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Traveler’s Tales, “publishers of stories, wit and wisdom from travelers around the world,” is sponsoring the Solas Awards — “an annual competition to honor excellence in travel writing.”
“We’re looking for the best stories about travel and the world—funny, illuminating, adventurous, uplifting, scary, inspiring, poignant—stories that reflect the unique alchemy that occurs when you enter unfamiliar territory and begin to see the world differently as a result.”
Submissions of at least 750 words or longer — along with a $20 entry fee — will be accepted through November 15, 2006. The official rules in full can be viewed on BestTravelWriting.com
Cash prizes will be awarded to the top three submissions overall, along with a chance at having your story published in The Best Travel Writing 2007.
For more information, visit BestTravelWriting.com.
This week, my Yahoo! “Traveling Light” column gives a nod to the 12-year anniversary of the completion of my first vagabonding journey — an eight-month road trip through 37 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces in 1994. Reflecting on this journey made me consider how much independent travel has changed in the ensuing years, including the following factors:
1) Cell phones
In 1994, cell phones were too clunky and expensive to be of use to budget vagabonders; I used quarters or calling cards to call people, and I was functionally unreachable to incoming calls. These days, cell phones make communication cheap and easy stateside — and cell rentals are increasingly being used by travelers in overseas destinations. In time, the proliferation of web-browsing BlackBerry-type devices, Internet phone services (such as Skype), and satellite technology will make out-of-pocket communication even easier. On the upside, this makes travel anywhere safer and more efficient. On the downside, one of the charms of any journey is being completely cut off from your home — and a buzzing phone in your pocket only makes it harder to immerse yourself in your surroundings.
2) Email
Just over a decade ago, few people outside of research and technology circles had an email address; now it’s rare to meet a person without one. Fortunately, email is a useful and non-intrusive way to communicate on the road — just so long as you don’t get obsessive about seeking out Internet cafes to check your inbox as you wander.
3) Digital cameras
Not so long ago, waiting in anticipation for photos from a one-hour developing lab was a standard part of any travel experience. Now, digital cameras enable you to immediately document, analyze, and edit your travel experience. In a certain sense this threatens to dilute travel experiences, as the quest for a perfect snapshot can get in the way of actually seeing a place (if you don’t believe me, just witness the obsessive snap-check-edit rituals during any Santorini, Chichen Itza, or Angkor Wat sunset). Nevertheless, there’s something to be said for having a visual record of your travels: In 1994, I often got fed up with the hassles and uncertainties of my film camera — and my photo album has unfortunate gaps as a result.
4) iPods
In ’94, I thought my Sony Discman (and 60-CD storage wallet) was the pinnacle of compact audio technology. Twelve years later, iPods (and similar devices) allow travelers to carry their entire music library in their pocket — and still have hard-drive space left over for podcasts, digital maps and city-guides, TV episodes and photo storage. The advantages here are obvious; the challenge is in knowing when to set aside your digital world and better embrace the real one.
5) Internet travel planning
The World Wide Web is inarguably the most significant thing to affect travel planning in the past twelve years. When I was planning my 8-month USA trip in the early nineties, I often felt like a lonesome, semi-delusional iconoclast. These days, online travel communities like Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree, Bootsnall.com, and IgoUgo, can connect you with dozens of people who share your travel yen and are willing to pass along advice and encouragement. Moreover, online booking services allow you to score the best travel bargains; destination guides and tourism websites allow you to plan your itinerary right down to the last ferry run or museum opening; blogging software allows you to post your travel journal and photos in real time. In terms of increasing travel options and efficiency, this has been a godsend, but the primary temptation is to micromanage your journey before you ever step out the front door. Most everything memorable from my 1994 USA adventure happened by chance — and those happy accidents rarely happen on an over-planned itinerary.
To read my full column on how travel has changed over the past dozen years, click here.
Quiet American, a personal website of visual and digital sound projects collected by Aaron Ximm, features a collaboration called one-minute vacations, which showcases field recordings from people around the world.
“One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else.”
Each week, Aaron uploads a new audio clip from somewhere around the world. “The goal,” he says, “is to transport the listener, if only for a moment, somewhere else.” He’s been collecting these snippets for over four years, each week posting a new sound from a new location — places like Valladolid, Mexico’s San Servacio Cathedral [1.3mb .mp3], or a county fair in Lebanon, Pennsylvania [1.4mb .mp3].
The project is actively seeking contributions, if you have the right equipment and are in the right place – “a place you just had to be, could never be again, forget you always are.”
The entire archives can be purchased on CDR (with the proceeds going to an unnamed charity).
So grab some headphones and head over to Quiet America’s One-minute vacations for an auditory journey taking you to new locales each week. Well worth the bookmark.
“[T]ravel for me is a kind of writing, an alternate text, a preliminary draft. It isn’t just a way to escape, as Graham Greene put it, or a way to gather material or battle against boredom. It is an act of creativity in which the world is an empty page and I’m the pen scrawling looping, recursive lines across a landscape. The goal in each case is the same — insight, joy, euphony, vivid experience, visual excitement, sensuous delight and discovery. Safer than alcohol, cheaper than heroin, it’s my method, a la Arthur Rimbaud, of systematically deranging my senses, opening myself up to the new and unexpected.”
–Michael Mewshaw, “Travel, Travel Writing, and the Literature of Travel” (2004)
This week in my Yahoo! News travel column, I interview Moon Handbooks author Wayne Bernhardson about South America’s Patagonia region — a sprawling frontier of unrivaled wilderness; an emptier, antipodean version of the American West, full of gorgeous dry plateaus, dense, temperate rainforests, and active glaciers.
Bernhardson has a few tips for Patagonia first-timers:
I would say that first timers should sample the three principal environments — the wildlife-rich Atlantic coastline, the windy and seemingly endless steppe, and the ruggedly scenic Andes. The best, most accessible choice for the first would be Argentina’s Península Valdés, which swarms with whales, penguins, orcas, elephant seals, sea lions and other South Atlantic wildlife.
Inland, on the vast steppe between the Atlantic coast and the Andes, the highway between the Chilean cities of Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales (the gateway to Torres del Paine) is good for a first-timer. The road from Natales to Paine, also through the steppe, probably has more wildlife, though.
For sampling wildest mountain scenery, and its forests and lakes, the usual suspects are the granite needles of Chile’s Torres del Paine and the Moreno Glacier in Argentina’s Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (they’re close enough to each other that many people visit both). A more conventional choice is the more northerly area surrounding the Argentine city of Bariloche, in the so-called “lake district” that extends into Chile.
More tips on travel to Patagonia can be found in the full article, online here.
A young Vagabonding reader named Austin recently emailed me to say this:
I’m entirely new to the idea of vagabonding. I’m 17 years old, and I plan to hit the road around age 19. Right now I’m on the fence about what I plan to do when I get older and I don’t want to get some major in college when I don’t even know if I love doing that, so I want to travel and see the world, and spend time thinking.
How expensive it is to go around Europe? I’ve heard prices are about the same to travel there as it is in America. If there’s a way to get around there cheaply, that would probably be my first adventure, or Canada.
I’m also wondering if there’s any very important advice that is especially true for very young vagabonders to listen to, such as myself? I don’t expect to do it right the first time, but I’d like to avoid some really painful mishaps. I also wonder how possible it is for someone to move around a lot and find enough work to sustain their travels. I’m a Windows computer tech so I’m inclined toward doing that sort of thing, although I am not physically unable to do something like landscaping or similar.
This is what I told Austin:
It sounds like you have some great travel plans in the works. 19 is a good age to travel, and you’ll find plenty of people your age on the road. Moreover, an extended experience of travel will help see amazing new things and possibly focus your thoughts on what you might want to do in life. Just keep your eyes open to the possibilities as you travel!
Europe is a great destination, and a common starting point for American vagabonders (I happen to be traveling in Sweden at the moment, and it’s great). It’s easy to travel here, and there are plenty of fascinating cultures packed into a small place. The biggest disadvantage, as I see it, is that Europe can be very expensive. You’ll get more mileage for your money in other parts of the world, such as Southeast Asia or India or Central America. If you do travel in Europe, I’d recommend cutting down on lodging expenses by signing up with a hospitality service such as Servas, Hospitality Club, or CouchSurfing. You can find all of those services online, and staying with foreign hosts will be much cheaper and more interesting than finding hostels all the time. Hostels can be fun, of course, but it would be wise to find free hospitality accommodation as well.
Canada and the USA are also good places to start vagabonding. I did my first vagabonding stint in North America in 1994, and had a great time. The key here is to travel in a vehicle you can sleep in, or find lots of crash pads along the way.
As for work on the road, you might be able to do some computer tech work as you travel, but only if you market yourself in advance. My advice to travelers is generally to do your work before you leave, save your money, and travel on that “nest egg”. That way, even if you want to work on the road from time to time, you can be free of it financially (since road jobs rarely pay well). Check out Transitions Abroad magazine for ideas about work and volunteering opportunities overseas.
Final advice, about avoiding painful mistakes: I’d just stay informed. Read your guidebooks for safety and cultural information, and learn as you go. You will invariably make mistakes from time to time (I still do, and I’ve been at it for years!), but it will get easier as you go.
Remember Pig Latin? Perhaps you toyed with it in grade school or uttered the occasional “amscray,” but it won’t get you very far in pickup lines or job interviews. Outside of the Anglosphere, on the other hand, syllable inversion is much more than a childhood memory or annoying habit. In the U.S., syllable inversion is less common than Klingon. South of the border or east in the Orient, it’s everywhere.
Here are a few examples of words al vesre (al revés = backwards) that you can hear on a daily basis in Argentina, which boasts an extremely confusing Italian-Spanish hybrid slang called Lunfardo:
If that weren’t confusing enough, sometimes the words just seem scrambled or chopped beyond all recognition when there are more than two syllables.
To make matters worse, the Porteños, natives of Buenos Aires, pronounce both “y” and “ll” like the “sh” of “ship”. Good luck.
To be sure, the Argentines pride themselves on being unique, and go out of their way to be the Europeans of South America, but they have no monopoly on mutilating words by inverting them. Although English speakers usually don’t toss syllables around, the Japanese are happy to take English words, convert them into Japanese, then hack them to pieces. To wit:
In any language that tends to end words with vowels (Japanese, Spanish), and particularly languages rich in bisyllabic words, this inversion will crop up in slang and colloquial speech. Greek has its podana (ana-poda = reverse), and French has its verlan (lan ver = l’envers = the inverse).
At the end of the day, ever after the migraines and brain scrambling, I can’t help but think that English speakers are missing out on the fun.
Are we too good for inversion? Have we banished it to the realm of childish, along with comics and cartoons, where we need hide our enthusiasm for fear of being labeled weirdos? So what if I love Wolverine, still dig the Transformers (especially Optimus Prime), and like to say “let’s go to the veemoes” instead of “let’s go to the movies”? Is that so wrong? Certainly not. Inversion could just be the next stage of English evolution, but it needs a push, a small snowball effect, so be sure to do your part. If you need a little push yourself, just force it and give it a shot: three shots to be exact. 300 or 400 milligrams of caffeine should be enough to get you started. You’ll be talking jibberish in no time.
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Tim Ferriss is fluent in five languages, has studied more than 15, and has spent the last 12 years analyzing the world’s best language learners. He has lived in more than 25 countries, designed curricula worldwide for Berlitz®, and studied East Asian Studies and Neuroscience at Princeton University. He can be reached at timferriss@gmail.com with questions, feedback, and topic suggestions.
“Journalism desperately needs a return to terrain, to the kind of firsthand, solitary discovery of local knowledge best associated with old-fashioned travel writing. Travel writing is more important than ever as a means to reveal the vivid reality of places that get lost in the elevator music of 24-hour media reports. In and of itself, travel writing is a low-rent occupation, best suited for the Sunday supplements. But it is also a deft vehicle for filling the void in serious journalism: for example, by rescuing such subjects as art, history, geography, and statecraft from the jargon and obscurantism of academia, for the best travel books have always been about something else. Mary McCarthy’s The Stones of Florence (1959) and Robert Byron’s The Station (1928) deal with the art of the Renaissance and the Byzantine empire respectively. Winston Churchill’s The River War (1899) and T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) employ both the experience of travel and the study of geography to explore warfare and statecraft in late nineteenth-century Sudan in Churchill’s case, and the techniques of guerrilla insurgency in Lawrence’s. Owen Lattimore’s The Desert Road to Turkestan (1929) is on one level about the organization of camel caravans, and on another about Russian and Chinese imperial ambitions. Freya Stark’s The Southern Gates of Arabia (1936) is as good a depiction of Osama bin Laden’s tribal homeland of eastern Yemen as any you’ll find.”
–Robert D. Kaplan, “Cultivating Loneliness“, Columbia Journalism Review, Jan-Feb 2006
Last week, my Yahoo! News “Traveling Light” column dealt with the very complicated issue of dealing with beggars on the road. From my article, here are five principles to help navigate this sadly common and difficult travel situation:
1) Spend some time in the community before you give to beggars
Not only will a few days of immersion in the local culture give you a better sense for which beggars are and are not truly needy — it will also give you a sense for the spending power of the local currency.
Moreover, a little cultural familiarity will allow you to see how locals react to beggars: when they give money, and how much they choose to give. Most of the world’s spiritual traditions have time-honored practices for helping the needy, and following these local religious protocols is often the most culturally appropriate way to give money. In less religious societies, such as those in Western Europe, state funds are often available for the homeless and indigent, theoretically eliminating the need for hunger-based beggary.
Donations to local charities and NGOs are another solution for helping the needy in a given community — though you should research aid organizations carefully, since many such agencies are notorious for siphoning money into bloated administrative overhead.
2) Practice skepticism
Try and donate to those who truly need it (physical deformities are usually a reliable indicator of need), and try to avoid putting money into the hands of hustlers. Any able-bodied beggar who is too aggressive, charming, accusatory, persistent, melodramatic, or (in non-Anglophone countries) good at English is probably working a scam, trying to raise drug money, or avoiding legitimate work.
Children who beg are always a tough call, since it’s natural to feel sympathy for them. I almost never give to child beggars, however, because child beggary is so often tied to organized crime and familial exploitation. Moreover, even if a given kid is begging independently of opportunistic adults, I find it best not to reinforce this behavior at such a young age. Some travelers suggest giving pens or other educational supplies to child beggars, but I find this strategy a tad credulous. Better to give school supplies (or money) to an actual school or aid agency in a developing country than to presume these items will go to good use at random.
3) Don’t be afraid to say no
It’s better to give out of conviction than guilt, so don’t give if you truly don’t want to. Some travelers I know even have a policy of never giving to beggars at all (reasoning that their donation stands to create as many problems as it solves), and this is as legitimate a way as any to deal with the situation. Beggars realize that what they’re doing is a numbers game, and that not everyone who walks past is going to give them money.
4) You’re not saving the day
Giving money to a person on the street may make that person’s day a little better, but rarely will it do much to actually change his or her life. Individual travelers are rarely more than a fleeting presence in the lives of beggars, so keep things in perspective, remain humble, and don’t condemn those travelers who choose not to give.
5) Be courteous
It is perfectly normal protocol to ignore beggars in a given situation (they’re used to it), but don’t lecture them on how they should live their life or spend their money. In other words, remember the essential humanity of the needy as you travel, and don’t presume the presence of beggars is somehow an affront to your vacation. After all, as a traveler you are a mere guest in a faraway place, and they have just as much right as you to hang out at a given landmark, a public square, or tourist attraction.
Full article online here.
Edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokman
Reviewed by Aly Young
As a self-proclaimed travel freak currently teaching English in Korea, I love venturing into new places and letting the unknown surroundings stimulate my senses. I am particularly curious to hear how other travelers experience different countries, especially when it involves other equally adventurous females traveling solo.
Tales from the Expat Harem, an anthology of modern travel writing about Turkey, includes stories that span four decades, contributed by 29 women from around the world, the majority being from America. The tales are told from many drastically different perspectives with entrepreneurs, archaeologists, Peace Corps volunteers, missionaries, English teachers and women marrying into the Turkish culture — to name a few — offering their personal and often intimate accounts of the Turkey they have come to know and love. The topics throughout this anthology range from the hamam or Turkish bath, marriage rituals, tales of the bazaar, song and dance, and Turkish superstitions.
The recurring mention of Turkish tea throughout most of the stories made me crave the environment where tea is constantly being served in miniature tulip shaped glasses. The savory descriptions of the Turkish food, which appear throughout the various stories, got my taste buds salivating for homemade yogurt, cucumbers, eggplant, dolma (stuffed vine leaves) and baklava. The tea, food, dancing, marriage rituals and the Turkish bath all sound amazing but the idea that appealed to me most from this collection of stories was the recurring theme of Turkish hospitality. An example of this genuine hospitality can be found in “Rescued by Village Intelligence,” where Claire Uhr is sick with influenza and is taken in and cared for by her unknown neighbors. In another story, “Hijacked,” Kathleen Hamilton Gundogdueing is unnecessarily wary of certain strangers who are in fact going out of their way to ensure her safety and comfort.
@Backpack Foodie & Kim:...
