Travel books you should read

Wild greenery, splendid mountains, seamless beaches and breathtaking scenery are some vivid visuals that come straight to one’s mind upon hearing the word ‘travel’. Exploring new places and creating everlasting memories while travelling is something that everyone looks forward to. The sound of birds chirping and the music of river water lapping over rocks makes everyone appreciate the beauty of Mother Nature.

In the hustle and bustle of our fast paced lives, travelling helps us to take a break and soothe our nerves. However, it is also true that our busy lives do not always allow us to take out enough time to travel. In such times, books can help us travel places and wander around without actually going there. “I read; I travel; I become”, is what Derek Walcott (poet and playwright) once said. Thus, books have intense power in themselves to make us delve into the beauty of nature and to travel in our mind.

Here we list down travel books that you can add to your reading list!

(Photo: Canva)

The book begins as the record of a journey on foot through coastal East Anglia. From Lowestoft to Bungay, Sebald's own story becomes the conductor of evocations of different people and cultures of Chateaubriand, Thomas Browne, Swinburne and Conrad, of fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms. The result is a rich meditation on the past via a melancholy trip along the Suffolk coast, and an intricately patterned book on the transience of all things human.

Pic credit: W. W. Norton & Company

The book is a celebration of 38 foodie tales from around the world. It is a compilation of short stories from famous chefs, writers and foodies around the world, who all share a love of food and the power it has to bring people together.

Pic credit: Lonely Planet

The book is a witty and irreverent look at the world and a celebration of the glory of train travel. It takes the readers on a route that covers 45,000 miles - almost twice the circumference of the earth - coasting along the world's most remarkable railways- from the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet's Qinghai railway to silk-sheeted splendour on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. The author offers a wonderfully vivid account of life, history and culture in a book that will makes everyone laugh out loud - and reflect on what it means to be a global citizen.

Pic credit: Bloomsbury Publishing

The book is a travel guide with a difference. It delves into 2 very important questions-why we go to a place and how we might become more fulfilled by doing so. With the help of a selection of writers, artists and thinkers - including Flaubert, Edward Hopper, Wordsworth and Van Gogh - this book provides invaluable insights into everything from holiday romance to hotel mini-bars, airports to sight-seeing. It tries to explain why we really went in the first place - and helpfully suggests how we might be happier on our journeys.

Pic credit: Hamish Hamilton UK

The book is about Guy Stagg, who in 2013, walked from Canterbury to Jerusalem. Though a non-believer, he began the pilgrimage after suffering several years of mental illness, hoping the ritual would heal him. For ten months he hiked alone on ancient paths, crossing ten countries and more than 5,500 kilometers. Travelling without support, he had to rely each night on the charity of strangers. The book offers a unique insight into contemporary faith, and lays bare the author's struggle to escape the past and walk towards recovery.

Pic credit: Picador

The book centers on Elizabeth Gilbert, a woman in her early thirties, who had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want- husband, country home, successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion. This book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature, against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence on the Indonesian island of Bali.

Pic credit: Riverhead Books

The book is a travelogue and memoir in which Delisle recounts his trip to Jerusalem, parts of Palestine and the West Bank, as well as within Israel, with his two young children and his long-term partner, Nadège. It expertly lays the groundwork for a cultural road map of contemporary Jerusalem and eloquently examines the impact of the conflict on the lives of people on both sides of the wall while drolly recounting the quotidian: checkpoints, traffic jams, and holidays.

Pic credit: RHUK

The book is the chronicle of Harris’s odyssey and an exploration of the importance of breaking the boundaries we set for ourselves, an examination of the stories borders tell, the restrictions they place on nature and humanity, and a meditation on the existential need to explore—the essential longing to discover what in the universe we are doing here. It explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that can never fully be mapped. Weaving adventure and philosophy with the history of science and exploration, it celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other.

Pic credit: Dey Street Books