non-fiction books by women that inspire travel and adventure
Discover inspiring non-fiction books by women that fuel wanderlust and adventure. Explore captivating travel memoirs and true stories that will ignite your passion for exploration and the great outdoors.
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Dear Exile
by Hilary Liftin
A funny and moving story told through the letters of two women nurturing a friendship as they are separated by distance, experience, and time. Close friends and former college roommates, Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery promised to write when Kate's Peace Corps assignment took her to Africa. Over the course of a single year, they exchanged an offbeat and moving series of letters from rural Kenya to New York City and back again. Kate, an idealistic teacher, meets unexpected realities ranging from poisonous snakes and vengeful cows to more serious hazards: a lack of money for education; a student body in revolt. Hilary, braving the singles scene in Manhattan, confronts her own realities, from unworthy suitors to job anxiety and first apartment woes. Their correspondence tells--with humor, warmth, and vivid personal detail--the story of two young women navigating their twenties in very different ways, and of the very special friendships we are sometimes lucky enough to find.
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Tales of a Female Nomad
by Rita Golden Gelman
The true story of an ordinary woman living an extraordinary existence all over the world. âGelman doesnât just observe the cultures she visits, she participates in them, becoming emotionally involved in the peopleâs lives. This is an amazing travelogue.â âBooklist At the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita Golden Gelman left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of travelling the world, connecting with people in cultures all over the globe. In 1986, Rita sold her possessions and became a nomad, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico, sleeping with sea lions on the Galapagos Islands, and residing everywhere from thatched huts to regal palaces. She has observed orangutans in the rain forest of Borneo, visited trance healers and dens of black magic, and cooked with women on fires all over the world. Ritaâs example encourages us all to dust off our dreams and rediscover the joy, the exuberance, and the hidden spirit that so many of us bury when we become adults.
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Four Corners
by Kira Salak
At age 20 Salak set off to become the first European women to traverse the South Pacific Island. In present-tense, journal-style only without any dates, she recounts the geographical journey and personal awakening. There is no scholarly paraphernalia. c. Book News Inc.
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No Touch Monkey!
by Ayun Halliday
From taming the wild dog packs of Bali to requiring the services of a bonesetter in Sumatra, Ayun Halliday offers up the best of her itinerant foibles as examples of how not to travel abroad.
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Holy Cow
by Sarah Macdonald
In her twenties, journalist Sarah Macdonald backpacked around India and came away with a lasting impression of heat, pollution and poverty. So when an airport beggar read her palm and told her she would return to Indiaâand for loveâshe screamed, âNever!â and gave the country, and him, the finger. But eleven years later, the prophecy comes true. When the love of Sarahâs life is posted to India, she quits her dream job to move to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. For Sarah this seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love, and it almost kills her, literally. Just settled, she falls dangerously ill with double pneumonia, an experience that compels her to face some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void. âI must find peace in the only place possible in India,â she concludes. âWithin.â Thus begins her journey of discovery through India in search of the meaning of life and death. Holy Cow is Macdonaldâs often hilarious chronicle of her adventures in a land of chaos and contradiction, of encounters with Hinduism, Islam and Jainism, Sufis, Sikhs, Parsis and Christians and a kaleidoscope of yogis, swamis and Bollywood stars. From spiritual retreats and crumbling nirvanas to war zones and New Delhi nightclubs, it is a journey that only a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love lifeâand her sanityâcan survive.
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Beyond the Sky and the Earth
by Jamie Zeppa
A woman who lived for three years in Bhutan chronicles her extraordinary experiences in this Buddhist kingdom on the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. Reprint.
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Desert Places
by Robyn Davidson
The author tells of her experiences traveling through a year's migratory cycle with the Rabari nomads of northwest India in 1992.
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Tracks
by Robyn Davidson
The author recounts her almost two-thousand mile journey across Australia with nothing but a dog and some camels for company.
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Somebody's Heart Is Burning
by Tanya Shaffer
At the heart of her tale are the profound, complex, often challenging relationships she forms with those she meets along the way.".
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Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals
by Wendy Dale
From salsa dancing in a rum-induced haze and struggling to exercise in Colombia (âthe guerillas were using the track again todayâ), to crossing international borders unconventionally and dodging bombs in Lebanon (âthe good news was that they were âsmall bombsââ), Wendy somehow manages to find herself in the midst of hysterical, adventurous, and often illegal situations. Case in pointâevery time she heads to Costa Rica, she is forced to visit another prison. Although a jail may not be everyoneâs idea of a place to ?nd a date, Wendy soon falls in love with a man, a country, and its people and risks everything she has to clear his name. Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals is a bumpy and hilarious ride in which Wendy discovers that a successful vacationâmuch like that elusive thing, happinessâcan be found in some of the most unlikely places imaginable.