Travel Blog
Magic Johnson Helps Launch Travel Agency
by Michael Yessis | 05.16.06 | 10:01 AM ET
Basketball star turned business mogul Magic Johnson announced yesterday that he’s leading a “joint venture that aims to bring more minorities into the rapidly growing business of selling travel from home,” according to Tom Stieghorst’s story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. It’s an effort to capture America’s rapidly growing “minority travel segment.”
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Yahoo! BuzzNo. 17: “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” by Eric Newby
by Michael Shapiro | 05.15.06 | 4:00 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: 1958
Territory covered: Afghanistan
In A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, one of the classic mid-century travel adventures, Newby sets out to climb one of Afghanistan’s highest peaks with just four days of mountaineering experience under his belt. His inexperience shows. Near the 20,000-foot summit, he has an ice axe in one hand and a climbing manual in the other, trying to learn how to carve steps in the ice. Known for his wry and self-deprecating humor, Newby is a delightful traveling companion and his descriptions of the high-altitude Kush convey a shimmering sense of wonder. His failure to reach the summit becomes almost irrelevant, because the tale is about the journey, not the final destination. At his side for part of the trip (but not the climb itself, which he did with a friend) is his stolid wife Wanda, who helped save Newby’s life during World War II when he escaped from a POW camp. That story is related in Newby’s “Love and War in the Apennines.” Like his contemporary, Wilfred Thesiger, Newby was an intrepid explorer who helped define the modern travel narrative with sly commentary on our common humanity.
The Lust for Travel: Literature as Inspiration
by Michael Yessis | 05.15.06 | 8:33 AM ET
No. 18: “All the Wrong Places” by James Fenton
by Frank Bures | 05.14.06 | 11:53 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: Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea and the Philippines
James Fenton is not only one of the great characters of travel writing, having starred as the poet-sidekick of Redmond O’Hanlon in his Into the Heart of Borneo. He also happens to be one of the great travel writers, having authored classics of the genre like The Snap Revolution, about the chaos surrounding the fall of Marcos in the Philippines. At the time, the entire region was convulsing in the Cold War, and having been given an award for “traveling and writing poetry,” Fenton had to pick a place to go. “Looking at what the world had to offer,” he wrote, “I thought either Africa or Indochina would be the place to go. I chose the latter, partly on a whim.” Once there, Fenton watched governments rise and fall, and many of his stories in All the Wrong Places read like semi-comic thrillers. They are required reading for anyone traveling through Southeast Asia who wants to understand the background against which their travels take place.
Al Gore’s Alternate Reality: Americans Can’t Go to Europe Anymore Without Getting Hugged
by Michael Yessis | 05.14.06 | 10:00 PM ET
What would the world be like if Al Gore was the current President of the United States? Saturday Night Live broadcast a hilarious state of the union speech delivered by Gore—not an imitator, but the former VP himself—from an imagined alternate reality that included Michael Moore and George Clooney on the Supreme Court, a new country called Mexifornia governed by Presidente Schwarzenegger and an America so loved around the world “that American tourists can’t even go over to Europe anymore without getting hugged.” Thanks alternate reality Al Gore! Crooks and Liars has the clip.
No. 19: “Hunting Mister Heartbreak” by Jonathan Raban
by Michael Shapiro | 05.13.06 | 7:30 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: 1990
Territory covered: The United States
Like a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville, Jonathan Raban has traveled the length and breadth of the United States, observing Americans with the keen eye of a foreigner. His book Hunting Mister Heartbreak traverses the pathways of American immigration from late 19th-century Ellis Island to late 20th-century Seattle. In the book, Raban fully inhabits each place he visits, even borrowing an old black labrador named Gypsy in Alabama to feel more at home among the locals. He investigates whether a foreigner can truly become an American. In the end Raban realizes that one can adopt American ways but can never become completely American. And he seems quite relieved about that.
Nullarbor Plain, Australia
by Ben Keene | 05.12.06 | 8:27 PM ET
Coordinates: 31 10 S 129 0 E
Approximate length: 1,243 miles (2,000 km)
A scenic ride with nothing much to look at. Well, nothing you’re likely to see from the window seat as you glide along the rails of Australia’s Transcontinental Line. A treeless expanse of limestone south of the Great Victoria Desert that once formed the bed of an ancient sea, the Nullarbor Plain is crossed by the single longest straight section of railroad track in the world. But for all its monotony, it’s not altogether lifeless. Lacking any surface water, the Nullarbor’s semi-arid terrain nonetheless supports well over 1,000 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and vascular plants.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
No. 20: “River Town” by Peter Hessler
by Frank Bures | 05.12.06 | 7:40 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: 2001
Territory covered: China
In 1996, Peace Corps volunteer Peter Hessler was sent to the town of Fuling, in Sichuan Province, to teach English. During the two years he spent there, he got to know his students, their culture, their language and the imperious and strange communist state better than most outsiders. Today, China is arguably the second most important country in the world, and its influence can be felt on every level—economic, military, cultural. The rise of China only makes River Town more essential reading as a window into the culture. Many China analysts can add up the sum of China’s productivity increase, but can’t tell you why the Nanjing Massacre still rankles people so deeply, or what the average young Chinese person’s hopes for the future are. “River Town” is a textured look at a culture. It is also an important and moving account no one should miss.
When the Stone Age Will no Longer Do
by Jim Benning | 05.11.06 | 11:10 AM ET
Fascinating story in today’s New York Times about the roughly 80 people living Stone Age lives in Colombia who suddenly marched out of the jungle recently and declared their desire to live in the modern world. “The Nukak have no concept of money, of property, of the role of government, or even of the existence of a country called Colombia,” reports Juan Forero. “They ask whether the planes that fly overhead are moving on some sort of invisible road.”
No. 21: “Road Fever” by Tim Cahill
by Rolf Potts | 05.11.06 | 9:54 AM 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: 1991
Territory covered: Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska
A founding editor of Outside magazine, Cahill has been credited with revitalizing adventure writing—a genre that had previously been confined to breathless, semi-fictional tales of danger in the pages of low-culture men’s magazines. The tongue-in-cheek titles of Cahill’s early essay collections—“Jaguars Ripped My Flesh”; “A Wolverine is Eating My Leg”; “Pecked to Death by Ducks”—are a nod to his pulpy precursors, but his writing is the opposite of pulp: informed, nuanced, self-deprecating, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Road Fever, Cahill’s only book-length travel narrative, chronicles a 15,000-mile dash to set a world record by driving overland across the Americas in less than 24 days. In many ways, it’s an anti-adventure book, since a large portion of the tale documents the process of making plans and procuring corporate sponsorship—but this says a lot about the competitive, publicity-driven, and weirdly postmodern state of post-Exploration Age adventure. The author’s partner in the journey is professional endurance driver Gary Sowerby, and together the duo deal with fatigue, dangerous roads, stubborn bureaucrats—and an overabundance of sponsor-supplied pudding—as they race north into the pages of the “Guinness Book of World Records.” As the miles speed by, Cahill’s exuberant reporting and eye for the absurd make for an amusing and exhilarating ride.
No. 22: “When the Going was Good” by Evelyn Waugh
by Frank Bures | 05.10.06 | 7:15 AM 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: 1947
Territory covered: Ethiopia, Yemen, East Africa, Guyana and Brazil
In the first part of the 20th century, Evelyn Waugh was one of a handful of bright young writers who headed off into the wild world to propel the genre of travel writing forward. “We turned our backs on civilization,” Waugh wrote of himself, Peter Fleming and Robert Byron, whose early death Waugh mourned. “From 1928 to 1937,” he wrote, “I had no fixed home and no possessions which would not conveniently go on a porter’s barrow. I traveled continuously, in England and abroad.” Armed with trunkloads of wit, an eye for characters and the cocksure attitude of the imperialist he was, Waugh headed to Ethiopia, Yemen, East Africa, Guyana and Brazil. The result was several travel books that went out of print. But the author pulled long excerpts from them, which were reprinted in When the Going was Good. Each is essentially a short travel book itself, including one about the coronation of Haile Selassie and Waugh’s attempt to travel from Guyana to Brazil. It all has a carefree feeling, as Waugh himself admitted. “I never aspired to be a great traveler,” he wrote, “I was simply a young man, typical of my age; we traveled as a matter of course. I rejoice that I went when the going was good.”
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.
No. 23: “Behind the Wall” by Colin Thubron
by Tom Swick | 05.09.06 | 9:25 AM 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: 1989
Territory covered: China
As usual, Thubron studied the language before the trip and arrived with his customary grasp of history and notebook of contacts. His encounters with people—beginning with his seatmate on the plane over, who believes he says “smile” when he asks her if the Chinese think Westerners “smell”—have the openness and the authenticity (and in this case the humor) of a great travelogue. But Thubron raises the bar with his physical descriptions, employing language that often verges on pyrotechnic, and his analytical thrusts. He is one of those rare writers who possess both the intellectual capacity to interpret and the emotional ability to connect. As a result, his writing upgrades frequently from informative and entertaining to profound and moving. This is perhaps the best book by the best travel writer working today.
No. 24: “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere” by Jan Morris
by Michael Shapiro | 05.08.06 | 8:50 AM 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: 2001
Territory covered: Trieste, Italy (and Jan Morris’ imagination)
A student at a writing seminar once asked Welsh author Jan Morris when she planned on writing her autobiography. She smiled and said that every one of her books about place was autobiographical, none more so than her “final” book, written on the eve of the millennium, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere. Morris said that she saw herself in Trieste, in its melancholy and moodiness, and its isolation. Once a major port city in the Austro-Hungarian empire, Trieste in the 20th century, as a consequence of war, became part of Italy. But some 70 percent of Italians aren’t aware that its a part of their country, according to a 1999 poll. It’s this sense of displacement that resonates with Morris, born James Morris to a Welsh father and English mother. Morris never felt at home in her male body and culminated her transition to a woman in Casablanca in the early 1970s. She has traveled the world for half a century, enraptured by great cities and penning classic works about them. Morris visited Trieste as a soldier at the end of World War II. Revisiting in the 1990s, she sees in Trieste, which sounds much like the Italian word for sadness, the ideal city on which to project her memories, hopes, and disillusionments. She comes across an open-air concert in a piazza where a few hundred Trieste elders are assembled. “They were singing their own songs, in their own language, out of their own past,” she writes. “I noticed that some of their eyes were full of tears, and I almost wept a little myself: because of their age, because of mine, because of the hard times they had lived through…because of the sweet songs, because I feared nobody would be singing them much longer…and because—well, because of the Trieste effect.” Ultimately, Morris evokes hiraeth, the Welsh idea of longing for something but not knowing what. But “Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere” is far from depressing. It sparkles with insights and universal truths, always infused with Morris’s trademark charm, more like a wink than a smile. And as she does in every city, Morris finds hope, and cause for celebration.
