Download The Wander Year: One Couple's Journey Around the World AudioBook Free
From the writer of the Wall Neighborhood Journal best seller The Kindness of Strangers Mike McIntyre and his longtime girl, Andrea, are in their early 40s and itching for a break. So they book their San Diego home - dog, kitty, and furniture included - and go on a yearlong journey around the world. "We're not out to find ourselves, or even to lose ourselves," McIntyre writes. "We're merely seeking a pause in our routines." However the few is soon swept up in the adventure of an eternity: trekking in the Himalayas, traversing the Sahara on camel, scrambling over the temples of Angkor, crossing the world's largest salt flat in South America, scaling a New Zealand glacier. The reserve recounts the odyssey in 48 dispatches from 22 countries. Included in this: birdwatching in Indonesia, a haircut from Vietnam's oldest barber, touring a notorious jail in Bolivia, haggling over rugs in Morocco, on safari in Nepal. McIntyre taps his self-deprecating laughter to convey the joys, perils, and frustrations of prolonged travel. When the couple projects into a cyclone in Fiji over a rubber raft, he writes, "The lack of life overcoats and paddles meant more room for our lunacy." And during a ride across India with a hired car and driver, he records, "His passing approach was so precise, I could see my horrified expression reflected in the chrome bumpers of onrushing trucks." He also writes eloquently of such poignant occasions as sleeping under the personalities in North Africa, flying kites with a poor son in Bali, and the loss of life of a lady tour guide in China. By journey's end, he's shucked much of his journalist's cynicism, and he stands in awe of the staggeringly beautiful world and the resilient souls who complete it. The Wander Time can be an extended version of the popular series of the same name that ran in the Travel section of the Los Angeles Times.
