A Personal Journey or a Travel Book?

I was one of the last women on the planet to read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

A New York Times bestseller that has resonated with women in every part of the globe, the book really only piqued my interest when I overheard a group of women discussing it with passion and a sense of purpose.

"When I was in Bali a couple of weeks ago I visited the same medicine man that Elizabeth Gilbert went to," shared one of the women.

"Oh my god, that's what my girlfriends and I are planning to do at the end of the year," shrieked another.

I can see it now: somewhere on the beautiful Indonesian island of Bali sits a man espousing herbal remedies and his philosophies on life with a steady stream of mostly single women beating a path to his door. The book's publication in February 2006 made him an international phenomenon as women the world over attempt to recreate the personal journey that Gilbert took to find herself at the end of a painful and messy divorce.

Now I love a good memoir and this certainly ticks that box, but bestsellers are generally not my first choice when I rock up to Borders for a new read. However, millions of women can't be wrong so I decided to get in on the act and find out what all the fuss was about.

Gilbert strikes me as being a bit obsessive compulsive with her organisation of the book into 108 neat little parts like a japa mala, apparently India's answer to rosary beads. That, and the fact that the three countries she chose to visit all begin with the letter I. But I wasn't going to let that put me off.

As I started reading, it occurred to me that I may in fact be too happy with my life to be able to identify deeply with Gilbert's reason for embarking on this self-discovery. Is it because I'm not single that I don't share the urge to take myself off to Italy on a whim? Maybe it's because I'm not depressed that I have no desire to immerse myself in prayer at an Ashram in India? And I've been to Bali too many times to believe that's where I would find peace.

But this isn't my memoir, it's Elizabeth Gilbert's. And that's why it's fantastic that so many women have been able to identify with her downs in order to search out her means of lifting herself back up. But surely the point of the book is that every person's journey is personal.

Eat Pray Love isn't a travel book, it's a journal of one woman's path to enlightenment and personal enrichment. Be inspired by her, by all means, but for god's sake stop following in her footsteps and go find some of your own.

When the film version of the book is released sometime in 2011, I predict that travel to Italy, India and Indonesia will get a massive boost. And that poor medicine man will never again be at peace.