I’d like to think that those of you who have been reading my blog for some time have picked up some useful information about what it’s like to travel solo.  One area, though, where I know I have not been able to help you is in regards to long-term (round-the-world) solo travel–because my trips never last that long.  That’s where  The Art of Solo Travel: A Girls’ Guide comes in.

The Art of Solo Travel: A Girls’ Guide was written by Stephanie Lee and produced by Indie Travel Media Ltd. Stephanie Lee is a writer for the Indie Travel Podcast and Brave New Traveler.  She’s a long-term traveler who has been to 30 countries (20 of them solo), and enjoyed her experience so much she decided to write a book to inspire others to travel solo, too. This e-book has been available since June 1.  I’m a little slow reviewing it because I wanted to read it in its entirety and mull it over a bit before deciding whether or not I would recommend it to my readers.  Even though I’m friendly with the folks at Indie Travel Media (who gave me a review copy of the e-book at no cost), I’m not the kind of person who would promote something unless I believe in it.  Especially when that something costs money.  Well, I’m happy to say now that I can give this book a thumbs-up.

The book itself is extremely well-organized.  The first section starts exactly where it should, with the question of “Why travel alone?” It provides some inspirational reasons for people who need to be convinced that solo travel really is right for them. (If you’re already convinced, feel free to skim it.) Once you get past the “Why” section, Stephanie covers all the other topics you would hope she would, including:.

• The realities of what you leave behind in order to go on that round-the-world trip;
• Suggestions of places you can travel to, with some tips about what it’s like to be a solo female traveler in those places;
• How to prepare for your trip (including a packing checklist and advice about what gear you’ll need, as well as other practical things you’ll need to do, like obtain vaccinations);
• How to budget for your trip (including ways to save money now);
• Transportation options;
• General advice about eating cheaply (but healthy);
• Loneliness and meeting people;
• How to make couchsurfing work for you (which is what she did); and
• Safety. (This section could have been longer, in my opinion, since it is often the biggest psychological stumbling block for would-be solo travelers.)

My favorite part of the book was the financial section.  Too much of the advice I see online about round-the-world travel is very vague about what everything costs.  Stephanie is not vague at all.  She lists her itinerary and exactly how much she spent on her trip, and in what categories.  She traveled to countries that are notoriously expensive, and yet still, over the course of a year, spent only about a quarter of my annual salary. That is the kind of specific detail that I’m looking for when I engage in travel research.

Let’s be real here:  Much the information in this book can be found on the Internet if you take the time to look for it, but you’ll spend many hours doing so, and you probably won’t find it all in one place.  I can’t tell you how often I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time researching something online, only to later realize it would have been less frustrating and more cost-effective (based on what I earn per hour) to have purchased a guide on the subject.   How much is your time worth to you? This book provides all the information you need to know to get started as a long-term solo traveler, and it does it in one compact format that you can download immediately.  At the price of $12.95 (US), it’s a good value–but not for everyone.

While this book is perfect for the inexperienced traveler who is interested in long-term solo travel, this book is not for:

• Those who only travel for a week or two at a time;
• People who prefer to travel with tour groups and have their trips planned for them by someone else;
• Experienced long-term travelers, solo or otherwise.

Even though this is called “A Girls’ Guide,” I can’t help but think there are some men out there who could benefit from this book, too. In fact, I feel so strongly that this book has value to newbie solo travelers that I’m placing a link on my site so my readers can purchase the book through me if interested.  There are many e-book affiliate programs out there, and this is the first one I have joined, because I do believe it’s a product that can be of value to my readers who are new to long-term solo travel.  Maybe my blog hasn’t yet convinced you that you, too, can travel solo; or maybe I haven’t  given you all the tools you need to do so, because I’m not a long-term traveler and that’s what your dream is.  If this book can fill that gap for you, how can I not promote it?

So if you’ve been on the fence about long-term solo travel, yearning to give it a try, but not sure where to start, what are you waiting for?  Go buy the book and start planning your first solo travel adventure.

A post at World Hum turned me onto this great article by Andrew Seal at Biographia Literaria titled New York Novels and Chicago Novels, in which he discusses the way regions of the U.S. are treated in literature.  It’s a good read for an English major and other lit lovers.

Here’s an article by Dave and Deb at ThePlanetD.com, How Travel As a Couple Makes Life Easier that is worth checking out.  I know, you’re probably wondering how I could recommend an article that seems to negate the joys of solo travel.  On the contrary, I think most of us who travel solo are very well aware that there are inherent difficulties in traveling solo, and that our travel lives could potentially be easier if we had a traveling companion that suited us.  Dave and Deb make a great case for this.  But those ideal traveling companions are rare indeed. And sometimes, it is worth doing things (like solo travel) that are more difficult.  Still, I occasionally wish for my ideal travel partner, so I can have one of those “easier” adventures.

Darlene Wade (aka @nydarling on Twitter) turned me on to this fantastic piece by Benny Lewis (@irishpolyglot) at Fluentin3Months.com, Are you closed minded? How I finally learned to get along with Parisians.  It’s a self-examination about how one’s own expectations and perceptions can color the way they view their experience in a foreign locale.

I loved this article by Candice Walsh at Candice Does the World:  Spring, Some Promises, and Why Some Things Are Worth the Wait.  I could so relate.  Living in Vermont, where winter is 6 months long and experiencing the first warm days of spring is like being released from prison.  If you don’t know what a harsh winter is like, how can you truly appreciate the first warm days of spring?  And how can you appreciate places you travel to, if you can’t work up any appreciation of what’s enjoyable about where you live?

After last week’s prologue to Lauren Quinn‘s road trip down the California coast, I do hope you’re reading about her adventures at her blog, LonelyGirlTravels.com, including this fabulous piece called Wind and Dust and Real Wild West. Her road trip takes her to some places that most travelers wouldn’t think about, such as Salvation Mountain and Slab City.  And you know what?  That’s too bad, because these bits of the American experience say a lot about who we are beneath the surface.

Photo credit:  “On the platform, reading” by moriza.

Welcome to a new week, everyone. Tomorrow is the Ides of March.  But as long as your name isn’t Julius Caesar, I don’t think you have anything to worry about.  Don’t forget St. Patrick’s Day is coming up this week, too!  Green beer for everyone!

On to my recommended reads of the week…..

Sabina of SoloFemaleTraveler.com has written a series called “Jerusalem Jeweler – The Friends That Solo Travel Can Find” that I highly recommend. It’s a lovely story about a fascinating shopkeeper she has several encounters with in Jerusalem, and is told in three parts: Part I, Part II, Part III.

It’s funny how the same names keep cropping up time and again in my recommended reads.  Last week saw a really funny entry from Jodi at LegalNomads.com, but this week’s inspirational article is about “Why I Quit My Job to Travel Around the World.” If you’ve ever wondered how people come to make such a radical life change, check this out.

I’m starting to really love photo essays.  Here’s a terrific one by Gary Arndt of Everything-Everywhere.com that was published in the Washington Times:  “Traveling the Yasawa Island, Fiji.” Gary takes some of the best travel photos I’ve seen.

Sheila Beal at GoVisitHawaii.com shares “8 Great Hawaii Waterfalls Worth Gushing Over.” (Get it? “Gushing Over”?  What can I say, I’m a sucker for wordplay.)  It’s nice to know there’s a gorgeous waterfall on pretty much every Hawaiian island I’d be interested in traveling to.  Check them out; they’re beautiful.

In “Los Angeles, Give Me Some of You!” at Lonely Girl Travels, Lauren is embarking on my dream road trip down Highway 1 from the San Francisco area to Los Angeles, where she hopes to dig beneath the superficiality of Los Angeles to find what is deep and admirable about Southern California. She has such a way with words, and this piece is beautifully written.  I can’t wait to read about what she learns on her journey.

What was your favorite travel article this week?

Photo credit:  “Reading the paper” by MShades at Creative Commons.

Another week, another installment of my favorite reads this week:

Let’s kick things off with two interesting articles about tourism: Eric Weiner‘s “Why Tourism is Not a Four-Letter Word“ at World Hum and Sarah Menkedick‘s “Tourism and the ‘Preservation’ of Culture: A Rebuttal” at Matador Abroad.  They both raise some great points, and I can’t disagree with either of them.  From an intellectual standpoint, I probably align closer with Sarah (because I’m a worrier, and so I worry about things like cultural imperialism), but from an emotional standpoint, I support Eric’s premise that tourism is not as negative a thing as many travelers make it out to be.  I, too, grow quite weary of the travel snobbery that exists out there, and the people who act as though the only “right” way to travel is by shunning luggage with wheels, tour groups, and popular attractions like the Eiffel Tower.  I don’t buy into this theory that tourists and travelers are radically different things, and that one is right and one is wrong. Tomayto, tomahto, people; live and let live.  Sometimes, the only way a person is going to have the courage to travel and see the world is with a tour group  that “edits” their experience.  I’d rather see them do that than not travel at all.  And sometimes, the only way a region can eke out a living is with tourism.  I know, because I live in a state that depends on tourism a LOT.  Does everyone in Vermont ski, milk cows and tap maple trees?  No, but if that’s what brings people here to spend money in our state, God bless.

Here’s a follow-up piece to the article I noted in last week’s Recommended Reads (How Vacations Affect Your Happiness from the New York Times).  Here, Christine Garvin elaborates on The Truth About Happiness and Travel at Brave New Traveler.

And thanks to Jared Romey at Matador Trips for this fantastic article, Budget Guide to South Beach.  I love-love-love South Beach (especially in the winter time), but it can be quite pricey.  I’m always looking for ways to save money there.  Jared offers some great tips in this regard.

I really enjoyed this entry by Christine Ka’aloa at GRRRLTraveler, GRRRL Goes Whimpery in Her New Korean Location.  What do you do when you commit yourself to working in Korea for a year, arrive there all excited, only to discover your initial impression is disappointing to the extreme?  Okay, first you freak out.  Then what?  Read Christine’s post and find out.

And for your weekly funny. . . Poor Jodi at LegalNomads describes a frustrating, maddening and yet hilarious (sorry, Jodi) problem she’s been having on her travels in The Official Birdcrap Counter: Documenting the Crap.  I can honestly say this has never happened to me, and I hope it never does.

Photo credit: foxypar4 at Creative Commons.

Want to read something great and not too long about travel?  Try travel poetry.  Two Go Round-The-World has launched a new column called “Looking Back,” where they include a journal entry from their past travels. Daniel kicked the series off this week with Looking Back: Langkawi (Malaysia) which includes a photo and one of the most lyrical descriptions of a place and time I’ve read in awhile.  Lauren Quinn occasionally shares some of her travel poetry on her site, Lonely Girl Travels (for instance, see the poem at the bottom of her post “It Itches! Feeling the Burn of Wanderlust”.  And J.B. Conway writes daily haikus about Disney World at his site, MouseofZen.com.  It’s been a good 20 years since I wrote poetry, but I can see the appeal of applying it to the travel genre.  Do you know anyone else who writes travel poetry?  I’m kind of getting into this.

I hate to sound like a complete fangirl of Daniel and Kathryn at Two Go Round-The-World, but they also produced a second one of my imagination-capturing posts this week, their entry to the I Backpack Canada /Gap Adventures competition to create  your own adventure. What can I say? They were on a literary roll this week, and as a former English major, I was very receptive to this.  Their entry was “Channel Your Inner Hemingway”, which really sent me daydreaming about following in Hemingway’s footsteps around Spain, though I don’t think I’d want to run with the bulls in Pamplona, since being gored isn’t on my bucket list.

A terrific photo essay titled 10 Reasons to Love Brazil by Robin Esrock and Ana Alheiro at MatadorTrips set my mind to daydreaming about Brazil, beautiful, exotic Brazil.  Lovely photos, and excellent reasons for traveling there.

I was jazzed to read an article in the New York Times this week called  How Vacations Affect Your Happiness.  Apparently, some researchers from the Netherlands did a study on the happiness levels of people in relation to their vacation travels.  It proves my long-held theory that I get as much enjoyment (perhaps more, depending on the trip) out of the process of planning my travels as I do out of the actual travel itself.  It also explains why I am always planning my next trip.

On a more sobering note, Staying Safe While Traveling (by Stephanie at My Melange) offers up a sad story to serve as a reminder that bad things can happen to us, even on vacation.  So please be safe out there.

Photo credit: alicejamieson

Have you all been watching the Olympics this week?  I confess, I was not–until I read my first recommended article of this week, written by JoAnna Haugen of Kaleidoscopic Wandering. The 2010 Olympics from a Traveler’s Perspective was a wake-up call to me that I have been focusing so much on the trees, I forgot the forest.  I thought I was too busy to watch the Olympics.  JoAnna reminded me that the Olympics is more than just a sporting event, it’s a celebration of the very reasons we travel.

Christine Garvin, at the Matador Networks’ Brave New Traveler, writes In Defense of the Introverted Traveler.  Sometimes it may seem as though all other travelers are extroverts, but that’s just not so.  And not everyone wants to meet other people on the road.  Do be sure to also read the article that sparked Christine’s essay, a March 2009 article by Sophia Dembling titled Confessions of an Introverted Traveler at WorldHum.com.

Lauren Quinn of Lonely Girl Travels is one of the freshest young voices in travel writing that I have discovered in the past few months.  She has a very real and earthy writing style. In I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow: Port Costa and the Past, she shows that you don’t have to travel very far to have a travel adventure.  Her description of the trains is truly lovely.

Those of you who have been following my blog for more than a year probably remember that I spent Christmas week 2008 in New Orleans and fell head over heels for that city.  In New Orleans: It’s About to Get Weirder at WorldHum.com, Adam Karlin notes that New Orleans seems to have finally turned a corner in this, its fifth year after Katrina; its recent election of a new mayor and the Saints’ triumphant win at the Super Bowl are symbolic of this turn.  It’s a well-written piece which captures the joie de vivre of the city beautifully.

Finally, another wonderful post by Sarah Menkedick, this time at her blog, Posa Tigres:  One Brief Illustration of Authenticity explores authenticity and awareness in Sarah’s interaction with two boys–part children, part businessmen–on a sand pile.  It’s a simple story that leads to some complex thoughts about the intersection between tourists and locals. Wow.

Photo credit: Midge cat and computer by Doug Woods.

Happy Heart Day, everyone!  I’m really thrilled with this week’s crop of recommended reads, as they represent such variety of topic and writing style. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Forests to Burn – Do you love the great outdoors?  Do you dream of traveling the US, visiting the most remote areas of natural wilderness, far from the madding crowds?  Many of us do.  Joshua Berman spent a summer traveling from forest to forest with the National Park Service, where he had a most unusual job.  Read this fascinating firsthand account of his experience at WorldHum.com.

Christmas in Placencia – Alex Berger, the VirtualWayfarer, writes of his solo travel experience in Placencia.  What appealed to me about this post is his firsthand account of being alone at Christmas on the road. Although he wasn’t actually “alone,” since he did what most solo travelers do–he made friends on the road to spend time with.  Would you travel solo during the holidays?

Lucky? And/or smart? Solo Women and Safety – Zoe Zolbrod connected with me this week on Twitter, and am I ever glad she did!  You must check out her blog, she’s an excellent prose writer.  She writes of her youthful adventures traveling solo. I have been captivated by her posts.  I chose this one, even though it was published in early January, because it seemed especially appropriate for my readers.

Interview with Sallie Latch – a 77 year old vagabond – Many times, we postpone traveling for a variety of excuses, such as lack of money, poor health, age, etc.  This inspirational interview by Greg Rodgers of Vagabondinglife.com just goes to show that’s all they are: Excuses.  I want to be like Sallie when I grow up.

And in honor of Valentine’s Day, I am hereby playing Devil’s Advocate by offering you:

How to Travel With Your Partner and Still Come Home a Couple – Yes, solo travel is wonderful, but what if you have a partner you want to travel with once in awhile?  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that too much togetherness–especially on the road–can sink a relationship faster than a torpedo. Lucy Corne at Bootsnall.com tackles the topic in a realistic and humorous way, acknowledging the pitfalls and giving practical advice on how to avoid them.

Photo credit:  “Reading e-mail” by tm_lv at Creative Commons.

In this week’s collection of recommended reads, we have solo travel articles that describe making friends on the road, overcoming our fears, and appreciating solo travel when it comes our way.  The round-up is capped off with an inspiring destination post on Paris. Enjoy!

Travel Solo for a Rocky Mountain High - People who have never traveled alone are often afraid to try because they think they’ll be lonely, but new friends and acquaintances seem to come into our lives quite readily when we travel solo–as is the case in this personal story byJanice Waugh at SoloTravelerblog.com. If my stories about meeting people on the road haven’t convinced you to give solo travel a try, maybe Janice’s story will.

Solo female travelers shouldn’t let safety concerns put the world off limits – Ellen Perlman of BoldlyGoSolo.com tackles the subject of how solo female travelers sometimes allow their fears of particular places (usually based on media perceptions) prevent them from traveling to those places.  How much of our fear is real, though?

“Finding Myself” as a Mother on an Airplane - by Mona Shand at AnnArbor.com.  Mona’s first experience traveling solo with her baby leads her to some revelations about herself and her prior life as a frequent solo traveler.

Touching Air in Rio – This article put a big grin on my face from start to finish.  Just because my attempt to go parasailing last spring was thwarted, doesn’t mean I can’t live vicariously through someone else’s airborne adventure.  Jeannie’s (Jeannie Mark of NomadicChick.com) motivation to go hang gliding was to face her fear of heights.  I love the idea of taking advantage of travel to face our fears.

5 Picnic Spots in Paris -  I am starting to plan a trip to Europe for the fall, including Paris, so the timing of this article by Robin Locker at MyMelange.net could not have been better.  If you, too, are planning a solo trip to the City of Lights, why not incorporate into your days a lovely picnic in one or more of these suggested locales?  It will undoubtedly be cheaper than dining in a cafe, and you can soak up the view and the local culture at the same time.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who read my blog regularly for helping to catapult me to fame on Twitter this week when @travelpod announced that I was the week’s fastest riser among their Top 100 Travel Blogs.  I went from #96 to #85 in one week, which was fairly dramatic.  It was definitely the high point of an otherwise sucky week.  So THANK YOU.

Photo credit:  Photo of cat reading by Trinity at Creative Commons.