Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett & Amanda Pressner · 2010 · global

The 2010 travel memoir by three friends. In their late twenties, Jennifer, Holly and Amanda quit their New York media jobs and set out around the world together - hiking the Inca Trail in Peru, volunteering in Kenya, seeking themselves in an Indian ashram and backpacking through Southeast Asia to Australia - a year-long, sixty-thousand-mile detour into adulthood and friendship.

1. 1
   New York

   Approaching thirty and unsure they want the lives they are building, three friends in Manhattan media jobs make a pact: quit everything, leave boyfriends and careers behind, and travel the world together for a year.

2. 2
   Peru

   They begin in South America, wandering Brazil and Bolivia and hiking the Inca Trail through the Andes to Machu Picchu - a giddy, spring-break start that only slowly deepens into something more searching.

3. 3
   Kenya

   In Kenya they volunteer at a girls' centre in Kitale and are welcomed among the Maasai, the trip turning from sightseeing to something that begins to change how each of them sees her own life.

4. 4
   India

   India tests them hardest - Holly enrolls in a demanding ashram to train as a yoga teacher, and the crowds, illness and intensity of the country strain both their nerves and their friendship.

5. 5
   Southeast Asia

   Through Laos, Thailand and Vietnam they drift by tuk-tuk and night train and river - Luang Prabang, Vang Vieng, Hanoi - falling into the easy rhythm of backpackers with nowhere they have to be.

6. 6
   Australia

   Road-tripping at last down the coast of Australia, the three friends reach the far side of their year changed - surer of who they are and bound by a sisterhood that will outlast the journey home.