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Jamie Bisiada
Five years ago, Diana Hechler, president of D Tours Travel in Larchmont, NY, had an idea: Through her agency, personal travel, and connections in the industry, she knew so many real travel experiences. Taking a cooking class at a destination is the kind of experience you’ll pass up.
What if she collected them, wrote about each one, and organized them into a book?
In the year In 2018, she pitched the idea to her friends at a pool party and it was well received. But she was a busy travel agency owner, so for a while, it remained just that: an idea.
And then the epidemic happened.
“My business stopped working,” Hechler said. “There was nothing I could do. So around March 2020, I was like, ‘If not now, when?’ I said.”
That five-year-old idea has come to fruition, and Hechler’s book, “Walking with Your Elephant: Perfect Moments in Travel” (Window Seat Press, 2023) is now available for sale.
The book, organized alphabetically by destination, contains nearly 80 different experiences that Hechler has collected.
Over the past decade, she says, there has been a lot of talk about how travelers are looking for authentic travel experiences. She began to incorporate that into her own business, offering unique opportunities to her clients. And every time she meets a presenter, she asks them a simple question: “Tell me something new that I don’t know.”
Sometimes their responses would be on the bare side, like a private tour of Rome, but sometimes they’d offer something like tagging a rhinoceros in South Africa with a vet (the latter of which made it into the book).
“The more I started asking people the right questions, the better it got,” Hechler said.
Even since writing the book, she’s collected a handful of other new experiences, which may appear in another edition down the road.
“There’s no shortage of people in the travel business who continue to create new and different things to do, and I find that fascinating,” she says.
The book’s primary audience is consumers, but she hopes it will be useful for those in the travel industry as well. It can serve as a handbook for fellow counselors.
“There is no copyright in this matter,” Hechler said.
It also feels appropriate in a hotel or cruise ship library.
The experiences in the book are extensive and come at different price points; Some are free, like following John Wilkes Booth’s path after shooting President Lincoln.
“I love the business it’s in,” Hechler said. “I love to talk about travel. And it’s wonderful for me, when I mention to someone who is going to Sydney, “Have you ever thought about the Bridge Climb. [at the Sydney Harbour Bridge]? And they said, ‘What?’ And to be able to tell them and have them come back and say, ‘That was the highlight of my trip,’ is really exciting.
“I hope this book does the same thing,” she added. “People look at it and go, ‘Could I do that? Really?’
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