It was the dream of a euphoric young traveler awed by the crystalline silence of Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush: “Someday, when I am rich, I am going to invite someone from my travels to visit me in America.” Twenty-five years later, Brad Newsham set out from his home in San Francisco to make good on his youthful vow–and this irresistibly charming, deeply humane book is the chronicle of what happened along the way.

Giving himself one hundred days to journey around the world, Newsham began in the Philippines and immediately found himself embroiled in serendipitous adventures and unexpected relationships. An affable young Filipino father led him on a challenging hike into the secret green heart of Luzon. He savored the panorama of the Himalayas from a two-dollar hotel room in Darjeeling, drank tea with an Egyptian family in the Valley of the Kings, and struck up an impromptu friendship with a Tanzanian shopkeeper on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. And through all the exotic encounters, Newsham kept an eye out for that special person, the one stranger he would invite back to America.

As engrossing as a novel, Take Me With You is an enchanting account of one man’s mission not only to see the world, but to leave it just a little bit different.