The Lost Girls

Finished September 26
The Lost Girls: three friends, four continents, one unconventional detour around the world by Jennifer Baggett, Holly C Corbett, and Amanda Pressner

I was attracted to this book because it brought back memories of my own youthful travels, but once reading it, I found more differences than similarities.
The three women who wrote this book took months to plan their trip (which was really trips as they returned to New York at least once each during their travels), they preplanned a lot of it, their travels took them to South America, Asia, New Zealand, and Australia. The thing that made the biggest difference between their experience and mine was when they travelled. They took their laptop, blogged about their travels, Skyped with people back home and generally kept in pretty good touch with everyone, including a few get-togethers with friends and family along the way.
While the book didn't share the same experiences as I had, it did awaken memories of my trip and that made it worth the read.

My trip was in 1985 when I was 22. I started off with a good friend, but our goals changed along the way and just over four months in, we split up and travelled independently. We didn't do much in the way of planning and were off just a few short weeks after we came up with the idea. Keeping in touch meant letters and postcards, and finding public phones. In many places, that meant finding the post office, and because of time differences that meant that my phone calls home weren't always that convenient for my parents. When I set off for Turkey alone and didn't phone home for a month, my parents were a tad on the worried side. But it was a great experience, I met a lot of great people, some of whom I'm still friends with. One became a boyfriend a bit later, for a while. What I also got was the travel bug, and I still love travelling. I think leaving your country when you are young and experiencing other cultures gives you an appreciation of your own nation and an understanding of differences. Something everyone should experience. My trip ended abruptly when I broke my foot in Frankfurt, but those nine months will always be one of the best experiences of my life.