The last time you really heard from me was over one year ago. Since then you have read my travel stories but little else. If you did not know any better you would think that I am still traveling the world non-stop by myself.

I am not.

I spent months living a stationary life in Colombia, followed by London, Philadelphia, and back to London where I am living now by London’s Sloane Square.

The reason why I have toned down my non-stop solo travels is probably maturity.

I had a blast overall. I am so happy that I traveled and its a huge part of what I have become now. I graduated university in December 2009 with the plans to travel indefinitely. Since then I have done just that. I did so much that I have dreamed of doing. Extreme sports, wandering through sketchy neighborhoods, visiting world-class art museums, partying in some of the best clubs in the world, and meeting a handful of really special friends.

Though two years must seem like an awfully short time to reach these conclusions about travel. On the other hand, I really did start traveling independently around five or six years ago. That was enough time to visit most of the countries I really wanted, which is actually a very little number…Brazil, Mexico, etc. I made some very good friends around the world in a handful of countries. Some of those I have met up with in more than four countries, not even on the same trip.

On the other hand, there comes a point where there is not much more to gain with non-stop solo travel. Doing so began to make me question what kind of life is traveling solo non-stop. After a while, what is the point? It is fun but the most important things in life are missing; namely family, friends, love, and belonging to something.

I can see that throughout the travel blogosphere many other long-term travelers are reaching the same conclusions. That is not to say myself or other long-term travelers are giving up. Far from that because travel is my favorite hobby. And that’s really all that travel is, a hobby. Unfortunately it is one of those unique passions that does not let you have it all. You must choose between the hobby and a balanced life.

In the coming week I am going to write about my thoughts and plans for different aspects of my life:

• Resettling: Despite the opportunity to be anywhere in the world I did sign 12 month lease for an apartment
• New Routine: No longer is my routine only traveling. I have worked up some new things to do every day.
• Family: This has become increasingly more important and I will need to change some aspects of life to accommodate them.
• +++ More!

I read a lot. I like to follow blogs related to my style of travel, lifestyle, and countries I am interested in. Over time I have collected a list of blogs I regularly follow, though some more than others. If you enjoy reading my blog I guarantee you will like some of these even more. Below is my list in a somewhat random order. If I had to choose my favorites they would be websites like RooshV, Stop Having a Boring Life, Tynan, Travelvice, and Wandering Earl.

• Adventurous Kate
  • http://www.adventurouskate.com/
• Bacon is Magic
  • www.baconismagic.ca/
• Cuaderno Inedito
  • http://cuadernoinedito.wordpress.com/
• Art of Backpacking
  • http://artofbackpacking.com/
• Banana Skin Flipflops
  • http://bananaskinflipflops.wordpress.com/
• Brooke vs. the World
  • http://brookevstheworld.com/
• C’est Christine
  • http://www.cestchristine.com/
• ContemporaryNomad.com
  • http://www.contemporarynomad.com/
• David Lida
  • http://davidlida.com/
• Don’t Step in the Poop
  • http://dontstepinthepoop.com/
• Expat Chronicles
  • http://www.expat-chronicles.com/
• FOGG Odyssey
  • http://foggodyssey.com/
• GloboTreks Travels
  • http://www.globotreks.com/
• Idea Economy
  • http://www.ideaeconomy.net/
• Jasmine Wanders Travel Blog
  • http://jasminewanders.com/
• Legal Nomads
  • http://www.legalnomads.com/
• Maverick Traveler
  • http://www.mavericktraveler.com/
• Medellin Living
  • http://medellinliving.com/
• Nerdy Nomad
  • http://www.nerdynomad.com/
• Neverending Voyage
  • http://www.neverendingvoyage.com/
• Ryan Goes Abroad
  • http://ryangoesabroad.com/
• Sovereign Man
  • http://www.sovereignman.com/
• The World or Bust
  • http://www.theworldorbust.com/

• Backpack with Brock
  • http://BackpackWithBrock.com
• El Vagabundo
  • http://martivagabundohamilton.blogspot.com/
• Exile Lifestyle
  • http://exilelifestyle.com/
• Fly Brother
  • http://fly-brother.blogspot.com/
• foXnoMad
  • http://www.foxnomad.com/
• Freedonia Post
  • http://freedoniapost.com/
• GoBackpacking
  • http://gobackpacking.com/
• Joey Goes Global
  • http://www.joeygoesglobal.com/
• Life of Brett
  • http://www.lifeofbrett.com/
• Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like
  • http://stuffexpataidworkerslike.com
• Rerunaround
  • http://rerunaround.com
• Roosh V
  • http://rooshv.com/
• Stop Having A Boring Life
  • http://stophavingaboringlife.com/
• The Travelvice Travelogue
  • http://travelvice.com
• Todd’s Wanderings
  • http://www.toddswanderings.com
• Twenty-Something Travel
  • http:///twenty-somethingtravel
• Tynan | Life Outside the Box
  • http://tynan.net/
• Vagabond Quest
  • http://www.vagabondquest.com/
• Wandering Earl
  • http://www.wanderingearl.com/

Adventurous Kate

http://www.adventurouskate.com/

Lately I’ve been having a lot of conversations about ways to minimize the cost of holidays. Something that I don’t have a tremendous amount of first-hand experience with is holidaying on a budget when you’re traveling as a family as opposed to a lone traveler or young couple. The amount off additional expenditure that my friends who have children need to factor in is astonishing.

It’s not simply the additional costs of flights, extra rooms and an increased food budget; it’s the little things like new clothes, special diaper bags and so on. Even things I never would have thought of like beach toys and entertainment and the sometimes extortionate charges for a babysitting service so that Mum and Dad can actually have one night of relaxation on the vacation.

I thought that I would share a tip from my friend Amy. With three little kiddies and another one on the way, she and John, her husband, have been through the trials of attempting to enjoy a break while looking after their children and still trying to put money into college funds. Amy’s top tip for family holidays is to look into vacation home rentals rather than a resort or hotel accommodation. Because you’re renting from the owner directly you can often cut out the costs of a middleman, and many of these owners are simply leasing out their own vacation home when they aren’t using it, rather than running a business. These factors can mean that you end up saving a nice bit of money.

The added benefit, apart from conserving your budget, is that these vacation rentals will normally have all the comforts of home. A fully-equipped kitchen means that the children’s snacks and any special dietary needs can be as easily organized as at home, and babies’ bottles can be heated as and when needed. Any special requirements or information can be arranged with the owner ahead of time, leaving you free to relax and enjoy your holiday without unduly stressing or upsetting your family.

Note: This is a guest post

This may be hard for some younger readers of this blog to believe, but once upon a time, booking a hotel was a strenuous and confusing process.

Back in the 1990s, I was a salesman for a rapidly-growing technology company. If you’ll permit me to slip into corporatese, I sold “middleware solutions” to other corporations around the world. Whenever I had to go on a business trip or on vacation, I’d have to call up someone from a profession that no longer really exists: a travel agent.

In those days, we all relied on agents with extensive contacts, lists of hotels, and up-to-date pricing. It was expensive to book anything and time-consuming. I remember that I’d have to instruct a secretary (that I shared with another salesman) to contact our travel agent, who would then fax me a long list of hotels, prices, and a proposed agenda for my trip. The whole process would cost me a lot of money, time, and stress. The agent would copy over something from her gigantic binder of international hotels, I’d have to pick from the list, and then call her back with my selection.

Don’t listen to anyone who reminisces about the “good old days.” The good old  days sucked. My company was headquartered in London, where I would frequently need to fly in to France, Germany, Spain, and even Eastern Europe.

I probably spent weeks of my life just paging through those faxes as I shuttled from London to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Zurich.

Nowadays, I’m in business for myself, so I don’t have a secretary or a travel agent. EasyToBook has replaced both of them. The interface moves quickly, has an attractive color scheme, and always finds the right hotel for my budget in the area I want in three seconds or less.

One feature that I’m particularly impressed with is its event search engine. This year, I decided that I wanted to run the le Marathon de Paris again, after missing it for five years in a row.

All I need to do is punch in “Paris Marathon” into their engine, et voilà! It shows locations in my price range close to where the event starts.

It has detailed, well-written reviews, user ratings, discounts of up to 80%, and a broad listing of hotels around the world.

What I like best, though, is the clean interface and the fast-loading suggestion feature. It works especially well when I book reservations from my Android. Instead of typing out the full place name on my mobile keyboard, it finishes it for me in less than a half-second with relevant suggestions. If I’m punching in the name of one of my favorite hotels, it completes it for me before I can finish.

It’s not bogged down by ads, provides relevant suggestions for my profile and what I’m looking for, and shows listings in multiple currencies and languages.

EasyToBook focuses solely on hotel reservations, it’s far more useful to me than most other booking sites that do package deals. I rarely go for packages because I have a high-level membership on an international airline, so my flights are usually covered by my frequent-flier miles already.

You’ll be impressed with the speed, the design sensibility, and the low prices.

Even if you already use a different service, go try it out.

The story of my job stress is the same as those of any other moderately successful professional. Not only do my employees – and my bosses – expect for me to check my Blackberry every five minutes, even on weekends, but I have a long commute into the city. I make just enough money to make me feel middle class on some basic level, but not enough to actually enjoy it.

It seems like every morning I wake up this winter, it looks like this outside.

This winter, we’ve had snow in just about every state in America. Even my parents down in Arizona have been snowed upon this season. After Christmas a few weeks ago, as I was scraping the ice from my windshield, was struck by a sudden realization. I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to go to work that day, nor the next week. Nor the week after. This wasn’t necessarily a crisis – I’ve earned the vacation time, and the small company would explode without me keeping everything together. I knew what I had to do. I took out my Blackberry, text messaged my secretary to call in sick, and then began scanning for flights to Tenerife.

The low prices flabbergasted me. One of the up-shots of being a working man in a horrific economy is that guys like me can jet around the world using the money that I dig out from behind the couch. I picked a flight for the following day and reserved a hotel room as part of the package deal.

I fled the snow for the endless ocean.

I opened up my car door and put my ice-scraper back into the glove compartment. Then, I headed back into my house to start packing. I felt at ease, in control of my life. I contemplated leaving my Blackberry behind – just so I could enjoy the sound of the waves smacking against the sand of the Canary Islands without worrying about the rude vibration of my mobile against my hip signifying another round of office drama – but I ultimately lacked the courage.

Blessedly, now that I’m tapping in this post from a seaside café, sipping espresso infused with some sort of strange booze, I have the damn thing on silent. When I’ve gone sailing, at least, the service is patchy. I preface my e-mail to my fellow office drones stuck in my old time zone: “Sorry I didn’t get your message, I was out on a catamaran with my new petite amie, Bridgitte.”

"Elle s'appele Bridgitte." My high school French was just enough to make my Canary Island vacation that much more fun.

The glowers that I’ll get when I return to the office will be more than made up for by the gloating I can enjoy now.

South America is for the adventurous; South America is an adventure. Everyone has to visit this part of the world at some stage in life.

Here are a few travel tips for getting to some of the most popular destinations….

1. Buenos Aires, Argentina

Buenos Aires is the capital and main gateway to Argentina. Here you can learn to tango and sample an Argentine asado.

You should book flights to Ministro Pistarini International Airport if you want to visit Buenos Aires. This airport is just 14 miles from Buenos Aires and it is the main hub for Aerolíneas Argentinas, which offers connections between Europe, the USA and Argentina.

1. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Everyone loves Rio because of its beaches, scenery and iconic landmarks. Galeão International Airport is just 12 miles from Rio de Janeiro city centre and TAM Airlines is the main company which offers international flights to Rio. If you want to travel from Rio to another destination in Brazil or South America, you should look for airfares with Gol Airlines which is a Brazilian low cost airline.

1. Santiago, Chile

Santiago is the capital of Chile and it is the perfect base for discovering the city and going for day trips to the Andes, Valparaiso, and Viña del Mar. Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport is just 9.3 miles from Santiago and it is the hub for Lan Chile which offers international connections. Sky Airline is a Chilean low cost airline which operates domestic flights and connections to other cities in South America.

1. Cusco, Peru

Cusco is one of the most visited cities in Peru. Not only is it the historic capital of the Inca Empire, but it is also a World Heritage Site and gateway to the famous Machu Picchu. International flights usually have one stopover in Lima before a connection flight to Cusco Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport. Check for flights with LAN Perú and TACA Perú.

After spending a day visiting the art museums, devouring tremendous amounts of seafood and a guinea pig, I took a connecting flight to Cusco – also scandalously inexpensive. The dollar buys you decadence in Peru.

Cusco itself reminded me of an ancient Roman city. The Incans were more industrious than you might think. Some of the ruins of their terraced farms still exist. The peasants in the area still use the hand-plowing farming techniques in the mountains that their ancient forebears did. The buildings in Cuzco itself – at least in the city center – have foundations of granite that were originally laid by the Incans. In the outlying areas, the peasants still build their homes with mud bricks. Guinea pigs roam semi-domesticated, fertilizing the fields and supplying meat.

On the morning that I departed for the Inca trail with my travelling party, I drank at least a few invigorating cups of coca tea. In the surrounding villages, peasants sell bags full of the leaves to chew to sojourners. It’s safe as long as you avoid swallowing the leaves.

Look at where you are. Now look at this picture. Sadly, you aren't in Peru. But you could be very soon.

Everyone should experience the Inca trail at least once. It’s unlike most others hikes in that it has a ready-made narrative attached to it. You can see at least a dozen Incan ruins on the way to your final destination of the sacred city of Machu Pichu. You almost trace the route on where the Incans fled the Spanish conquistadors and their native allies. Once you arrive, you can hike back or return on the train to Cusco.

This kind of trip remains in memory for the rest of your life. Airlines like Aerolíneas Argentinas run inexpensive flights to Lima from all over the world every day. Regardless of your budget, this trip is within reach.

Travelling in the United States of America can be an absolutely amazing experience. There are so many different states that have completely different looks and backgrounds to them. Thanks to the size and horizontal length of America there is pretty much any environment that anyone could ever want right here in the states. One of the most commonly travelled states is New York. Thanks to its location on the East Coast it has a deep and rich history that anyone can enjoy.

Tip 1: Accommodation

Accommodation can get quite pricy, however it is not necessarily the case if you book a cheap New York hotel in advance or get a nice deal. NY is full of different types of properties: cheap hotels, hostels and especially motels. Before securing your deal, do have a look on reviews and cleanliness of the property to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

Tip 2: Coming to NY

Assuming that you booked your cheap hotel in New York City, there are multiple ways to get out to New York. If you are from US, many families will rent RVs and drive up there. With an RV you get the best of both worlds. You'll save quite a bit of money when the only other alternative is flying. Flying a full family of 5 or more people can be extremely expensive. When you rent an RV you're going to save quite a bit of money and you'll be able to have fun on the trip. Make the RV trip part your holiday. You can also use it with you want to explore places outside NY.

Coming from overseas, only leaves you with a flight as an option, but you can still find it cheap. Do have a look for nice deal and cheapest rates from more than just 1 company.
Tip 3: Get a map
Once you are in New York there are plenty of things that every tourist is able to do. Oftentimes, on the first day there, people will jump on a bus that gives tours of New York. They'll take you to all of the famous places such as Time Square. They'll be able to tell you of the history of the place you're visiting as well which makes for a very fun trip. If you're trying to save money, however, consider investing in a nice map. You'll be able to find a map for not very much money and once you have a map you have access to everything you could ever want.

(image: in Central Park by Ed Yourdon)

Tip 4: Eating in NY
Another way to save money once you're in New York is to eat in. Your hotel is probably not going to offer the cheapest of meals. Rather, you should consider buying a cheap hotel that has a full kitchen range in it. This way you can make your own food that you're comfortable with and you'll be able to save. If you have the money or just feel like splurging, eating out in New York can be a delicious thing. There are many restaurants thanks to the rich tourist industry found in New York. One great Japanese restaurant is located at #967 Amsterdam Ave. It's called Sushi Sama and it's known as one of the best Japanese places that can be had for very cheap.

There are many ways to save money when it comes to going for holiday. Money shouldn't be an issue when it comes to holiday. Get out there and have fun!

(image: Sushi by Alexandre Chang)

There becomes a time when you make the adjustment from gap-year or short-term traveler to full-time international travel. In this case travel insurance just doesn’t cut it anymore since it is meant as a supplement to regular health insurance.

In my case I graduated from university in the United States nearly one year ago which took away my eligibility to share my father’s health insurance plan. On a side note next year i’ll rejoin his plan because of the new health insurance regulations that allow anyone under 26 to be a part of a parent’s plan. At that point i’ll buy travel insurance again. As someone who is self – employed with my own one man company I had no option but to find my own private health insurance. The trick being that I needed international coverage which is not commonly offered with most health insurance plans.

I ultimately chose HTH Worldwide Global Citizen which is an Aetna PPO. The reason I have waited so long to talk about my choice is that any review of an insurance plan is useless unless the reviewer has used it. At this point after ten months on the plan I have successfully filed numerous claims with HTH Worldwide valued at nearly $10,000. This includes care in the United States, Hong Kong, and Japan. The company has fairly reimbursed my claims, covering the appropriate amount as indicated in the terms of my plan. I have both paid doctors directly and later filed claims with HTH Worldwide. I have also had doctors bill HTH Worldwide directly and have them send me a bill.

With the most important part of the review out of the way I am going to tell you about why HTH Worldwide is a good choice for the permanent travel, location independent professional type.

“When outside the U.S., connect to our network of international medical providers through premier on-line tools: browse doctor and hospital profiles, schedule appointments, and in most cases, have HTH make direct payments to providers.”

“When inside the U.S., access our comprehensive provider network made possible by Aetna. One of the largest networks available, the Aetna Passport PPO provides more than 700,000 doctors and 4,400 hospitals for you to choose from.”

Now you can choose a specific plan based on how high a deductible you want. See the chart below for the options.

This becomes a good deal when used abroad if you believe in the idea of health insurance being useful in general. I personally browsed the members only area of the website for recommendations of hospitals and specific doctors. They have a system where the company can book an appointment but they generally are not great at this. I just checked that the doctor or hospital was in my network and booked an appointment myself which ensured a quicker turnaround time. Its not difficult because if the hospital is listed on the website they will have English speaking staff. Other times I walked into random hospitals and made appointments myself, even if they were out of network.

Some important things to note:

1. Copay waived when visiting an HTH Worldwide contracted provider.
2. Deductibles are Per Person per Policy Period.
3. The Out of Pocket Maximum is calculated by adding the deductible and coinsurance maximum together.
4. Amounts paid to satisfy a deductible are credited to all other deductibles, both inside and outside the U.S. For example, if you satisfy your Outside U.S. deductible, this amount is credited to the U.S. (In Network) and U.S. (Outside Network) deductible requirement.
5. An Insured Person only has to satisfy his/her Out of Pocket Maximum once a Year for all services received outside of the U.S. and in the U.S.

The plans also come with basic preventative and primary care where the deductible is waived for

1. Primary Care Office Visits
2. Office Visits/examination
3. Immunizations, Lab work & X-rays
4. Routine Pap Smears, annual mammogram
5. PSA For Men
6. Annual Physical Examination/Health Screening
7. Diagnostic lab work & X-rays

As I mentioned a little bit earlier every plan comes with access to the members area. It’s pretty useful because you can file/check claim status online as well as make appointments.

Overall with very few choices available for people traveling more or less full-time this is a legitimate health insurance provider. I remember making a list of 2-3 other companies but what HTH offered was more in line with what I needed.

I’m walking down the streets of a wealthy east coast suburb with all 40 pounds of my belongings for the indefinite future. The destination?  The train station to begin my next journey after a month of wasting away in the United States. I had a really nice time staying with family and seeing some old friends but I didn’t do anything. I had little purpose here waking up whenever I wanted to do nothing but laze away watching TV and occasionally going out. I expected this would happen, enjoyed parts of this, and built up an incredible amount of anticipation for my next trip which as you will read is fundamentally different than others I have taken.

I am trading my usual international travels to live abroad in a foreign country. On this trip I am going to live in Medellin, Colombia for up to four months, maybe more. Then again I could change my mind in an instant to continue traveling.

But this trip is about establishing one of a few potential “home bases”. In the coming years I can’t just keep traveling because as someone much wiser than I wrote, “I’d been travelling for most of the 90′s, and far from becoming the fulfilled, broad-minded person that legend tells us travel creates, I found that I felt like a ghost — seen and heard occasionally, but completely lacking in substance and permanence” –English Teacher X. I am starting to feel similar emotions myself. What I think would be an ideal compromise are a few “home bases” around the world complete with a group of close friends in each city.

As being away from everything I know brings perspective, I am appreciating the importance of family and life-long friends. For so long I wanted to travel aimlessly, leaving behind any semblance of a home base. I wanted true independence, traveling from place to place, only visiting old friends and family on occasion. While I have done this many times in the past I never actually gave up my home base of friends until this year.

I can report back that after four months of aimlessly traveling without the comfort of a home base in the back of my mind, this concept just doesn’t work in my reality. The past four months of travel were the same as any other year. The difference is that after all of these amazing experiences I had few people to share them with that I would ever see again.

What I eventually want is to develop 2-3 of my own bases (friends, apartment, etc.) in foreign cities and split my time in each throughout the year. I’d then take shorter, 1-3 week mini-vacations to new international destinations whenever I please.

Of course what makes me most scared about this trip is the social part. Will I make new friends? If I make new friends will they become close friends? I’m not going into this experience completely cold. I have some acquaintances, both locals and foreigners living here. That includes a girl I dated about 4 months ago last time I was here.

If it all works out like I am thinking within the next few days I will rent a sweet furnished apartment. I’m going to spend US$1,000 plus per month for something really comfortable. I have made a list of appointments to check out apartments that have all the extra facilities like a rooftop pool, sauna, steam room, gym, doorman, maid, security, and so on. Though there is a good chance I’ll go for one of these with a roommate because most I have found so far are advertised by renters looking for one.

Once I have a semi-permanent place to stay I’m going taking salsa lessons. I don’t like playing the “oh I’m a foreigner so I don’t know salsa” card any longer. I like to dance and I am going to learn how even if I don’t have any natural rhythm.

I will also work out often. Besides a two week stint practicing Muay Thai boxing in Bangkok I have not been active for a couple of years. I want to change this. By not constantly being on the move it should be much easier to make working out a routine. As luck would have it an online personal training service I had considered trying for months now wants to exchange services. I will write the owner’s wife a resume and he will create a personalized meal plan, workout plan, etc. for me.  I have no excuses.

I would also like to eat better, though this I’m not as serious about. I used to cook for myself about 6 days/week in university and having my own kitchen again will make this easy. Though restaurants are plenty, cheap, and healthy enough so I am not too confident about achieving this goal.

A surprise is that one goal missing is to continue improving my businesses. I never thought the day would come that I would be content with the state of things. I’ll continue to put in the necessary work for them to function well but I can’t see myself putting in all the extra hours finding better ways to increase sales like I used to do.

As it turns out that walk to the suburban train station was awkward as can be. I’m walking around a wealthy suburb past stores like JCrew and Apple, all while carrying my giant backpack. But once again I relished in the thought that I was going to go do something exciting. I am going to Colombia and they are going to…the supermarket?

A $5, 20 minute train ride into Philadelphia and only 5 minutes after I was on a $9 bus to New York City. Of course I pumped out a bunch of resumes on the bus using the free Wi-Fi. Productivity can happen in the strangest of places.

Two hours later I’m outside Penn Station with my next task of getting to LaGuardia Airport. I go down to the subway and jump on what I assume to be the correct train. Wrong. I get off after one stop flag down a taxi all before I could say screw that plan.

The taxi was one of the better ideas because the Spirit Airlines check-in line was understaffed. There was one person manning the entire line and two different people had already missed their flights. One was a non-English speaking Russian man. At first I pegged him as a jackass for trying to cut the line but it turned out he was quite the innocent man. He was too shy to budge but didn’t want to wait either while missing his flight. Plus, Spirit is ultra low-cost and if you miss your flight, that’s it.

Three hours of more work on my laptop with the occasional interruption from more people missing their flight while waiting at the departure gate, I boarded my own without issue.

A few hours later I am in Fort Lauderdale just in time to find a good spot and sleep. I even prepared by bringing my blanket but wasn’t prepared for the ultra bright lights. The floor wasn’t at all like the comfortable bed I imagined it might be. Since I like to learn from my experiences I didn’t use my backpack as a pillow. Last time I did that my laptop broke from the pressure. I didn’t take my laptop out of the bag either because last time I slept in a public place a group of middle aged women attacked me trying to steal my stuff.

At 6AM with no sleep I grabbed my bag and got up because it’s just strange to be huddled in a corner laid out in a busy airport. I walked back through security where I am now at 9:30Am with an hour to go before my flight to Medellin, Colombia. Oh, and by the way, the reason I felt motivated to write this is because the free airport internet has crapped out and I have nothing to do. Travel is far from glamorous.

Solo travel is accompanied with a lot of downtime. Sometimes it can mean being stuck for 3 days in a small Bolivian jungle town waiting for weather improve so that the plane out of there can take off. I read a new book all three days. Other times its while eating out alone to pass the time while waiting. I have read many books in small spurts that way.

I have come to really value books, so much that I make certain to start any new trip with three new books. I already ordered my next three for my upcoming South America trip but maybe you’ll find some of the books listed below interesting. These are some of the books I have read during my travels, though I seem to be missing the dollar store fiction novels I read so quickly in Bolivia!

Out of Captivity: Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle – Gary Brozek

In Out of Captivity, Gonsalves, Stansell, and Howes recount for the first time their amazing tale of survival, friendship, and, ultimately, rescue, tracing their five and a half years as hostages of the FARC. Their story takes you inside one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations, going behind enemy lines with vivid and haunting imagery. Their words conjure a reality that few people have ever encountered—from sleeping on beds literally carved out of the jungle to escaping Colombian military air strikes under the cover of darkness to being bound with steel chains by their captors. Describing backbreaking starvation marches and forced isolation, the authors chronicle their confrontations and interactions with the FARC guerrilla soldiers—a motley crew of brainwashed, idealistic teenagers and seasoned vet-erans who’ve been around long enough to realize that the only way out of the FARC is in a body bag

A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran -  Reza Kahlili

A true story as exhilarating as a great spy thriller, as turbulent as today’s headlines from the Middle East, A Time to Betray reveals what no other previous CIA operative’s memoir possibly could: the inner workings of the notorious Revolutionary Guards of Iran, as witnessed by an Iranian man inside their ranks who spied for the American government. It is a human story, a chronicle of family and friendships torn apart by a terror-mongering regime, and how the adult choices of three childhood mates during the Islamic Republic yielded divisive and tragic fates. And it is the stunningly courageous account of one man’s decades-long commitment to lead a shocking double life informing on the beloved country of his birth, a place that once offered the promise of freedom and enlightenment—but instead ruled by murderous violence and spirit-crushing oppression.

On the Road -  Jack Kerouac

On The Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac’s works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century. Like nearly all of Kerouac’s writing, On The Road is thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac’s real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac’s alter-egos, On the Road is a cross-country bohemian odyssey that not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest levels of American thought and culture.

Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation – Joseph T. Hallinan

In Going up the River, Hallinan comprehensively chronicles America’s prisons, investigating how prison authority has passed from hard-nosed wardens to the federal court system, a change that simultaneously improved the treatment of prisoners while making inmate rehabilitation and safety more difficult to attain. He also addresses the prison boom: facilities quickly built for economic reasons, resulting in poor prison conditions and a system “so lucrative its founders have become rich men.” This immense financial gain is ironically juxtaposed with the fact that most people view prisons as a terrible waste of money.

The Fruit Palace - Charles Nicholl

Charles Nicholl is on a quest for “The Great Cocaine Story.” The time is the early eighties and the place…Colombia. The story actually begins twelve years earlier in the tiny, scruffy seaport town of Santa Marta, described by some as “a victim of its privileged geographic location.” “The town had the feel of a tropical smugglers’ den. It was a rakish, seedy, avaricious little place, but somehow exhilarating in the way it lived according to its own laws.” The Fruit Palace, a dismal whitewashed café that legally dispenses tropical fruit juices, has another purpose as the meeting place for a variety of black market activities and the place where Nicholl unwittingly begins his quest.

He returns to Colombia in 1983 “on assignment.” His research is thorough, the risks he takes are serious, and characters he encounters–colorful, cranky and always looking older than their years–are so thoroughly fleshed out, you almost forget you’re reading nonfiction. Nicholl survives dangerous encounters with powerful drug lords, fever, earthquake, solo treks through treacherous jungles–all to deliver this decadent and compelling journey through the cocaine underworld of Colombia.

My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist – Sadanand Dhume

Indonesia is the most populous Islamic country in the world, but Indonesian Islam rests lightly on the nation’s rich mixture of Hindu-Buddhist history and culture. Indian-born Dhume, educated in the United States, worked as a mainstream journalist throughout Southeast Asia before moving to Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2000. Intrigued with the displacement of Indonesia’s tolerant past by the expanding impact of conservative Islam, he traveled to different regions and interviewed a wide range of Islamists to prepare this book, his guide a young editor committed to building an Islamic community reflecting the challenge facing his country. Dhume conveys his frustration with his companion’s mix of kindness and rigidity. He weaves discussion of recent Indonesian history and politics with his confusion over the contrast between the cosmopolitan, hedonist elite and popular culture in Jakarta and the austere intolerance and sometimes violence intrinsic in the push toward Sharia law. Even as he respects the opportunity and discipline that Islamic organizations bring to Indonesians, Dhume despairs over the loss of curiosity and empathy that results. Dhume’s lively writing creates an impressionistic array of personalities and settings, but some readers might hope for more structure and balance. Recommended for general readers.—Elizabeth R. Hayford

Don’t Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I’m a Piano Player in a Whorehouse - Paul Carter

Since age 18, Paul Carter has worked on oil rigs in locations as far flung as the Middle East, Columbia, the North Sea, Borneo, Tunisia, Sumatra, Vietnam, Nigeria, Russia, and many others — and he’s survived (so far!) to tell stories from the edge of civilization (places, as it happens, upon which most of our lives rely). Carter has been shot at, hijacked and held hostage, almost died of dysentery in Asia and toothache in Russia, watched a Texan lose his mind in the jungles of Asia, lost a lot of money backing a scorpion against a mouse in a fight to the death, and served cocktails by an orangutan on an ocean freighter. Taking postings in some of the world’s wildest and most remote regions — not to mention some of the roughest rigs on the planet — Carter has worked and gotten into trouble with some of the maddest, baddest and strangest people you could ever hope not to meet.

The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands – Aidan Hartley

Hartley, a journalist and British subject with four generations of colonial administrators in the family, offers a startlingly refreshing perspective on the political, social, and cultural impact of British colonialism in Africa and Arabia. The son of a foreign service officer, Hartley was raised in East Africa and educated in British prep schools. As a journalist, he traveled the war circuit through Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Bosnia, and other hot spots. Drawing on his personal experience of colonial legacy–his family being more comfortable fighting and dying in the colonies than living in Mother England–and his contemporary journalistic perspectives on war and conflict, Hartley details a fascinating odyssey that reflects on the past, present, and future of colonialism. He criticizes the policies of the UN and the U.S. in many of the world’s trouble spots, putting a contemporary face on historic colonialism with an accuracy and veracity seldom seen in Western critique

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe – Bill Bryson

After 20 years as a London-based reporter, American journalist Bryson ( The Mother Tongue ) set out to retrace a youthful European backpacking trip, from arctic Norway’s northern lights to romantic Capri and the “collective delirium” of Istanbul. Descriptions of historic and artistic sights in the Continent’s capitals are cursory; Bryson prefers lesser-known locales, whose peculiar flavor he skillfully conveys in anecdotes that don’t scant the seamy side and often portray eccentric characters encountered during untoward adventures of the road. He enlivens the narrative with keen, sometimes acerbic observations of national quirks like the timed light switches in French hallways, but tends to strive too hard for comic effects, some in dubious taste. He also joins other travelers in deploring the growing hordes of peddlers who overrun major tourist meccas.

Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu -  J. Maarten Troost

Using a format similar to that of his previous work, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Troost creates another comical and touching travel memoir. Troost and his wife, Sylvia, move from busy Washington, D.C., to Vanuatu, a nation made up of 83 islands in the South Pacific. As Sylvia works for a regional nonprofit, Troost immerses himself in the islands’ culture, an odd mix of the islanders’ thousand-year-old “kastoms” along with imperialist British and French influences. This really means that Troost gets to live in a nice house while he gets drunk on kava; dodges “a long inferno of magma and a cascade of lava bombs” at the “world’s most accessible volcano”; and checks out the “calcified” leftovers from one of Vanuatu’s not-so-ancient traditions, cannibalism. At the end of the book, the couple move to Fiji so that Sylvia will have state-of-the-art medical care when she gives birth to their first baby. While modern-day Fiji provides little fodder for Troost’s comic sensibilities, the birth of his son enables him to share some deeper thoughts and decide it is “time to stop looking for paradise.” A funny travelogue with a sentimental heart, Troost’s latest work genuinely captures the search for paradise as well as the need for home.

WAR - Sebastian Junger

War is insanely exciting…. Don’t underestimate the power of that revelation, warns bestselling author and Vanity Fair contributing editor Junger (The Perfect Storm). The war in Afghanistan contains brutal trauma but also transcendent purpose in this riveting combat narrative. Junger spent 14 months in 2007–2008 intermittently embedded with a platoon of the 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, one of the bloodiest corners of the conflict. The soldiers are a scruffy, warped lot, with unkempt uniforms—they sometimes do battle in shorts and flip-flops—and a ritual of administering friendly beatings to new arrivals, but Junger finds them to be superlative soldiers. Junger experiences everything they do—nerve-racking patrols, terrifying roadside bombings and ambushes, stultifying weeks in camp when they long for a firefight to relieve the tedium. Despite the stress and the grief when buddies die, the author finds war to be something of an exalted state: soldiers experience an almost sexual thrill in the excitement of a firefight—a response Junger struggles to understand—and a profound sense of commitment to subordinating their self-interests to the good of the unit. Junger mixes visceral combat scenes—raptly aware of his own fear and exhaustion—with quieter reportage and insightful discussions of the physiology, social psychology, and even genetics of soldiering. The result is an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.

The Places In Between – Rory Stewart

We never really find out why Stewart decided to walk across Afghanistan only a few months after the Taliban were deposed, but what emerges from the last leg of his two-year journey across Asia is a lesson in good travel writing. By turns harrowing and meditative, Stewart’s trek through Afghanistan in the footsteps of the 15th-century emperor Babur is edifying at every step, grounded by his knowledge of local history, politics and dialects. His prose is lean and unsentimental: whether pushing through chest-high snow in the mountains of Hazarajat or through villages still under de facto Taliban control, his descriptions offer a cool assessment of a landscape and a people eviscerated by war, forgotten by time and isolated by geography. The well-oiled apparatus of his writing mimics a dispassionate camera shutter in its precision. But if we are to accompany someone on such a highly personal quest, we want to know who that person is. Unfortunately, Stewart shares little emotional background; the writer’s identity is discerned best by inference. Sometimes we get the sense he cares more for preserving history than for the people who live in it (and for whom historical knowledge would be luxury). But remembering Geraldo Rivera’s gunslinging escapades, perhaps we could use less sap and more clarity about this troubled and fascinating country.

Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail - Thomas McFadden

This memoir of a British drug dealer’s nearly five years inside a Bolivian prison provides a unique window on a bizarre and corrupt world. McFadden, a young black man from Liverpool arrested for smuggling cocaine, finds himself forced to pay for his accommodations in La Paz’s San Pedro Prison, the first of many oddities in a place where some inmates keep pets and rich criminals can sustain a lavish lifestyle. The charismatic McFadden soon learns how to survive, and even thrive, in an atmosphere where crooked prison officials turn up at his private cell to snort lines of coke. By chance, he stumbles on an additional source of income when he begins giving tours of the prison to foreign tourists, a trade that leads to the mention in a Lonely Planet guidebook that attracts the attention of his coauthor, Young, who was backpacking in South America at the time. McFadden’s unapologetic self-serving story will attract little pity as he freely admits to countless cocaine sales for which he was never held accountable. Once the authors chronicle the novel aspects of life in San Pedro, from which McFadden was released in 2000, the narrative loses momentum. The book would have benefited from some judicious editing and some objective perspective on the veracity of McFadden’s story.

The Ministry of Special Cases: A Novel – Nathan Englander

The novel is set in 1976 in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Kaddish Poznan, hijo de puta, son of a whore, earns a meager living defacing gravestones of Jewish whores and pimps whose more respectable children want to erase their immigrant parents’ names and forget their shameful activities. Kaddish labors in the Jewish cemetery at night. His hardworking wife, Lillian, toils in an insurance agency by day, and their idealistic son, Pato, attends college, goes to concerts and smokes pot with his friends. When Pato is taken from home, Kaddish learns what it really means to erase identity, because no one in authority will admit Pato has been arrested. No one will even acknowledge that Pato existed. As Lillian and Kaddish attempt to penetrate the Ministry of Special Cases, Englander’s novel takes on an epic quality in which Jewish parents descend into the underworld and journey through circles of hell. Gogol, I.B. Singer and Orwell all come to mind, but Englander’s book is unique in its layering of Jewish tradition and totalitarian obliteration. At times Englander’s motifs seem forced. Kaddish, whose very name evokes the memory of the dead, chisels out the name of a plastic surgeon’s disreputable father, and in lieu of cash receives nose jobs for himself and his wife. Lillian’s nose job is at first unsuccessful, and her nose slides off her face. One form of defacement pays for another. Kaddish fights with his son in the cemetery and accidentally slices off the tip of Pato’s finger. Attempting to erase a letter, Kaddish blights a digit. But the fight seems staged, Pato’s presence unwarranted except for Englander’s schema. Other scenes are haunting: Lillian confronting bureaucrats; Kaddish appealing to a rabbi to learn if it is possible for a Jew to have a funeral without a body; Kaddish picking an embarrassing embroidered name off the velvet curtain in front of the ark in the synagogue. When he picks off the gold thread, the name stands out even more prominently because the velvet underneath the embroidery is unfaded, darker than the rest of the fabric. Englander writes with increasing power and authority in the second half of his book; he probes deeper and deeper, looking at what absence means, reading the shadow letters on history’s curtain.

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found -  Suketu Mehta

Bombay native Mehta fills his kaleidoscopic portrait of “the biggest, fastest, richest city in India” with captivating moments of danger and dismay. Returning to Bombay (now known as Mumbai) from New York after a 21-year absence, Mehta is depressed by his beloved city’s transformation, now swelled to 18 million and choked by pollution. Investigating the city’s bloody 1992–1993 riots, he meets Hindus who massacred Muslims, and their leader, the notorious Godfather-like founder of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party, Bal Thackeray, “the one man most directly responsible for ruining the city I grew up in.” Daring to explore further the violent world of warring Hindu and Muslim gangs, Mehta travels into the city’s labyrinthine criminal underworld with tough top cop Ajay Lal, developing an uneasy familiarity with hit men who display no remorse for their crimes. Mehta likewise deploys a gritty documentary style when he investigates Bombay’s sex industry, profiling an alluring, doomed dancing girl and a cross-dressing male dancer who leads a strange double life. Mehta includes so-called “Bollywood” in his sweeping account of Bombay’s subcultures: he hilariously recounts, in diary style, day-to-day life on the set among the aging male stars of the action movie Mission Kashmir. Mehta, winner of a Whiting Award and an O. Henry Prize, is a gifted stylist. His sophisticated voice conveys postmodern Bombay with a carefully calibrated balance of wit and outrage, harking back to such great Victorian urban chroniclers as Dickens and Mayhew while introducing the reader to much that is truly new and strange.

Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea – Eric Hansen

In 1978 Eric Hansen found himself shipwrecked on a desert island in the Red Sea. When goat smugglers offered him safe passage to Yemen, he buried seven years’ worth of travel journals deep in the sand and took his place alongside the animals on a leaky boat bound for a country that he’d never planned to visit.

As he tells of the turbulent seas that stranded him on the island and of his efforts to retrieve his buried journals when he returned to Yemen ten years later, Hansen enthralls us with a portrait — uncannily sympathetic and wildly offbeat — of this forgotten corner of the Middle East. With a host of extraordinary characters from his guide, Mohammed, ever on the lookout for one more sheep to squeeze into the back seat of his car, to madcap expatriates and Eritrean gun runners- and with landscapes that include cities of dreamlike architectural splendor, endless sand dunes, and terrifying mountain passes, Hansen reveals the indelible allure of a land steeped in custom, conflicts old and new, and uncommon beauty.

Shantaram: A Novel – Gregory David Roberts

At the start of this massive, thrillingly undomesticated potboiler, a young Australian man bearing a false New Zealand passport that gives his name as “Lindsay” flies to Bombay some time in the early ’80s. On his first day there, Lindsay meets the two people who will largely influence his fate in the city. One is a young tour guide, Prabaker, whose gifts include a large smile and an unstoppably joyful heart. Through Prabaker, Lindsay learns Marathi (a language not often spoken by gora, or foreigners), gets to know village India and settles, for a time, in a vast shantytown, operating an illicit free clinic. The second person he meets is Karla, a beautiful Swiss-American woman with sea-green eyes and a circle of expatriate friends. Lin’s love for Karla—and her mysterious inability to love in return—gives the book its central tension. “Linbaba’s” life in the slum abruptly ends when he is arrested without charge and thrown into the hell of Arthur Road Prison. Upon his release, he moves from the slum and begins laundering money and forging passports for one of the heads of the Bombay mafia, guru/sage Abdel Khader Khan. Eventually, he follows Khader as an improbable guerrilla in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan. There he learns about Karla’s connection to Khader and discovers who set him up for arrest. Roberts, who wrote the first drafts of the novel in prison, has poured everything he knows into this book and it shows. It has a heartfelt, cinemascope feel. If there are occasional passages that would make the very angels of purple prose weep, there are also images, plots, characters, philosophical dialogues and mysteries that more than compensate for the novel’s flaws. A sensational read, it might well reproduce its bestselling success in Australia here.

My Wicked Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn – Errol Flynn

By the time Errol Flynn got around to the task of putting his incredibly adventurous life on paper, booze, drugs and a life of dissipation had caught up with him. At 50, he was a wasted shadow of the once beautiful, vibrant movie idol who had captured a nation’s imagination in such glorious screen epics as “Captain Blood” and “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” No longer capable of the sustained concentration and commitment necessary to write an autobiography, Putnam and Sons assigned Flynn to a ghost writer by the name of Earl Conrad. Conrad spent many hours interviewing Flynn, and the result is “My Wicked, Wicked Ways.” While the book was not written by Flynn, Conrad tried to duplicate the actor’s unique way of expressing himself so that it was, in a way, spoken with Flynn’s voice. The reader of “My Wicked, Wicked Ways” should be aware that a great deal of its contents has, since its publication, been discovered to be false. Flynn either made things up as he went along — he was a notorious and gifted liar — or he was confused thanks to the two quarts of vodka he tossed down every day of his life, and simply got some things wrong. Whatever the case may be, Errol Flynn did not tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth in “his” autobiography. However, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways” is still a rousing look at a rousing life…at one of the most visually stunning men of his or any other day…at a man who could seemingly generate screen magic without effort…at a man whose demons drove him, at the age of 50, into his grave with the body of an 85-year-old man. For those reasons it is worth reading.

Rule No. 5: No Sex on the Bus: Confessions of a Tour Leader – Brian Thacker

In this rollicking, absurd ride, Brian Thacker, bus-tour leader extraordinaire, confesses all as he reveals the best (and worst) of more than 20 trips as a tour leader though Europe. He tells how he fed passengers horsemeat spag bog, hamburgers made from breakfast cereal, and roosters’ testicles. He also introduces people to the world of scams, broken rules, terrible blunders, promiscuous locals, and inevitable clashes of cultures when a busful of tourists take on Europe on a four-week tour. Other stories include how he left a passenger standing by the side of a motorway in France for three hours in his underwear clutching a purple toothbrush, and how he lost his driver, his cook, his bus, 10 brightly colored canal bikes, a large church, and eventually his patience. Countries dissected include Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, and France.

Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism – Thomas Kohnstamm

Invoking Hunter S. Thompson is a risky proposition for young writers, who can be gulled into thinking that chemical intake and sketchy reporting are substitutes for the gonzo great’s keen insight and lacerating wit. Fortunately, although Kohnstamm plays the Thompson card on his first hand, documenting a monumental pub crawl with a coke buddy called “the Doctor,” he soon finds his own voice. Scratching a bite from the travel bug, Kohnstamm walks away from a Wall Street cubicle to accept a poorly paid, impossibly deadlined job updating the Lonely Planet guide to Brazil. Sharp writing and self-deprecating wit add spice to a chronicle of the sometimes absurd world of guidebook writing. (In one memorable scene, he gets thrown out of a hotel he is researching because he looks—accurately—too poor to stay there.) There’s food for thought, too, about Lonely Planet’s journey from backpacker tip sheet to faux-hobo itinerary and the aftereffects of the travel it promotes. Kohnstamm’s hedonism is heroic, but it’s his willingness to think about hedonism’s consequences that makes this worth reading.