Travel adventure books are the favorite picks for a reader as it not only mirrors the joy of travel but also gives an overview of the various cultural and social outlook of life all over the world.
Part 1: Best 5 travel adventure books online
Travel adventure book 1.1: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Score: 4.5 stars out of 5
Tags: adventure, travel, outdoors
Excerpt: In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself.
Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.
Pros: The best travel adventure story that brings out the heart-wrenching drama showcasing what life is all about.
Cons: Despite its alluring look into the wilderness, the detailed descriptions often feel like a drag.
Travel adventure book 1.2: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Score: 4.5 stars out of 5
Tags: Travel, adventure, love
Excerpt: In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert 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. To find her true self, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world— all alone.
Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life.
India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way— unexpectedly.
Pros: The book brings out the journey of a woman in three different places and three different outlooks on life that is eating, praying and love
Cons: This travel adventure book acts more as a memoir than a look into the adventure.
Travel adventure book 1.3: On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Score: 4 stars out of 5
Tags: Travel, adventure, outdoors
Excerpt: On the Road swings to the rhythms of fifties underground America, jazz, sex, generosity, chill dawns, and drugs, with Sal Paradise and his hero Dean Moriarty, traveler and mystic, the living epitome of Beat making this travel adventure book one of the essential classics of all time
Pros: The book talks about a journey that’s alluring and filled with passion for life
Cons: The long narration feels like a lag at times.
Travel adventure book 1.4: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown by Paul Theroux
Score: 4 stars out of 5
Tags: Travel, adventure, outdoors
Excerpt: In Dark Star Safari the American novelist Paul Theroux takes readers through the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.
Pros: the author showcases the history and politics with insightful and intelligent writing
Cons: This Travel adventure book at times lightens the dark notes with its humorous take.
Travel adventure book 1.5: Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road by Kate Harris
Score: 4 stars out of 5
Tags: Travel, adventure, life
Excerpt: Lands of Lost Borders, winner of the 2018 Banff Adventure Travel Award and a 2018 Nautilus Award, is the chronicle of Harris&rsquo’s odyssey and an exploration of the importance of breaking the boundaries we set ourselves
As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved–that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler, and philosopher–had gone extinct. From her small-town home in Ontario, it seemed as if Marco Polo, Magellan, and their like had long ago mapped the whole earth. So she vowed to become a scientist and go to Mars.
To pass the time before she could launch into outer space, Kate set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule, then settled down to study at Oxford and MIT. Eventually, the truth dawned on her: an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines.
And Harris had soared most fully out of bounds right here on Earth, traveling a bygone trading route on her bicycle. So she quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Mel, this time determined to bike it from beginning to end.
Pros: A new insight to travel and the boundaries of life
Cons: The travel adventure books at times feel stretched unnecessarily.
Part 2: 5 Must-read outdoor adventure books
Travel adventure book 2.1: The Stranger in the Woods by the Woods by Michael Finkel
Score: 4 stars out of 5
Tags: Outdoor, Travel, Adventure
Excerpt: In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later when he was arrested for stealing food.
Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water and avoid freezing to death.
He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries. Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of his secluded life— why did he leave? what did he learn?— as well as the challenges he has faced since returning to the world.
Pros: the best outdoor adventure book that shows the dream of escaping modern life
Cons: Intense and complicated feelings at times feel unnecessary in this true story of outdoor adventure
Travel adventure book 2.2: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Score: 4 stars out of 5
Tags: Outdoor, trekking, non-fiction, travel
Excerpt: At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered, and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life.
With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone
Pros: the unique representation and suspense-filled intriguing writing makes this outdoor adventure book one of the best read
Cons: At times the story feels stretched while pointing out the feelings of the author
Travel adventure book 2.3: The Last Season by Eric Blehm
Score: 4.5 stars out of 5
Tags: Adventure, travel, outdoor
Excerpt: The Last Season tells the true story of the life and disappearance of Randy Morgenson who, over the course of twenty-eight summers spent in California&rsquo’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, became arguably the most celebrated ranger in the National Park Service&rsquo’s most adventurous unit.
For the solitary, introspective Morgenson, the job was a calling, and he became fiercely devoted to protecting the wilderness he loved from visitors— and those visitors from the wilderness. But the intense isolation and a series of personal setbacks took their toll, and when Morgenson vanished without a trace in 1996, many suspected suicide or foul play
The Last Season is an intriguing adventure narrative, complex psychological portrait, and compelling mystery. Was Morgenson murdered by one of the two disgruntled park visitors he had felt threatened by just the summer before his disappearance? Did the guilt he suffered after being unfaithful to his wife and his growing despair with the state of the Park Service drive him to take his own life?
Pros: One of the best intriguing outdoor and travel adventure stories with suspense and mystery all around
Cons: Even with its intriguing mix of adventure the story has its weak moments of boredom
Travel adventure book 2.4: The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson
Score: 4.5 stars out of 5:
Tags: travel, adventure, wild, outdoor
Excerpt: “ I had to stand there and watch while the rest of my life was determined by the shaky adhesion of a few millimeters of fractured ice and the dubious friction of a tiny point of metal in a hairline crack in a rock wall…”
Marking the climax of his climbing career, Joe Simpson confronts his fears and mountaineering history in an assault on the North Face of the Eiger. Since his epic battle for survival in the Andes, recounted in Touching the Void, Joe Simpson has experienced a life filled with adventure but marred by death.
He has endured the painful attrition of climbing friends in accidents that call into question the perilously exhilarating activity to which he has devoted his whole life. Probability is inexorably closing in.
The tragic loss of a close friend forces a momentous decision. It is time to turn his back on the mountains that he has loved. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see the last climb on the mile-high North Face of the Eiger as the cathartic finale to his climbing career.
Pros: One of the best travel adventure books that shows the fear of death, dreams, and a journey of life
Cons: Joe’s narrative feels too philosophical at times for one’s liking
Travel adventure book 2.5: The Beach by Alex Garland
Score: 4 stars out of 5
Tags: Travel, adventure, outdoors, journey
Excerpt: The classic story of paradise found – and lost.
Richard lands in East Asia in search of an earthly utopia. In Thailand, he is given a map promising an unknown island, a secluded beach – and a new way of life. What Richard finds when he gets there is breathtaking: more extraordinary, more frightening than his wildest dreams.
But how long can paradise survive here on Earth? And what lengths will Richard go to in order to save it?
Pros: One of the great, intriguing masterpieces and a travel adventure that’s chilly and unique
Cons: Slow-paced plotline
