I can never quite decide if I like travel memoirs. I am not a world explorer. I have no grand designs to traipse across the world with nothing but a backpack and a passport. I’m not opposed to world traveling, but it just doesn’t call to me like I think it calls to others. Those Others tend to be the ones writing travel memoirs, so I think I am intrigued by the premise of many travelogues but then feel put-off because I don’t quite understand the kind of of unspoken zest that runs under the text.

However, a specific narrative voice sometimes sucks me in. Mock me if you will, but I adore Eat, Pray, Love. Maybe I’m more interested in the memoir than the travel?

I couldn’t quite decide if I liked To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One Story, but ultimately, Scieska’s story and voice endeared me. Scieskza has the zest for travel – just out of college, she wants to teach in China, revisit her study abroad locale of Morocco, and has landed a Fulbright to spend a few months researching education systems in Mali. But she also has a zest for Steven, who she met while in Morocco. Since then, they’ve been maintaining a long-distance, nascent-romance, and what better way to start a Real Relationship than by traveling, working, and living together around the world?

What I ended up liking about this book was Scieska’s earnestness, her honesty. This is not about the romance of travel, but the excited optimism of being young and running around the world, taking it all in. This is not about the romance of two lovers shacking up overseas, but about the romance of getting to know each other when you share a dusty apartment with no appliances and the air conditioning stopped working and it’s 100+ degrees outside and you have some kind of traveling sickness.

Scieska writes the text here, so it’s mostly her story, but her partner, Steven, contributes charcoal-y illustrations.

I wonder where they are traveling to now?