Destination: Asia
Travel in 2017: Start Learning Chinese and Changing Your Eating Habits
by Michael Yessis | 10.18.07 | 2:59 PM ET
The Freakonomics guys aren’t the only ones this week with an eye on the future of travel. Forbes delivered a special report about “The Future,” which features some provocative speculation on travel in the year 2017 from World Hum contributor Elisabeth Eaves. Among her predictions:
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzThomas Swick Takes On Agra Station
by Eva Holland | 10.18.07 | 7:59 AM ET
In his latest column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Thomas Swick describes his arrival at the station in Agra, the former capital of the Mughal Empire and home of the Taj Mahal. Foreign train stations, Swick writes, “have always held a certain terror for me.” But Agra’s was even more intimidating than most: “I stepped over sleeping bodies on the sidewalk and rolled my suitcase into a human maze. Crowds engulfed the platform, grudgingly making way for porters, machinery, luggage, new arrivals. There was no visible information, though every once in a while a woman’s voice—soothing in this predominantly male world—descended from the PA system. I couldn’t understand a word.”
Dreaming of Extreme Golf in Kabul
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.17.07 | 12:39 PM ET
If Mohammad Afzal Abdul was Kevin Coster, the Kabul Golf Club would be his Field of Dreams. Never mind that the nine-hole course in Afghanistan is a barren patch of earth and the greens are actually “browns”—a mixture of firmly packed sand and oil. And forget that most golfing vacations are usually in the beachy lands of glossy travel brochures instead of war-torn countries. As Mr. Abdul’s website states, this is “extreme golf with attitude.”
Tony Wheeler on What’s Next for Burma Travel
by Michael Yessis | 10.17.07 | 9:45 AM ET
Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler writes in the Guardian that his travel contacts within Burma are reeling from the recent protests and the ensuing crackdown. However, he adds, boycotts and isolation are not the best response to recent events; he continues to be an advocate for travel to the country.
China’s Three Gorges: As Environmental Catastrophe Looms, Beauty Lingers
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.15.07 | 10:17 AM ET
We’ve been reading for some time that China is choking on epic pollution produced by its push for fast growth. One of the victims, of course, is the Three Gorges, the once-beautiful, mist-filled river passage through tall limestone and sandstone crags. Since 2003, China has dammed the Yangtze, the country’s largest river, to create a reservoir that is expected to fill by 2009. The dam is expected to produce 20 times as much electricity as the Hoover Dam and reduce China’s reliance on polluting coal—hopefully reducing the smog that regularly blots out the sun. Already more than 1,000 towns and villages are underwater, and an iconic landscape has changed. But it’s still a beautiful place of rain-slicked trees and bamboo bushes and slender waterfalls churning into a jade-colored river, writes Mary Beth Sheridan in The Washington Post.
Women’s Travel E-Mail Roundtable, Part Eleven: (De)Parting Words
by Liz Sinclair | 10.12.07 | 7:14 AM ET
All this week, four accomplished travelers -- Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Liz Sinclair, Terry Ward and Catherine Watson -- talk about the rewards and perils of hitting the road alone as a woman.
Travels in Afghanistan: ‘This is no Ordinary Vacation’
by Michael Yessis | 10.11.07 | 3:37 PM ET
That realization hit Cassie Biggs 40 minutes into her flight to Afghanistan, which to me seems, oh, at least 40 minutes too late. Afghanistan is, after all, a war zone. Yet among a certain breed of curious travelers it’s showing signs of returning to popularity—Lonely Planet just released a new guidebook—and even for those who, like Biggs, are just looking for “something unusual to do” for a birthday. In a story for the AP about her trip, Biggs writes about a country where the signs of war and destruction are all around, yet she still finds things one might see on an “ordinary vacation.” She writes: “[W]hat I found on a week-long trip was a surprisingly green country with incredibly welcoming people. Often peeping from beneath those enveloping burqas I saw strappy high-heeled sandals and crimson-colored toenails.”
Rambo in Burma: ‘This is a Hellhole Beyond Your Wildest Dreams’
by Eva Holland | 10.09.07 | 3:30 PM ET
An unlikely commentator has emerged on human rights in Burma. Sylvester Stallone, who recently spent time on the Thai-Burmese border while filming a new “Rambo” movie, is speaking out about the isolated regime’s ongoing war with ethnic minorities in outlying areas of the country. (He was there before the military crackdown on protesting Buddhist monks.) “I witnessed the aftermath—survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We saw many elephants with blown off legs,” Stallone said in an AP story. He added that people in his crew were threatened and had warning shots fired at them, while some of the families of his Burmese extras wound up in prison.
‘The Darjeeling Limited’: A New Wanderers’ Classic?
by Elisabeth Eaves | 10.09.07 | 11:53 AM ET
Hollywood rarely produces a great travel film. It endlessly mines the road trip for material but doesn’t get at the actual experience of travel, the drama of which, for most of us, involves neither bad guys nor tragic endings, but rather logistical snafus and the occasional small epiphany. So it was with trepidation that I approached director Wes Anderson’s new movie The Darjeeling Limited, about three bumbling brothers on a train trip through India. By the end, though, I wanted to join the protagonists as they ran, yet again, for the train. “The Darjeeling Limited” is a fresh and funny lesson in that most ancient piece of travel wisdom—it’s about the journey, stupid, not the destination.
Women’s Travel E-Mail Roundtable, Part Three: Arguments and Getting to the Heart of the Subject
by Liz Sinclair | 10.09.07 | 8:05 AM ET
All this week, four accomplished travelers -- Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Liz Sinclair, Terry Ward and Catherine Watson -- talk about the rewards and perils of hitting the road alone as a woman.
Lonely Planet Publishes Guidebook to…Afghanistan?
by Jim Benning | 10.05.07 | 1:23 PM ET
Indeed. The San Francisco Chronicle’s John Flinn leafed through it recently for kicks. He writes: “The accommodations section for Kabul lists guesthouses meeting the United Nation’s Minimal Operating Security Standards, and there’s a helpful list of acronyms: Car bombs are called VBIEDs, for vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. And then there are DBIEDs—donkey bombs. That these are common enough to qualify for their own acronym is a little troubling. Rather than the typical lecture about the advantages of traveling light, the guidebook advises visitors to pack a ‘quick run (or grab) bag.’ This, it explains, ‘is to be kept with you should you have to leave in a hurry.’ All this raises the question: What in the name of Mullah Omar was Lonely Planet thinking?” LP’s short answer: Stability will come, and with it a market for the book.
Related on World Hum:
* Q&A With Paul Kvinta: Travels with Rory Stewart in Afghanistan
* Rory Stewart on Afghanistan: ‘The Problem is That We Act on the Basis of Our Own Lies’
* No. 17: ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ by Eric Newby
Board the Airbus 300—to Nowhere
by Michael Yessis | 10.02.07 | 8:01 AM ET
The plane never leaves the ground, and might only spin in circles if it tried—it only has one wing and a hint of a tail. Yet the $4 tickets are going fast. According to the Times of London, 99 percent of India’s population has never traveled on a plane, so retired Indian Airlines engineer Bahadur Chand Gupta has set up “virtual journeys” on an old Airbus 300 in Delhi.
Interview with George Saunders: Loose in the Real World
by Frank Bures | 09.28.07 | 1:03 PM ET
Frank Bures talks with the author about Dubai, Nepal's Buddha Boy and what he learned about travel from a mob of rock-hauling, 70-year-old women in Singapore
Nepal Contemplates Nudity Ban on Everest
by Eva Holland | 09.28.07 | 11:39 AM ET
It looks as though Lakpa Tharke Sherpa, the first man to stand naked on the summit of Mount Everest, may also be the last. Mountaineering authorities in Nepal are calling for a ban on nudity, and on any other attempts to set obscene records like the one set by the Nepali climber last year. From the AP story: “Ang Tshering, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, says the people who live at the foot of Everest worship the mountain as a god and mountaineering authorities have asked the government to ban disrespectful stunts.” Hard luck, ladies. If Nepal follows through, this could be one record that’s never matched by a woman.
Related on World Hum:
* ‘Climb Everest for a Discount Rate’
* Everest Base Camp: ‘The Himalayan Version of Burning Man’
Photo by star_trooper via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
The Crackdown in Burma: One Chilling Photo
by Jim Benning | 09.27.07 | 6:47 PM ET
This is one of those images that’s hard to shake off, taken today in Rangoon after soldiers opened fire on protesters, killing at least nine people. The blood-soaked sandals are the kind worn by the protesting Buddhist monks. The photo was made available by the Mandalay Gazette. As we noted earlier, the State Department just warned U.S. citizens to postpone travel to Burma.
Related on World Hum:
* U.S. State Department: Postpone Travel to Burma
* First Deaths Reported in Crackdown on Protesters in Burma
* As Defiant Monks Protest in Burma, Travel Debate Rages On
Photo: AP.