It's a long way from College Heights to far-flung locales like a goat farm in Galilee, Israel, and a not-quite-as-advertised yoga retreat in Goa, India.
But these were the kinds of places in which Prince George native Daniel Baylis found himself when he embarked on a year-long adventure in 2011, visiting 12 countries on six continents.
On Saturday, Baylis is back in Prince George where he will be signing copies of his debut book - The Traveller: Notes from an imperfect journey around the world - where he sums up the experience with post-travel wisdom and fish-out-water wit. The signing begins at 1 p.m. in Books and Company's Cafe Voltaire.
"I was excited to bring it to Prince George first," said Baylis, who is saving the major promotion for the book until after the Christmas season, but celebrated its completion and release with launch events in Montreal and Toronto.
Born and raised in the city, Baylis took off for other locations after graduating from College Heights secondary school in 1998. He spent a year travelling through Australia and New Zealand before going to post-secondary school in Edmonton. In 2003, he moved to Montreal where he's found a second home and has lived for the past 10 years.
The genesis of Baylis' adventure came about after graduating from Concordia University and looking ahead to his 30th birthday.
"I didn't know what I was going to be," he said.
Having completed a program in human relations, it left his career options far more open-ended than if he had obtained a degree in engineering or nursing.
Ultimately, Baylis set his sights on travel and spent more than two years working and planning for a 12-month sojourn where he would attempt to trade volunteer labour for room and board.
"It was a sense of, well it's not going to be a year of going to spas around the world to make this trip possible, so I'm going to do work exchange," said Baylis.
And while he kept family, friends and followers up to date on his travels via his blog, the journey continued when he returned home and began the process of putting together a book.
"I didn't know that it would be that from the get go," said Baylis, who began writing while in university for the school newspaper and branched out to his personal blog and contract work. "I wanted to tackle something different than that - something larger. And the trip made sense to me."
But with the writing complete, the voyage of getting published was just beginning, and ultimately Baylis decided to go the self-publishing route.
He set up a crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo that was wildly successful, raising 200 per cent of his initial $5,000 goal to get the book to print.
"I think the times have changed to make that possible for me. Where I can self publish with a bit of legwork but a lot more ease than even five years ago," said Baylis, noting he's not sure he would have been published had it not been an option since he's not the type to knock on the doors of large publishing houses.
But like any trip, you get by with a little help from your friend and Baylis also contracted the services of an editor, typesetter and cover designer to make sure the finished product was something that could compete with any other publication on a bookstore shelf - making it more of a team-publishing endeavour.
But he didn't forget about the hundreds who helped him fund the project through the Indiegogo campaign, and personally packaged and mailed about 200 copies of the book to supporters.
"It's been very exciting. On my Facebook, people are posting photos of themselves with my book. Sort of honouring the cover which is selfies [the cover features 12 photos of Baylis from various stages of his trip, arranged in a Viewmaster reel] - they actually take a selfie of themselves with the book, which like a meta layer of selfies," he said. "I think it's Baylis said his next adventure will be to tackle the biography of a Prince George woman, which he said he'd like to start by the middle of next year. Keep up with Baylis on his website, www.danielbaylis.ca.
