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Lonely Planet just released its first-ever travel humor anthology, entitled By the Seat of My Pants. Edited by the ever-prolific Don George, it features funny travel tales from veteran scribes Tim Cahill, Jan Morris, Simon Winchester, Pico Iyer, David Downie, Jeff Greenwald, Doug Lansky, and Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Also in the lineup are 2005 Paris American Academy writing workshop student Kelly Watton, and my old New Orleans pal Joshua Clark (who’s currently collecting submissions for his own anthology of Lousiana tales).
My contribution to Seat of My Pants is “Something Approaching Enlightenment”, an all-new India tale wherein I survive a three-day bus ride in the Himalayas, get detained by the Indian army along the Tibetan border, and am subjected to watching several hours of poorly dubbed porno videos by a trio of Hindu road engineers. To read this and the rest of the Lonely Planet humor tales, order here, or check out the travel section of your local library or independent bookstore.
“Money is the wealth of the materialist, and works miracles in the realm of the physical. Time is the wealth of the pilgrim, and works miracles in all realms.”
–Ed Buryn, Vagabonding in the USA (1980)
Elliott Hester, my fellow former Salon.com travel columnist, is currently touring in support of his new book, Adventures of a Continental Drifter : An Around-the-World Excursion into Weirdness, Danger, Lust, and the Perils of Street Food. Below is a rundown of his appearances in and around New York, Philly, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, Raleigh, Dallas, Houston, and Albuquerque.
Wednesday, September 14, 7:30 p.m.
New York, New York
Barnes & Noble
4 Astor Place
New York, NY 10003
212-420-1322
Thursday, September 15, 7:00 p.m.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Wynnewood)
Borders
80 East Wynnewood Avenue
Wynnewood, PA 19096
610-642-0362
Friday, September 16, 12:30 p.m.
Washington, DC
Howard University Bookstore
2225 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20059
202-238-2640
Friday, September 16, 6:30 p.m.
Washington, DC
Candida’s World of Books
1541 14TH Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
202-667-4811
“There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.”
–Joy Harjo, quoted in The Sun, May 2004
I’m headed to Greece on magazine assignment, and I’ll be there — mainly in the islands — for the next four weeks. Since I don’t want to spend my travel time skulking around Internet cafes, this means I’ll probably only post two (or so) blog entries a week for the next month.
Once I return from Greece and write up my stories, I’ll resume regular blogging — likely sometime in early-to-mid October.
“It is the dilemma that every traveler faces — especially every traveler who wants to tell his friends about the Hidden Paradise he’s discovered: the very fact of giving a name — or a face — to the place you love changes it till it becomes a place you hardly like. Talk about how unspoiled somewhere is, and you’re almost inviting its despoilation. When someone gives you the address of the unknown Shangri-la he’s found, you’re forced to wonder whether he’s serving its interests or his own.”
–Pico Iyer, Tropical Classical (1997)
[Above: The offending ad.]
OK, I’m sure Anthony Bourdain isn’t really a tourist dork, but I do take issue with the magazine advertisement for his new Travel Channel show, Without Reservations, which features the tagline “Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist”.
For starters, the traveler/tourist dichotomy has long been one of the most insipid obsessions of the travel world (since, as peripatetic guests in foreign places, we are all tourists, regardless of what we wear, where we eat, and which guidebook we use) — and to imply that one can shed the “tourist” mantle by watching a television show is positively idiotic.
Moreover, in the ad, Bourdain is shown clutching a red magic-marker in front of an aerial photograph of Paris, presumably having just scribbled little morsels of wisdom into the margins, such as: “Hungry? The Royal, a typical Parisian caf
I’ve been monitoring the post-hurricane devastation and chaos in New Orleans this week with much apprehension and sadness. I rang in the 2005 New Year in New Orleans, and lived in the French Quarter for the first three months of this year. Moreover, I’d long planned to go there this week, en route to a magazine assignment in Greece (“Looking for a hotel in New Orleans?” a Travelocity.com automated message chirped in my inbox this morning. “Try one of these!” I don’t think so).
I can’t really add any gravity or perspective to the reports that have been coming out of Lousiana and Mississippi, so I’ll just urge everyone to donate to legitimate relief organizations and do what you can on some small level.
On a rather surreal note, my old New Orleans friends Joshua Clark and Ellen Harris, who are still holed up in Josh’s apartment near Jackson Square in the French Quarter, have been regular telephone guests on NPR’s Talk of the Nation this week. It looks like they may well be on today’s show, too. Stay safe, you two!
My interview subject this month at the RolfPotts.com Travel Writers page is Peter Moore, who has been called “The Australian Bill Bryson.” His books include The Wrong Way Home, which saw him traveling overland from London to Sydney, Swahili for the Broken-Hearted, an account of a journey from Cape Town to Cairo, and Vroom with a View, where he went in search of Italy’s dolce vita on a 1961 Vespa. At last count he had visited 95 countries and written six books.
Moore attributes much of his initial success as a travel writer to the Internet. “My big break came when the Internet appeared,” he says. “I used the 1mb of free web space provided by my ISP to start up a travel web site called “No Shitting in the Toilet”. All the stuff I’d found on the web about travel seemed very po-faced and serious, and didn’t reflect travel as I found it — a crazy, maddening, hilarious experience. (Hence the name — taken from a sign I saw on the toilet door at Jack’s Cafe in Dali, China that seemed to sum up my philosophy of travel. It’s illogical, it’s irrational but it’s all the better for it.) So every fortnight I’d put up a new chapter and top ten, taking the piss out of conventional travel guides but still full of useful nuggets of advice. The site became famous, won a few awards and I took the idea of publishing it as a book to a publisher and they went for it. It was my foot in the door.”
Moore’s advice to aspiring travel writers is to fund your own travels at the outset. “My warning is that [travel writing] takes a while before you can earn enough money to live from it,” he says. “To start with you’ll have to pay for your own trips, so I often tell aspiring travel writers to treat it like a holiday. Then if nothing comes of it career-wise they’ve at least had an amazing trip.”
More writing advice can be found at the Secret of Travel Writing section of his website, PeterMoore.com.
My full Peter Moore interview is online here.
@Backpack Foodie & Kim:...
