Explore the World One Page at a Time: 5 Books To Combat Travel Depression
The throes of a global pandemic doesn’t exactly make for the best time to travel and see the world. This we learned all too well between this year and last, but for many of us, that itch to travel, to feel your stomach rise as the plane does, to eat new foods, see new sites, and converse with new and interesting people, doesn’t just go away because of a health crisis. For so many, this past year has only rendered that itch unscratchable, which is its own kind of torment. Luckily, the escapism we find through reading can help to ease that itch just a little. It may not be quite the same as traipsing along the Champs-Élysées or the Great Wall, and it won’t leave your belly full of Spanish tapas or Italian wine, but novels about traveling and those that are set in lands different than our own, can quench a certain hunger in their own right.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
This 1980s classic is a timeless piece about the pursuit of dreams and the far off places those dreams will take you. In The Alchemist, the main character, Santiago, begins his journey in the southern region of Andalusia in Spain and eventually travels through Tangier, Morocco as well as Faiyum Oasis, Egypt. Santiago ventures through the foreign markets andthe beautiful, albeit harsh landscape of northern and eastern Africa on a quest to find life’s meaning and the answers to our dream’s questions. This book was one I read during the early days of the pandemic. It was uplifting in message and incredibly memorable and vivid in the locales it takes readers to.
The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City by William B Helmreich
Living in New York, I know I am a bit biased when I say it’s the greatest city in the world. Even when it was more feasible to travel to “The City That Never Sleeps” pre-pandemic, to really see everything New York has to offer is next to impossible. I have been here for three years and I can still whole-heartedly say that it is not yet a feat that I have accomplished. However, short of walking all five boroughs, I did take one day this past summer to walk Manhattan top to bottom. That hike alone could spin a story worth reading. Helmreich’s piece of nonfiction take it a step (no pun intended) further, by traversing the whole of New York City, conversing with hundreds of New Yorkers from all over the world, and depicting why it truly is the world’s greatest city.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
This novel is probably one of the most well known “road trip” works of fiction and one that holds a defining spot in the makeup of the “Beat Generation.” First published in 1957, this book is a fictional take on Kerouac’s own travels and his journey of self-discovery that follows the characters of Sal and Dean as they wander from San Francisco to Denver to Mexico City and beyond.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Though I read this book in college, it is one that I return to again and again as a result of the narrative that Hemingway crafts around his life in Paris as a young writer in the 1920s. He paints the picture of what the City of Lights must have looked like during this time, while simultaneously sharing the conversations and musings between famous characters including Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife Zelda, Ezra Pound, and others. But even more, this memoir reads as if Paris is the main character itself; the others, including Hemingway, just attentive narrators under the powerful and changing whims of the city. Those who are plagued by wanderlust will be happy to know that a number of the restaurants and cafes depicted in the book are in fact still operating in Paris today.
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
As much a love story as it is a comedic social commentary, A Room with a View, places readers among the piazzas and vineyards of Florence, Italy, where the protagonist, Lucy Honeychurch, finds herself falling in love with the socially unsuitable George Emerson. The novel can be read with a sharp eye toward social critiques on the patriarchal norms of Victorian England, as well as a wide-eyed look into the beauty of northern Italy and the reminiscent feelings of first love.
While I am sure I speak for more than just myself when I say I know how keen so many of us are to be able to see the world again, there is still some solace to be found in the pages of fiction and nonfiction alike. It will certainly be a beautiful day when we can see with our own eyes the sweeping countryside of northern Italy or the arid beauty of eastern Africa. It will be remarkable when we can again drink coffee in the cafes of Paris. But for now, while we remain domestically located, let’s allow ourselves to be taken away in imagination only to the landscapes painted with words, in the works of literature we might not have otherwise allowed ourselves the time to read.
