Travel As Transformation

Based on the author's own travel and resulting self-discovery, this book encourages moving beyond the boundaries of comfort to experience new climates, interesting scenery, and different cultures, thereby enabling self-growth and transformation toward a global consciousness.

Travel and tourism have a long association with the notion of transformation, both in terms of self and social collectives. What is surprising, however, is that this association has, on the whole, remained relatively underexplored and unchallenged, with little in the way of a corpus of academic literature surrounding these themes. Instead, much of the literature to date has focused upon describing and categorising tourism and travel experiences from a supply-side perspective, with travellers themselves defined in terms of their motivations and interests. While the tourism field can lay claim to several significant milestone contributions, there have been few recent attempts at a rigorous re-theorization of the issues arising from the travel/transformation nexus. The opportunity to explore the socio-cultural dimensions of transformation through travel has thus far been missed. Bringing together geographers, sociologists, cultural researchers, philosophers, anthropologists, visual researchers, literary scholars and heritage researchers, this volume explores what it means to transform through travel in a modern, mobile world. In doing so, it draws upon a wide variety of traveller perspectives - including tourists, backpackers, lifestyle travellers, migrants, refugees, nomads, walkers, writers, poets, virtual travellers and cosmetic surgery patients - to unpack a cultural phenomenon that has captured the imagination since the very first works of Western literature.

The books that we read, whether travel-focused or not, may influence the way in which we understand the process or experience of travel. This multidisciplinary work provides a critical analysis of the inspirational and transformational role that books play in travel imaginings. Does reading a book encourage us to think of travel as exotic, adventurous, transformative, dangerous or educative? Do different genres of books influence a reader's view of travel in multifarious ways? These questions are explored through a literary analysis of an eclectic selection of books spanning the period from the eighteenth century to the present day. Genres covered include historical fiction, children's books, westerns, science-fiction and crime fiction.

A daring, intelligent, and unapologetic call to find yourself through wanderlust. When you travel to a foreign place, do you experience this new life as your old self? Or do you become a new version of you? From living in a van on the streets of San Diego, to growing chocolate with indigenous tribes in Central America, to teaching in the Middle East and volunteering in Africa, bestselling author Gregory V. Diehl has followed a worldly and unconventional path through life. Leaving his California home as a teenager, he fully immersed himself, living and working, in 45 countries across the globe-all by age 28. In Travel As Transformation, he puts his diverse cultural experiences on display and asks the reader to question how their own identity has been shaped by the lifestyle they live. As you delve into Travel As Transformation, you will learn just how profoundly travel can influence your perception of yourself. Diehl teaches aspiring travelers, vagabonds, and nomads to let go of their internal inhibitions and former sense of self. To encourage world wanderers to embrace change, he shares his own stirring experiences of transformation across Costa Rica, China, Morocco, Armenia, Iraq, Monaco, Ecuador, and more. By embarking on this nomadic journey alongside him, you will learn to examine all of humanity through unbiased eyes and discover all that lies just beyond your backyard. A new, vast cultural experience awaits. To travel with a truly open mind is to forget who you were when you started. It is to be constantly born anew, and identify with ways of existence you did not know were possible. Travel As Transformation will give you the wisdom, the inspiration, and the resources to conquer the limitations placed on you by your home culture. It's time to take advantage of everything the world has to offer and become everything you can be. Find yourself through Travel As Transformation.

This book examines The Thousand and One Nights in terms of the tales' narrative and in particular using the idea of the journey and mobility as a tool to understanding the work.

A critical exploration of travel, animals and shape-changing in fin de siècle literature.

Modern life is often described as an iron cage from which there is no escape. But popular culture venerates leisure and travel as authentic escape routes from routine and monotony. However what kind of escape is tolerated in modern society? How is it shaped by historical expectations of leisure and travel? And what do we actually experience when we engage in leisure or travel activity? This fascinating and accomplished book tries to supply answers to these questions. A major scholarly contribution to the sociological analysis of leisure, pleasure and travel, Dr Rojek's study is a radical challenge to the existing paradigmatic orthodoxy. Bryan S. Turner, University of Essex.

The Road Within is a book of transformation, of lessons learned, maps drawn and burned, and spiritual blessings bestowed by that great and hard teacher -- travel. Learn what mystics and saints have always known -- that wondrous things await people who are in touch with themselves, with the world, and with God. Authors featured in this very different kind of travel book include Annie Dillard, Huston Smith, Natalie Goldberg, Andrew Harvey, Barry Lopez, and Bill Buford.