TRAVEL BLOGS
These are some of the blogs that share my love for travel and continue to inspire me to see and experience the rest of the world. :)
An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy
'Great journeys tend to bring me out in a rash of over-used superlatives, so all I will say this time is that Himalaya was a wonderfully, magically, brilliant journey, with more gasps of astonishment per square mile than any other in my entire life.'
- Himalayas
- Himalayas
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
Love With A Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche
"A full moon illuminates everything under its neon glow so that, at night, our anchor is visible on the seafloor twenty feet below. Everything slips into black when there's no moon, but stars decorate the sky like glitters sprinkled by an excited child. Sometimes the child's hand slips, and glitter is spilled in the ocean, creating phosphorescence - bursts of lights from hundreds of tiny bioluminescent organisms that flash when the water is disturbed. We spend hours playing with these lights in the water, dipping and swishing an oar to stimulate the sparkling pins of blue light."
Somebody's Heart is Burning : A Woman Wanderer in Africa by Tanya Shaffer
"Here's what I love about travel : Strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart and makes you a different person when you go to sleep - more tender, less jaded - than you were when you woke up."
*I have yet to finish this book
Love With A Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche
"A full moon illuminates everything under its neon glow so that, at night, our anchor is visible on the seafloor twenty feet below. Everything slips into black when there's no moon, but stars decorate the sky like glitters sprinkled by an excited child. Sometimes the child's hand slips, and glitter is spilled in the ocean, creating phosphorescence - bursts of lights from hundreds of tiny bioluminescent organisms that flash when the water is disturbed. We spend hours playing with these lights in the water, dipping and swishing an oar to stimulate the sparkling pins of blue light."
Somebody's Heart is Burning : A Woman Wanderer in Africa by Tanya Shaffer
"Here's what I love about travel : Strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart and makes you a different person when you go to sleep - more tender, less jaded - than you were when you woke up."
*I have yet to finish this book
Stones Into Schools by Greg Mortenson
"Instead, those words affirm my belief that the people who live in the last places - the people who are most neglected and least valued by the larger world - often represent the best of who we are and the finest standard of what we are meant to become. This is the power that last places hold over me, and why I have found it impossible to resist their pull."
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
“Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.’
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
"The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead. To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of the life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."
The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost by Rachel Friedman
"What happens we lose the things that anchor us? What if, instead of grasping at something to hold on to, we pull up our roots and walk away? Instead of trying to find the way back, we walk deeper and deeper into the woods, willing ourselves to get lost. In this place where nothing is recognizable, not the people or the language or the food, we are truly on our own. Eventually, we find ourselves unencumbered by the past or the future. Here is a fleeting glimpse of our truest self, our self in the present moment."
"What happens we lose the things that anchor us? What if, instead of grasping at something to hold on to, we pull up our roots and walk away? Instead of trying to find the way back, we walk deeper and deeper into the woods, willing ourselves to get lost. In this place where nothing is recognizable, not the people or the language or the food, we are truly on our own. Eventually, we find ourselves unencumbered by the past or the future. Here is a fleeting glimpse of our truest self, our self in the present moment."
The Lost Girls by J. Baggett, H. Corbett, A. Pressner
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way and not starting."
"...uprooting our lives to take an unconventional detour was one of the most challenging things we ever did, but the experience taught us that getting lost isn't something to avoid, but to embrace. The only leaps of faith you'll ever regret are the ones you don't take."
"...uprooting our lives to take an unconventional detour was one of the most challenging things we ever did, but the experience taught us that getting lost isn't something to avoid, but to embrace. The only leaps of faith you'll ever regret are the ones you don't take."
Touch the Top of the World by Erik Weihenmayer
"Suddenly I told myself, 'You could turn around right now. Nobody would stop you.' Standing next to Jeff, my mind churned with fear, self-doubt, and endless self-questioning. Perhaps the way to approach such a monster of a mountain was to break it down into more manageable chunks, to clear my mind so heavy with expectation, and to experience the climb moment by moment, step by step. I would try not to worry about everything that lay ahead but focus on the beauty and friendship that was all around me, and no matter how high I got up the mountain, I would celebrate that as my summit."
Video Nights in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer
"In the center of Nepal, I began to count my breaths and my steps, and to recite phrases to myself, pushing thoughts away. This is the way some people meditate. I could only feel that calm for at most an hour a day. It was however, a serenity, I had never felt before. It was what I valued most about walking."
Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves
"The best kind of travel - the kind I wanted to experience - involves a particular state of mind, in which one is not merely open to the occurrence of the unexpected, but to deep involvement in the unexpected, indeed open to the possibility of having one's life changed forever by a chance encounter
"But I created my life. If you choose one path you can't choose another. I'll never wonder what it would be like to sail across an ocean or move to Europe or just take a year off to chill out. I'll never doubt myself in a strange land, never be scared of languages or funky rooms. I won't be cynical about human nature, because strangers have helped me so many times. My ripped suitcase, as it tumbles onto the carousel, is bursting with life. I followed my wanderlust. It bruised me sometimes, and took me to all kinds of highs. Now that my thirst is slaked, I get to start anew."
"But I created my life. If you choose one path you can't choose another. I'll never wonder what it would be like to sail across an ocean or move to Europe or just take a year off to chill out. I'll never doubt myself in a strange land, never be scared of languages or funky rooms. I won't be cynical about human nature, because strangers have helped me so many times. My ripped suitcase, as it tumbles onto the carousel, is bursting with life. I followed my wanderlust. It bruised me sometimes, and took me to all kinds of highs. Now that my thirst is slaked, I get to start anew."
What Were We Thinking? Bicycling the Back Roads of Asia by Nancy and John Vogel
"Now I longed for the intensity, for the challenge. I longed for the unexpected to pop up in front of our faces. I longed for the crowds which added an excitement to our journey. I longed for the suspense created by never knowing what lay beyond the next corner, or in the next village."
Wild by Cherly Strayed
"That perhaps being amidst the undesecrated beauty of the wilderness meant I too could be undesecrated, regardless of what I'd lost or what had been taken from me, regardless of the regrettable things I'd done to others or myself or the regrettable things that had been done to me. Of all the things I'd been skeptical about, I didn't feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me."
For more on my thoughts on some of the books : read this.
Some books I'm still reading:
Shantaram
The Flat Earth
Places in Between
Some books I'm still reading:
Shantaram
The Flat Earth
Places in Between
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