28 Best Travel Books

Sal Paradise leaves New York with his reckless friend Dean Moriarty, hitchhiking back and forth across postwar America in search of excitement and meaning. Long nights of jazz, liquor, and endless highways blur into a restless portrait of friendship and freedom.

Travels with Charley recounts Steinbeck’s 1960 road trip across the United States with his poodle, Charley, as he drives a camper named Rocinante, meeting strangers and taking stock of a changing country he had spent decades writing about.

After a wrenching divorce, Gilbert spends a year traveling alone through Italy, India, and Indonesia, seeking pleasure, spiritual grounding, and a new sense of self in a journey that blends confession, humor, and honest questions about happiness.

Bryson travels through Australia, marveling at its deadly wildlife, vast empty spaces, and cheerful inhabitants. He explores the country's history and geography with a mix of awe and terror.

Patrick Leigh Fermor recalls the first part of his youthful walk across Europe toward Constantinople, reaching Hungary in this volume. Encounters, landscapes, history, and architecture form a portrait of a continent on the threshold of profound change.

Bruce Chatwin travels through Patagonia in search of local histories, unusual encounters, and half-forgotten legends. His account interweaves landscapes and personal observations with stories of Welsh settlers, wandering outsiders, and figures such as the outlaw Butch Cassidy.

Paul Theroux recounts a railway journey across Europe and Asia, with the trains themselves becoming stages for encounters with fellow travelers. Routes including the Orient Express and Trans-Siberian Railway link observations of places with conversations and railway routines.

Robert Byron’s diary follows a 1933 journey through the Middle East, Iran, and Afghanistan in search of architectural treasures. Descriptions of buildings mingle with comic encounters and travel difficulties, recording both artistic discoveries and the experience of the road.

After her mother's death and the collapse of her marriage, Cheryl Strayed impulsively sets out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail alone. With little preparation, she confronts the physical demands of the journey alongside the losses she carries.

Bryson attempts to hike the Appalachian Trail with his out-of-shape and recovering alcoholic friend, Stephen Katz. Facing bears, bugs, and difficult terrain, the duo delivers a hilarious account of friendship and the American wilderness.

William Least Heat-Moon recounts a journey through America’s backroads and small towns. His encounters with residents, observations of local life, and personal reflections form a travel narrative about the people and places beyond the country’s familiar highways.

Alain de Botton explores why people travel and why journeys sometimes disappoint. Combining personal experiences with artists' and writers' insights, he considers anticipation, landscapes, curiosity, and the habits that influence what travelers notice.

Traveling through Nepal with biologist George Schaller, Matthiessen searches for blue sheep and, maybe, a glimpse of the snow leopard. The journey becomes a deep book of grief, attention, and spiritual inquiry.

Leaving the London fashion business behind, Eric Newby joins Hugh Carless on an expedition to Afghanistan’s Nuristan region. Their attempt to climb Mir Samir becomes a comic travel memoir of inadequate preparation, demanding terrain, and encounters along the way.

Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad travels through a country transformed by invasion, occupation, and sectarian conflict. Personal experience and reporting follow ordinary people and armed groups, examining how war reshapes communities, identities, and the places people once called home.

Wilfred Thesiger recounts journeys through Arabia’s Empty Quarter with Bedouin companions in the years after the Second World War. His descriptions of desert travel and personal relationships record a way of life facing rapid outside change.

Paul Theroux travels overland from Cairo to Cape Town, returning to Africa decades after teaching there. Journeys by train, bus, boat, and other transport bring encounters with residents and reflections on how the continent has changed.

British backpacker Richard follows a map to a secluded Thai beach where travelers have established an apparently idyllic community. As he joins their hidden life, the effort to preserve paradise exposes tensions beneath its promise of escape.

Tahir Shah moves his family from London to Casablanca and buys a house that needs extensive restoration. Renovations, local relationships, and beliefs about the property shape a memoir of learning to live in an unfamiliar cultural setting.

An Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way, he meets a series of mentors who teach him about listening to his heart and following his Personal Legend.

Drawing on his own experiences, Orwell describes working as a kitchen hand in Paris and drifting through hostels and streets in London. The book offers clear eyed reporting on poverty, casual work, and the small routines that keep people going.

David Grann follows the trail of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who vanished in the Amazon in 1925 while searching for an ancient city. It is part biography, part historical mystery, and part firsthand journey into the jungle that consumed him.

Rolf Potts offers a guide to making extended world travel part of ordinary life. Practical advice and reflections explore the independent mindset behind vagabonding and the possibilities of spending more time discovering unfamiliar places.

Eric Weiner travels to countries with very different reputations for happiness, exploring how culture and place shape well-being. Conversations with residents, researchers, and thinkers combine with comic self-examination as he tests assumptions about what makes people content.

A walking journey through Suffolk becomes a meditation on history, memory, and decay. W. G. Sebald connects landscapes, encounters, and abandoned places with stories reaching far beyond England, following the traces of human activity and its quieter catastrophes.

Mark Adams, an inexperienced adventurer, retraces Hiram Bingham’s 1911 exploration of Peru with an Australian guide. His trek combines physical mishaps and encounters with Inca sites with an investigation of the history behind Machu Picchu’s rediscovery.

Peter Mayle recounts the first year he and his wife spend in a farmhouse in the Lubéron. Renovations, mistral winds, village characters, and unforgettable meals turn a dream move to Provence into a funny, affectionate memoir.

Tony and Maureen Wheeler recount the travels and business decisions that led to the creation of Lonely Planet. Their memoir follows the company from its first self-published guide through expansion, setbacks, and the personal demands of building a travel-publishing business.