Hello. I’m Dina Bennett, also known as Dashboard Dina. I’m a grown-up tomboy, married to my soul mate, Bernard, a dashing Frenchman, who outdoes me in his passion for exploring.

In 2007 Bernard and I embarked on the 7,800-mile Peking to Paris Classic Car Motor Challenge. We drove a 1940 LaSalle, the rebuild of which nearly ended in divorce. And what fun would that be? In truth I’m a daydreamer riddled with self-doubt. Yet I found myself in a car with my perfectionist husband, limping across the Gobi, Siberia and the Baltics, sidestepping rock-throwing Mongolians and locking horns with Russians left over from the Intourist era—not to mention getting a sandstorm facial. Quitting entered my mind. Often. Peking to Paris: Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World is my memoir of that wild emotional ride. It’s funny and self-deprecating, equal parts romance and adversity. And totally honest. Click below to read an excerpt.

In the ten years since, we’ve continued driving, covering thousands of miles on dusty, bone-shattering back roads in China, India, Tibet, South America, Iran and more. Tales from those travels are now published in A Travel Junkie’s Diary: Searching for Mare’s Milk and other Far Flung Pursuits. Think of the covers of this book as a magic door: open them and you’re transported to my side, wincing or laughing as I do at the essential mystery and wonder of travel. You’ll live moments that are embarrassing, terrifying, hilarious, each in its own way vivid and emotional, full of the color, smells, sounds and reality of local life. Open a page in my Diary and view the table of contents.