Before travel for travel’s sake, before the journey to explore distant lands, and before anything remotely like tourism, there was The Odyssey.

But as Jeffrey Tayler pointed out in his comments on our top 30 travel books, the tale of Odysseus is sadly neglected in the annals of travel writing. It is a curious omission given the story’s power and its role as a mythical archetype for tales we tell when we get back from our own time at sea.

Years ago, I came across a fantastic translation read by one of the world’s greatest thespians. Straight from Middle Earth, Sir Ian McKellen gave what must be one of the best audio readings ever recorded.

I listened to the tapes over and over. It was the ultimate adventure, with the waves and the water and the arrival on strange shores. With Sir Ian’s mesmerizing reading, it’s almost as if you are there.

Recently I went to look for the recording in my collection but it was missing. So I went to get a replacement and discovered the recording was finally released on CD. So I got a copy, put it in the stereo and was off.

For those who can’t remember their Cliffs Notes, “The Odyssey” is the story of Odysseus, who is on his way home from the sacking of Troy (as well as other cities along the way), and who is still patting himself on the back for the wooden horse, when he is blown way off course. 

For 10 years, Odysseus tries in vain to reach his home on Ithaca, but the gods have other plans. Much of that is what makes up “The Odyssey.”

Old as it is, Robert Fagles’s translation has a beauty and elegance that I can only imagine the original must have had to make it endure so long. Even so, I know that the chances of most of us sitting down nowadays and plowing through 600 pages of antiquity are about the same as meeting an actual Cyclops. But it was originally an oral tale anyway, and in hands of McKellen, the ultimate travel story becomes pure magic. 

“The Odyssey” is beautiful and transporting, but it is also, I think, instructive. After all, who hasn’t had their plans frustrated? Who hasn’t sensed some mysterious force working against everything they want to do? And who hasn’t depended almost totally on the kindness of strangers?

For those of us who love travel and think that travel should not always be easy, and for those of us who believe we find out what we’re made of when fate puts the screws to us, “The Odyssey” reminds us that what makes us who we are is not our failures, but how we confront those failures, and how we overcome the obstacles and challenges we meet on the road.

Because if that is how we travel, it is also how we live.

After all, what is life, if not an odyssey?

Frank Bures is the books editor of World Hum.