Travel Writing Novels

It's hard to find great travel writing, but it's out there. Part of the reason for this is that so much travel writing is also considered nature writing or narrative non-fiction. Part of the reason is that the field is so competitive because of a lot of good authors competing for a relatively small market space. But there is a wide array of great travel fiction out there, and here is my list of the best ten travel novels I've read over the past couple years.

10) Through Painted Deserts, by Donald Miller. This is one I actually found in the "Christian Non-Fiction" section, which can be unfair. There's no question Miller is a Christian, but he's a writer first and foremost, he's not preachy, and his questioning of his own faith, of reasons for existence, of who and what he is or is becoming is reminiscent of the fantastic soul searching that came from the travel writing of the Beat generation. Miller's account of his trip is great, going through the moments of beauty, the necessity of good road trip music, and admitting his moments of embarrassment and fear as freely as any other part of his journey.

9) Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah MacDonald. The early reading of this book can be hard, because after the first few chapters there's a lot of the Western perspective, the whining of living conditions and poverty, the type of scorn you don't care to read from travel writing. I'm glad I read the rest, because like "Through Painted Deserts," "Holy Cow" is about the author's journey. Sarah evolves and changes chapter to chapter in front of you as she sheds the scornful nature of an atheist "too smart" to fall for superstition, and she opens up, traveling through India and sampling all the different religious beliefs and practices as she becomes a humble Theist who learns happiness, learns to grow, and learns that alien cultures can have a lot to offer the open traveler.

8) Into the Wild by John Krakauer. I first caught sight of this book at a Barnes and Noble on one of the feature tables. I was on winter break from Alaska and visiting family in Iowa. I picked up the book, sat down, and read the entire work in one sitting. Travel book, journalistic book, nature book, adventure book-whatever you call it, this is one heck of a read, and the debate this book causes is deep and passionate. As a wanderlust traveler, I understand the drive the main character feels, as an Alaskan, I understand the native perspective of irritation, of the lack of understanding that nature is brutal and especially Alaska needs to be respected as such.

7) Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown, by Paul Theroux. Paul Theroux is at his best in "Dark Star Safar," where his skills of observation and his dry wit are on full display. Paul takes readers the length of Africa via overcrowded rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train in a journey that is hard to forget. There are moments of beauty, but there are also many moments of misery and danger. This is a narration of Africa that goes beyond the skin deep to dare to look at the deeper core of what is often referred to as "The Dark Continent."

6) Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, by William Least Heat-Moon. This is an auto-biographical travel journey taken by Heat-Mean in 1978. After separating from his wife and losing his job, Heat-Moon decided to take an extended road trip around the United States, sticking to "Blue Highways," a term to refer to small out of the way roads connecting rural America (which were drawn in blue in the old Rand McNally atlases). So Heat-Moon outfits his van, named "Ghost Dancing" and takes off on a 3-month soul-searching tour of the United States. The book chronicles the 13,000 mile journey and the people he meets along the way, as he steers clear of cities and interstates, avoiding fast food and exploring local American culture on a journey that is just as amazing today as when he first took the journey.

5) The Lost Continent, by Bill Bryson. There are tons of fantastic Bill Bryson books out there, and any one of them could hold this spot here. "The Lost Continent" is Bryson's trip across America, visiting some common places (the grand canyon), but also exploring the back roads and looking for that familiarity that helps him remember home.

4) Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventures and Romance by Pico Iyer. Probably one of the best travel writing collections released in recent memory, this collection is under the name Pico Iyer, who helped to edit this collection. These stories come from the "Wanderlust" section of Salon.com and create a varied tapestry of travel writing that will keep the reader flipping from one writer to another.

3) A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. This is one of the all time modern classics in travel literature, as Peter Jenkins recalls the story of his 1973-1975 walk from New York to New Orleans. For many readers, this remains a rare travel book that grips you and keeps you. Known as a travel writer who will walk anywhere, including Alaska and China, Peter Jenkins says, "I started out searching for myself and my country and found both." That sums up what travel writing should be all about.

2) Travels w/ Charlie by John Steinbeck. This was a novel that helped John Steinbeck win a Nobel Prize in Literature. "Travels with Charlie" is a fantastic travel narrative that gets to the heart of travel, the point of the trip, and the strange confrontation and realization that the places and people you remember are gone once you are. As he revisits the places of his youth that many of his books are based on, he realizes on seeing old friends that they're as uncomfortable with him being back as he is with being there. A great story about travel, about home, about mourning lost history, about aging, and about America-this should be required reading for every high school student.

1) The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac. The beat generation was full of great travel narratives, and Jack Kerouac was the master of powerful, moving, passionate language that unfolded stories like few people have ever managed. While "On the Road" is the most often pointed to travel narrative by Kerouac, "The Dharma Bums" is a better book. Full of passion, interesting characters and stories, and the kind of passionate language and powerful prose that made the beat generation writers popular, this Kerouac book is extraordinary and deserving of its number one spot.

If this list doesn't get you rearing for a road trip, then you'd better check your pulse and get recessitated. After that, check out this great website on road trip planning to get all the input you need for a once in a lifetime adventure!

I love traveling, and one thing that surprises me is how many travel bums think of GPS as cheating. I have to disagree - knowing where you are or how to get unlost doesn't keep you from the adventures and joys of interacting with people during travel.

There are many choices, but the GPS system I hear the most great things about is the Garman GPS system. This is one of the most popular GPS systems, because it's one of the best.

If you're going to go on an extended travel adventure, going with GPS isn't bad at all.

I have always loved to travel. Wanderlust runs in my family, and I've embraced it fully. My ideal travel situation is almost anything. I can appreciate winter hiking at -40 in Fairbanks, Alaska, to a homestead, or relaxing on a beach on the coast of southern Alabama. Seeing the pyramids in the Yucatan, or fishing in Canada...even the city trip to Vegas. Travel should be about the experience.

That's also a major reason why I love Travel Writing. To be able to read about far away places I haven't been to, to see new cultures through their eyes. The people, the place, and the experiences of the writers are just enthralling to me.

Travel writing comes in many different forms. From Jack Kerouac to modern writers like Bill Bryson, travel writing takes a wide variety of forms. Heck, I even like reading Fromer's Travel Guides if the country is interesting enough, like Scotland or The Falkland Islands.

This lens will get updated on a regular basis, so keep stopping back as I keep adding information on travel and travel writing to this lens.

The picture of me looking out over the seas was taken by my friend Tom Shover, when we were traveling the Kenai Peninsula off Southern Alaska during the brief but beautiful summers between surviving Alaska winters.

What a great memory! Thanks for stopping by!

Tim Cahill is another fantastic travel writer, along the same lines as Bill Bryson. One thing that Cahill has in common with Bryson, and most other extremely sucessful travel writers, is mixing a vivid writing style with natural humor.

Cahill is a founding editor of Outside magazine and currently serves as an "Editor at Large" for the magazine. He also is a frequent contributor to National Geographic Adventure magazine.

Along with professional long-distance driver Garry Sowerby, Cahill set a world record for speed in driving the entire length of the American continents, from Tierra del Fuego in southern Argentina up along the Pan-American Highway to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in 23 days, 22 hours, and 43 minutes.

This trip was the source material for his book, Road Fever. This was an incredible book that describes an amazing once in a life time journey.

If you're looking for some great modern travel writing, Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts might be the perfect book for you.

Donald Miller is a very talented writer who has carved out an interesting niche for himself. He's a writer whose books tend to be more spiritual in nature, more reflecting than preachy, giving a great sense of his search for all those questions most of us ask at somet time or another.

This is a book heavy on all the questions of the universe and tends to find more fans among readers who love travel writing and philosophy than the heavily religious Christian readers.

This book turns out to be Miller's first, though it was not the first published. He decides part way through college that he needs a road trip. He dreams about that huge road trip that every college male dreams about, the one that takes monthes, has only the vaugest travel plans - the kind of a trip you remember for a life time.

But while other friends hem and haw and let life get in the way, he and a hippie friend name Paul get serious and decide to go through with it. He hates everyone's dumbing it down to "Don needs to find himself," as Don sees it as a lot more. Not as finding himself, but as changing into his future self.

Don willing gives up his comfort, his job, the best living situation he's ever had, and a mutual break up with his girlfriend (he explains he couldn't possibly have asked her to wait for him) in order to take the trip he knows he has to take.

This is travel writing at its best. It's not just about location or destinations, but it's about the people they meet and talk to on the way, the annoying van that Paul just wants to die, even as they're traveling, the problems and people they meet along the way - both good and bad, and the problems along the way. It's that first night at a rest stop where you look at a clear starry sky and feel the forest around you, only to realize the next morning the forest is a few scattered trees and you're still by the Interstate.

This work is about asking questions. In a world obsessed with how: (how can I make money, how can I get a girl, how can I get a better job) Donald says he thinks, if not obsesses about the "Why." Why was it so necessary to take this trip? Why does the universe exist? Why do we worry about the how questions? Why do any of them matter? Why?

This leads to an incredible story about the open road, about the beauty of traveling with only a vague destination and itinerary, of realizing how much of what you learned is learning the "structure" everyone "has to" live, and what breaking away from that means.

This book is about freedom, about questioning faith and yourself, about bonding, about travel, and about living instead of existing.

Donald Miller is an exceptional writer, and while Blue Like Jazz might be his most popular book, "Through Painted Deserts" may be the best he has written, and we can only hope he plans more travels in the future.

Bill Bryson is one of the funniest travel writers out there. He manages to capture the humor of travel, of other cultures, of the silliness and strangeness of the human race like few others. Throw in the fact that he has a great self-deprecating sense of humor, and he is hard to beat.

Bill Bryson has an irrelevant sense of humor that often comes through, and he's not afraid to play a little with the reader's head.

Some of his most popular novels include The Lost Continent, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, and Neither Here Nor There. Bryson is known for his humor. I personally found that it took me about fifty pages to really get into his sense of humor, but once I did the rest was absolutely delightful!

About anything you read by Bill Bryson is worth it, and if you're interested in actual travel writing, Bryson is a great author to study.

I have always had wanderlust. The road calls me, unseen destinations call me, I'm like my father in that respect. Men in our family hear the wind, the ocean, the call of adventure. Our ancestors were the same way--our ancestor, Ralph Dayton, was in the United States 15 years before the Pilgrims.

So when Lee, a great buddy of mine who wrote poetry, train jumped, and lived and loved with passion, gave me a copy of Dharma Bums when I was a junior. Sadly, I never had time to read the book.

Several years later I ran across it while packing for a road trip to New England. Why? Because it was there, I had a bad experience in grad school that caused me to drop out, and it was time for a change. A buddy went with me, and we road tripped for Vermont while I read Dharma Bums on the road.

The pure energy with which Kerouac writes is incredible. In my mind it was like I could see Kerouac hunched over, scribbling furiously while the parties of the sixties went on around him, sweat dripping on the pages.

I have never read a writer who could put down so much energy, who could awake your inner traveler with a furious yearning for the road, for adventure, for one of those once in a life time experiences. For life itself.

I loved this book so much that I bought a copy of On the Road in a book store we visited in Rutland, Vermont, and read it by camp fire light during camping nights in the Appalachians. We visited Vermont, Pennsylvania, avoided New York, also enjoyed New Hampshire and a weekend in Maine.

We ended up back, not being able to find work to stay in the area, but the trip was one in a life time, and the intensity of his writing stuck affected me, stuck with me, was an inherent part of that road trip, whether it was shivering on an incredibly cold September night in Indiana, the smell of the ocean (not necessarily pleasant--which made it a great surprise!) off the Maine coast,the amazing ravine in New Hampshire...so much there.

These books are dangerous to someone like me, because my wanderlust is hard enough to control, and these books set me on fire for another adventure. While it's a little easier nowadays to get a small fix by following a travel blog or two, or seven or eight, it still can't kill the feeling you get every time you read the intense passion of these books.

But if you need a kick in the pants to do something different, to embrace passion and adventure, these are your books!!

Among travel guides, everyone has their favorites. Fodor's is one that comes up often, and nothing against them--they're the best selling travel guides for a reason, but I'm a big fan of the Lonely Planet travel guide series.




To me, they seem to have better "nook and cranny" travel sites, and may be a little more aimed towards a younger demographic, though not nearly as much as backpacker's guides.

In the end the best travel guide is the one that seems to best apply towards the types of things you are most interested in seeing. When you're looking to travel in a new area, always make sure that the area is safe. And don't be afraid to consider someplace different, like planning Gatlinburg Vacations.

Remember that physical borders (mountains, valleys, etc.) are more important in many parts of the world than political boundaries. So be sure to do research and then find a good guide. The more tips for traveling abroad you can find and take to heart, the more likely you are to have a great and safe time abroad.

By popular demand, here is a complete list of Bill Bryson novels. I was even nice enough to seperate them by category :)

Travel Novels: (what he's by far and away the best known/most famous for)

The Palace Under the Alps and Over 200 Other Unusual, Unspoiled, and Infrequently Visited Spots in 16 European Countries (1985)

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)

Notes from a Small Island (1995)

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

Notes from a Big Country (United Kingdom title), aka I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away (1998)

Down Under(UK) aka In a Sunburned Country(US) (2000)

Bill Bryson's African Diary (2002)

Walk About (2002)

Language:

The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way (1990)

Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1994)

Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (2002)

Science:

A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Memoir:

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006)

Biography

Shakespeare: The World as Stage (2007)

I'm often suspicious of "best of" collections. Too often I find haughty writing or tilted writing or, even worse, just plain boring stuff.

The The Best Travel Writing series, however, has offered me a pleasant surprise in this area. These collections are put together once a year. I read about a journalist who had to crawl through a half caved in underpass in northern Afghanistan, because his guide explained it was safer than standing outside arguing. I've read about Africa, Asia, Antarctica, Alaska--and many other places that don't begin with the letter A :)

The freshness to me is how the styles of writing can vary dramatically from piece to piece, as well as locations and even types of travel. From high adventure to deep wilderness to the finer parts of Paris--the variety and changing tones is what kept these books fresh, and the judges for this know what they're doing.

These are great collections. I've read most of them from 1999 on, and have yet to find one that has caused me to be disappointed. I highly recommend them all! From searching out of the way locations to avoiding tourists at tourist traps, these travel writing collections remind you of the importance and wonder of every bit of travel, even going so far as the importance of something simple, like finding some good hotels.