Nanjala Nyabola
toggle caption Nanjala Nyabola
Nanjala Nyabola is an academic, traveler, and collector of guidebooks, some of which are pictured here. Nanjala Nyabola
Remember Lonely Planet? Rough Guides? The glossy photos? The breezy descriptions of faraway places?
Long before the pandemic lockdown, those classic guidebooks were go-to reading for many people going on a big trip. Nanjala Nyabola is one of them. She s a writer and a consummate traveler from Kenya who collects these guides, but discovered early on that the information that lay between their covers was not written with travelers like her in mind.
Touring Africa through the lens of these guidebooks almost discouraged her from traveling altogether.