Inspiring Travel Books to Read on Your Next Vacation

13 Sep Inspiring Travel Books to Read on Your Next Vacation

A great vacation replenishes the traveler. It’s absorbing, taking you on an uplifting narrative of adventure and relaxation. It recharges you, so that by the last day, you are ready to tackle the real world with fresh and vibrant intentions.

The same can be said for a great novel, especially those, like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, that wonderfully combine travel and inspiration. By the last page, you accept the end of your literary journey with a smile, for it has filled you with a positive motivation. To be positively motivated on your next vacation, consider downloading these titles to your e- reader.

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton – This philosophical examination of why and how we travel goes around the world and throughout history to describe, in poetic detail, the pleasure of anticipating a journey, the magnetic allure of the exotic and the value of observation.

Tracks by Robyn Davidson – A frank and funny account of a courageous young woman’s journey through the Australian desert, where she learns a lot about herself and her companions: a dog and four camels.

Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald – A woman who vowed never to return to India again returns to India again. The resulting story is one of discovery and adventure in this land of beauty and chaos.

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts – This is more than a how-to manual on independent travel (which needs good travel agent advice just like any other form of travel!). It’s also an essay on experiencing the world in your own unique way.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner – Weiner, a foreign correspondent, decided he’d had enough of the war-torn locales he reported on. So he traveled around the world in search of mirth, discovering, along the way, the true meaning of happiness.