The Lost Girls

Every once in a while a great little book comes along that seems to speak directly to you. It ignites something within you, an old passion that had been lost- buried somewhere under deadlines, appointments, and grocery store check-out lines, only to re-surface and take hold of you once again. This is what happened to me with The Lost Girls. 

I love to travel, I love being on the road, I love airports, I love packing, I love getting a stamp in my passport, I love converting currency, I love changing your watch to a new time zone and I love being a foreigner. Most importantly, I love a great travel buddy. This is what The Lost Girls is about. Three friends on the road, traveling for a year. Amanda, Jennifer and Holly go country hopping, hoping to find some answers to big questions. Because this is what traveling does, it answers big questions. And these three girls need some answers. They are 28 years old, workaholics, New Yorkers living lives that most women would kill to have. But they feel stagnant, they need to do something and it has nothing to do with finding a new job, apartment or boyfriend. They need something that makes them feel alive. They needed to travel. So they do. They save their money, plan their route and commit to making this trip together - their Around-The-World trip.  The girls travel through South America, Kenya, India, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia documenting their experiences, lessons, mistakes, romances, fights and realizations that come along the way.

I have been feeling stir crazy lately. I have been blaming it on the winter blahs, but now that spring has sprung and that feeling is still here I know what the real issue is. I am itching to be back on the road, itching for adventure. Is that why they refer to it as being “bitten by the travel bug”? The Lost Girls dusted off the cobwebs on my travel memories and made me dig out the in-depth journal I kept while traveling with my then

 boyfriend, now husband-to-be. I open to a random page of the journal which takes me back to our time spent in Don Det, one teeny, tiny island amongst the other 4,000 Islands in southern Laos. Reading about the adventures we once had makes me happy and excited.        
It makes me happy knowing I am marrying my #1 travel buddy and excited for the next adventures we conjure up as we pour over a map. And just like that, I don’t feel so stir crazy. I know I am never stuck somewhere, there is always the possibility to explore. The Lost Girls reminded me of that...

***RANDOM SIDENOTE***One thing that I found a bit odd was that the cover photo of the book is a stock photo! Why didn’t they use a real picture from their year of traveling? They must have at least ONE cool picture between the three of them that could have been used! Does this not seem bizarre to anyone else? Am I the only loser who looked up the photo information?