Tales of a female nomad : living at large in the world / Rita Golden Gelman.

Originally published: New York : Crown Publishers, c2001.

Includes index.

Rita Golden-Gelman was living a comfortable but unhappy life, dining in elegant restaurants and attending glamorous parties. When her marriage failed, she sold her possessions and, at the age of 47, took off to see the world. Fifteen years later, she's still living very happily with no permanent home. In her life as a nomad, Rita has lived in Mexico and the Galapagos Islands, Bali and New Guinea, Israel, Nicaragua, Thailand and New Zealand. She has climbed mountains, paddled up rivers and learned to scuba dive. Having only a moderate income from writing children's books, she has learned to subsist for a year on what many people spend in a few months. Determined to understand each culture she visits, Rita stays with the locals, sleeping in thatched huts, cement-block houses or mountain cabins. She even spent four years in a palace in Bali, complete with prince. In this book, Rita celebrates her glorious transformation from an unfulfilled suburbanite to a liberated and incredibly self-assured woman of the world.