Destination: Nepal
Think ______ is Great Now? Oh Please, You Shoulda Seen it in the ‘70s.
by Jim Benning | 06.11.07 | 8:53 AM ET
There’s at least one person in nearly every great place you travel to who will look you in your dazzled eyes and tell you in no uncertain terms that you really missed it, that you should have been there 5, 10, 20 years ago, when the place was truly magical and not overrun with people just like you. John Flinn calls it the Kathmandu Syndrome. As he defines it: “Every place used to be better, at least in the eyes of those who were there then. Now all these places are blighted, charmless, overcrowded and hopelessly touristy.” In a fine column in the San Francisco Chronicle, he explores this all-too-common expression of the hyper-competitive streak in some travelers.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: From the Great White North to the Land Down Under
by Michael Yessis | 06.08.07 | 12:49 PM ET
This week travelers trek the length of the globe, from Canada to California to Mexico to Costa Rica to Australia. There’s also the inevitable Paris Hilton vs. Hilton Paris match up. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
In Napa, Wilderness Above the Wineries
* That’s Napa, pictured above.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Paris Hilton accommodations vs. Hilton Paris
* Christopher Reynolds pits the two head-to-head.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Mexico to (Miss) U.S.A.: Boooooo
* Readers have mixed feelings about the now-infamous boos.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
JetBlue Tries to Bounce Back From Storm of Trouble
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Air Traffic Control System Command Center
Most Read Feature
World Hum (this week)
An Island in Costa Rica
Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
National Geographic’s Atmosphere
* Current podcast: Mount Everest Expedition
U.S. Issues New Nepal Travel Warning
by Jim Benning | 05.08.07 | 3:54 PM ET
Nepal travel fans were hoping a peace agreement between Maoist insurgents and the Nepalese government in November would put an end to the violence and robberies that have plagued the Himalayan nation in recent years. No such luck, apparently. As a result of ongoing acts of violence and threats by Maoist insurgents, the State Department has issued a fresh warning to travelers considering a Nepal visit to stay abreast of security information and be ready to change plans.
Peace Deal Helps Lure Travelers Back to Nepal
by Michael Yessis | 03.08.07 | 8:42 AM ET
Photo of Nepal by Hugh Gage (Via Flickr, Creative Commons).
Adventure travel companies that had discontinued trips to Nepal in recent years are planning to resume their operations soon, according to a New York Times report. Conflict between the Nepalese government and Maoist rebels had caused outfitters to stop running trips, but a peace deal signed in November changed their outlook.
Peru: It’s No Nepal
by Michael Yessis | 01.12.07 | 6:16 AM ET
Royal Nepal Airlines apologized to Peru for promoting Nepalese tourism using an image of Machu Picchu, perhaps the most iconic attraction in all of South America. How does such a blunder occur? M.B. Khadka of the airline said the mix up was caused by the printing agency in charge of making the airline’s advertising posters, according to news reports.
John Flinn on ‘the Coolest Six-Buck Souvenir I Ever Got’
by Jim Benning | 12.13.06 | 2:25 PM ET
San Francisco Chronicle travel editor John Flinn gets around. Not only was he recently on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, but not long ago he was in Nepal and was robbed by a Maoist rebel—sort of. As Flinn recounts in Sunday’s paper, he was on a bus from the Tibetan border to Kathmandu when the weaponless Maoist boarded and demanded cash. Flinn knew that rebels had been funding their insurgency by robbing visitors, and at the urging of his English-speaking guide, he turned over 400 rupees—less than $7. But it gets better.
Pico Iyer: On Travel and Travel Writing
by Matthew Davis | 11.30.06 | 8:32 AM ET
Two decades after boarding a plane for the trip that would yield "Video Night in Kathmandu," Pico Iyer talks to Matthew Davis about fact and fiction, books he wishes he hadn't written and his humble beginnings as a travel writer.
MacLean: ‘Travellers Have Poisoned Tradition and Helped to Pervert the Unique Into the Mundane’
by Michael Yessis | 06.06.06 | 12:31 PM ET
Are we that bad? Rory MacLean, author of the forthcoming book “Magic Bus: On The Hippie Trail From Istanbul To India,” believes so. He takes several shots at modern travelers in an essay in the Guardian, charging not only that they damage cultures like a “fast-mutating virus,” but that they generally seek adventure through physical challenges instead of the spiritual quests embarked upon by earlier generations of travelers. MacLean bookends his piece with some words from one of those travelers, Desmond O’Flattery, a longtime expat in Kathmandu and generally bitter man who laments that his adopted city is full of travelers with Lonely Planet guidebooks. “I mean, at their age we wanted to get into each other and society, not to live in a melt-down world,” he tells MacLean. “We didn’t have guidebooks, we didn’t even know the name of the next country.”
Mt. Everest: A Climber’s Controversial Decision
by Jim Benning | 06.01.06 | 12:49 PM ET
The Los Angeles Times today recounts an expedition last month in which climbers left a man to die near the summit. Everest icon Sir Edmund Hillary condemned the incident, saying, “Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.”
George Saunders on Nepal’s “Buddha Boy”
by Michael Yessis | 05.29.06 | 11:38 AM ET
When the editors at GQ asked In Persuasion Nation writer George Saunders to travel to Nepal to write about Ram Bahadur Bomjon—before he abandoned his spot a couple months ago, the 15-year-old “Buddha Boy” was making headlines around the world for meditating under a tree and not eating, drinking or moving for months—Saunders said no. But he couldn’t get the kid off his mind. The account of the trip Saunders eventually took appears in the June issue of GQ. Though Saunders’ story is more about the writer, really, than the Buddha Boy, it does provide an interesting look at what may or may not be an elaborate hoax as well as a Nepal in turmoil.
No. 8: “Video Night in Kathmandu” by Pico Iyer
by Rolf Potts | 05.24.06 | 11:04 PM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1988
Territory covered: East and South Asia
A collection of 11 essays chronicling the cultural fusion of East and West in the 1980s, Iyer’s literary debut is an answer to all those critics who claim that great travel writing died once the terra incognita was mapped. As this Asia-themed collection shows, the final frontier of adventure isn’t located on some distant mountain or impenetrable jungle, but in the intimate (and often comical) cross-cultural fascinations and discoveries that arise from an ever-shrinking world.
Amid his sharp reportage and analysis, Video Night in Kathmandu‘s greatest strength is Iyer’s refusal to draw prim moral conclusions as Western popular culture bumps up against the traditions of the East. Instead, he casts things in terms of a tenuous romance.
“When Westerner meets Easterner,” Iyer writes, “each finds himself often drawn to the other, yet mystified; each projects his romantic hopes on the stranger, as well as his designs; and each pursues both his illusions and his vested interests with a curious mix of innocence and calculation that shifts with every step.” Moreover, the author’s eye for ironic juxtapositions—Rambo-inspired musicals in India, baseball fever in Japan, Mowhawk haircuts in Bali—proves so keen that he practically inaugurates the now-common “cultural-contradiction” travel-story template. Even if the specific cross-cultural obsessions of “Video Night” (Michael Jackson, Rambo) seem a bit dated, the ensuing rise of globalization and reach of the Internet have only underscored how relevant Iyer’s observations were.
No. 11: “The Snow Leopard” by Peter Matthiessen
by Rolf Potts | 05.21.06 | 10:00 PM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1978
Territory covered: the Himalayan Dolpo region of Nepal
Matthiessen’s Zen-flavored masterpiece is as much a classic of nature and spiritual literature as it is of travel writing. Documenting a 1973 journey into the remote Dolpo region of Nepal, Matthiessen officially sets out to help zoologist George Schaller study Himalayan blue sheep. As he takes the reader deep into the mountains, however, we realize that Matthiessen is using this scientific journey as a metaphor to reflect on much broader matters of life, death and existence itself. The famous irony of The Snow Leopard is that Matthiessen never spots the elusive creature during his adventure.
Thus, robbed of the climactic moment, the author leads us into the simple essence of his journey: “the common miracles—the murmur of my friends at evening, the clayfires of smudgy juniper, the coarse, dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do.” In this way, the spiritual lessons of this book aren’t relegated to romantic abstractions or heady epiphanies, but to a gentle reminder that life consists of what each moment brings us; that it’s futile to obsess on the workings of the past and future if you’re missing out on experience of the present moment.
A Brief History of Adventure Travel
by Michael Yessis | 02.04.06 | 2:17 PM ET
Yahoo! adventure guru Richard Bangs covers the history of adventure travel in just 874 words today in a New York Times piece. I’ll summarize in 86 words: First adventure travelers were merchants on expedition. Many accidental discoveries. Ericson, North America. Columbus, the Caribbean. Modern adventure travel began 35 years ago. Treks in the Nepalese Himalayas. Maoist revolutionaries emerge. Adventurers go to Bhutan. In the ‘70s, Afghanistan, Algeria and New Guinea. In the ‘80s, the Nile, Mount Ararat and Bali. Religious-based terrorism drives out adventurers. In the ‘90s, the Alps. Euro rises. Everyone goes to Thailand. Tsunami hits. Libya, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Panama become popular. For now. When in doubt, there’s always Costa Rica.
Expedition Everest: Disney Brings Nepal and Tibet to Orlando, Florida
by Michael Yessis | 01.27.06 | 1:06 AM ET
Whether you love Disney or curse it for devouring the world, you’ve got to admit that the mega-corporation sure understands the power of travel and the journey. Since Uncle Walt opened Disneyland in 1955, the company has drawn people to its theme parks by tapping into the mythology of many of the world’s iconic destinations and travel experiences. New Orleans. The Matterhorn. Pirates plundering the Caribbean. Huck and Tom on the Mississippi River. Then there’s California Adventure, an entire theme park that revolves around some of the state’s best known attractions. Even Disney’s $7.5 billion deal for Pixar supports the point. After all, aren’t “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo,” at heart, about epic journeys?
Annapurna, Nepal
by Ben Keene | 11.18.05 | 12:03 PM ET
Elevation: 26,502 feet (8,078 m)
Coordinates: 28 34 N 83 50 E
Location can be a beacon for individuals as well as groups of people for a wide variety of reasons. To mountaineers, Asia is key as the world’s 10 highest peaks can all be found on this continent. And while the geologically young range known as the Himalayas (they’re less than 70 million years old) continues to lure a growing number of intrepid climbers, Annapurna in central Nepal became the first mountain over 8,000 meters to be summited in 1950.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.