Any travel book that changed your life?

Have you ever read a travel book that changed the way you thought about the world, or that made you quit your job, pack up a knapsack and hit the road?

Well, I already quit my job and I travel whenever I can...but not yet because of a specific book.

I'm looking forward to reading other folks' posts and maybe I can hitch a ride on one of their suggestions.

Shantaram is on my TBR list because a friend loved it and now desperately wants to go to India.

Yes It was a book that I bought more than 30 years ago called Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa by Ed Buryn. It taught me that travel was not about money or privlege but about desire. It gave me the feeling that I could travel anywhere I wished.

I think the books I read by all sorts of travellers have encouraged me to feel I can do stuff by myself; I have undertaken some limited travels by myself and felt open to new experiences, talking to people etc.

Oh, and Paul Theroux taught me that sometimes it's just cool to be really, really grumpy!

I think Patrick Leigh Fermor made me appreciate the world more - well Europe in particular, but also the way he looked at the world broadened my outlook.

Back in the mid eighties I was visiting a friend during the summer, and late one night started reading Granta 10: Travel Writing. This edition was dedicated to all things travel and I was hooked. This was also my first time reading Granta, which is a quite remarkable anthology series in itself.

Marquez, McEwen, Hoban, Raban, Fenton, O'Hanlon, Thubrun, Gellhorn, Chatwin, Holmes, Lewis, Bellow, Marnham, Morris, Theroux. Brody, and Weaver. All in one place!!! Cover to cover that night. That was definitely a change in the way I looked at writing.

Yes, I read Granta 10. It's hard to find them anymore in the US. I read On the Road when I was 21, and that really inspired me to travel. Also the fiction and travel narrative of Paul Theroux. I just discovered Jonathan Raban and he inspires the same feeling to dust off the backpack and head out.

~ 7 interesting you join the travel and fiction of Theroux - I adore the travel and really don't like the fiction! I wonder why!

I read "A Fortune Teller Told Me" while backpacking through Vietnam and Cambodia. What a great book about traveling slowly and appreciating the journey along the way. It helped give me the push to take leave without pay from my job and to finish my own travelogue about living and traveling in the Middle East in 2002 and 2003, which thankfully, came out last year.

Best,
Ben

Benjamin Orbach
author of Live from Jordan
www.benjaminorbach.com