A love story disguised as a travel memoir.
Or perhaps, the other way around.
Staring down thirty-something complacency, our relationship fraying under unspoken strains, Cesca and I did the mad thing. We quit our jobs, packed two rucksacks, and set off for a year across twelve countries — testing not just the world, but us.
“Loved it! A reflective travel memoir that looks beyond destinations… The book is very readable and left me with a renewed sense of curiosity and wanderlust.”
“An engaging and compelling travelogue with a vital and strong emphasis on connection and experience over ticking off the bucket list… Overflowing with the author’s curious spirit.”
“This book reminded me why we travel: not for the postcard moments, but for the mishaps, characters, and revelations along the way.”
“A richly written, unexpectedly profound journey. The book highlights how travel can add richly to the meaning of one’s life.”
“For a hearty dose of mind, body, spirit, travel, and Zen in remarkable places — take yourself somewhere magical, wherever you are.”
“A story of perseverance, agility, the happy, the sad, and the tests of faith and belief.”
What happens when ‘normal’ life feels… wrong? Like a splinter in the mind?
Ever had that nagging “Is this it?” doubt — the job, the routine, the quiet erosion of evenings? The feeling that life is an endless pilgrimage, chasing a destination that never quite satisfies? This wasn’t a postcard holiday. The real thread was our marriage, laid raw on the road and healing in unexpected ways — from tense silences in third-class trains to quiet hand-holds under the Bodhi Tree.
With relentless honesty and dry wit, Trials & Tea Ceremonies charts a quest to stop living life as a pilgrimage toward a distant reward, and instead learn to dance to the music while it’s playing. It’s a profound and unflinchingly funny memoir about leaving everything behind — only to find that what truly matters was sitting right next to you all along.
This memoir reveals…
Popping the Backpacker Bubble
Third-class train tickets in Mumbai, and the genuine, sweat-soaked connections that smell more of chai and chaos than Instagram filters.
A Comedy of Errors
Alpacas launching dry spit volleys, gut-wrenching food poisoning in Goa, and a perpetual dance with giant spiders in the tropics.
Pilgrimage into Music
A practical shift from life’s grind — school, job, promotion — to embracing it as music, sparked by Zen gardens in Kyoto and Daoist climbs in China.
The Ultimate Relationship Test
Navigating Varanasi’s deathly rivers and Tokyo’s neon contradictions with two rucksacks and frayed nerves — discovering love thrives on shared resilience, not comfort.
The route the road chose for us
Oceania
- Storms on Kangaroo Island
- Sharks & moonbows on the Reef
- An eight-legged welcome
- The Ghan, and finding Franco
Southeast Asia
- Luang Prabang & Vang Vieng
- Thailand trekking
- Vietnam during Tet
- Fake cafés, real fireworks
The Subcontinent
- Mumbai & the third-class ticket
- Goa: sun, sand & sickness
- Varanasi wakes you up
- Under the Whispering Tree
The Far East
- Tokyo, land of contradictions
- Soaking in sight of Fuji
- Kyoto — gardens of Zen
- A cup of tea at the road’s end
Photography throughout by Cesca — “life lived in motion, one frame at a time.”
“The flat echoes. Empty now, stripped bare… Tomorrow, I walk away from my job for the last time — a prospect that sends a thrill, not a tremor, through me. Basho, it seems, is going global.”
The Prologue — On the Road, a Note to Friends — is yours to read in full.
Basho & Cesca
Basho (James Bell) is a philosopher, writer, and filmmaker. For over a decade his blog Outside Context has been a platform for long-form writing on travel, philosophy, and culture. His work has been licensed by Air New Zealand, published by Cambridge University Press, and used in global advertising by Google. By day, he is a Director of AI & Data, an AI Ethicist, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society — the high-pressure corporate world he and Cesca stepped away from to make this journey.
Cesca is a visual storyteller known for capturing quiet moments and overlooked beauty. Drawing on a background in international branding and garden design, her photography runs throughout the book — life lived in motion, one frame at a time.
Begin the journey
Paperback £12.99 · eBook £3.99 · Order from any bookshop via Gardners & IngramSpark · ISBN 978-1-0369-7197-7
