Perfect for fans of Bill Bryson, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Cheryl Strayed, this is more than a travelogue—it's a hilarious and heartfelt journey for anyone who has ever wondered: "Is this it?"
What happens when the life you've built no longer feels like your own?
For Basho, turning thirty felt less like a milestone and more like "a splinter in the mind." A series of personal crises convinced him and his partner, Cesca, to make a radical choice. They walked away from their careers, put their lives in storage, and set off on a year-long, unscripted adventure across a dozen countries to answer one question: Is there a better way to live?
Their path takes them from the rugged shores of Australia to the spiritual heart of India and the serene temples of Japan. But between the moments of transcendent beauty, a deeper, wilder journey unfolds. They must face down spitting alpacas, chaotic farm hosts, a terrifying encounter with the world’s largest spider in a Laotian toilet, and the constant challenge of escaping the "backpacker bubble" to find genuine connection.
With relentless honesty and dry wit, Trials & Tea Ceremonies charts a quest to stop living life as a pilgrimage toward a distant reward and instead learn to dance to the music while it’s playing. It’s a profound and unflinchingly funny memoir about leaving everything behind to find what truly matters—together.
It's a love story disguised as a travel memoir—or perhaps the other way around.
Excerpt
The tuk-tuk ride there offered a glimpse of 'grand' Calcutta – vast parks, enormous Victorian buildings left behind by the British Raj, monuments to imperial power stretching to the horizon. Impressive, yes, but they felt heavy, aloof, profoundly disconnected from the teeming life (and death) at their feet. For a moment, I felt a flicker of understanding for the French peasants gazing up at Versailles – that sense of an utterly alien, indifferent power structure. It made Gandhi's achievement seem even more miraculous – his ability to see beyond these colossal stone testaments to empire, to recognise their impermanence, and to perceive the enduring strength and destiny within the 'filth' and the seemingly powerless people surrounding him.
The train ticket office was predictably packed, but thankfully boasted a 'Tourist Booth' – a small island of relative efficiency in the administrative ocean. Armed with our Lonely Planet and a destination (anywhere but here), securing tickets for that very night was surprisingly straightforward.
Tickets secured, a brief moment of relief. We walked towards the Maidan, the huge park visible nearby, thinking perhaps a stroll might lift our spirits. We turned a corner, near one of the grand entrances. And stopped dead.
It was the single worst sight of our entire year of travel.
She lay sprawled in the middle of the wide pathway. Not begging, not sleeping, just… collapsed. Utterly broken. Naked, save for the ragged, filthy remains of a hessian sack clutched around her midriff. Her skin was dark with ingrained grime, her black hair a matted, hopeless tangle. Her face, when I could bear to look, was contorted in a silent grimace, lips moving soundlessly. She seemed completely detached from reality. And the people… the people just flowed around her. Didn't see her. Or chose not to. As I stood there, frozen, a couple of brightly dressed, affluent-looking Indians, deep in conversation on their mobile phones, simply stepped over her as if she were nothing more than a crack in the pavement. Invisible.
Tears pricked my eyes. A wave of nausea, helplessness, and profound sorrow washed over me. "How can...?" The words died in my throat. What could possibly be done? She was clearly profoundly ill, mentally broken, abandoned. The chilling realisation hit me: this woman was utterly, terrifyingly alone, beyond help, beyond fixing, at least by any means available to me, a powerless foreign observer. Cesca gently tugged my arm, pulling me away. We were the only two people in that stream of pedestrians who seemed to even register her existence.
It was like she occupied a blind spot in the collective consciousness. I thought of the Buddha, Siddhartha the prince, venturing out from his palace walls and encountering sickness, old age, and death for the first time. That shock, that confrontation with suffering, set him on his path. I wished, in that moment, for a fraction of his strength, his resolve to dedicate a lifetime to understanding, to finding an answer to the question posed by such abject misery.
We walked back to the hotel in silence, the image seared into my mind. Any attempt to 'enjoy' Kolkata after that felt obscene, impossible. The city had revealed its broken heart, and it was too much to bear.
Professional Reviews
LoveReading (Featured as an "Indie Books We Love")
"An engaging and compelling travelogue with a vital and strong emphasis on connection
and experience over ticking off the bucket list."
Mike Richards, bestselling author of ‘The Travelling Ape'
A richly written, unexpectedly profound journey. The book highlights how travel can add richly to the meaning of one's life.
Alastair Humphreys, English adventurer, author and motivational speaker.
This book reminded me why we travel: not for the postcard moments, but for the mishaps, characters, and revelations along the way.
An account of adventures in Scandinavia that involved flying dragons, Russian and German submarines, old WW2 era battlefields, Finnish foxes (female kind), Finnish-Mexican cuisine and much more. Written for the most part with a light touch, it ends o
