Best Travel Books: 16 Book Recommendations for Your Wandering Heart

No luck with love this Valentine’s Day? Is it because you’d rather see the world than muck around with your broken heart? No problem here because we have all the best travel guides and books that are perfect for your wandering heart, or if you decide to just go on a journey this Valentine’s Day, or just simply stay home and read some of these books.

1. The Bucket List: 1000 Adventures Big & Small

For those dreaming to have a wandering heart, this book will help you check off that travel list in your mind, and perhaps more. The Bucket List is not just a travel list but also a collection of different adventures you can experience across every continent, ninja training in Japan to walking across the Galapagos Islands, from panning for gold in California to seeing the northern lights from an igloo in Finland. This could be the book to inspire you to final go out and climb an active volcano somewhere or just experience milking a cow.

2. Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders

If you want your bucket list, and your wanderlust, to explore only the strangest and most curious places in the world, then Atlas Obscura is the book for you. We bet you didn’t know about a baobob tree in South Africa that is so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can sit and drink or the glowworm caves in New Zealand, the devil baby jumping festival in Spain, Turkmenistan’s 40-year hole of fire called the Gates of Hell or a graveyard of decommissioned ships on the coast of Bangladesh.

3. Destinations of a Lifetime: 225 of the World’s Most Amazing Places

Created by National Geographic, the book is a photographic tour of spellbinding and breathtaking images of visual wonders, ancient monoliths, scenic lands, white-sand shores, rainforests, and other classic and wonders of the world worth traveling to. Each location is loaded with hard information such as how to get there when to go, what and where to eat, where to stay, and what to experience.

4. Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Greatest Trips

Another creation from National Geographic, this book features the top picks for the world’s most fabulous journeys. Each location is filled with information for readers who want to try out the travel destinations. It features wonder journeys such as the heights of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, trekking in Transylvania, the scenic highlands of Scotland, or riding the famous Ghan train in Australia’s outback.

5. Humans of New York: Stories

It started on September 11, 2001, when all New Yorkers felt proud and at the same time, many had stories to tell of their lives. Today, many New Yorkers still feel the sentiment to have their stories told and not just be remembered during Patriot Day. The author knew “everyone has a story to tell” and so spent 5 years scouring the streets and collecting stories from more than 10,000 New Yorkers. While it’s more of a human experience book that you won’t be able to put down, it may give you the urge to add New York to your travel destinations.

6. Bushcraft First Aid: A Field Guide to Wilderness Emergency Care

If your wandering heart takes you on hiking treks or camping excursions, you may want to read up on this book and keep it handy on your next mountain climbing. You can’t call 911 in the middle of a rain forest, so what do you do? Bushcraft First Aid teaches you how to deal with a variety of emergency situations, including making bandages, dressings, and slings with whatever is handy. This book may save a life, yours even, the next time you’re in the bush.

7. 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: Revised Second Edition

After the first book came out in 2003, it sold 3 million copies, making it one of the bestselling travel books of all time. This new revised and updated second edition has over 200 new entries. But it is still the informative, experiential, and budget-friendly advice book that it has been famous for. It’s an honest book that tells you what’s beautiful, what’s fun and worthwhile, and what’ forgettable on our planet.

8. Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Travel: Our List of the 500 Best Places to See…Ranked

Lonely Planet has always been ranked as one of the world’s leading travel guides, with a unique ranking of 500 of the world’s attractions and hotspots. Many tourism authorities around the world compete for attention with Lonely Planet’s global community of travel experts as to who makes it to the top ten, and ultimately number. The book is fair since large mega-sights that are overrated like the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower have to compete with lesser-known tourist attractions that are hidden or unknown because of lack of marketing.

9. Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

It’s a unique book that many backpackers will love, as well as those who travel around the world on a shoestring budget. It’s traveling to see the world to take time off from the dredges of normal life. It shows how you can travel on a limited budget from a limit of 6 weeks to 4 months to up to 2 years, seeing the world on your own terms and pace. It also gives advice on how to finance your travels, determining destination, adjusting to life on the road, working and volunteering overseas, and handling travel problems.

10. Letters from Wanderlust

A different kind of book that backpackers and those who are used to just putting things in a bag and going away to travel. It entails leaving the normal life and traveling the world on one-way tickets. It is more traveling as a search of the true self and to discover wisdom from other countries. The book reads more like a novel rather than a travel guide and is hard to put down, taking you on journeys on five of the six habitable continents and experiencing different cultures.

11. The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life

This book it touted as remarkable because it is both a travel guide and inspirational book. It reveals how anyone can bring meaning into their life by traveling far and wide. It is also a book that will be hard to put down as the traveler’s biggest revelation is finding how many people like him or her exists in spite of cultural differences. It shows how traveling can be a quest rather than just a dull tour because humanity is diverse and traveling is more than just seeing tourist sites, while also seeing injustice, poverty, and other threats in other countries.

12. Be Expert with Map & Compass Book

If you love trekking, hiking, and camping in the wilderness, then this book is the required reading especially for the beginner in learning about map and compass reading. It’s a book for both the novice and serious trekker. It is written in simple, clear, and concise terms, easily understood, and gives great details about the basics of map and compass work, with detailed descriptions and illustrations.

13. Destination Earth: A New Philosophy of Travel by a World-Traveler

The author, Nicos Hadjicostis, took 6.5 years to travel around the world continuously without backtracking or returning to his point of departure, treating the world as if it were one huge country or a single destination. The book chronicles exploring 70 countries on 6 continents, not just seeing the sites, but mixing it up with the people, cultures, and other wonders.

14. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

More of a survival guidebook, Laurence Gonzales’s book has helped save lives from the deepest wildernesses, as well as improving the reader’s life of traveling through trekking and hiking some of the most unforgiving natural wonders. It’s a mix of adventure, narrative, survival science, and practical advice on how to take control of stress, learn to assess risk, and make better decisions under pressure because there is no one to call for help out there and the wilderness can be an unforgiving mother nature.

15. I’ll Push You: A Journey of 500 Miles, Two Best Friends, and One Wheelchair

This book is more of a novel about two best friends and the challenge of a lifetime. It’s the true story of Justin and Patrick who grew up together, went to school together, and were best man in each other’s weddings. Then Justin got diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease that robbed him of the use of his arms and legs. So when the two friends heard about the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile trek through Spain, Patrick immediately told Justin, “I’ll push you. It is real-life travel adventure full of love, humor, and exemplifies what true friendship is meant to be.

16. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

In 1986, shy but intelligent 20-year old Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared by living in the forest alone. The only time he would speak to another human being would be nearly 30 years later when he would be arrested for stealing food. He lived only in a tent even through brutal winters and survived only by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store food and water, while avoiding freezing to death. He broke into vacation cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed. For almost 3 decades no one could ever solve the burglaries until Knight was finally arrested. The book is based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, a clear account of his secluded life, and why he decided on it.