Destination: Africa
The Burden of War
by Wendy Knight | 11.05.04 | 9:34 PM ET
Photo by Bobby Model Wendy Knight went to Sudan in search of compelling war stories. Then her own personal battle began.
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Yahoo! BuzzNational Geographic’s Mea Culpa
by Jim Benning | 09.24.04 | 11:15 PM ET
Dan Rather and CBS News aren’t the only media heavyweights apologizing for shoddy journalism these days. In the October issue of National Geographic, Editor-in-Chief Bill Allen apologizes to readers for unwittingly passing off a staged photograph of a tribal elephant hunt in Tanzania as the real thing. According to Allen, the photographer, Gilles Nicolet, posed the photo, which appeared in the July issue, and then lied to editors about it. Readers noticed that elephant tusks in the photo had numbers printed on them. When confronted, Nicolet confessed that the tusks had been borrowed from the Tanzania Department of Wildlife. “I’m still losing sleep over the fact that we failed to uncover the truth before publishing the pictures,” Allen writes in the print edition; (a different explanation is available here). “You have our apology.”
Journey to Libya
by Jim Benning | 06.11.04 | 9:40 PM ET
Richard Bangs’ stories about his travels in Libya have been featured this week on Slate’s Well Traveled. Bangs was also featured in an interview in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, in which he spoke about his Libya trip.
Do Travel Writers Get Africa Right?
by Michael Yessis | 05.03.04 | 8:25 PM ET
Often they don’t, writes Jeevan Vasagar in Friday’s Guardian. “[W]hen confronted with the breadth and complexity of Africa, most travel writing simply fails,” Vasagar writes. “[P]erhaps the miserable writer should just stay in a five-star hotel now and then, take an air-conditioned bus and give the continent a break.” Vasagar criticism targets specific writers and books, including Paul Theroux’s “Dark Star Safari” and Shiva Naipaul’s “North of South.”
Lonely Planet at 30
by Jim Benning | 12.29.03 | 9:46 PM ET
Jim Benning celebrates three decades of groundbreaking independent travel guides
Test Day
by Frank Bures | 09.10.03 | 9:49 PM ET
Photo by Frank Bures. Frank Bures administers an English exam to his students in Tanzania, where life is hard and giving up isn't an option
Terror and Travel in Morocco
by Jim Benning | 07.01.03 | 12:21 AM ET
Terry Ward had just arrived in Morocco for a six-week Arabic course when she heard about the previous night’s terrorist bombings in Casablanca, 230 miles away. “Four explosions in Casa. Suicide bombers,” the receptionist at her Tangier hotel told her. “Many, many people dead.” Ward spent the coming days trying to make sense of the attack and how it might affect her stay in the country, which she chose to visit because she thought it would be safe. Her evocative account appears in Sunday’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Take A One-Minute Vacation
by Michael Yessis | 06.06.03 | 8:56 PM ET
We’ve just added a new link to our travel blog section, Aaron Ximm’s One-Minute Vacation. Every Monday Ximm posts a 60-second audio clip recorded by him or another traveler originating from somewhere around the world. “One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen,” he writes on his site, quietamerican.org. “Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else.” Recent recordings include a call to prayer in Morocco and a scene from the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. Ximm reveals the hows and whys of his audio blog in a Q-and-A with Dave Heaton at erasingclouds.com.
With the War Underway, Do People Want to Hear About Travel Writing?
by Jim Benning | 03.27.03 | 9:02 PM ET
Paul Theroux, one of travel writing’s greats, read from his new travel memoir, Dark Star Safari, on the first stop of his book tour Wednesday evening in Southern California. Given all the war hoopla, I wondered on the way there how many people would turn out for a book about travel in Africa. Maybe everyone would stay home, glued to the news. Or, more hopefully, perhaps the city’s travelers, waiting out the war before heading abroad again, would be itching for a little escapism.
Happily, 20 minutes before Theroux was to appear, the bookstore’s reading room was so packed that employees hurried to bring out more chairs. By the time Theroux walked in, smiling, at least 75 people were on hand. Not bad at all. Theroux quickly launched into an explanation of why he traveled to Africa. He wanted to see the place where, four decades earlier, he’d worked in the Peace Corps. He wanted to get away from it all. “I’m sick of people calling me up, saying, ‘Can you do this for me tomorrow?’” he said. Between e-mail, fax machines and cell phones, “Anyone can find you,” he said. “We’re so connected. It’s a kind of craziness. One of the great thrills of traveling in the world is losing yourself. I wanted people to call up my wife and say, ‘Where’s Paul?’ ‘Oh I don’t know. He just went and disappeared.’” The audience erupted in laughter.
Theroux spoke of getting robbed in South Africa and, on another occasion, ducking behind cows to avoid getting shot. He suffered five months of parasites but barely mentioned it in the book. “Who wants to read about that?” he said. He read a paragraph, took a few questions, signed copies of the book. He made only one brief mention of the war. By the time I left, with visions of Africa in my head, I felt as though I had disconnected, if only briefly. It was a fine evening.
He Drives a Lexus. So What’s Paul Theroux Doing Crammed in an Overcrowded Minibus in Africa?
by Jim Benning | 02.20.03 | 3:51 PM ET
Even he wonders. Theroux talked with writer Maureen Isaacson of South Africa’s Sunday Independent recently about his life and latest book, “Dark Star Safari.” Over mediocre fish and chips, Isaacson elicited some great quotes. “To take a trip this long, you have to be very sure of what you are doing, you have to be mentally very clear,” Theroux said in describing the Africa journey he chronicled in the book. “You are often very shocked by what you see. It is very insulting physically to be jammed in a minibus with 20 people. I often think I am a fool. I live in Hawaii. I have a farm, I have a Lexus. Why am I in a bus on a muddy road driving from Tanzania down to Malawi? And when I arrive in a place, where have I arrived? In Blantyre? And what is the stupidity of being in an unsafe vehicle?” If I may be so bold: books, Mr. Theroux. The stuff makes for good books.
Family on Safari
by Frank Bures | 11.22.02 | 10:52 PM ET
Photo by Frank Bures. How would Grandma have felt about the bumpy Tanzanian roads? She would've hated them. And those pit toilets? Ditto. Frank Bures explores the family vacation minus one.
Theroux’s ‘Dark Star Safari’: First Takes
by Jim Benning | 11.13.02 | 12:39 AM ET
The first review we’ve seen of Paul Theroux’s new book, “Dark Star Safari,” about his recent journey through Africa, appears to have been written by someone as
cranky as Theroux, if that’s possible. In a review in the Guardian, critic John Ryle takes Theroux to task for what he writes are inaccurate statements in the book about the continent’s history and its aid workers. Ryle details his beefs in paragraph after paragraph, then adds, “There are compelling episodes, when the author’s prejudices melt away and the spirit of place asserts itself.” Not a very satisfying review.
Meanwhile, the Guardian has also published an excerpt from the book.
The Magical Miracle Tour
by Frank Bures | 08.01.02 | 10:59 PM ET
Photo by Frank Bures. When a German evangelist arrived to save Africa from Satan and his evil witch doctors, Frank Bures went along for the ride
The Pleasures of Staying in a Mud Hut in Zambia
by Jim Benning | 06.05.02 | 12:46 AM ET
Helen Truszkowski watched her 6-year-old son, George, grow increasingly attached to his Harry Potter merchandise and the idea of getting his own telephone. So for a dose of reality, shetook him on vacation to a mud hut in Zambia. “A screened-off tin bath took the place of our regular en-suite,” she writes in the Independent. “No electricity, no cutlery, no flushing loo, no telly. Any doubters among you will be gagging to probe the shortfalls of a village stay like this, so insignificant may seem the tokens of modern-day comfort, even basic reassurances for visitors.”
Fitness for Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 05.23.02 | 7:36 PM ET
The idea for World Hum contributor Suzanne Schlosberg’s latest book came to her while she was working out at the world’s most inadequate gym, which is located in the basement of an overpriced hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco. “My instinct was to blow off the workout. Between the flimsy equipment and my general feeling of lethargy, I had a couple of decent excuses,” she writes in the introduction to Fitness for Travelers. “But then I rallied…Afterward, I felt much, much better.” That incident inspired Schlosberg to compile fitness tips and routines for travelers taken from her own experiences and those of an array of fellow wanderers, many of whom also share anecdotes about the lengths they go to stay fit on the road. Among those Schlosberg spoke with are a sex therapist, an American political big wig and, most noteworthy, Lynyrd Skynyrd drummer Michael Cartellone.