This is not a travel guide, nor is it a typical travel book. This is a story about a man who overcame personal tragedies to achieve his lifetime ambition to explore the world. You won't find stories of a man who climbed mountains or sailed the seas. Instead you'll hear about one man's journey who visited over 100 well-known foreign countries and cities, swam with the sharks in Bora-Bora, Tahiti and in Grand Cayman, explored the underwater world of the Australian Great Barrier Reef, walked the Great Wall of China; and went on photo safaris in the African wild game parks. When he began his traveling adventures, the last thing on his mind was writing a book. As he progressed through his trips, he would entertain his relatives, friends and clients with the stories and photos of his more important memories. Invariably, they would say "you ought to write a book!" And so he did, and here it is. The book should assist the beginning traveler in deciding where to go, how to go, and how long to stay, and last but not least, how to stay safe in a sometimes dangerous world. Traveling can be, and often is, very rewarding. But it can also be frustrating, expensive, and dangerous. When traveling to a foreign country it is best to expect the unexpected, as your experience will be unlike anything you've experienced before. The Travel Junkie also reveals the true character of Jack Harms and his personal life. Including his hitchhiking days, his attraction to famous entertainers' live performances, his traumatic experiences - being on his own at the age of fourteen in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the deaths of his mother, and only two brothers at very young ages.

When he married for the second time, Jay Keyser thought he and his wife would settle down on a bucolic little farm where the cows meet the sea. That was before he found out the awful truth: he had married a travel junkie. While he was envisioning walks along quiet beaches, her sights were set on stakeouts beside Tanzani’s Grumeti River watching crocodiles take down baboons. He didn’t want to come within 6,000 miles of a crocodile, let alone 6 feet. But, somehow, he couldn’t let Nancy go it alone. And so, for the past 15 years, Jay Keyser has followed his wife around this treacherous world. This is his chronicle. Our reluctant traveler did his level best to understand the extraordinary people and places he visited as well as his internal conflict. He gradually began to accept profound differences between his wife and himself. Although terrified by them, he has learned from his experiences, most especially from an encounter with an angry female gorilla, who offered key insight into marriage and human nature. Jay Keyser learned to stop and smell the elephant dung.

Dina Bennett’s on the road again—and she can’t stop! Having completed the 7,800-mile Peking to Paris Classic Car Challenge while braving carsickness and patching rocky marital relations, she’s once more in over her head, enduring 100,000 miles of road trips through the world’s out-of-the-way places. Drawn to strange foods and intriguing views into the kaleidoscope of local life, and with a knack for getting into—and out of—awkward situations, Dina gives you the world in all its glory. She’s a born storyteller, uncovering the curious and unusual in the ordinary, bringing you along on vivid experiences in laugh-out-loud style. Neither particularly brave nor wild, she opens her diary of personal triumphs and embarrassments, suspense and discovery, in places most will never get to. Join her as she stands knee-to-knee with a Tajik border guard in his bedroom, hunts down camel pad meat in the street markets of China, and seeks out the source of mare’s milk in Kyrgyzstan. Whether stranded on a sandbar in Myanmar’s Chindwin River or sharing barley beer with an ex-Black Panther in Ethiopia, Dina’s observations are half prying neighbor, half best friend gossiping together on the crooked path to enlightenment. The tales in A Travel Junkie’s Diary plunge the reader right into the midst of exhilarating travel experiences, with all the smells, sounds, sensations and emotions of being right there. They are by turns fascinating and frightening, endearing and bittersweet, humorous, humiliating, and always engrossing.

From the Desk of the How-To Junkie for the "Traveling Junkie": Howdy friend, who wants "to travel for vacation on a budget," Let me guess, you are looking for a getaway. By getaway, I mean vacation. Ah yes, the vacation that you've been dreaming about all year. Well you certainly deserved to! After all, what's the point of living and not enjoying? Traveling offers that much needed relaxation to get away from everything with yourself or with friends and families. It allows you to clear your head and remember why life is so freaking awesome, and revitalize yourself to refocus your perspective on things. But what's the biggest setback stopping our fellow travelers from doing it more often? Work? Time? How about the biggest hurdle of them all - money? Let's face it, vacations don't come cheap. They cost money, but that doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of dough or lose a leg to afford it. You just may not know how to best go about it, know what to do, or are simply overwhelmed. Fret not! On the other hand, perhaps you're one of those lucky folks who get to go on permanent vacation whenever you want and money is not an issue, but still, wouldn't you rather enjoy more savings and travel the smart way? That's why we're focusing on the fastest way to get going on a vacation, regardless of whatever limited-vacation time you may have, and travel on a budget. By being a "Traveling Junkie," you will know: * How to plan a vacation fast even if you don't know where to go. * How to find the cheapest flight deals the smart way step-by-step. * How to book your accommodations to save tons of money. * How to calculate your budget and not go over expenses. * The secret insider tips only experienced savvy trailers know and do. ...and full-satisfied junkie more. So what are you waiting for? Instead of dreaming about sipping coconut under a palm tree, be actually doing it! And send me a postcard while you're at it (even if you don't like coconut staying at some big city instead). Plan your vacation now! Signing off. Your friend, - The How-To Junkie

Chronicles the author's international travels with his wife to Africa, China, Bali, and other places.

An ultimate guide for the outdoor and sports enthusiasts seeking out the world's most fantastic adventures. The book runs the gamut of water, mountain and hiking sports for all skill levels from beginners to experts.

“Don’t women with children travel?” Marybeth Bond and Pamela Michael enquire, in their book A Mother’s World: Journeys of the Heart (1998), when discovering the absence of portrayals of travelling mothers. Addressing this absence, our book Travellin’ Mama: Mothers, Mothering and Travel explores the multiple dimensions of motherhood and travel. Through a variety of compelling creative pieces and critical essays with a global outlook and wide-ranging historical, cultural, and national perspectives, Travellin’ Mama: Mothers, Mothering and Travel examines the vital contributions made to travel writing and representations of travel by mothers. Autoethnographical approaches inform many of the pieces in this book, illustrating the significance of the personal and writing the self in re-imagining our cultural narratives and representations of travel, and the mothers who undertake it. This book is about mothers who travel, for mothers who travel with their children, and all those readers who have travelled in any capacity, with or without family.

Since leaving home for Europe alone at age seventeen, Karen Gershowitz has traveled to more than ninety countries. In pursuit of her passion for travel, she lost and gained friends and lovers and made a radical career change. She learned courage and risk taking and succeeded at things she didn’t think she could do: She climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. She visited remote areas of Indonesia on her own and became a translator, though only fluent in English. She conquered her fear of falling while on an elephant trek in Thailand. And she made friends across the globe, including a Japanese family who taught her to make sushi and a West Berliner who gave her an insider’s look at the city shortly after the wall came down. An example that will inspire armchair travelers to become explorers and embolden everyone to be more courageous, Travel Mania is a vivid story of how one woman found her strength, power, and passion. Travel is Karen’s addiction—and she doesn’t want treatment.

What sort of mad longing besets a woman—nearing fifty and recently widowed—to sell everything she owns, buy an around-the-world airline ticket, pack a single suitcase, and set off alone on a year-long journey without a plan or agenda? When Your Heart Says Go answers that question. Set in 1990–’91, Judy’s story takes readers from San Diego through eleven European countries, the then-Soviet Union, and finally India, during the lead-up to the first Gulf War. Explorations of foreign locales and interactions with strangers and acquaintances who become a lifeline to friendship are interspersed with occasional flashbacks to Judy’s life with her beloved husband, Tom, as well as his illness and death. Descriptions of sites historic and current serve as both daily life and background for Judy’s struggle to find her way as a sober, single, independent woman in the vast world as it edges toward the collapse of the Soviet Union and war in the Middle East. The outer journey serves as a container for the inner; the more Judy experiences of the world, the more she learns about herself—and the closer she gets to realizing her lifelong dream of being a writer.

When Alana and Roland, a spirited Canadian couple with an insatiable desire to live life to the fullest, embark on an epic yearlong travel adventure around the world with their newborn son and ten-year-old daughter, they think they’re prepared for whatever might come their way. They soon discover that this is not entirely true. This charming family love story, sure to inspire wanderlust, is peppered with funny parenting mishaps, thrilling adventures, breathtaking sceneries, unforgettable monuments, and culinary bliss. However, as you are taken through the temples of Southeast Asia, the pyramids of Egypt, the rolling hills of Tuscany, and the African plains, you will also be exposed to the world as experienced by a biracial, blended family. Around the World in Black & White is a tale of self-discovery, racial awakening, resilience, and deeper understanding. This bold, witty, and heartfelt memoir will have you rethinking how you travel, how you see the world, and how the world sees you.