On The Road trips

Though endlessly evocative on the page, the journeys around America detailed in On The Road are largely meandering affairs that are not easily reprised as holidays unless you have the same swaths of time to play with and a similar instinct for the unbeaten track. But while several niche places – St Louis, Cincinnati, Texas’s south-western borderlands – crop up in Kerouac’s text, three key cities have a special presence. Each can be the basis for a road trip in 2022.

DENVER

In some ways, the Colorado capital is a metropolis alone – famously marooned at altitude, with the Rocky Mountains rearing to the west. Kerouac visited it en route to California. Modern tourists should use it as a starting point for a journey that goes in search of the state’s rugged majesty, whether that be the grand groove in the ground that is Black Canyon of the Gunnison (nps.gov/blca), or railroad town Durango, where the Durango & Silverton Railroad (durango train.com) still forces steam-powered passage through San Juan

National Forest.

Bon Voyage (0800 316 3012; bon-voyage.co.uk) offers Colorado, Mountain Country & the Mother Road, a 14-night odyssey that calls on all the above locations, as well as the state’s second city, Colorado Springs. From £2,095pp, with flights

SAN FRANCISCO California’s great city on the bay is On The Road’s pot of gold, siren-calling to Kerouac from his life in New York. It needs scant introduction: the Golden Gate Bridge is an unmistakable icon, the bars and restaurants of the Mission District are lively. But San Francisco will always lend itself to wider adventures, whether (like the author) you go south to LA, or east into nature, taking in the peaks and waterfalls of Yosemite National Park (nps. gov/yose), or the heat of Death Valley (nps.gov/deva). Complete North America

(0115 961 0590; complete northamerica.com) offers a California Sunshine Coast from San Francisco trip that takes 15 days over its progress to San Diego, via Monterey, Santa Barbara and LA. From £2,199pp, with flights

NEW ORLEANS

Kerouac has some of his wildest encounters in the second part of On The Road, swapping New York for the Algiers district of New Orleans. Three-quarters of a century later, the most fabled dot on the map of Louisiana is still a splendid soup of a city – sticky under foot in the watering holes of the French Quarter, much more authentic in the music clubs on Frenchmen Street in Faubourg Marigny. Its decadent air can be compelling, but also exhausting. Once you’ve had your fill, drive out to explore a state alive with Creole soul. The 14-night Louisiana’s Finest fly-drive offered by America As You Like It (020 8742 8299; americaasyoulikeit.com) also trundles into the state capital Baton Rouge, and dips into neighbouring Mississippi. From £1,509pp, flights included