Travel Writing Memoirs

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.

Sky-Hitching to Heaven, Experiencing the Fun Side of God is an entertaining book that includes thirty amazing experiences in which God intervened in unexpected ways. Mary Gordon has lived a life filled with thrills. Whether “sky-hitching” across the country, whitewater canoeing, hiking, primitive camping, or cooking exotic multi-course meals, she sees God involved in the everyday and the extraordinary aspects of life. There’s even a chapter involving a shopping miracle. In 1977 Mary sky-hitched from mid-Ohio to Spokane, Washington.

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.

Is 50 too late for a first trip to Paris? Can an old marriage survive the author's expectations of the city of light and love? This honest essay explores the challenges travel places on a marriage and the unexpected sweetness of affection revived.

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.

In the winter of 1986, driven by an, “everlasting itch for things remote” a knucklehead, disobeying official orders from the Chinese police, sneaks across the southern branch of the Silk Road en route to Lhasa, Tibet. Along the way a series of unique circumstances unfold which alter his perception of life and love forever.

When Kathy Ivchenko finds herself stuck in her hometown with no job prospects and a non-existent love life, she makes the unexpected decision to leave everything she knows and join the Peace Corps. In this unique and compelling real-life adventure, Kathy learns to let go of home and embrace the unknown. From the ups and downs of training, teaching, and romantic stumbles, Kathy takes the listener on an astonishing journey of self-discovery that crosses borders.

In June 2016 I decided to sell my house of 22 years and leave my comfort zone. Slowly the Camino de Santiago showed itself and I decided, with no rucksack or hiking experience, to start... But that’s another story, the one that led to this one. My Camino in Spain taught me to let go of everything I didn’t need, to travel light and wash my clothes in the shower, but most importantly it taught me to trust my heart and my feet, to let my journey unfold naturally, instinctively, intuitively.

Since graduating from college with a journalism degree, Phil Cousineau's wanderlust has driven him to visit nearly 100 countries as a backpacker, a documentary filmmaker, a travel writer, a photographer, and an art and literary tour leader. For him, travel provides what his mentor Joseph Campbell called "the key to the realm of the muses".

What happens when you throw a small town British Columbian punk clear across the continent onto a cruise ship that was never meant to be a cruise ship? In this memoir, Heather tells how she didn't know what she was in for when she applied to work for Commodore Cruise Line, on a ship called The Enchanted Capri. Leaving from New Orleans, it all sounded fancy enough, but that couldn't have been further from the truth.

The author who unforgettably captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany in bestselling travel memoirs expands her horizons to immerse herself—and her readers—in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places. A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes—a...

Blithely venturing off on their first-ever trip together, the Moore sisters travel to Ireland, England, and Scotland. In their mid-60s, they embark with visions of fun on their horizon when all too quickly reality sets in. One sister learns she must accept her internal GPS in untrustworthy.

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Monthly Bookazine Issue No. 3 for September 2014 contains among the best travel stories from Michael’s huge collection of about 10,000 travel tales that he has gathered in interviews with nearly 1,750 world travelers and adventurers during his four decades of travel to more than 125 countries throughout the world. The 10 travel tales that are featured for September, as well as each following month, include a fascinating mix of travel stories as well as a few brief vignettes.

My sand life, my pebble life. My life measured out in tides, coming in and going out. My life measured out in games of trying to spot the sea first. My life measured out in the delicious and indulgent sadness that comes from leaving a holiday cottage for the last time and for the first time in several days it isn’t raining, but at least the kids have had a great time and, let’s face it, so have you.

This is an extensive diary of my time in Costa Rica from January to May 2001, sandwiched between two more recent reflective entries. I recommend listening to this if you are interested in exploring Costa Rica, in what Monteverde, Costa Rica, was like in this particular time period before much of the modern development, or if you are interested in hearing a firsthand account of a young woman with bipolar disorder in between severe swings and culture shock.

By captivating millions during his six-year, 50-country tenure as The New York Times' "Frugal Traveler", Seth Kugel has become one of our most internationally beloved travel writers. While his famously unassuming journeys around the globe have forged a signature philosophy of whimsy and practicality, they have also revealed the seemingly infinite booby traps of on-the-grid tourism. In a book with widespread cultural reverberations, Kugel takes the modern travel industry to task, determined to reignite humanity's age-old sense of adventure.

Russians needed internal visas to travel outside their place of residence. It was rare for foreigners to get such travel permission. After 30 years of corporate employment the author made an improbable career change. His new boss and two VP’s were black-listed by the KGB and could not enter Russia. The author was asked to write a business seminar proposal for Russia to see if he could open a door and get in. One of the three Russians who received the proposal got approval nine months later by Moscow’s Ministry of Education and the KGB.

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.

When Tim Bowden went back to Tasmania to explore his state of origin for the first time in many years, he was reminded of his adolescent assertion that "Tasmania is the testicle of Australia, suffusing the mainland with strength and vigour. What a pity there is only one of them".