Portsmouth-based author Tom Sykes will publish his new book The Years of Travelling Anxiously on 26th March.
Over the last twenty years, Tom has been lucky enough to travel all over the world. But his trips have often been marred – if not ruined – by anxiety. For Tom panic can strike in the most serene situations, where each time he is convinced that the symptoms are in fact physical and that his lungs or heart will stop working, and the only relief is a paramedic telling him that he won’t die despite being stuck with him in an ambulance in a smoky Global Southern gridlock.
Part travelogue, part wellbeing memoir, The Years of Travelling Anxiously recounts jittery visits to Nigeria to get married and undergo IVF treatment, stressful encounters with bigots and bureaucrats in France, the Philippines and the USA, and what can be learned about mental health on the road from a baby with an inspiringly calm attitude to travel.
Travel writer Ben Aitken has described the book as ‘full of character, verve and honesty’ while explorer Lawrence Millman has called Tom ‘the Bruce Chatwin of anxious travel writing.’ Nathan James Thomas, editor of Intrepid Times magazine, writes, ‘Tom Sykes has authored neither a macho memoir nor a self-help text. It’s a frank and thoughtful meditation on where this fear that so many travellers feel truly comes from.’
The Years of Travelling Anxiously tries to solve a lifelong conundrum about the causes and consequences of panic and distress, and in so doing help other anxious travellers, or indeed anyone who gets anxious about anything, wherever they go.
You can buy the book here.
Photo courtesy of Icon Books.
