The Wander Year: One Couple's Journey Around the World by Mike McIntyre

Journalist and author Mike McIntyre and his longtime girlfriend, Andrea Boyles, are in their early 40s and itching for a break. So they rent out their San Diego home—dog, cat and furniture included—and embark on a yearlong journey around the world. “We’re not out to find ourselves, or even to lose ourselves,” McIntyre writes early on. “We’re merely seeking a pause in our routines.” But the couple is soon swept up in the adventure of a lifetime: trekking in the Himalayas, traversing the Sahara on camel, scrambling over the temples of Angkor, crossing the world’s largest salt flat in South America, scaling a New Zealand glacier. The book recounts the odyssey in 48 dispatches from 22 countries. Among them: birdwatching in Indonesia, a haircut from Vietnam’s oldest barber, touring a notorious prison in Bolivia, haggling over rugs in Morocco, on safari in Nepal. McIntyre taps his self-deprecating humor to convey the joys, perils and frustrations of prolonged travel. When the couple ventures into a cyclone in Fiji on a rubber raft, he writes, “The absence of life jackets and paddles meant more room for our lunacy.” And during a ride across India with a hired car and driver, he notes, “His passing technique was so precise, I could see my horrified expression reflected in the chrome bumpers of onrushing trucks.” He also writes eloquently of such poignant moments as sleeping under the stars in North Africa, flying kites with a poor boy in Bali, and the death of a female tour guide in China. By journey’s end, he’s shucked much of his journalist’s cynicism, and he stands in awe of a staggeringly beautiful world and the resilient souls who fill it.

The Wander Year is an expanded version of the popular series of the same name that ran in the Travel section of the Los Angeles Times.

I wish I had the guts (and a partner to follow my whims) to temporarily pack up my life and do something like this!

After finishing reading this book, it makes me realize that this is the kind of book I would love to write myself. It is full of the readers individual personality, what their interests are, their day-to-day life etc. AT times he reminded me of a middle-aged, male Carrie Bradshaw (that is if she wrote about travel instead of shoes!)

While I love reading travel books to get inspiration for my own future expeditions, I find it particularly interesting to read about other travelers experiences in Countries that I have also visited, for example while I was in Bali it never crossed my mind to go bird-watching or fly a kite.

Given that this book is made from excerpts of his newspaper columns, it glazes over many locations very lightly, so you probably won’t really enjoy this book if you want an in-depth view in to each different place, although the author does mention that you can buy the full list of articles for $200! I however, love a bargain so way happy with the condensed version on Amazon for $4.95.

Overall it was a good read with a good ending.