The best movies to watch based on true traveling stories


Good movies are great, but good movies based on real life stories and happenings are even better. Knowing that the events playing out on the screen before you did happen to someone somewhere draws you in like nothing else, and you feel like you’re walking down history lane. Movies based on real events are always very inspiring, with numerous lessons for those watching.

Several movies have been produced over the decades to depict adventurous traveling experiences of various individuals worldwide. Usually, these are individuals who decide to take a break from normal life and everything that’s familiar to them and venture into wild adventures. From life changing experience to tragic ends, the best of them are documented in a way that will keep your eyes glued to your TV set, elicit various emotions, and give you a sense of what the travelers went through. Below is a list of the best movies to watch about real traveling stories.

1. Into The Wild

Into The Wild is a biographical film produced in 2007 and directed by Sean Penn. The film is an adaptation of a 1996 nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer which is based on the travels of Christopher McCandless. The story is about how Christopher decides to give up his modern life shortly after graduating with high honors from Emory University.

Destroying everything that ties him to his conventional life such as his identification documents and credit cards, he donates all his savings before setting out on a sojourn through North America. He means to escape any influences of modernity, and has many experiences along the way until he finally settles in Alaska in an old abandoned bus. He eventually wishes to get back to his family and friends, who he left devastated because he never told them where he went off to, but comes to his demise alone in the Alaskan wilderness.

2. Motorcycle Diaries

Based on the memoir The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, this film recounts the experiences of Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado on their trek through South America back in 1952. The movie was produced in 2004 and directed by Walter Salles. Che Guevara and Granado first set out on Granado’s motorcycle with the pure intentions of having as much fun and adventure as possible. At this time, Che Guevara is 23, while Granado is 30. They come across many indigenous communities along the way, and begin realising the real plight that faces the impoverished people. It is during this period that Che Guevara adopts a different approach to life, seeing things in a perspective that eventually molds him into a popular revolutionary.

3. Gorillas In The Mist

Dian Fossey travels from her home in Kentucky to the deepest jungles of Rwanda in Africa to begin work with rare mountain gorillas. The film is based on a book by Fossey, giving an account of what she encounters in her work with the gorillas. It’s directed by Michael Apted, and stars Sigourney Weaver as Dian Fossey. Fossey begins her work in the Congo forest but has to move to the neighboring Rwanda after an unpleasant run in with Congolese soldiers who accuse her of being a foreign spy. It’s in Rwanda where her work gets more heated as she deals with poachers and laws that endanger the gorillas.

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