3 Great Books About Inspiring Travel Adventures

This article was written by Daniel Lefferts on behalf of Bookish.com. Whether because of its opportunities for kangaroo sightings or the lively culture of its seaboard cities, Australia remains a favorite destination for travelers. As you plan a your summer getaway—whether during their summer this winter or ours in June—dive into these fascinating adventures tales set in Australia. In the Land of OzBooker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson’s memoir of Australia, which is being re-released to mark the 25th anniversary of its publication, remains a classic portrait of the country. While offering hilarious notes on kooky locals and misadventures in the Australian Bush, he also zeroes in on the darker contradictions at work within Australian society, namely the fraught relations between whites and Aborigines. In a Sunburned CountryNo collection of Australia adventure lit would be complete without Bill Bryson’s “In a Sunburned Country.” In this classic travelogue, the itinerant travel writer trains his razor-sharp wit on every odd character, creature and locale he encounters, from the mysterious rock formations at Uluru to the giant (12-foot!) earthworms of Gippsland. If you’re looking for a bracingly spot-on portrait of the country that’ll also leave you keeled over with laughter, this is the book for you. 30 Days in SydneyMan Booker Prize winning novelist and Australia native Peter Carey returned to Sydney in the midst of the 2000 Olympics to take stock of how the city and country had changed during his 17-year absence. The result is a vivid and impressionistic guide to the spirit of Australia—as only an Aussie could deliver. Click here for more awesome Aussie-themed books to help inspire your next trip to the land down under.

Splashes, shrieks, giggles, and grins. My family and I wade delicately, as suburbanites do, into a Montana creek after a long plane ride from New York. Even in late summer, the water is cold. TAKE A MONTANA TOUR! And it's easy to see why—early snow has dusted the distant peaks. Didactic Dad gestures toward the mountains and reminds his daughters that they're basically standing in melted snow. They're not listening—and why should they? Clara, my seven-year-old, is collecting the most colorful rocks she's ever seen (and couldn't care less that they've been deposited here over eons by the glaciers that give this park its name). Rosalie, just turned two, is simply delighted to be standing in water that's swirling and burbling around her. My wife, Michele, and I share a moment beyond words as we watch our girls discover Glacier National Park, nicknamed the Crown of the Continent for its stunning array of Rocky Mountain peaks, a place she and I have come to treasure as our favorite spot on the planet. For the next two days, we'll happily skip rocks, paddle canoes, and hike gentle, family-friendly trails in the company of mountain goats, bald eagles, and fellow awed humans. DAYS 1 AND 2 Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road 64 miles Arriving at Glacier International Airport in Kalispell, Mont., is nothing like "deplaning" at a cookie-cutter airport. Steps from the tarmac we're greeted by wildlife replicas like mountain goats and loons. Within minutes we're in a rental car and zipping up the winding roads into the mountains toward Glacier National Park (West Glacier, Mont., nps.gov/glac, $25 per car). We load up on provisions at a supermarket in Columbia Falls, then we enter the national park world—where the day's schedule is established gently by the rising and falling of the sun, the turning of the stars, and the puffy clouds in the Big Sky. We check in at Apgar Village Lodge (Apgar Village, Glacier National Park, Mont., westglacier.com, cabins with kitchens from $176), essentially a motel made up of individual cabins equipped with bathrooms and kitchens. We've reserved Cabin 22, right along the shores of McDonald Creek and a few steps from Lake McDonald, the biggest lake in the park. We drop our bags and head right for the creek's gin-clear water, washing big-city anxiety from our bodies. The mountains of the Continental Divide are reflected perfectly in the lake. Yes, our cabin has a kitchen, and over the course of our two days in the park we'll put it to good use flipping pancakes and burgers. But on our first evening in Apgar Village, we want someone else to do the cooking. Eddie's Café (Apgar Village, Glacier National Park, Mont., eddiescafegifts.com, ale-battered fish-and-chips $13.99) is the only game in "town," and it's just what we're looking for, with local trout and exceptional beef on the menu for decent prices. We tuck into excellent Redhook Ale-battered fish-and-chips and, for dessert, wild huckleberry ice cream by the lake. First thing in the morning, we hit the ultimate highway—with an emphasis on "high." As thoroughfares go, there's really no place like Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road. Completed in 1932, it hugs the sides of mountains as it snakes 53 miles across the park, up to the Continental Divide at Logan Pass then down to East Glacier. Along the way you can spend happy moments—or even hours—exploring the easy, .6-mile Trail of the Cedars, boulder-strewn Avalanche Creek, and jaw-dropping turnouts with views of the pine-studded valleys far below. Once you reach Logan Pass, 32 miles from Apgar, with a visitors center that includes the highest souvenir shop I've ever shopped at, plan on hiking a ways on a boardwalk that was built especially to preserve the delicate alpine flora that grow here during the brief summers. You can follow the boardwalk uphill to a platform overlooking Hidden Lake (if your legs survive the hike, you'll understand how the lake got its name!) and you're almost guaranteed to see mountain goats—white-haired, horned relatives of antelopes that live only at exceptionally high altitudes—clomping along the boardwalk up there. Back at Apgar that evening, we attend one of Glacier's evening ranger talks, this one on Native American folk tales. At our cabin, we drift off to sleep while the night sky is still a little orange in the west. You can spend days in Glacier, and I recommend taking Going-to-the-Sun Road all the way to the east side of the park, where you can explore the area around Saint Mary's Lake, Many Glacier, and other spots. For this trip, though, we've allotted just two days to the park and now we're headed for Bigfork. DAY 3 Glacier National Park to Bigfork 41 miles Bigfork, on the shores of Flathead Lake, hasn't yet made Budget Travel's Coolest Small Towns list, but it certainly has a shot. It boasts a thriving main street (with the '80s-evoking moniker Electric Avenue) complete with a great book store, jewelry shops that specialize in local sapphires, art galleries, and no-nonsense eateries that will load you up with quality sandwiches. After "roughing it" in Glacier for two nights, the lure of Eva Gates's wild-huckleberry preserves is strong for us (456 Electric Ave., Bigfork, Mont., evagates.com, three jars of wild huckleberry preserves $35). We grab some snacks and also buy some syrups and preserves to mail back to New York, where the flavor of Montana huckleberries will remind us of this trip for months. We spend the night at a "stylish steal," the Swan River Inn (360 Grand Ave., Bigfork, Mont., swanriverinn.com, $195), ready to set out first thing in the morning for Montana's dinosaur country to the south. DAY 4 Bigfork to Bozeman 289 miles Today's ride is relatively short by Montana standards, but can stretch out as long as you like depending on how willing you are to stop and explore the "chain of lakes" that follow the Clearwater River down the Swan mountain range along the Bob Marshall National Wilderness. We stop at Rainy Lake for a short hike and hear the unforgettable cries of loons across the water. Next, we make a left at the giant cow. Well, it's actually a bull, the mascot of a convenience store at Clearwater Junction where we turn east on our way to Bozeman. With a collection of dinosaur fossils that rivals those of much larger museums in much larger cities, Bozeman's Museum of the Rockies (300 West Kagy Blvd., Bozeman, Mont., museumoftherockies.org, two-day admission $14) represents some of the bounty discovered by dinosaur hunters such as Jack Horner, and you can sign up for a dig yourself. (Be prepared for a long, hot day of digging and, possibly, disappointment.) We take our time strolling through a timeline of Montana history, including artifacts from Native Americans and early American settlers. There's also an exceptional planetarium and the Living History Farm, an original homestead reconstructed on the grounds of the museum to show visitors how a farming family lived more than a century ago. In the farm's kitchen, volunteers have been known to cook up a fresh feast using fruits and vegetables grown right on the grounds, and a cookbook of traditional (and yummy) recipes is available at the museum's bookshop. Our dinner is decidedly more contemporary—immense submarine sandwiches from the Pickle Barrel (809 West College St., Bozeman, Mont., picklebarrelmt.com, The Big Sky sandwich $7.40), an affordable favorite of Montana State University students here. Try The Big Sky, piled high with bacon, turkey, and cheddar cheese. With our amazingly tasty sandwiches in hand, we check in to a cozy home away from home—Homewood Suites by Hilton (1023 Baxter Lane, Bozeman, Mont., homewoodsuites.com, suites from $169). DAY 5 Bozeman to Helena 97 miles Bozeman can be your gateway to Yellowstone National Park if you've got the time, but on this trip, Helena, the state capital, is next. Though Helena feels like the big city at this point, it is still defined, as all these Montana destinations are, by the wildness just outside its borders. As we approach the city, peaks rise before us and the kids are delighted with the Sleeping Giant—mountains that look like an immense dude asleep on the horizon. Helena's Last Chance Gulch is a throwback to 19th-century prospecting days, though nowadays the only panning you'll be doing is for antiques and western art. We love the burgers at the Windbag Saloon (19 South Last Chance Gulch, Helena, Mont., 406/443-9669, burgers from $11). Shhh!—don't tell my kids this was the site of Helena's last bordello. Then we embark on a two-hour guided boat tour of a stretch of the Missouri River dubbed the Gates of the Mountains by Lewis and Clark for its towering cliffs (3131 Gates of the Mountains Rd., Helena, Mont., gatesofthemountains.com, 2-hour cruise $16). A night at the Red Lion Colonial Hotel (2301 Colonial Dr., Helena, Mont., redlion.com, from $115) and we're ready—well, not really—to fly back to New York. Standing on a crowded Manhattan street corner and realizing you're literally seeing more people at one time than you saw in an entire day at Glacier is a back-to-reality moment that comes all too soon.

How much would you pay to swim with a shark? If, like me, your first reaction is to ask how much you yourself would be paid to do such a thing, you may be in an ever-decreasing minority. Shark-watching tourism is expected to grow in popularity over the next two decades. It currently generates about $300 million each year but is expected to reach nearly $800 million by, say, 2033. A recent study published in Oryx: The International Journal of Conservation, notes that while the shark fishing industry—fueled by an appetite in east Asia for shark-fin soup—currently generates about $630 each year in revenue, it will be eclipsed by shark tourism. So, what exactly does "shark tourism" entail? It can be as simple as donning a wetsuit and scuba diving with harmless little lemon sharks off the coast of Florida, diving with makos off Southern California (the toothy, bug-eyed sharks look like runaways from a Hollywood sci-fi shoot), or going whole-hog (er, make that "whole fish") and getting in a shark-diving cage in Baja and letting great whites sniff you from the safety of your metal security blanket. About 600,000 people take the plunge each year, and forward-thinking travel destinations such as Palau, the Maldives, the Bahamas, and French Polynesia have created shark sanctuaries where commercial fishing is banned. Want to try diving with sharks? The Active Times recently recommended a number of organizations around the world that can get you face-to-face with the ocean's alpha predators. Here, three ways to get started: Jupiter Dive Center. See little lemon sharks and the spectacular coral reef off the Palm Beach coast (jupiterdivecenter.com, charter scuba dives depart each morning at 9, Saturdays and Sundays at 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., $65/person) Shark Chums. This Southern California outfit gets you up close and personal with mako sharks—the ones that look like aliens—in the waters of La Jolla. (sharkchums.org, day trips departing approximately late June through November, $180/person) Great White Adventures. Test your nerves with a cage-diving excursion (you wear scuba gear and view sharks from the safe confines of a cage) to Isla Guadalupe, off Baja, Mexico, one of the world's perfect places to view the fearsome great white shark. (greatwhiteadventures.com, five-day trips departing August through October, $3,219/person—no, it ain't cheap, but this past season divers averaged seven great whites per day and lived to tell about it) TALK TO US! We want to know: Have you ever gone swimming with sharks? Would you like to give it a try?

Let's get this out of the way up front: Couchsurfing.org is not a scheme that allows you to "see the world for free." Although it is a worldwide community of more than 6 million people in 100,000 cities who will open their homes to guests at no charge, Couchsurfing aims to bring like-minded, travel-obsessed people together for the sheer good of it—the cultural exchange, the personal connection. And one of the benefits is that you can obtain insider, locals-only travel advice before you leave home, and a comfortable place to sleep free of charge when you get to your destination. I was skeptical. Though I'm not averse to sleeping on a couch—or even a floor—when duty calls, at heart I'm more of a comfy hotel bed kind of guy. Also, I seem to be hard-wired to fret about safety. (Family lore holds that one of my ancestors almost bought a ticket on Titanic but at the last minute was warned against sailing on a maiden voyage—that kind of epic save is tough to shake off.) But Couchsurfing is not some fly-by-night fad. Founded in 2004, the company has successfully paired so many travelers with hosts around the world that at this point it's not even surprising to see Seth Kugal, the New York Times's Frugal Traveler columnist, mention it as a smart choice from time to time. As for safety, Couchsurfing requires members to register via detailed online profiles, and urges users to make contact early, get to know potential guests and/or hosts, and to report complaints. And some users simply rely on Couchsurfing as a source of travel advice, never actually meeting the people with whom they correspond. Curious, I decided to grill a veteran. Kathryn Cooper, a New York City-based writer/photographer, has been using Couchsurfing for four years now and has a travel resume that would be the envy of any BT reader (or editor, for that matter). Here, Cooper's candid answers to my (and, I hope, your) top questions: How did you get into Couchsurfing? "I was hanging out with a well-traveled friend in Brooklyn. He had maps all over his apartment and entertained me with his exotic travel stories. He introduced me to a group of Couchsurfers visiting from Europe and I suddenly "got" the whole idea: It's not just a way to travel for less, but to actually get a real feel for local people and places. And I could show people my city and my favorite hidden sections." What was your best-ever Couchsurfing experience? "From learning to surf in California to hiking with wild elephants in India, I've had quite a few incredible Couchsurfing experiences. My most amazing, however has to be my trip last year through Nepal: a 15-day adventure that included motorcycle trips, visits to Tibetan refugee camps, and a hike up into the Himalayas where we met locals, heard their stories, and hiked up steep inclines with quite a few cows!" What was your worst? "My brother and I were staying with a host down South who came back home in the middle of the night with a black eye and several cuts on his face—and a number of additional house guests. The next morning, he didn't even remember what had happened. We never felt in danger, but it was definitely my least favorite Couchsurfing experience." Any advice for a Budget Travel reader who wants to give Couchsurfing a try? "My first piece of advice: Be open. Open to new experiences, new types of people, and more. I can truly say it's changed my life, the way I travel, the way I learn about a country. If all you want is a free bed, don't bother. And when people are skeptical, I don't mind at all: We're a wonderful community, but not everyone will approve of the idea. It involves quite a high degree of trust. If you do visit Couchsurfing.org and decide to join, fill out your profile completely—including likes, dislikes, pet peeves, and hobbies. It's a way for those you contact to really find out who you are."