A new chapter in travel where every destination tells a story

You may often book a holiday. But how often do you holiday a book?

Sometimes it happens coincidentally. I recall one visit to the Moroccan city of Tangier, exploring the narrow alleys and stairs of its medina and being reminded of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. It's the first stop in the journey for the main character, Santiago, who finds work in a crystal shop after all his money is stolen, earning enough to make his way to Egypt. I encountered neither jewel nor heist but, like Santiago, it was another chapter in my journey.

Sometimes it's a little more planned. Travelling in Spain, through the region of La Mancha, my itinerary is focused on the inspiration Miguel de Cervantes found for Don Quixote. His house is now a museum with lots to see, but it's up on nearby hills, at a series of 12 windmills, that you can really imagine how he and his delusional knight saw them as giants with thrashing arms.

The idea of literary tourism is again front of mind with the release of The Odyssey. Even though the modern movie may be the spark for some "set-jetting", it's just taking a page from centuries of travel inspired by the ancient text, with Mediterranean itineraries through Turkiye, the Greek Islands, Sicily, and more.

For years, people have used books to travel to novel destinations. While Pictures from Italy by Charles Dickens encouraged 19th-century tourists to embark on their own Grand Tour, modern readers journey to Canada's Prince Edward Island because of Anne of Green Gables or the Greek island of Corfu for Gerald Durrell's famous trilogy. Dracula inspires trips to Romania for the love of fantasy, while Eat Pray Love inspires trips to Bali for the fantasy of love.

Perhaps even more common - and still a form of literary tourism - is reading a book set in a destination while you are setting foot there yourself. I've done it with Burmese Days in Myanmar, The Beach in Thailand, and In Patagonia... in Patagonia. Other popular holiday reads include My Brilliant Friend in Naples, Shantaram in India, and One Hundred Years of Solitude in Colombia (my Kindle broke when I was only halfway through... but I assume it's just another 50 years of solitude).

Although James Joyce's Ulysses is a notoriously difficult read, there are ways to get a taste of the epic novel on a trip to Dublin without reading even one of its 265,000 words. A good place to start is one of the city's Martello Towers, which is where I found myself one trip. These stone cylindrical towers were built along the coast in the early 1800s as a defensive system against Napoleon, and eventually Joyce spent some time staying in one of them. He used that experience as the setting for the opening of Ulysses, and now the tower is a small museum that gives you another opening into the book. Of course, if you want to explore more chapters in person, head to Dublin on June 16 - the date on which the whole novel is set - for the annual Bloomsday festival.

Although literary tourism has existed for centuries, it's now entering a new chapter. Bolstered by trends like slow travel, book clubs, and even viral online BookTok posts, more people than ever are turning over a new leaf in the way they travel for literature. It's now often about more than just visiting the destination - there's also been a boom in specialised reading tours.

You can do a nine-day tour in the United States that sails along the Mississippi River, following the adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain, including his family home and the limestone caves featured in Tom Sawyer. You can take a four-day tour in the Scottish Highlands to see the medieval sites in the Outlander books, or walk for six days through mountain passes and historic temples of Japan to explore trails captured by haiku master Matsuo Basho. Or go on a 20-day expedition in northern France to see the inspirations for a range of authors like Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, and Gustave Flaubert.

From Australia, ASA Cultural Tours offers 18 days in England's East Anglia browsing through the landscapes of Arthur Ransome, the marshes of Ruth Rendell, the retreats of Beatrix Potter, and many more. Meanwhile, a small company called Better Read Tours takes it a step further with a trip to Paris for two weeks to work on your own memoir, or a week in Stratford-upon-Avon in England for a creative writing workshop.

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Even beyond writer retreats, we now also have reader retreats. The Literary Man Hotel in Portugal has 100,000 books to borrow during your stay. And some tour companies are taking people away... just so they can sit there and work through a book, like a four-day sailing trip around the Spanish island of Mallorca with an itinerary that reads, "leisurely breakfast on deck, sail south with stops for swims and reading time on deck". Or, closer to home, you can have two nights near Canberra with Reading Retreats Australia where you "let the outside world melt away for a weekend that's all about you and your books".

It may seem odd to travel somewhere just to read, but if the aim of a holiday is to relax and experience a new world, then you can get both of those things from a good book. The best authors stay with you, so it's also no surprise you may want to find ways to connect to them in the real world. But ultimately, whether you're out in the landscapes or just in your hotel bed, there's a good holiday to be found between the covers.