Destination: Tanzania
Safaris: Saviors of the Printed Word?
by Eva Holland | 08.04.09 | 1:07 PM ET
In the latest installment of Bookspotting, Book Bencher Vicky Raab spied Wired’s New York editor, Mark Horowitz, toting a stack of travel books—real ones, in hard copy!—in preparation for an African safari. What, no Kindle?
Raab writes: “Horowitz acknowledged that he was ‘totally Kindlized,’ but he was a bit worried about recharging, and none of the titles he had purchased are available as downloads. Still, he said that he may bring his along for the plane ride.”
Fair enough. The man does work for Wired, after all. His list of essential pre-safari titles is a good one, with everyone from Isak Dinesen and Peter Matthiessen to Stanley and Livingstone represented.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzStranger in Paradise
by Christopher Vourlias | 06.15.09 | 2:19 PM ET
Photo by Christopher Vourlias Christopher Vourlias searches for a place to call home in Stone Town, Zanzibar
Shrinking Planet Headline of the Day: ‘Facebook Swahili Version Launched’
by Jim Benning | 06.15.09 | 2:15 PM ET
Facebook is now available in roughly 50 languages, and Swahili was the second African language to get its own version of the social networking site, the BBC reports.
Eight Great Family Travel Stories
by World Hum | 05.01.09 | 11:33 AM ET
iStockPhoto To mark World Hum's eighth anniversary, we've collected eight favorite travel stories from our archives that explore the family vacation in all its forms
Eight Best Cities for Street Food
by Terry Ward | 12.15.08 | 12:17 AM ET
iStockphoto Terry Ward lifts the lid on a few of the world's tastiest places to eat the people's cuisine
Sesame Street, Global Edition
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.17.08 | 1:59 PM ET
When I heard Big Bird and South Africa’s muppet Zikwe talking to NPR about Putumayo Kids’ “Sesame Street Playground” album this weekend, I couldn’t help feeling jealous that I hadn’t grown up hearing songs like “Rubber Duckie” in Mandarin. The 40-year-old dean of all children’s shows now airs in 120 countries, and the new album showcases its worldwide reach.
There are songs from Israel, Palestine, Tanzania, South Africa, France, China, Russia, Mexico, the Netherlands, India and the United States. Concierge is especially fond of the “Pollution Song” from South Africa: a ditty about cleaning up after yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone in the world sang along to that?
Playing the ‘Mzungu Crazy Card’ in Zanzibar
by Eva Holland | 09.29.08 | 10:53 AM ET
In the Ottawa Citizen, Rebecca Hall muses about the “incredibly freeing” nature of being an outsider in Zanzibar. She writes:
I called it the Mzungu Crazy Card (mzungu is the Swahili term used to identify, varyingly, white people, foreign people, Europeans and magicians). As one of a handful of expatriates living on the Tanzanian archipelago, Zanzibar, everything I did incited laughter. Everything I did was “crazy,” and treated as such. I haggled for a mango in the market. I asked for tea without sugar at work. Crazy! I asked for tea with sugar at work. Still crazy.
Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro: ‘Worse Than Childbirth’
by Eva Holland | 02.14.08 | 1:53 PM ET
That’s the verdict Gayle MacDonald comes to, after making the climb with 11 other middle-aged Canadian moms. Her recent story in the Globe and Mail, which is heavy on the ugly details, doesn’t exactly make me eager to try taking on Kilimanjaro myself, but it does make for a fun read about an unlikely group of people breaking from their routines and rising to a challenge. Here’s a sample:
‘Travels with Herodotus’: Kapuscinski and the Weight of History
by Frank Bures | 07.03.07 | 3:11 PM ET
Frank Bures considers Ryszard Kapuscinski's newly translated book -- and the Polish writer's controversial legacy
Suffering and Smiling: Vanity Fair Does Africa
by Frank Bures | 06.27.07 | 11:31 AM ET
Africa is hot. Why? So we can save it? Frank Bures deconstructs the magazine's latest issue and what it says about Western views of the continent.
The Sound of Sunshine
by Frank Bures | 07.03.06 | 10:18 AM ET
Frank Bures was working for a boss he didn't like, spending too much time alone. It was a dark time. He found light in the bright, poignant music he first encountered in Africa: soukous.
Darkness, Then Light, On a Road in Tanzania
by Jim Benning | 07.01.06 | 11:29 AM ET
How often do the best travel stories in newspapers appear outside the travel section? At least half the time, I’d say, and today’s New York Times has a good example. In an eloquent opinion piece, Verlyn Klinkenborg writes about arriving in Tanzania after sundown and the ride from the airport into Arusha on a darkened highway. “Again and again, the lights caught people walking along the side of the road — past the edges of the fields and in the dusty track beside the asphalt,” Klinkenborg writes. “They were not hastening. Some wheeled heavily loaded bicycles. Many carried five-gallon plastic buckets, in every way those buckets could be carried. Some were dressed up, with surprising formality, for the evening ahead, although why the formality surprised me is a good question. They came into view for a second or two and then vanished. As for the country beyond them, it might have looked like anything — like savannah, like forest, like the canals of Mars.” Over the next week, the road and Arusha are illuminated for Klinkenborg, literally and metaphorically.
No. 6: ‘North of South’ by Shiva Naipaul
by Frank Bures | 05.26.06 | 9:18 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: Kenya and Tanzania
Lake Victoria
by Ben Keene | 02.17.06 | 1:05 PM ET
Area: 26,564 sq. mi. (68,800 sq. km)
Coordinates: 1 0 S 33 0 E
The shriveling Aral Sea made the news first, followed soon by Lake Chad, which, in 2001, researchers reported had shrunk to 1/20th of its former size. According to the International Rivers Network (IRN), a nonprofit organization monitoring rivers and their watersheds worldwide, Lake Victoria’s water level has also dropped sharply in recent years, reaching its lowest point since 1951. Lake Victoria is the largest such body of water on the African continent and the source of the Nile, and this finding certainly has seriously implications for some 30 million people in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda who rely on its resource. The study cited by IRN contends that human activity, namely the building of a large dam, and drought conditions have contributed to the receding shoreline.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
Kenya vs. Tanzania: Trading Insults and Allegations for Tourist Dollars
by Jim Benning | 03.11.05 | 8:53 PM ET
The battle for visitors is getting ugly in East Africa. Officials in Kenya and Tanzania—two major safari destinations—have taken to unabashedly insulting one another’s tourist offerings in the press. “Tanzania is too boring,” a Kenyan official says. “Kenya is too dangerous,” replies a Tanzanian. And that’s just the beginning. One Tanzanian government official has accused Kenyans of making a threatening phone call that led to a travel advisory for Tanzania. A recent report in the Washington Post has all the sad details.
- « Prev Page
- Next Page »
