Travel Blog
Trekker in Nepal Beaten by Former Rebels
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 12:56 PM ET
As the autumn trekking season winds down in Nepal, a Swiss man hiking near Annapurna says he was beaten by Maoists when he refused to give them money. And we thought they simply wanted “donations.”
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Yahoo! BuzzDear Mexican, Why the Yellow Cheese on Tex-Mex Food?
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 11:47 AM ET
Anyone who’s traveled much in Mexico knows you just don’t see much yellow cheese on authentic Mexican food. You’re far more likely to encounter a lighter white cheese. So why are so many Tex-Mex and California-Mex dishes north of the border—heck, throughout the world—smothered in yellow cheese? Gustavo Arellano, who writes the terrific Ask a Mexican column, explains.
Related on World Hum:
* All Hail ‘The Burrito King of Argentina’
* ‘On the Road’ Sites, Including a Mexico City Sanborns, Then and Now
* Eating Fajitas in France
Related on TravelChannel.com:
* Anthony Bourdain: Highlights From Mexico
Photo by HeatherW via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Reporters Without Borders vs. Beijing 2008
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 10:57 AM ET
Reporters Without Borders—or the much hipper sounding Reporters Sans Frontieres, if you prefer—launched a campaign against the Chinese government’s crackdown on journalists and Internet users earlier this year, according to its Web site. I just spotted this powerful billboard promoting the campaign yesterday in Los Angeles. Among the organization’s beefs: China’s ongoing detention of at least 30 journalists and 50 Internet users, the blocking of news Web sites and the fact that “the authorities are now concentrating on blogs and video-sharing sites.”
New Travel Book: ‘Worth the Detour’
by Frank Bures | 12.10.07 | 10:41 AM ET
Full title: “Worth the Detour: A History of the Guide Book”
Author: Nicholas Parsons
Released: Nov. 25, 2007
Travel genre: History of travel
Territory covered: The world
Junior Year in Italy: ‘Not At All What I Expected’
by Julia Ross | 12.10.07 | 9:41 AM ET
Stanford student Sophie Egan’s year abroad in Bologna, Italy, has taken an unexpected turn. Because one of the suspects in a grisly murder case in another Italian city, Perugia, happens to be an American woman Egan’s age and from the same hometown—Seattle—Egan finds herself fending off wary inquiries. Despite the unfortunate similarities, Egan hasn’t given up on her quest for cultural immersion. “Sure, answering the question ‘Where are you from?’ is a bit more awkward,” she writes in a New York Times op-ed, “but it certainly gets the conversations going.”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Snow Days
by Michael Yessis | 12.07.07 | 2:27 PM ET
Travelers have turned their attention to hitting the slopes—and making their money go far when they get there. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Top Ranked Travel Story
Propeller (this week)
Top 10 Budget Ski Resorts
* This list originated from The Guardian. Cervinia, Italy (pictured) rates No. 3.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph UK (current)
Best Budget Ski Resorts
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Under Early Quebec Snow, a Jewel for Skiers
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Countries Where Dollars go the Distance
* Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia are among the countries that make the cut.
Most Read Travel Story
USA Today (current)
New Passport Rules are About to Get Even Stricter
Most Blogged Travel News Story
Buzz Tracker
Continental Airlines Testing Cellphone Boarding Passes
Mumbai Plans Museum for Rudyard Kipling
by Jim Benning | 12.07.07 | 12:30 PM ET
The Mumbai house where Rudyard Kipling was born and lived until the age of 6 will become a museum honoring the writer—a sure sign, some say, that India is beginning to embrace him, despite his imperialist stance. An English professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi told the Telegraph: “It’s part of the process of India finally pardoning Kipling.”
Photo: AP.
World Hum Contributors Elsewhere in the World
by Michael Yessis | 12.07.07 | 11:19 AM ET
Some link love today for recent stories by World Hum contributors: Abbie Kozolchyk, whose Requiem for a Little Red Ship, is our featured dispatch at the moment, looked into the state of space travel for Forbes Traveler. Full disclosure: I make a cameo, dropping James Bond’s name.
New Travel Book: ‘Ganga’
by Frank Bures | 12.07.07 | 11:04 AM ET
Full title: “Ganga: A Journey Down the Ganges River”
Author: Julian Crandall Hollick, who also guided a six-part NPR series on the river.
Released: Oct. 15, 2007
Travel genre: River travel
Territory covered: India
JetBlue Set to Debut In-Flight Wi-Fi; Other U.S. Airlines to Follow Soon
by Michael Yessis | 12.07.07 | 9:11 AM ET
Only one JetBlue plane will offer access to e-mail and instant messaging beginning Tuesday, Dec. 11, but it looks like the start of a wave of in-flight Internet service to come to U.S. carriers in 2008. The New York Times reports that American Airlines, Virgin America and Alaska Airlines plan to roll out more expansive Internet service in 2008.
Blog to Watch: Jet Lagged
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.07 | 9:59 AM ET
The New York Times has just launched Jet Lagged: Navigating the Unfriendly Skies, a group-written blog boasting some contributors familiar to World Hum readers. Among them: Wayne Curtis, Elliot Hester, Patrick Smith and Pico Iyer. Iyer kicked off the proceedings yesterday with a contrarian idea: “Air travel is in fact as comfortable and reasonable today as it’s ever been.”
Mumbai and the Proximity of Elegance and Squalor
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.06.07 | 9:47 AM ET
The middle of the night is “not such a bad time to arrive” in Mumbai, Thomas Swick writes in a engrossing story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The darkness hides the city’s sins, such as the searing poverty. By daylight, however, you see the slums but also the garlanded temples, Bollywood wealth, the elevator operators reading Oliver Sacks, the carnivalesque tourist district of Colaba, the “harsh, utilitarian cacophany” of Crawford Market.
Memo to Macau Guides: Don’t Mess With Mainland Chinese Tourists
by Jim Benning | 12.05.07 | 3:48 PM ET
This has to be my favorite travel-related news story of the year. From the BBC: “Riot police in China’s enclave of Macau have been called in to calm mainland tourists angry they were being shown too many shops and not enough sites.” The report is a tad sketchy, but it seems that roughly 100 tourists were involved, traveling by bus in Macau, and their guides were leading them to the shops. “The tourists had complained to their guides that they wanted to see more of the former Portuguese colony’s historic sites,” the report states. “They said they were being pressured into buying goods.”
On the Pineapple Express*
by Jim Benning | 12.05.07 | 1:43 PM ET
It sounds more like a train name than a weather event, but the Pineapple Express is, in one paper’s words, “a strong jet stream of subtropical air originating in Hawaii.” The same Pineapple Express storm that wreaked travel havoc on the Pacific Northwest is now delivering giant waves to California. One big-wave surfer drowned yesterday off Pebble Beach. Moments ago I took this shot off Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, where gawking locals were causing traffic jams and a number of surfers were dropping into double overhead waves—the wave breaking in the distance here has a solid 10-foot face.
Update, 1:05 p.m. PT: Big-wave tow-in surfers in Ireland on Saturday rode waves the size of houses. Um, the Shamrock Express?
A ‘Gastronaut’ Goes to San Sebastián
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.07 | 1:21 PM ET
