2024-12-08

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Sure, you can read travel blogs full of advice from the road for free and get loads of great information. But you’ll have a read a few dozen of them until you’re bleary eyed to get the kind of structure and comprehensiveness you can find in a good book. Here are a few that are worth plunking down some cash for if you’re planning months, a year, or more on the road.

The Rough Guide First Time Around the World” is a good primer if this will be your first trip circling the globe. The fourth edition was released this year and this book goes into far more detail than most, covering all the things you haven’t thought of but should: visas, vaccinations, cultural taboos, credit cards, and much more. Especially geared to those on a budget, it will certainly save you far more than the $14.50 the paperback costs on Amazon.

Vagabonding by Rolf Potts is about taking time off from your regular life to discover and experience the world on your own terms. This is an entertaining and inspiring read, as much a philosophy of travel guide as a primer. It came out around the same time as the first edition of my book 10 years ago and has never been updated, so details here and there sound kind of dated. If that bothers you, get the Audible version Rolf recorded recently as some of the anachronisms were removed. Mostly though, it’s evergreen, still as useful today as a decade ago.

How to Travel the World on $50 a Day is blogger Nomadic Matt’s guide to traveling around the world on a limited budget. He’s been doing it for years, so there’s plenty of advice from the voice of experience on all matters of long-term travel. See my detailed review here that I wrote when it came out.

The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World is from outspoken writer and travelers’ rights advocate Edward Hasbrouk. The author has spent a lot of time inside a travel agency selling round-the-world tickets and he knows the ins and outs of getting the best deals. This is the 5th edition, so it’s been through plenty of tweaks. It’s a detailed, well-researched guide that offers far more depth than most planning guides: one to dip into for guidance and education, not to just read in one sitting for motivation.

The Career Break Traveler’s Handbook is from Jeffrey Jung, who runs the Career Break Secrets blog. It’s not aimed at 20-something travelers trying to stave off the real world, but rather those who would like to step off the treadmill and take a break. A long break. Full of inspiration, planning and budgeting advice, and stories from those who have taken the leap and landed on the other side of the world.

Work Your Way Around the World: The Globetrotter’s Bible by Susan Griffith is the one to pick up if wanderlust is pulling hard but you’re not going to have enough money to last as long as you want to be away. Covering everything from fruit picking to hostel working to teaching English as a second language, it lays out all the ways to make a buck abroad. This is the 16th edition—16th!!—so there are all kinds of great examples readers have sent in over the years. Griffith is also the editor of Teach English Abroad, a book I used to guide my overseas exploits in Turkey and South Korea many editions ago.

Off Track Planet’s Travel Guide for the Young, Sexy, and Broke is a silly, irreverant, satirical book about thrills and (beer) spills around the world. In other words, exactly what the YouTube party generation is looking for. From the website that gives you articles like “9 Places You Must Have Sex Around the World” and “Guide to Keeping Your Genitals Healthy Abroad,” you know this won’t be a dry, fact-filled travel book. If your priorities while traveling abroad are pretty much the same as your priorities were in college, this is your RTW travel guide.

The World’s Cheapest Destinations, now in its 4th edition, my guide focused on the #1 factor that impacts your long-term travel costs more than any other: where you go. Subtitled “21 Countries Where Your Money is Worth a Fortune,” it should save you exponentially more money than you spend on it by steering you to where your funds will really stretch or where you can upgrade your experience and travel better. Note that if you’re only going to one section of the world and want to figure out how to stretch a buck, there are regional editions too just for Asia, Latin America, or Europe.

What did you read before you took off or what are you reading now to prepare?

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