You've read the book, you'll probably go to see the movie, but is it really possible to follow the path of Eat, Pray, Love and find the end of your rainbow?

Or would you really just end up overweight, unemployed, broke, desperate and a yogi wannabe forever chanting to try to keep yourself calm?

Elizabeth Gilbert's bestselling 2006 memoir saw her leaving her life in New York to find personal fulfilment in Italy, (where she ate a lot), to India, (where she prayed) and Bali (where she found love). 

Now with Julia Roberts starring in the movie of the same name due out last Thursday (Oct 7), no doubt, even more people are seeking to follow the same or similar trail to happiness.

Perhaps the tale simply capture an age-old spirit of adventure and a need to find our true loves, spiritual meaning, or who we really are.

Bonnie Dean   

The announcement of Oprah's visit to Australia was more exciting to Bonnie Dean than most because she recognised the date when the show is being filmed in mid December in Sydney.

It's exactly one year since Bonnie followed Elizabeth Gilbert's quest in Eat, Pray, Love to meet the very same medicine man in Bali, and it was December 14 when she finally met him to buy a painting for her sick mother.

"I had just moved and was setting up home when I saw the author on Oprah, so I left my unit and went straight to the bookshop to buy the book," 35-year-old Bonnie says.

"I was overwhelmingly inspired by Liz's personal story," she says.

" got to Chapter 9 when I decided on giving myself permission to go on my own journey."

Chapter 9 was the part where Gilbert reads a petition to God to her friend Iva, asking for her ex-husband to sign the divorce papers, and within hours she gets her wish.

"It was like a bolt of lightning hit me," Bonnie says.

"I knew how this worked and had used it many times before but sometimes we need reminding."

Bonnie, however, was not looking for anything in the region of love. 

She was divorced and had a further relationship that was dwindling. 

She was seeking a "magic painting" from the Bali medicine man, as Elizabeth Gilbert sought at the end of her travels.

Despite protestations from friends who pointed out all the dangers of travelling alone, Bonnie booked her flights (using frequent flyer points), sent her two children to live with her ex-husband, and left. 

"I was getting a bit freaked out by my own actions," Bonnie admits.

"I'd just impulsively booked return flights to Bali on my own."

"I didn't really know what the next step was, so I just kept reading and let the book take me on the journey."

Bonnie knew Ketut Liyer (the medicine man) lived in Ubud and a taxi driver came to her rescue with his whereabouts - his boss had a baby who wouldn`t stop crying and the taxi driver had previously brought the baby to Ketut for magic water.

"I felt like I was Liz Gilbert when I sat on the floor of his front porch," Bonnie says.

"I explained that I read her book and I came all the way from Australia to find him."

"He was so excited."

"He pulled a dark red hardcover from the dusty shelves behind him and said, 'you know Liz'."

Gilbert sent him the book when it was first published.

"He's very old but has an incredible sense of humour," Bonnie says.

"He was so concerned about being handsome in the photos I took."

"He kept saying, 'I'm not handsome enough`, and he put on a headpiece, then a flower in his ear, and finally beads."

"I couldn't help giggling."

Bonnie did get her painting, which she says was one of two he offered her already prepared because he only creates on auspicious days.

It is meant to protect and heal a woman, and her mother now has it hanging over her bed.

"My mother is still battling on but all her scans have been clear," Bonnie says. 

"She says she doesn't feel protected now without the painting."

Ketut asked Bonnie to give the photo she took of him to Elizabeth Gilbert, and she put it on Gilbert's Facebook page, but now she is having second thoughts and hopes that the Oprah recording in Sydney exactly a year later to the day is more than a coincidence.

"It would be a perfectly completed circle if I could just get myself on the Oprah Show and Oprah could get the photos to Liz and the promise would be kept," Bonnie says.

Bonnie has learned a lot from her journey.

"The experience has taught me to go with whatever is in my heart and not to be scared, and not to put obstacles in my way and make excuses."

"I can do whatever I want."

Sharyn Howard

Sharyn Howard is on the Eat, Pray, Love trip of a lifetime that began when she read the book.

"Eat, Pray, Love definitely inspired me and I feel so part of that book that I can even remember line for line of parts in the book," Sharyn says.

"I have given it to so many people hoping that it will inspire them as well."

In November 2009, Sharyn received a phone call from a friend asking her to go to a party where the theme was "Come as you are in five years time".

The theme is based on the final chapter of another inspirational book, How to find your dream job in 21 days, by Melissa Shembri.

"I didn't know anything about the book but I liked the idea of stepping into the future for one night to live my dream," Sharyn says.

"I had been working in law firms for 20 years and while I loved the income and security, I felt that one day I would like to travel the world volunteering for orphanages."

Sharyn arrived at the party dressed as "an exotic world traveller who volunteers in Nepal and Cambodian orphanages".

She had always been afraid to live her dream because she didn`t think she would get a job upon her return, but she took leave without pay from work on the advice of others at the party and set off to Nepal and India.

"Before heading off to Kathmandu, I went to Ubud in Bali and did a yoga retreat for a month," Sharyn says.

"Then I got to travel extensively through Nepal and see all of the orphanages and prisons," she says.

"I was invited to attend the Dalai Lamas` teaching in a remote place called Disket and to help and travel with a famous eye doctor and participate in their eye camp in all the remote villages in Leh."

"I had such an amazing time and just loved working with the monks and the doctors and we all have become such good friends."

Sharyn has ideas to help the remote villages and says she now can't imagine coming back to Australia for good in November. 

"I only want to come back for a short while to catch up with everyone and then hopefully come back here to work," she says.

"I have never regretted a day of leaving my job, my house, my family and my beautiful friends to follow my dream."

"Only for the book, Eat, Pray, Love, and also Melissa (author of How to find your dream job in 21 days), who played a huge role in me taking the plunge and going with my heart, I wouldn`t be here."

Judi Young

Judi Young's journey was one she undertook for physical healing.

"Yes, I have lived the Eat, Pray, Love routine, only not quite as successfully as Elizabeth (Gilbert) did," Judi says. 

"I had cancer and went on a mad journey in search of a cure and of myself through India and the Philippines."

When Judi was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, having studied natural healing for 20 years, and having read a myriad of books about the power of certain diets and travel, she thought all she would have to do was get with the program.

Trouble is, she just couldn't.

"By the time I arrived in India, I was still thinking of the Prada in Singapore Airport," she says.

In India, she went to a healing retreat, which didn`t work out.

"I didn`t realise they were going to give me two enemas a day," she says, laughing. 

"I also thought I should be able to do meditation but I wasn't, and I'm highly competitive."

"I floundered around India and the Philippines before finally realising that this healthy living stuff is hell."

For all the dramas, like having to take over the driving of a rickshaw because the driver was so bad, Judi says she really enjoyed her trip.

"I need to go to realise I didn't need to go," Judi says.

Judi began writing a journal for herself, which has become a book, The Girl in the Picture, which she says is the antithesis of Eat, Pray, Love.

"I saw Elizabeth Gilbert on Oprah and a lot of women in the audience were saying they realise they have to look inside themselves," Judi says.

"I think we are trying to compete with a book on how to get spiritual."

"The answer for me won`t be the answer for you."

Judi's answer was to return home to New Zealand to meet up with her estranged family and, after surgery, she recovered from her cancer.

According to magazines, Judi says she was "too old, too fat, too wrinkly" added to which she was then "too bad" to be able to self heal on an around the world trip, when she couldn't stick to a diet and kept drinking red wine.

"My answer is, "As I am, I'm okay'," she says.

"I'm still a bit overweight but I've a lifetime to figure it out."

Jeremy Britton  

Jeremy Britton seemingly had it all when a heart attack at the age of 31 made him rethink his existence and go on an Eat, Pray, Love type quest for peace and love.

"I thought maybe there's something to this hippie relaxation," the successful financial planner says.

"I was always an A-type personality, and I've always lived my life completely driven," he says.

"I would get up early and go to the gym, then work, come home, have dinner, and then go back to work again."

But Jeremy started to get sick, first by tearing his vocal chords.

"That was the universe telling me I needed to chill," he says.

After his heart attack, Jeremy`s journey has been up and down.

He left his job at the bank and started his own business. 

"But I was still my own worst enemy," he says.

"Instead of having a ratbag boss, I had then about 100 ratbag clients, so I was going into the same pattern."

Luckily Jeremy met the love of his life, Yvie, who is his complete opposite, who seems to have helped him change for the better. 

"I met Yvie a couple of years ago," he says.

"I had written a book on finance and investing and I saw her reading my book in a shop window."

"I went in and and we sat down and talked and my stomach grumbled and that's when I realised we had been talking for five hours."

Since meeting Yvie, Jeremy says he has been hot air ballooning, taken up Tai Chi, and travelled to Zimbabwe to meet Yvie's family and negotiate a bride price. 

"I thought if I want this woman, I was going to have to let my creativity in," Jeremy says.

"I went skydiving before I called her dad to ask to marry her."

"He's seven feet tall, works out twice a day, and so looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Jeremy even went on a 10-day Buddhist silent retreat. 

"You face all your demons and are stuck with your own thoughts," he says.

"After three days, your brain is freaking out, but on the ninth day, I had a moment of absolute peace."

He has now completed a diploma of hypnotherapy and teaches people not only how to make money but how to keep it, balancing both sides of their brains.

"I went up in a hot air balloon on 8/8/08, jumped out of a plane on 09/09/09 and proposed to her at 9pm the same evening, and we're getting married today on 10/10/2010," Jeremy says.

"I do love to talk about my life since I met Yvie," he says.

"It's just so awesome now."

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