Elsewhere: One Woman, One Rucksack, One lifetime of travel @stoonlibrary

 

As I am prepping myself for travel in the next few years, I was hoping to find some inspiration. I had been poring over the internet looking for travel blogs which spoke to me but none did. It could have been that I was looking in all the wrong places or Google had a hard time figuring out what I was actually looking for. 

While I was browsing the Saskatoon library collection online, I stumbled across this book. The assumption was that the book would talk about Rosita's travel in a time linear fashion. It sort of does but does not at the same time. 

The book was a riveting read, even if it did not fall into the category of what I may consider travel writing. The stories of adventure were intertwined with other life experiences in every chapter. 

It was a very relatable book on a human level. When she is talking about travelling from point A to point B, she relates it to an incident that occurred many years ago. If this was an engineering book, almost every aspect of it would seem incoherent. This book works like the mind. It jumps from one story to another, seemingly unrelated, but related. What do 2 miscarriages and a failed adoption have to do with travelling in Bali? We are trying to find our purpose in life based upon our life experiences. 

Keeping a diary or a journal, being a voracious reader and open to ideas are some of my take aways from this book. I also find that the author is keenly aware of her "western" perspective of the world. I for one am aware that I am biased but unaware of what those biases are.

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To my knowledge Rosita Boland still works at the Irish Times and she has a twitter account https://twitter.com/RositaBoland