Since the holidays are approaching, I’m going to take a brief break from Vagablogging. New posts — including a roundup of my activities in 2006 — will resume on January 2nd.

During this holiday hiatus, you might see some visual changes to Vagablogging, since BootsnAll (who hosts this blog) is changing the content to a new server. The vagabonding-slanted theme of the blog, of course, will stay the same.

I also hope to debut some new Vagablogging guest bloggers in January, so stay tuned!

See you in 2007…

Rolf

Ever since I wrote about the Moscow subway system back in September, I’ve been a fan of EnglishRussia.com, a daily blog documenting the interesting happenings in Russian-speaking countries, “just because something cool happens daily on one-sixth of the Earth’s surface.”

The site recently featured some photos of strange Soviet buildings, including the “Friendship” hotel, which reportedly fooled the CIA into thinking it was a beach-side missile silo.

Head over to EnglishRussia.com to check out the rest.

I have never been to Panama. I’ve never even been through a canal. Even so, this YouTube video of a boat’s journey through the Panama Canal is quite entertaining. Perhaps it is the time lapse which I am such a fan of — or maybe the fancy music — but there’s something hypnotic about watching this ship pass through the various locks, raising and lowering as it makes its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Have a look:

“Travel writers are seldom scholars. They are, by inclination if not definition, transients and dilettantes. All that can save the travel writer and redeem his or her often inexpert perceptions of foreign people and places is curiosity, a willingness to be uncertain, an essential emotional generosity, and an ability to write. Even travel writers well equipped in all of the above are inevitably attacked for missing the point, getting all manner of things wrong, and generally mucking about in questions of history and scholarship to which — when compared to experts — they have only lightly exposed themselves. This does not mean the travel writer is incapable of insight, to say nothing of entertainment, and in some cases the travel writer’s fresh-eyed unfamiliarity with a place can be made a virtue. As Lord Palmerston once said, “When I wish to be misinformed about a country, I ask the man who has lived there thirty years.””
–Tom Bissell, “Euphorias of Perrier: The Case Against Robert D. Kaplan” The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 2006

There are several notable passages in this interview with Pico Iyer over at World Hum, but here are just a few quotes that resonated with me as someone who is interested in travel and writing.

“When I wrote ‘Video Night in Kathmandu’ I would say, ‘I am walking down Clinton Avenue in Iowa City and I am seeing the House of Aromas and then I am seeing the Iowa Old Capital Mall and then I am seeing this,’ and I would take and register everything in a kind of bombardment of images. And somewhere in the back of them all, there is a person playing the saxophone, maybe I would have said then. Now, I would cut everything away and just go right into that person playing the saxophone and make a very different kind of scene or texture out of it.”

“A travel writer has to rethink what discovery means, and exoticism and movement. That’s why, having done a lot of descriptions of other countries, I went and spent two weeks in the Los Angeles airport as a way to claim it as a different kind of destination. Of course, you could do the same with a shopping mall or a hotel or a hospital. And all that I regard as travel writing.”

Take some time and read the interview in full over at World Hum.

Code Green, by Kerry Lorimer

Reviewed by Kristin Van Tassel

Lonely Planet’s recently published Code Green, a guide to ecologically responsible world travel, is an important addition to their substantial collection of travel service literature. Compiled by Kerry Lorimer, Code Green features close to 100 destinations—spanning Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Europe, and North, Central, and South America—that offer environmentally sustainable travel experiences. The one-page descriptions of each of these destinations (collected from independent travelers) include “Responsible Travel Credentials” for the locale—that is, explanations of how both hosts and visitors are respecting the health of specific ecological and human communities and, in many cases, actively working to restore habitats, ecological integrity, and community vigor.

In addition to these features (accompanied by vibrant photographs), Code Green offers general advice that applies to many places and modes of travel. For instance, readers are offered tips on how to tread lightly in fragile ecosystems, seek alternatives to fossil-fuel-reliant transportation, and distinguish genuine ecotourism from “greenwash” companies using the “eco” label to make a buck.

I was particularly impressed with Lorimer’s emphasis on the complex, holistic nature of “green” travel. Code Green makes it clear that the environment includes not just flora and fauna but also living human communities facing real social and economic challenges. For example, Lorimer confronts the ongoing dilemma of how to respond to begging, rightly placing the question within the larger issue of sustainability and responsibility. Many of the contributors to Code Green encourage travelers to eat local food, stay in locally-owned accommodations, and buy responsibly produced local products. Repeatedly, travelers are urged to use their dollars in ways that nurture communities. I recall, in particular, the feature encouraging travelers to take drumming lessons in Senegal—in doing so they would not only be choosing low-impact travel but also spending time with locals and supporting them in the maintenance of their traditional skills and lifestyles.

Code Green is an excellent guide that addresses the questions we all should be asking, regardless of whether we travel or not. What are the consequences of our choices and purchases? Who benefits and who loses? How might our actions change a place? In short, how should we live?

(more…)

Are you interested in writing for Vagablogging?

We’re looking for a few good folks to assist in keeping the blog updated with fresh content: everything from travel tools, gear, articles, blogs, memoirs, news, or anything else floating around the online travel world that fits the vagabonding style. Interested writers should be able to commit to writing one to three original, well-written blog posts per week. To get a better idea of the type of content we’re looking for, please have a look at the Notes from the collective travel mind category.

If you’re interested, please send us the following:

1) Your name, contact information, and brief note on why you’d be interested in contributing to the blog.

2) Two or three original sample posts written with the Vagablogging readership in mind.

Send this information in the body of an email (no attachments please) to both Rolf and myself: rolf at rolfpotts dot com, justinglow at gmail dot com.

This is an unpaid position. However, hard work does not go unnoticed, and your contribution will not only give you a regular venue to express your voice, but it will also act as a great way to make contacts and act as a stepping-off point into future opportunities in the travel writing world. I’ve been blogging here for the past 6 months and I was just recently offered a paid writing position with Gadling.com (hence the call for writers here), so I can attest to the benefits a position with Vagablogging can muster.

That said, I’d like to thank everyone who enjoyed and commented on my stories over the past 6 months, and I look forward to bringing on some new voices at Vagablogging to help spread the word of independent, long-term, budget travel.

“Just for a few months of one’s life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

It’s been almost four years now since Vagabonding was first published, and I continue to be encouraged by readers who’ve found travel inspiration in its pages.

Here are five outtakes from recent reader letters that underscore the practical and inspirational strengths of Vagabonding:

As travel inspiration:

“Hey man, I just finished Vagabonding and of all the books I have ever read in my life, yours was the most inspirational — I have started referring to it as my new bible, and have recommended it to everyone I talk to. I read it while I was on a three-week jaunt through the Pacific Northwest. …As a firm subscriber to the belief that traveling is about the journey, not the destination, your book really got me fired up, and totally made me re-evaluate the way I want to live my life as a traveler.”

To fuel and focus your travel dreams:

“A friend who is absolutely enamored with the idea of vagabonding recommended your book to me and I ate it up as well, and I’m eager for my first travel experience. Such a nice book you wrote — you’ve given me a dream that should soon become reality.”

To more fully embrace life:

“I have read your book Vagabonding and absolutely loved it. It really started making me think about what’s out there and what’s possible. I have decided to do this myself, to actually live, and I’m very excited.”

For practical and philosophical travel information:

“I had been planning to travel for years (tied down with the college thing) and I stumbled upon your book when trying to find a Latin word to describe the type of traveling I would be doing. Your book rocked my world. I found more than a word, I found a guide, a philosophy, resources and the mistakes I made on previous trips. There is already a waiting line for my friends that want to borrow the book. Your book probably saved me countless hours of head-pounding failed Internet searches and many mistakes I would have made on the road.”

As a guide for living deliberately:

“Your book was a great inspiration to me. Not only do I think that it is a brilliant guide that shows us how and why to travel, I think that your book outlines the underlying principles of how we should be our best selves.”

For more information about Vagabonding, check out the book’s website here

Set Tim Cahill loose in Yellowstone with a camera crew in tow, and you’ll get a little something like the following 10 minute pilot episode of Travelers’ Tales, hosted by Michael Shapiro. The two (along with praised nature photographer Tom Murphy, and some unidentified ladies) take a dip in a steaming hot pot and discuss what makes a good travel story:

“Imagine if you will a vacation at a resort, where the food is wonderful, the beach was terrific — everything was wonderful. You’d come home with no stories to tell whatsoever. Something has got to go wrong. There has to be adversity.”

To err for the sake of story is something Tim is all too familiar with, it seems, and he relives a few of those unintentionally scary moments of his traveling past on camera while traipsing through the snow packed valleys of Yellowstone.

The pilot was uploaded to Google Video in January 2006, though I couldn’t find any evidence of other episodes existing beyond this one. Anyone know if any more were filmed? Anyway, have a look: