Turkey: Travel Survival Kit

Lonely Planet - Travel Survival Kit

by Tom Brosnahan, Lonely Planet (Manufactured by), Pat Yale

A thorough update of the highly acclaimed and bestselling guide to Turkey, this new edition contains over 100 detailed maps, expanded coverage of cultural and historical information, extensive coverage of sights from the modern to the ancient, and accommodation and restaurant listings for every budget.

Genres: Travel

784 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

In 1968, Tom Brosnahan wrote the first budget guidebook to Turkey as a Peace Corps project. Instead of completing work on a Ph.D. in History, he turned to travel writing and authored dozens of best-selling guidebooks for Frommer's, Lonely Planet and Berlitz. In 2000 he described it all in his humorous travel memoir, "Turkey: Bright Sun, Strong Tea" (2005).

In 2000 he transitioned to the Web, where his websites guided millions of travelers from 230+ countries.

In 2016, standing in Istanbul's Sultan Ahmet Square, he remembered how it looked in 1968 during the hippy era. Characters appeared in his imagination, he wrote down their antics, and within a week he had 30,000 words of a humorous novel: "Istanbul Love Bus" (2018).

"Paris Girls Secret Society" (2017) was to be a sequel, but new characters appeared instead. Some of the Istanbul characters reappear on a Greek island in "Alexandros - the island" (2024). Fascinated by the similarities between today's world and the Gilded Age, he wrote "Serene - a novel of the Belle Époque" (2022).

Another humorous travel memoir centered on food is in the works (2025), as is another novel.

Reviews

[Yuki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got sick in Turkey (after my dad and brother got sick in Greece), so I did not see as much of Istanbul as I would've liked. Would love to return to see more of the country.