A Vagabond Journey around the World: A Narrative of Personal Experience

If you’ve ever done any extended low-budget traveling yourself, you’ll recognize the author as ‘one of us’, but 100 years earlier. He was a back-packer long before that became a ‘thing’.

This is the fascinating account of a young man who makes an epic journey around the world in 1904. He originally intended to travel on the bum, without money, without weapons, and without carrying baggage or supplies. Instead, he wanted to depend both for protection and the necessities of life on personal endeavor and the native resources of each locality.

He altered his original plan to decide to carry a Kodak camera and enough money to cover photography supplies ($104). The chief object of the journey was to live and work among the world’s workers in every clime. His plan included no fixed itinerary. He left the details of his route to chance and the exigencies of circumstances.

And it gets him everywhere around the globe. Harry Franck might be the quintessential backpacker; maybe he was the very first to do this.
Since he brought his camera, this book is loaded with 100+ photographs of the ‘coleur locale’.

PS: some sensitive readers might get a tad bit offended by the unsalted opinions the writer has on the various countries and peoples he visits and contacts. The book was written in a time when ‘Political-Correctness’ wasn’t a thing, yet.
So you’ve been warned.

Notoir Books is a publisher of books on topics of esoteric interests, eccentric memoirs, overlooked history, otherworldly stories and distinctive voices. You can visit us at notoirbooks.com for more.