About Me
About Ben Books The World
Hello and welcome to my page! I'm Ben, and I'm excited to share my travel journey with you. Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself and where my love for travel comes from. I grew up in Vermont, a small state in the USA, but my mom is originally from Germany. As a result, she spoke to me in German, and we visited my grandparents and uncle in Germany every year from the time I was around four years old. I believe that this early exposure to different cultures ignited my passion for travel.
One of my most memorable experiences was in fifth grade, when my parents took me and my brother out of school to spend a month in Tarifa, a town in southern Spain. We attended a Spanish school and then spent another month exploring the country. This was my first longer trip and one that really sparked my love for travel.
After this experience, I attended school in Germany for a month in Bavaria during 7th grade, and then decided to stay for a full year. During this time, I lived with six different families and played on the baseball, basketball, and handball teams. I enjoyed my first full immersion into traveling and living abroad and couldn’t get enough of it.
In terms of my professional life, I’ve been selling on Amazon for over four years, starting with used books in high school and then scaling up with a business partner to run a warehouse in Maine. But while I was immersed in my business, I longed for the freedom to travel and explore new places.
In 2021, I finally took my first solo trip in May to Texas, and then embarked on a three-month road trip around the USA. This experience made me realize that I needed to change my lifestyle to prioritize travel, and so I changed my Amazon business model to run it remotely from my computer.
I converted my car into a van and spent time skiing all over the USA while living a vanlife, and then went to Costa Rica for an Amazon conference. Within four days, I knew I wanted to travel abroad again, so I canceled my flight back to the USA and spent the next 2.5 months backpacking through Costa Rica and Panama. I did this on a budget of less than $2,000 per month while working remotely.
After that experience, I was hooked on solo backpacking and decided to book my next trip. I spent two months in Peru, one month in Lima, and one month backpacking around with a friend, before backpacking around Europe for a month and then exploring the Middle East to end out the year.
These last few years have transformed me and showed me what I want to do with my life: to travel and share my experiences with others. I’ve been documenting my life and experiences through social media, and I love teaching and sharing what I know. My goal is to inspire others to travel, and to show them how affordable and amazing it can be.
Through this blog, I hope to share with you the world of travel, what there is to see and do, and how you too can travel on a budget and experience the beauty of the world through its cultures, languages, and food. Thanks for joining me on this journey!