Is travel writing a lie? That’s a question The Guardian recently posed, looking at some famous examples of travel writers who exaggerated, embellished or even outright lied on occasion.

The Guardian has some solid examples of travel writers’ tendency to, well, exaggerate. Everything from sailors’ tales of sea monsters, to Marco Polo’s did-he-or-didn’t-he legacy have built travel writing on a firm foundation of, if not lies, at least a suspect allegience to the truth.

But what the Guardian does not address is whether or not it matters that travel writers embellish the truth. Does rearranging events so they flow better, inventing characters that provide a bit or humor or otherwise exercising literary license in pursuit of a story mean that the results are somehow less valuable?

Is such travel writing a lie, or is it simply a different story than a documentary film might tell?

Of course I’m thinking of travel writing mainly in book form, making things up for a magazine article purporting to tell where you should go and what you should do in say, Cuba, is an entirely different matter that (hopefully) inspires writers stick to the pure facts.

But when it comes to capturing the sense of a place, is a little embellishment as bad thing? Bruce Chatwin rather famously distorted and misrepresented some of the people he portrayed in his books, but as his biographer once argued, the stories were “not a half truth, but a truth and a half,” and in some respects that sounds a lot like traveling.

The truth of travel is not in the pure facts of a guidebook, if it were there would be no need to leave home. Instead traveling is mash of our own ideas, perceptions and yes, even fictions, meeting with the world around us. That the results inspire many to be creative in telling their stories is testament to the power of traveling not an indictment of those who write about it.

When most of us go to set our impressions down on the page does it matter whether we omit something or add a bit more to something if the final goal is really to capture what it felt like to be there?

Will we, as the Guardian seems to fear, lose something if the fact checking army of the internet is constantly pointing out inconsistencies and inaccuracies in travel books? Perhaps we should just accept travel writing for its results rather than combing through its methods and motivations looking for lies.

[photo credit Markus Rödder, Flickr]

The greatest parts on a trip are the exciting moments of newness and inspiration. But is it realistic to expect that you’ll have that every second of your trip? No. If you consider the realities of travel, you can manage your expectations—which usually makes for a better trip.

A new post by Nomadic Matt looks at the trickier side of travel. A few of the things he mentions are the difficulties with finding and keeping relationships—both friendship and romantic—and becoming fatigued during time on the road.

The post seems to have touched a nerve—a lot of his readers have chimed in with comments. A great conversation comes out of it with their suggestions for working around the difficulties (such a traveling more slowly, creating a community where you are, and finding a partner who shares the same love of travel).

Please don’t be discouraged! I hope that Matt’s post just provides more information so that you can feel better prepared for a long-term trip. Take to heart that others have encountered these difficulties before. Instead, continue forward with your trip plans—taking inspiration from the experience of Matt and his readers.

Just a reminder that the deadline to apply to join the team here at Vagablogging is fast approaching. If you’re been putting off submitting something, head the nearest internet cafe and fire off an e-mail.

We’re looking for a couple of new contributors to post once or twice a week on vagabonding-related topics of their choice — from travel tips to destination suggestions to reviews of travel media.

The ideal writer should be familiar with Rolf’s Vagabonding book and the philosophy behind it. To get an idea what we’re looking for in terms of content and style, take a look at our recent posts and archives. The best posts are informative in nature and conversational in tone. The deadline for submitting is September 30th.

Though the position is unpaid, it’s a great opportunity to build a readership, establish contacts, and create professional opportunities in the travel-writing realm. Vagabloggers who’ve landed lucrative gigs after writing for us include Tim Ferriss (who wrote a little bestseller called The 4-Hour Work Week), Justin Glow (who went on to full-time editing positions at Gadling and AOL), and a number of individuals who’ve landed paid freelance work at World Hum, the National Post, Gadling, US Airways Magazine, Travelers’ Tales, the Los Angeles Times, and other travel-writing venues. Kristin Pope even got a call from The Daily Show after her post about “staycations” last summer.

To be considered for a weekly slot at Vagablogging, please email 2-3 previously unpublished sample posts (200-600 words each) to me, Scott Gilbertson (luxagraf at gmail dot com). To ensure I get your submission, please include the word “Vagablogging” in the subject header. Also be sure to include a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from, your best travel experiences, and anything else you think we should know.

If you’ve already submitted your writing samples, be patient, we’ll be announcing our picks very soon.

Book cover

A lot of vagabonders are hardcore volunteer-ers and, often, tend to be more progressive and liberal with their politics.  This doesn’t mean that anyone who travels is a hippie pinko Commie rat, by any means…just that there tends to be a lot more support for giving your money away rather than saving it like Scrooge McDuck.  (Which is not to say the conservatives or right-wing don’t donate to charity! You do!)

The problem I always have is liberal rag after liberal rag coming up with problem after problem…but no direct solutions on how to fix them.  So there are children dying in Somalia?  How can I help them?  Signing a petition often just won’t do it as much as some unsparing investigation of your spending habits and/or donating time and money to a place that can a) use your donation and b) not use your donation for administrative costs.

Peter Singer’s book “The Life You Can Save” offers ACTUAL suggestions for which charities are looking for donations, which charities actually use the donations effectively, a breakdown of charitable giving and why you should do it, and where you can volunteer.  There is a list of charities that tend to put your money where their mouths are, and actually save the most lives for the least money.

Saving the world one person at a time, really does make a difference.

Over on my RolfPotts.com video page, I recently uploaded a two-part video of my July 2009 reading at Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore in Paris. I’ve informally read essays there in the past (alongside students from my annual writing workshop at the Paris American Academy) but this is the first time I’ve done an official event for the bookstore’s Monday-evening reading series. Other authors who’ve participated in this series include Jonathan Safran Foer, Michelle Tea, Dave Eggers, and the fictional writer played by Ethan Hawke in Richard Linklater’s 2004 film Before Sunset.

Because it was rainy on the day of my reading, my event took place on the second floor of the bookstore. The light coming in from the window behind me compromises the picture quality on the video, but the audio comes through just fine. Part I of the video (embedded above) will be familiar to anyone who’s attended my Marco Polo Didn’t Go There book events: I read from my “Tantric Sex For Dilettantes” chapter, then go on to read the humorous annotations from Chapter 15, which highlight the idiosyncrasies of a character named Mr. Ibrahim.

The second part of the video (embedded below) features a Q&A session with the Shakespeare and Co. audience. Topics I discuss include the ethics of tourist economies, the sometimes-tainted reputation of travel writing, how one can get to know a city through a single neighborhood block, the anthropology of tourist behavior, the idea that refugees are the true “adventure travelers,” the origin of the title “Marco Polo Didn’t Go There,” Bruce Chatwin’s decision to not include Salman Rushdie in The Songlines, and the future of travel writing in the digital age.

Cycling Italy, new edition.

The New York Times “In Transit” travel blog reports that Lonely Planet is re-introducing its cycling guides. The company noticed that out-of-print editions were selling for many times their listed price on websites like Ebay.

This shows biking is making a comeback (or was it never away?). In any case, it’s great to hear that more travelers are getting on the pedals.  Especially in more rural areas not really served by public transportation, bikes  are a great way to get around.

How do you guys feel about this? Are there any cycling guides you’d recommend over the Lonely Planet ones?

Some places are also much more suited to biking than others. Want to name your top picks for that magic ride?  Put them in the comments.

Bocas del Toro, Panama

The official currency of the Central American nation of Panama is the U.S. Dollar. If you buy a house, a book, or a stalk of bananas, you use the dollar. George Washington’s body may have been laid to rest in 1799 in Mount Vernon, but his image lives on in countless nooks and crannies of the world—including in Bocas del Toro, Panama, where this photo was taken.

One of the most powerful aspects of travel is that it introduces people from one socio-economic level to those of another—something that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen often enough back home. Through these interactions people sometimes even become friends. But what does deep friendship look like between people who inhabit starkly different socio-economic worlds? Friendship can seem easy and uncomplicated on a surface level, but when a person with little access to money has to decide which of his children to put through elementary school (while all of yours will go to graduate school), has to watch his spouse suffer from an ailment that you would not because your insurance would cover the thousand-dollar medication, or can only imagine through your photographs and stories what a week-long holiday in another country would look like, what is friendship? How does friendship navigate the economic chasm between two people?

Though this is just a playful photo, I thought it symbolic of how money can separate people on the road, even people who wish to be friends and in many ways are.

How do you organize your travel materials? I don’t mean your valuables — passport, money, etc — but less “valuable” though equally important stuff — maps, guides printed from the web, pages torn from a guidebook, etc.

We’ve written before about the value of a little research before you travel, whether it’s browsing forums, searching local websites, photocopying books from the library or buying a local map. A little planning and research can add a lot to your experiences abroad.

Digital research is easy, just bookmark it or e-mail it yourself and you’re all set. But what about those of us that want to bring some of the physical stuff along? As anyone who’s ever shoved a few pages in their backpack can tell you, well, that’s not a good way to store it.

It could be that I’m in the minority carrying this stuff around (largely a result of wanting to write about my travels), but I generally have a fair bit of paper stuff when I head out the door and organizing it has proved something of task. At the moment I just shove it in the back of a Moleskine notebook, something I noticed that Erik Gauger (of Notes From the Road fame) also does, though he appears to have taken it a bit further:

I always compress everything for my trip into a single moleskine journal – itineraries, contacts, airplane tickets and so forth. I also add notes about the places I am going. The process, before and during travel, helps me learn about different subjects.

Gauger is an artist as well as a writer and posts his Moleskine journals (which are quite beautiful) on his site for others to enjoy.

But what I’m really interested in is hearing how the rest of you store your little notes and plans when you’re on the road… got an ingenious solution? Let’s hear it.

[Photo of Moleskine by Erik Gauger, Notes From the Road]

If your goal is the journey and you have all the time in the world, how about traveling by freighter?

I’ve only read of a few people who have done it—travel writer Jeff Greenwald being one of them. In his book “The Size of the World,” he circled the world using every means of transportation except an airplane—including a freighter across the Pacific Ocean.

The thing is, you or I could do it just as easily. The article “Freight Escapes” in the current edition of Good magazine tells us how.

As I read the article—which interviews the president of Freighter World Cruises—I realized that freighter travel could be perfect for vagabonds on long-term travel. They say it’s best for travelers with a flexible schedule, since dates change and ports change. And in comparison to your typical cruise, “Freighter travel is for more self-sufficient types that don’t need to be babysat.” Often, the stops are at lesser-known shipping ports rather than tourist ports (although port stays might only be 8-12 hours long).

It definitely has a novelty factor. And I imagine that if had already been been traveling like mad for six months and surround by lots of others, the solitude and simplicity might be really appealing. There would be little to do but read, write, contemplate my next travels or a question on my mind, or work on other hobbies. The article mentions one traveler who spent her time on the freighter sewing—with the sewing machine that she brought with her (and with which she fixed the crew’s clothing!).

It costs about $90-130 per day, so it’s not exactly backpacker-cheap, but you have to take into account that it can cover a large distance. A trip could be anything from a 6-day cruise up the Norwegian coast to a 124-day trip around the world. The idea of being on a freighter might elicit thoughts of the most basic and industrial of surroundings, but Freighter World Cruises says that many of their freighters are outfitted with “a lounge with upholstered furniture, a library with a selection of reading materials, a small pool, and good deck space.”

If you’re looking for something travel-related to read, now that the long Autumn evenings are nearly upon us, the Times Online has posted a great list of the top 20 travel books of the past century which has quite a few excellent suggestions.

While the time constraint eliminates some of my favorites, like Marco Polo or Ibn Battutah, who wrote a fascinating account of traveling in India and Africa between 1325-1354, the list is rather nicely geared toward lesser-known travel books. Sure there’s a few stalwarts like Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia and The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (both amazing books), but there are also quite a few I’d never heard of like Norman Lewis’ 1951 A Dragon Apparent – Travels In Indo-China or Full Tilt: Ireland To India With a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy (1965).

Other names that don’t get much press these days — like Wilfred Thesiger, Peter Fleming or Apsley Cherry-Garrard — make the Times’ list a great jumping off point for your Autumn travel reading list.

While I’m generally not a fan of ranked lists, this one redeems itself with a wealth of links for each entry that lead to the original Times book reviews, as well as excerpts, author interviews and, sadly, an obituary or two.

Also worth checking out are the comments where fellow travelers have posted their own lists and filled out some of the gaps in the Times’ list.

Got your own favorite obscure travel book that the rest of really must read? Be sure to leave a comment.

[via World Hum, photo by blhphotography, Flickr]