Travelogs by Women Who Defied Convention and Followed a Dream

When I started blogging back in 2015 I was quick to tell anyone who would listen that I wanted to be the next Bill Bryson, however I now realize that’s because at the time I wasn’t familiar with any female travelog authors. As I leaned into the travel blogging community I discovered several amazing women, many who had dropped everything to solo travel and write about their adventures. These authors, most who started as bloggers and now have one or more books on bookstore shelves, are just as entertaining as Bryson. Though instead of the dry humor of an older, married male bumbling his way through his travels, these women serve their humor with a side of romantic entanglements, solo female traveler safety advice, and a dash of inspiration for other females thinking about throwing caution to the wind and setting out for the unknown. So in case you haven’t had the opportunity to discover these travelistas yourself, let me add some travelogs by women to your TBR list (and I highly recommend the audio versions of these books as most are narrated by the authors themselves!):

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Flirting with Disaster: True Travel Tales of Fear, Failure, and Faith by Angie Orth

Angie Orth walked away from a New York City based career in travel talent wrangling in search of happiness when the grind of climbing the thankless cubicle life ladder pushed her to a breaking point. She left for what was going to be a year of travel, started a blog, Angie Away, and never looked back.

I’ve been following Angie’s blog for a while and even had the chance to meet her in person while attending TravelCon. We’ve bonded over visiting Jane Austen locations and although I was going to buy her new debut book no matter what because I love the way she writes her blog posts, I was excited to find out the full story behind her own Mr. Darcy moment which she alludes to in her post about visiting Jane Austen’s grave in Winchester, but never gave more details about until now.

Flirting with Disaster not only includes the not-on-the-blog romantic mishaps Angie encountered during her solo travels, but is very heavy on Christian faith content. Those of you astute readers may have noticed, based on certain things within my wedding post, that I’m not exactly the target audience for the faith based content. While I found this particular content a bit much for my taste, the rest of the book was as entertaining as her blog and I couldn’t put the book down. And yes, it did have me thinking, maybe it’s time to ditch the day job, buy that one way ticket and see what happens!

Call You When I Land by Nikki Vargas

Nikki Vargas was engaged to be married, had a job that allowed her to travel, and wasn’t happy. To help her cope, she’d started a blog called The Pin the Map Project (now defunct, though the Facebook page still exists but the links to posts don’t work), and poured all her extracurricular time into traveling as often as she could and blogging. Vargas’ travelog chronicles the journey she has been on since deciding to break off her engagement. Her journey has taken her all over the world on writing assignments, ended up in some definite romantic entanglements before finding the man she would ultimately marry, and includes some career wins and losses.

Although I felt the last quarter of this book was more of a love letter to her husband than anything else, overall it’s the story of the evolution of a girl who started too afraid to walk down the street on her own (while living abroad in Paris) to a girl unafraid to take risks, which includes solo traveling. Vargas shares her story with us readers unflinchingly and with a side of sarcasm and humor. Near the end of the book she tells us about starting her own travel magazine. She threw a gigantic, expensive party to mark its birth and then juxtaposes that scene with one a year later in which she’s sobbing on the floor amid the wreckage of a photo of that party that she’s just smashed on the floor as the whole endeavor had run out of money. Throughout the entire book Vargas shares her personal and professional highs and lows like this and seems to convince herself at the same time as her reader that there may be tough times, but in the end, everything will turn out for the better. If you’re looking for a book to inspire you to keep going through the hard things in search of a better tomorrow, this book certainly does just that.

Love with a Chance of Drowning: A Memoir by Torre DeRoche

Torre DeRoche was yet another female bored with corporate life in San Francisco and wondering if there could possibly be more to life. Then one evening she met a handsome stranger in a bar. He said he had a sailboat and was about to set out to sail around the world and invited her to join him. Having never done anything before that would take her off course of the conventional life expected of her, she surprised even herself when she said yes to walking away from her job and sailing around the world with a man she hardly knew.

Torre, the Fearful Adventurer, turned her blog posts about her voyage that took her halfway around the globe into a captivating, funny, and heartfelt book. Unfortunately the handsome stranger, who became Torre’s boyfriend during the years she traveled with him, was kind of an idiot. After Love with a Chance of Drowning was published Torre shared via her blog that she had separated from the sailor, but her time with him certainly made for a good story.

What I was Doing While You Were Breeding: A Memoir by Kristin Newman

While her friends were getting married and having babies Kristin was single and ready to mingle, though not with American men. Kristin was not a blogger, but was still a writer. In fact, she was a tv show sitcom writer and used her vacation days between tv show seasons to travel the world. Using her witty writing skills she weaves a hilarious tale of solo travel and sexy encounters with foreign men.

I listened to the audio version of this book as I set out on yet another plane journey, and it was the perfect travel read (It’s definitely not PG, so perhaps it’s good nobody was reading over my shoulder!). This book certainly boosted my wanderlust, but I’m not sure I would have had the courage, or perhaps the brazenness, to make some of the choices Newman made while traveling. Like going home with foreign men seemed to fly in the face of solo female travel smarts. Of course it was this brazenness that made for a good story later though. Some parts of the book were laugh out loud funny while other parts were definitely cringe worthy.

I found this book horrifying, depressing, humorous, and inspiring, though part of my opinion may have come from reading this book while jetsetting at age 30, while also unwed and without a child on the way. Although in the end Newman found happiness with a divorcee with children from a former marriage, I found myself wondering if I, myself, didn’t settle down soon, was it possible that the only option I’d find left to me was becoming somebody’s step-mom? I think this is one of those reads from which what you get out of it differs depending on the time in your life in which you read it.

Destination Thailand (The Lonely Hearts Travel Club #1) by Katy Colins

Destination Thailand is actually a fiction book, but it’s based on the real events that happened to the author. Katy Coins made news headlines, becoming known as “the Backpacking Bridget Jones,” after she was left at the altar and went on to travel and blog at Not Wed or Dead (the remnants of which can be found today on Colins’ author site).

Although knowing that Colins may have embellished certain events as she’s allowed to do with a work of fiction, but also knowing the book is based on her own experiences which she blogged about along the way, I feel comfortable counting this along with the previous female travelogs listed here. Taking everything with a grain of salt and at the same time just letting myself enjoy the story, I couldn’t put this book down!

After finding success with this first novel, Colins added two more books after this one and called the trilogy The Lonely Hearts Travel Club and then continued to write several more books based on her life after finding a new man, getting pregnant, getting married, and sadly losing a parent. Although I haven’t yet read any of her other books, if they’re anything like her original blog posts, I won’t hesitate to pick up her next novels when I get a chance!

The Catch Me if You Can: One Woman’s Journey to Every Country in the World by Jessica Nabongo

This book provided the diversity I stupidly didn’t realize I was missing. Jessica Nabongo traveled to every country in the world by using her dual American & Ugandan passports and blogged her adventure at The Catch Me If You Can. As a dark skinned traveler (and a bald one, because she tired of trying to find hairdressers as she traveled who knew how to correctly trim her African-descent hair) she ran into situations on multiple occasions that her light-skinned traveling counterparts often never have dealt with.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t love the book, BUT it did provide a necessary perspective that I’d been lacking. My own opinion, however, may also be biased as I listened to the audio version of this book rather than read the beautiful coffee-table print version that I’ve heard contains stunning photos from Nabongo’s travels. I also unfortunately felt the audio version, although narrated by Nabongo herself, would have benefited from a more experienced narrator.

Despite my lackluster feelings for the narrated version, I still think this is an important read for travelers who may need a little reminder that your fellow travelers, although on the same route as you, may have an entirely different experience.

Have you read any of these travelogs? Are there books missing from this list? Let me know in the comments below!

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