The Idle Traveller by Dan Kieran: review In this book, which is an entire philosophy of life rather than just a book about travelling, Dan Kieran tells us about going to France when he was a teenager. He was with a friend. They were walking along a road near Lyon, miles from their destination. They arrived at a crossroads and had no idea where to go. So they sat down; after a while, they began to panic. The two of them were completely lost. "Now that the worst had happened... I was strangely comforted," writes Kieran. We both began giggling and finally worked out that this feeling was exactly what we'd come looking for. In other words, Kieran had planned to go somewhere, but really what he wanted was to get lost. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it's a brilliant insight, and, in the rest of the book, Kieran explores it with great verve. He delves into the idea of getting lost, and also of getting lost in the moment. We've all heard the idea, attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. That's what this book is about. You might say it is anti-destination. For what is our destination, in the end? Death, of course. And how does our culture want us to travel through the modern world? It wants us to hurtle to our destination as fast as possible. Kieran invites us to look at modern tourism. It's all about familiarity and convenience, words he uses more than once. In a way, it's about not going anywhere at all. Or rather, rushing from one familiar place to another. But Kieran doesn't fly. He likes to travel slowly, understanding places. He explains how, when you travel slowly, you get to know yourself better. You use your brain in a different way. He looks at the work of various thinkers and psychologists, notably Semir Zeki and Iain McGilchrist. It seems that the modern world favours the left side of our brains - the side that has a "preference for order and narrow focus." But the world is a much more fascinating place if you give the right side of your brain equal billing. As I read this book, I found my mind spinning with possibilities. Once you grasp the idea of stepping out of time, it's deeply alluring. Kieran describes a walk he took in the South Downs; he'd travelled the same way many times by car, but, when he walked this route, he entered a new mental landscape. I've rarely read a better account of a walk. There's a point where, he tells us, "I realised that "it" had happened." He'd stepped out of time. "I had crossed some kind of portal and my frame of mind and perspective had changed," he says. That's what you yearn for, isn't it? Those moments when you're not fretting about either the past or the future. When time seems to stand still. Kieran mentions lots of other people, such as the travel writers Bruce Chatwin and Patrick Leigh Fermor; it's all beautifully told. Wherever you travel, you'd gain a lot from reading this book. The Idle Traveller by Dan Kieran 224pp, aa t £11.99 (PLUS £1.35 p&p) Telegraph Books (RRP £12.99, ebook £4.99) Dan Kieran will be at the Telegraph Ways With Words festival on July 10