A reading list for solo travel
By Charlotte Schoeters · · 6 min read
Sixty percent of Yogavibe guests arrive alone. Below is the list I have been building since 2017, updated each year with whatever has been left on the terrace or recommended over dinner.
Sixty percent of Yogavibe guests come alone. They land in Essaouira, take the airport transfer, and by the second morning they are sharing a table with nine strangers who feel less like strangers every hour. But the flight, the transit, the first night in a new room — these are where the books matter.
Below is the list I have been building since 2017. It covers the practical and the philosophical, the things that make solo travel feel like a choice rather than a circumstance.
On being alone well
A Field Guide to Getting Lost — Rebecca Solnit
The book most often left behind at the riad. Solnit writes about deliberate disorientation — about stepping outside the known and allowing the unknown to teach you something. For anyone nervous about travelling solo, it reframes aloneness as a practice rather than a problem. It is not a travel book. It is better than a travel book.
The Sheltering Sky — Paul Bowles
Set in North Africa. Not a comfortable read, but an essential one if you are going to Morocco with your eyes fully open. Bowles lived in Tangier for decades; his characters move through the Maghreb as strangers who never quite arrive — which is, in part, the point. Read it before you go, not during.
Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse
A cliché for good reason. Best read slowly, one chapter per morning with coffee. The retreat format — structured time, rest, practice, reflection — creates exactly the conditions this book needs.
On the body and practice
The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
The science of how stress accumulates in the body and how movement, breath, and presence help release it. I recommend this to every guest who arrives visibly wound tight. The retreat makes considerably more sense once you understand the mechanism.
Breath — James Nestor
Short, evidence-based, and quietly transformative. Nestor's research on nasal breathing changed my own morning practice. I recommend it to anyone who arrives mouth-breathing through their first vinyasa — which is often more people than you would expect.
Light on Yoga — B.K.S. Iyengar
The reference text. Bring it only if you intend to study; it is heavy and not casual reading. But for anyone serious about their practice, there is nothing quite like it.
On Morocco
In Morocco — Edith Wharton (1920)
Colonial in perspective but extraordinarily observant. Wharton's descriptions of Fes, Marrakech and Essaouira remain accurate in ways that feel uncanny more than a century later. The light she describes is still the light.
A note on reading at retreats
On the first evening most guests are still checking their phones. By day three the books come out properly. By day five some people stop reading altogether. That is the point. The reading list is not the destination. It is the bridge.