Travel Writer's 10 Favorite Travel Books Of All Time

I’ve read a lot of books with travel at the heart. Some are great, some are preachy, some are hard to believe, and some read like history books without the maps. These 10 are the best.

Let’s start with the parameters (or lack thereof) that I used to create this list.

These books are on vacation. Photo by Link Hoang on Unsplash

After trying to be strict with various rules in the beginning, I made a pivot. I found myself cutting out some of my favorite books—books I want to share with you.

• The first rule I eventually scrapped was that the story has to take place in more than one country. That punts the work of Krakauer’s Into the Wild
• The second original guideline that I ultimately threw in the compost heap was that they need to be true stories. This rule dropped the Alchemist and The Beach from the first draft of my list.

In the end, I decided to just include my ten favorite books that I assume would identify as “travel books.”

Travel writing turns out to be a pretty big tent.

The category includes books of adventure, self-discovery, and coming-of-age. It includes fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, and whatever…