gets to travel, and who gets to write about the experience.

Following his hilarious introduction to Paris in French Like Moi, Midwesterner Scott Dominic Carpenter returns to the scene of the crime with more tales of intrigue. This time, though, the story starts with sorrow as Carpenter's wife struggles with dementia. Humor may be the best medicine, but even the antics of a vandal in their building can’t cement the tiles of her memory for long. Before he expects it, the author finds himself alone in a capital that is also blighted by the pandemic.

Writer Lisa Kusel, while living comfortably in her California home, feels an unsettling lack of personal contentment. When she sees a job posting for a new international school in Bali, she convinces her schoolteacher husband, Victor, to apply. Six weeks after his interview, Lisa, Victor, and their six-year-old daughter, Loy, move halfway around the world to paradise.

It's "award time" so to speak! It's now that I choose to pause for a bit and select the very best of the best so far, from approximately the first third of some 600 hours of roughly 10,000 recorded travel tales told to me over the last four decades by nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers, whom I've encountered during my many journeys across our globe.

An entertaining listen about 'life', written by a well-traveled man who simply prefers to be 'Outside' his clothes rather than 'In' them. This is an audiobook for anyone who loves the sun and the joys of 'skinny dipping', or who wants to. Travel with Richard on a global journey, sharing his nude experiences in the Mediterranian, Japan, Hawaii, South Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Rachel is finding it increasingly difficult to ignore her sister’s derision, society’s silent wagging finger, and her father’s advancing years. She’s traveled the world, but now finds herself at a crossroads at an age where most people would stop globetrotting and settle. She’s never been one to conform to the nine-to-five lifestyle, so why should she start now? Was it wrong to love the freedom and independence a single life provided, to put off the search for Mr. Right and the children? Perhaps she could find the time for one last adventure.

Honest, intense, moving, and hilarious, Figure It Out When You Get There is a memoir full of stories that will inspire you to live life first and watch how everything else falls into place. Barak Hullman’s stories are snapshots that illuminate the hidden truths of life. They span from Miami to Edinburgh to Jerusalem and include tales of falling into a pit, meeting King David’s direct descendant, learning how beautiful melodies are made, the insane friend who was worried about Hullman’s mental health, Menachem Begin’s driver, the Hasidic Rebbe who healed with his heart, and inhaling the cigarette of life.