Wanderlust - books that will make you want to travel

My preparation for moving to the UK via my Nepal trip was a long time in the planning. One of the things that I did throughout the planning stage was read tons of books to get me in the travel mood and keep up the excitement levels. It can be hard planning a massive trip over many months and maintaining motivation, so below are some of my recommendations for travelbug books.

I would love to hear about your favourite wanderlust books, so please leave a comment in the comments section below with your recommendations.

1. The Old Ways by Robert McFarlane

I can't recommend this book more highly. I read this during the winter of 2015 in Brisbane, and I think it was the book that tipped me over into travelling to Nepal.

Robert McFarlane is an academic at Oxford University, so when I first picked up the book I was anticipating a dry tome on the act of walking. Instead, I was instantly transported. Don't mistake this book for a treatise on walking, there are hilarious observations littered throughout the book.

The premise of the book is a focus on paths that have been walked since time immemorial, with the opening of the book starting with the Ickneild Way through southern England from Norfolk to Wiltshire.

However, while the book starts in England there is are diverse references to the act of walking across cultures. The Indigenous Australians get a mention with respect to navigation through songlines, while McFarlane travels to areas as diverse as Spain and Tibet.

There is also a focus on contested land, with Scotland, Tibet and Palestine all getting a chapter.

By far and away my favourite section of the book is the chapter on Minya Konka in Tibet. The chapter discusses the particular Tibetan Buddist practice of kora, an act of pilgrimage which circumambulates (in a clockwise direction) the holy site.

McFarlane notes a particularly extreme form of the kora undertaken around Minya Konka where the pilgrim will "bend, kneel, lie face down, mark the earth with the fingers, rise, pray, shuffle forwards to the finger-marks, bend, kneel... for thirty-two miles of rough rocky path."

Having recently returned from walking the Annapurna Sanctuary, I was left breathless (not the altitude I promise) at the thought of walking over 52km in this manner. I even made sure that I had this book downloaded on to my Kindle so that I was able to read it throughout the trek. Words can't describe reading sections about the Himalayas as I was standing in the mountains surrounded by flowering rhododendrons.

So if you are thinking about a long-haul trek and are in some need of travel inspiration, you NEED to read this book... like now!

2. The road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

In making the decision to move to the UK, I had read Bill Bryson's classic Notes from a Small Island. While it was a wonderful wander around the UK, the book had become dated making it not the most useful for planning my trip. So when it was announced that Bryson was releasing a new travel book (20 years since he wrote Notes from a Small Island) and that it was going to be another look at the UK, I was ecstatic.

Simply put, The road to Little Dribbling did not disappoint. I think Bryson is one of the best travel writers out there, and I am not the only one who thinks so given his long running success in this genre. Whereas the first book had been written in preparation for his imminent departure to the United States, this book was written just as Bryson had committed to becoming a citizen of the UK. And as such, there is a definite difference in the tone of the book. Less melancholy and more biting. You get the sense that he has become, to a large extent, one of the locals.

In his previous book, Bryson had travelled from the southern most point of the UK to the northern most tip. In The road to Little Dribbling, Bryson instead decides that he will travel the longest distance possible in the UK, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath along what he deems the 'Bryson line'.

How could you go past a book that, rather than lecture you about the historic value of the church of Saint McSaintyface, bla bla  bla *yawn* read it all before, instead takes joy in exploring a town called Bognor Regis! Even towns that get an absolutely lashing by Bryson should be grateful, as his biting wit made me want to explore even the shittiest towns mentioned here.

If your type of travelling isn't to explore only the best of a country, but to peel back the layers and experience a country at its worst, the Bryson line methodology is a sound one. Rather than hop, skip and jumping over the seedier elements of a country, The road to Little Dribbling forces the reader to challenge the way they think about travel. Do you want to be the tourist that Miss Lavish so despises with their nose in the Baedeker (read Lonely Planet Guide) or are you up for getting your feet dirty?

I for one, know what my answer is.

3. Room with a View by E.M Forster

This isn't your modern travel narrative. I have read the more modern tales of women travelling abroad, and if you are looking for something directly relatable there are others I can highly recommend. Nevertheless whilst written in 1908, E.M Forster's characterisation of women is incredibly modern. George Emerson notes to Lucy (somewhat better written in the movie I must admit) that "this desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together... But I do love you surely in a better way than he does" He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms."

Further, in terms of sheer romance and drama, I can't go past this classic.

When I went on my first solo overseas trip at 19, my lasting memory of the first few weeks is one of guilelessness. I still love Mr. Beebe's description of Lucy Honeychurch, where he notes that "If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays it will be very exciting, both for us and for her". That is how I felt when I first left Australia. That I needed to 'live as a played'.

I feel like there comes a time, sometime in your late teens or early twenties, when you make the decision to 'live as you play' and to be true to yourself. Lucy's trip to Florence, and her subsequent return home act as a vehicle for her to start to know herself. There is much to relate to in Lucy's journey, not so much her adventures through Florence, but her growth and development through travel.

And this is why this book is a travel classic for me. Because the act of travel should not just be about exploring the culture, or setting a physical challenge, or conquering a mountain. The act of travel should first and foremost be about getting to know oneself.

Here is what I take from A Room with a View. That the bad experiences of travel, be it a south facing room without a view of the Arno or food poisoning in the Himalayas, are just as important as the magnificent experiences. In some ways it is these travel tragedies that define you more that the moments of wonder.

I also think that A Room with a View book tells an important aspect of travel that is often missed out of most narratives. The act of homecoming and the boredom, relief and joy can be hard to capture accurately. That sense that you have fundamentally changed as a person, while those around you have been frozen in time, concerned with the mundane and domestic. Yet in the end, you realise that perhaps you haven't changed as much as you hoped and there is something to be said for appreciating the mundane and the domestic.

So there are my top three, what are you wanderlust books?

xx

N