The best books in which the author has a crazy travel adventure and you get to live it vicariously

How could I not love a book written by a fellow ‘Brexit refugee’? Around the same time Ben Aitken moved to Poland in the wake of the momentous 2016 UK referendum, I fled to Austria. Although we had different motives and his time in Poznan was a temporary adventure, I had to know how it went! And I wasn’t disappointed. There’s dry humour, plenty of self-deprecation, and lots of interesting trivia, which I like. Best of all, it’s a unique premise: “Britain has just reacted to ‘Poles taking our low-paying jobs’. So let me be the first Brit to try going to Poland as a manual labourer, and see how that pans out.” To learn the answers, and have your thoughts provoked whilst being thoroughly entertained, I recommend joining Aitken in the chip shop!

A humorous travel book that visits a bunch of places I’ve been to, including Pyongyang, Jerusalem, and…Thetford! Yes, please! If you’ve lived a life like Fletcher’s or mine, you’ve got no need for fiction because you know that people putting themselves out there in the real world delivers story-fuel beyond compare. The ‘quest’ here is to ‘lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places.’ Okay, it’s a little ethereal and refers to some of his relationship woes—but those words give you a perfect insight into the novel way in which the author sees the planet around him. Oh, and having also landed up basing myself in a Germanic country, I can relate to his experience of having a Teutonic girlfriend too!

One of the only criticisms we might level at Brill Bryson is that his idea of a crazy quest is likely to be something relatively tame—and heaven forbid it should play out in a developing or non-English-speaking country! But we’ll let him off, of course, because of the writing genius he brings to the party. This is a writer whose style and cutting observational humour I consider the benchmark to which my own real-world books must aspire. So his quest to traverse the United Kingdom exclusively by public transport inevitably makes my list. The fact that it was almost three decades ago is (to snatch another of his book titles) neither here nor there.

I don’t really get why Joe Bennett isn’t more famous as a travel writer. The Briton passes through the world with a detached cynicism that results in sheer hilarity. If that’s not enough, this book has a thread: the challenge of hitch-hiking around New Zealand, his adopted homeland. A country that had a cameo part to play in my own Outback truck driver mission. A country with which I have a love-hate relationship. (I love its beauty and old-world charm; I hate it because I’m South African and its rugby team is too keen on beating mine.) Like me, Bennett’s first impressions of the Antipodes came from dead-of-night sports broadcasts. Like me, Bennett wrote about how (in)accurate those were in his book. I think we’d get on…

I’m not usually into reading about places I haven’t visited, because the most interesting thing for me is hearing someone else’s take on things I’ve seen for myself. I get a kick out of nodding along in agreement—or otherwise. But this book came recommended, so despite South America being an enormous gap on my to-do list, I read it. Though it may not score as highly on humour as the others on my list, it’s still a breezy, inspiring read with a quest that arguably eats them all for breakfast. Cycling up and down the Andes for six months is a huge deal. Especially with the same friend, all the time. It certainly isn’t all giggles and selfies. Helmets off to McNuff for sharing the story with such honesty.