That elusive travel companion: sleep

My mother used to say it didn’t matter where you stayed, because a hotel room was just for sleeping. For a long time I thought that was her rationalization for booking budget accommodations.

Now I see it’s deeper than that. Although she was right about almost everything, she woefully underestimated the fundamental pleasure and therapeutic benefits of sleeping.

Someone should write a book about the best places to sleep on the road. I don’t mean a hotel guide; you can find plenty of those. What I’d like to know is where I’m likely to get a really dreamy night’s rest, from London to Bora-Bora. I’d plan a whole trip on that information, because sleep is as meaningful to me as food, books, art and -- I have to admit -- travel itself.

Of course, the weary traveler needs rest for the body. But it’s also a matter of giving the conscious time off so that the unconscious has a chance to feed the imagination. Only then, when we wake, are we are ready to understand why the Parthenon and Taj Mahal are interesting.

Beyond that, we work out things that trouble us in the arms of sleep, which must be why Shakespeare said that it “knits up the raveled sleeve of care” and why Anthony Storr wrote in “Solitude: A Return to the Self” that “entering the mad world of dreams each night probably promotes mental health in ways we do not fully understand.” Much to my benefit and amusement, I have found that I can jump-start that process by going deeply under in faraway places.

I always sleep divinely and dream baroquely on the east coast of Mexico but not on the west. For no reason I understand, I toss and turn in Puerto Vallarta. But I can still recall blissful nights in the sack at two hotels on the Yucatan coast, south of Cozumel: Curzan Guest House and Fishing Lodge in the village of Punta Allen, where I slept in the cabin of a beached boat, underneath a canopy of mosquito netting; and modest, little Cabanas Ana y Jose, near the Maya ruins at Tulum, with nothing fancier than bare tile floors, a murmuring ceiling fan and a hard, low bed in my room.

My ability to sleep in both places undoubtedly was affected by margarita nightcaps and the promise of a morning walk on the beach with a mug of good strong coffee.

But those elements were lacking a few years ago when I went kayak-camping north of Juneau, Alaska. Bedded down in a sleeping bag on a soft, aromatic nest of pine needles, listening to the rain tapping gently against my tent, I snoozed away like a grizzly cub in a den.

Another of my unforgettable sleeps on the road occurred many years ago at a bed-and-breakfast in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia. The bed had a feather tick as thick and soft as the beaten egg whites atop a lemon meringue pie and was so high off the floor that it required a stepladder to reach. Just thinking of that bed can make me nod off when I have trouble sleeping at home.

Insomnia is a hundred times worse on the road. You’re stuck in a hotel room with only a few of your favorite things around to distract you, thinking about how miserable you’re going to feel in the morning and how much you’re paying for it.

You sit up, turn on the lamp, go to the bathroom, fill your water glass, take two aspirin, then try to sleep again. When that doesn’t work, you read or watch TV or take a hot bath or make surprise phone calls to friends in distant time zones.

Desperately jet-lagged, I spent a lot of money that way, saw “The Godfather” dubbed in Russian and finished a fat biography of Peter the Great in three nights at the Astoria Hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia.

And don’t even get me started on the miserable nights I’ve spent camping, which is always either bliss or the opposite. Last month, there was the nightmare of a camp-out by Utah’s Lake Powell in freezing rain and subfreezing temperatures. My one-person tent leaked, soaking the bottom half of my sleeping bag, so I had to endure hours of darkness curled in the fetal position.

Last night, I couldn’t nod off thinking about the components of good sleep on the road. So I sat up and made a list:

The bed and its linens are important. High thread-count sheets at fancy hotels are an indulgence; stiff, scratchy ones are a cross budget travelers must bear. Either way, I’ve been kept awake at night wondering when the spread and blanket were last laundered.

A sense of personal security is conducive to sleep. That’s why women especially are advised to make sure front-desk clerks at hotels are discreet when making room assignments. I’ve lost count of the number of budget hotels I’ve stayed in, from French Polynesia to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where I felt it wise to wedge a chair against the door.

Stick to a routine. Re-creating the atmosphere and rituals of bedtime at home also helps travelers nod off on the road, sleep experts say. I need a glass of water, a clock that does not tick, a box of tissues and a reading lamp, no more than an arm’s length away from the bed.

Facilities must be accessible. The toilet must be close at hand, which is the big drawback to camping and budget hotels with shared bathrooms down the hall. I can be kept awake just contemplating the trial of getting to a far-away bathroom in the middle of the night.

Quiet calms. Absolute silence isn’t necessarily required. I like to sleep to lapping waves, chirping crickets, sometimes even the low din of city traffic -- but never to the sound of lust in the room next door. Once, desperate for a little shut-eye at a B&B; in West Hollywood, I got up and knocked at my neighbors’ chamber, hoping for a little forbearance.

My list stopped there. By then, I was feeling tired. So I turned off the light and went to sleep, like the happy traveler I almost always am.

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at latimes.com /susanspano.