Travel Blog
How Did Tom Haines Wind Up Clutching a Ruger Pistol in Enid, Oklahoma?
by Jim Benning | 11.22.05 | 12:13 AM ET
As the travel writer explains in Sunday’s Boston Globe, “I had ended up there, in part, because one week earlier I put some folded scraps of paper into two Styrofoam cups.” OK, there was a little more to it than that.
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Yahoo! BuzzJonathan Raban: “Stateless in Seattle”
by Jim Benning | 11.21.05 | 12:48 PM ET
Seattle Weekly last week published a feature story about—and interview with—writer Jonathan Raban. The focus is Raban’s new book, My Holy War: Dispatches from the Home Front, which writer Tim Appelo describes as “a kind of diary chronicling the shocks of our epoch: the [9/11] attacks, George W. Bush’s assault on American democracy, our traumatized attempt to fathom the Islamists’ motives and divine their next target, the weird mirroring of Islamofascists by U.S. neo-Puritans, the false dawn of Howard Dean, and Bush’s ugly second coming.”
Pico Iyer Discusses the Dalai Lama on Tibet.net
by Jim Benning | 11.21.05 | 1:43 AM ET
The official website of the Central Tibetan Administration has posted an interview with Pico Iyer, noting that Iyer is now at work on a book about the Dalai Lama. Iyer recalled meeting the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala in 1974, before he had gained celebrity in the West. Iyer marveled that he and his father, who was a philosophy professor, rang the doorbell and “were able to spend an hour and half [in] conversation with His Holiness.”
Bill Bryson Runs Out of Reading Material
by Michael Yessis | 11.20.05 | 10:27 PM ET
Like Bill Bryson, I’m someone who never goes anywhere without taking along something to read, so the predicament he writes about in the T Style Magazine in Sunday’s New York Times struck a particularly nightmarish chord with me: He ran out of reading material while stuck above the Arctic Circle in Norway, waiting 16 days for the aurora borealis to reveal itself.
President Bush to Reporter: “Have You Ever Heard of Jet Lag?”
by Michael Yessis | 11.20.05 | 9:43 PM ET
U.S. President George W. Bush had an awkward moment this morning during a press session in Beijing, blaming a lackluster appearance with Chinese President Hu Jintao on jet lag.
On the Jane Austen Trail
by Jim Benning | 11.18.05 | 1:14 PM ET
With a movie version of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” now in theaters, USA Today explores the travel possibilities for fans. UK tourism promoters, not surprisingly, are more than happy to help. Reports the paper: “Tourism folk in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and the hilly Peak District have come up with a ‘Visit Pride & Prejudice Country’ promotion that features packages including tours of sites from the film and a free map of locations used in the movie and in the critically acclaimed 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries.”
Is Simon Winchester Inadvertently Creating Natural Disasters?
by Jim Benning | 11.18.05 | 12:54 PM ET
You be the judge. He wrote “Krakatoa,” which involved a tsunami, and shortly thereafter, tsunamis struck South Asia. Then he wrote “A Crack in the Edge of the World” about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and a horrific quake hit Kashmir. Winchester himself told an amused audience in Menlo Park, California last month that his publicist is concerned: “She said, ‘Simon, have you ever thought people are going to start to say, whenever Simon Winchester writes a book, Stay indoors?’”
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.
Fighting the At-Home Blues
by Michael Yessis | 11.18.05 | 1:06 AM ET
Over at Transitions Abroad, Newley Purnell has some advice for avid travelers about coping between trips. Among his tips: Seek out adventures close to home. “Take weekend getaways to places you’ve never been before,” he writes. “Even consider taking a different route to or from work—just so long as you incorporate the search for the new and different into your daily life. You don’t have to be in a foreign country to discover new things.”
Brinco Shoes: Air Jordans for the Migrant Set
by Jim Benning | 11.17.05 | 8:58 PM ET
Shoemakers have created all kinds of models for travelers, from rugged hiking boots to waterproof loafers, but they’ve yet to design anything specifically for the undocumented migrant market—until now. Inspired by the thousands of Mexicans and other Latin Americans who hike through cacti-strewn Southwestern deserts to enter the U.S. illegally each year, Argentine-born artist Judi Werthein has created Brinco shoes. Named for the Spanish verb “brincar,” which means “to jump”—as in, across the border—the high-top shoes have some unique attributes.
Investigating Mark Twain
by Jim Benning | 11.17.05 | 1:15 PM ET
Mark Twain fans will be interested in a piece in today’s Los Angeles Times. The story focuses on how the discovery of a cache of letters written by Twain’s daughters has prompted new theories about the role of women in his life and work.
Las Vegas by Monorail
by Jim Benning | 11.17.05 | 8:07 AM ET
I’ve been a fan of Wayne Curtis ever since I read his terrific 2002 Atlantic Monthly story The Iceberg Wars, so I was happy to crack open the December 2005 Atlantic and find another piece by him. “Back to the Future,” whose first two paragraphs are available online, is about the new, problem-plagued Las Vegas Monorail, and it includes a brief survey of monorail history to boot.
Branson: Bye Bye Hydrocarbons, Hello Plant Waste
by Michael Yessis | 11.17.05 | 4:20 AM ET
Virgin Airways mogul Richard Branson says he’s looking to power his jet fleet with cellulosic ethanol, “the byproduct you get from the waste product (of plants), the bits in the field that get burned up.” Reuters has the details.
Was the Recent Attack on a Cruise Ship by Pirates Stranger Than Fiction?
by Jim Benning | 11.17.05 | 2:22 AM ET
Nope. As it happens, former Miami Herald reporter Sean Rowe wrote a novel called Fever, published in September, about the hijacking of a cruise ship by a band of thugs. So what did Rowe make of the recent cruise ship attack off Somalia? “This has me really freaked out,” he told the Miami Herald. “It’s just a bizarre example of life imitating art.”
The History of Guidebooks
by Jim Benning | 11.16.05 | 11:24 PM ET
Written Road today pointed to good read in the Sydney Morning Herald about the history of guidebooks. Written by Andrew Bain, a former Lonely Planet editor, the story traces their history back to “Descriptions of Greece,” the oldest surviving guidebook, written in about 160 A.D. for wealthy Romans.
