Travel Blog: Life of a Travel Writer
Train Completes First Journey to Tibet. But is it Progress or a ‘Second Invasion’?
by Jim Benning | 07.07.06 | 7:30 AM ET
In the final chapter of his terrific 1988 book Riding the Iron Rooster, about riding trains through China, Paul Theroux wrote of the difficulty in traveling from China to Lhasa, Tibet—“six days overland from Xian, or else a long and frightening flight from Chengdu.” Later, he continued, “[T]he main reason Tibet is so undeveloped and un-Chinese—and so thoroughly old-fangled and pleasant—is that it is the one great place in China that the railway has not reached. The Kunlun Range is a guarantee that the railway will never get to Lhasa.” If only it were so. Earlier this week, after years of construction, a train completed the first journey from Beijing to Lhasa along what is now the world’s highest railway, topping out at a breathtaking 16,640 feet. “Laptop computers and digital music players failed because the tiny air bags that cushion their moving parts broke,” the AP reported via the Los Angeles Times. “Some passengers threw up. Others took Tibetan herbs or breathed oxygen through tubes.”
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Yahoo! BuzzSouth African Writer Adam Levin on Travel, AIDS and Bruce Chatwin
by Jim Benning | 06.29.06 | 6:35 AM ET
Ethical Travel: What is a Traveler’s Responsibility?
by Michael Yessis | 06.28.06 | 9:27 PM ET
World Hum books editor Frank Bures explores the idea of ethical travel in a piece for the July/August 2006 issue of Mother Jones. “Last year more than 800 million tourists traveled internationally, and in 2004 tourism generated $623 billion, making it one of the largest industries in the world,” he writes. “Yet somehow that rising tide has not lifted all the boats (except, perhaps, cruise liners), and a growing number of travelers are ... looking to such movements as pro-poor tourism, fair trade tourism, and ethical travel for answers.”
Not a Bad Time to Be in Ghana
by Jim Benning | 06.23.06 | 1:23 PM ET
Travel writer Joshua Berman is in the midst of one of those ‘round-the-world trips that would make anyone with remotely itchy feet turn, uh, green with envy. Over the last year, he has passed through Paris, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia. And yesterday, he was in Ghana to see the African nation defeat the United States in a World Cup match. Not surprisingly, as this photo he shot indicates, he found himself in the midst of one serious party.
Interview with Peter Hessler
by Frank Bures | 06.20.06 | 11:34 AM ET
We’re always delighted when travel writers pop up on radio or TV. Over the weekend, Peter Hessler appeared on the radio show Here on Earth, Radio With Borders to discuss his new book, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present. Hessler’s first book, “River Town,” was No. 20 in our list of the Best Travel Books of All Time.
What do Travel Writers Always Carry When They’re On the Road?
by Michael Yessis | 06.13.06 | 11:07 AM ET
For Jan Morris, it’s a pot of English bitter orange marmalade. Tim Cahill takes a world-band radio (“I may be safe in the bush, but I would like to know if there are riots, gunfire, etc. in the capital city where I’ll have to go to fly home”). Bill Bryson carries items he no longer wants, such as sweaters given to him by his in-laws (“I can discard them en route and lighten my load as I go”). A dozen other travel writers answered the question posed by John Flinn in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.
Podcasts with Tim Cahill and Simon Winchester
by Jim Benning | 06.06.06 | 2:03 PM ET
Travelers’ Tales has added podcasts to the offerings on its Web site, debuting interviews by executive editor Larry Habegger with travel writing heavyweights Simon Winchester and Tim Cahill. I agree with Jen Leo’s assessment: If you can get past some stiff introductory remarks, there’s some good material inside. I enjoyed hearing Simon Winchester discuss the awful review that his recent book, “A Crack in the Edge of the World,” earned in the New York Times. “Let it ruin your breakfast,” he said, “but don’t let it spoil your lunch.”
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.”
Catching Up with Rolf
by Jim Benning | 06.02.06 | 11:58 AM ET
Travel writer Rolf Potts has been a busy guy lately. Not only has he been contributing to our list of the top 30 travel books of all time, and writing our Ask Rolf column, but he has been turning out columns for Yahoo and interviewing travel writers for his own site, too. Whew. For his Yahoo columns, he recently talked with “River Town” and “Oracle Bones” author Peter Hessler and meditated on our affection for souvenirs. Over at RolfPotts.com, he just posted an interview with Boston Globe travel writer Tom Haines, whose stories we often link to on World Hum. Remarked Haines: “I believe good travel writing, as opposed to foreign reporting, or essay writing, or memoir, or whatever, comes with recreating the experience of place. That is, try to present a complete picture: factual, imagistic, emotional. Try to capture, in other words, the multiple layers of reality of a place. Economics and politics, religion and history are all critical. But so is the way people walk, or talk, or act in a group, for example. So is how the light changes by late afternoon, or the feel of a hot wind from the west.”
Patrick Leigh Fermor: ‘An Englishman Abroad’
by Jim Benning | 05.31.06 | 10:53 PM ET
A few weeks ago, we declared (with the help of Thomas Swick) “A Time of Gifts” by Patrick Leigh Fermor one of the greatest travel books of all time. Leigh Fermor, now in his 90s, is not as well known to many American readers as other great travel writers of our time. So it was a pleasant surprise to find, in the May 22 issue of the New Yorker, a lengthy profile of Leigh Fermor by Anthony Lane. The story describes a writer who has lived one of the most compelling lives of the 20th century—so fascinating, in fact, that Lane insists it makes the rest of our lives “laughably provincial in their scope.”
Kristof Picks Missouri Grad Student For Traveling Companion
by Michael Yessis | 05.24.06 | 10:58 AM ET
New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof announced the winner of his travel contest yesterday, selecting University of Missouri journalism grad student Casey Parks. “We’ll most likely start in Equatorial Guinea, bounce over to Cameroon and travel through a jungle with Pygmy villages to end up in the Central African Republic—one of the most neglected countries in the world,” Kristof writes (the story is available to TimesSelect subscribers only). “We’ll visit schools, clinics and aid programs, probably traveling in September for 10 days.” Kristof, as we previously mentioned, conducted the contest to help draw more attention—and perhaps aid—to some heartbreaking region of the world and give a young writer a break.
Interview with Jen Leo
by Jim Benning | 05.19.06 | 2:41 PM ET
Travelers’ Tales editor extraordinaire (and friend of World Hum) Jen Leo fields questions about travel, editing and writing at eMarginalia.com. “I’m a romantic,” she says, “but I’ve never held any romantic ideals about writing.” A wise approach, Jen. How many perfectly good lives have been ruined by romantic notions about writing and the writing life? I shudder to consider the numbers.
Trouble in the Paris Travel Blogosphere?
by Jim Benning | 05.09.06 | 10:40 AM ET
It seems some aren’t too happy with Los Angeles Times travel writer Susan Spano’s ongoing blog from Paris. While I find Spano’s newspaper columns to be a cut above most material in newspaper travel sections—we link to them occasionally here—I’ve never found her blog to be terribly compelling. I don’t often read it. Kevin Roderick at LA Observed sums up the recent flap, which centers on a remark Spano made in her blog next to a photo of tents provided for the homeless along the Seine.
This Week
by Jim Benning | 05.09.06 | 10:35 AM ET
Michael and I both happen to be traveling this week—I’m enjoying a cloudy morning in Greenwich Village at the moment—so blog postings will be light. Nothing—nothing!—will get in the way of our countdown of the top 30 travel books of all time.
Study Travel Writing off the Turkish Coast
by Jim Benning | 05.06.06 | 12:35 PM ET
Travelers’ Tales Executive Editor Larry Habegger will be leading a narrative writing workshop on a yacht off Turkey this June—what a gig, what a classroom. Travelers’ Tales has details.
