By Monica Chard
The cancellation of travel plans has hit many of us hard this year. I heard about someone who got their travel fix by binge- watching Anthony Bourdain’s travel shows. So how about reading about travel from the point of view of someone nearer to home?
Dawn East lives in Shepperton. You may well know her. She is an avid member of Shepperton Run-ning Club, a prolific litter picker and more recently started running the Action for Happiness group which we featured last month.
Dawn has a long career as a teacher and was ready to get on the property ladder a couple of years ago, albeit without a huge amount of enthusiasm. A chance conversation planted the seed of thought that she could travel in-stead, go exploring the world and find out about herself whilst doing so. She was given a sabbatical from her job and set off, taking the Trans-Mongolian railway down through Asia, to Australia and ending in Eastern Europe.
‘Heading East’ is her journey. It tells her story warts and all. She talks frankly of her worries, her fussy eating habits and the challenges she faces, against a backdrop of discovering some incredible places and meeting some inspiring people along the way. She also offers practical advice to would be travellers.
The book started as her blog* which friends and family could follow on line, but a friend sug-gested it would make a great book. So she has published it to both inspire and to help others.
Dawn is also a great photogra-pher and you can see the photos of her journey on her blog. So, if you are missing travel, as it used to be, and want a bit of escapism and inspiration, do get a copy of Heading East..
Dawn is very frank about her feelings, what she got out of her year, what she learned about herself and about life, indeed what she discov-ered was the motivation to travel in the first place ie, needing a change. I love the last line of her blog “if you aren’t happy with some-thing in your life, then make a change”. Very true and wise words!
Available as an ebook from Amazon, or you can order your signed copy of Heading East, for £10 directly from Dawn: dawneast33@yahoo.co.uk.
(*www.headingeast33@wordpress.com).