Thoughts on “How Not to Travel the World” by Lauren Juliff

I don’t recall how I first heard of Lauren Juliff and her Never Ending Footsteps, but I started following her on Twitter and reading her blog about a year or so ago. I was curious about the travels of a young girl from the UK, who seems to have “disaster” painted on her forehead. I am not kidding—the stuff she gets into is truly fascinating. What’s more profound and inspiring however, is how she managed to overcome her anxiety, panic attacks and various fears1, left her safe home in England, and started travelling the world.

In these few months that I’ve started reading about her travels, she has managed to get violated in Thailand, get scammed in Shanghai, sit next to a corpse on a boat in Laos, and cancelled her trip to the Seychelles and Maldives2. She also survived a tsunami with her boyfriend Dave, which you must read up on his own blog after reading Lauren’s book—I won’t link to it now so as not to spoil the fun.

Fun? Well, not for them obviously, but Lauren’s adventures and their pitfalls are truly fascinating. Not only because of their absurdity, but mainly due to the fact the she is the last person I would have expected to face then and come out swinging. Her book “How Not to Travel the World” is a collection of stories and adventures, which takes the reader through the rollercoaster that she herself has been through, and it pulls all the right strings too—it has made me smile, laugh, cringe, get frustrated with her, stare in disbelief and almost cry at one point. She even tried to stay in a room with thousands of creepy crawlies—not something I would ever dare attempt.

What shocked me most is how frank Lauren is about herself and her life, displaying her weaknesses for the world to see. Yet she feeds on them, and it has seemed to have emboldened her beyond what she herself has thought she was capable of—I am quite impressed with her transformation. I hope she starts writing more often, be it on her blog or in preparation for another book, even if it’s just about mundane things—she has a talent for putting her thoughts on paper, and sucking the reader into her world.

Go grab the book in whatever form or store you fancy—it really is a good read.

★ How Not to Travel the World – iBooks – €6.49 / $6.49 →

★ How Not to Travel the World – Amazon US – Kindle – $11.06 →
★ How Not to Travel the World – Amazon US – Paperback – $13.99 →
★ How Not to Travel the World – Amazon UK – Kindle – £4.29 →
★ How Not to Travel the World – Amazon UK – Paperback – $7.99 →

And many others …

Too many to list here. ↩

That particular incident pissed me off to no end—I was afraid she’d given up and succumbed to her panic attacks. ↩