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Got a craving for Carnival? If you can’t get to Rio, don’t just give up and stay home. There are plenty of places in Mexico and the Caribbean, from Mazatlan to Dominica, to celebrate the annual bacchanal. And there’s still time to get there!
The Mazatlan Carnival lasts six days (in 2010, it’s from Feb. 11 to 16), and is centered along the Paseo Olas Altas—with food and beer stands, bands, dancing and costume parades. It’s not just wanton partying, however. Families are encouraged and there are arts events and concerts for all ages.
The Trinidad Carnival is the largest Carnival celebration in the Caribbean. The party lasts for two days (in 2010, it’s Feb. 15 and 16), but islanders prepare for it months in advance. In the last month before Carnival, the calypso tents open—with cultural shows, soca concerts and moko jumbies. But save your energy for the main event, which begins early on the Monday morning of Carnival with J’Ouvert, when revelers wear homemade costumes, mud and grease for their parade through the streets.
Aruba’s Carnival has an all-day grand parade on Sun., Feb. 14, which is the big (but not final) event. There’s a “farewell parade” and a ceremonial burning of King Momo on Mardi Gras, Tue., Feb. 16. Bring your dancing shoes for all the jump-ups and torchlight parades.
Carnival in Dominica is known locally as “Mas Domnik,” and considered the Caribbean’s most original Carnival. Monday and Tuesday (Feb. 15 and 16) are the main days with costume parades, but the festival has already started. Check out the queen pageant, the calypso band competition and street jump-ups.
I’ll be in my beloved city of New Orleans on Mardi Gras. Will you be celebrating Carnival? Where?
Ice sculptures by Joseph Ellis melting in the heat in Beijing. Photo: Reuters
The stereotypical Western expat in China is the investment banker in Hong Kong or the executive doing deals in Shanghai. On the other hand, the creative set has also been setting up shop in the Middle Kingdom, according to this New York Times article: For China’s Western Expats, Creative Lives of Plenty.
Five artists are profiled, all of whom have plugged into the rising dragon. There are certainly many benefits, such as the low cost of living and labor. Artists can afford to hire assistants and lease oodles of space for their studios, whereas if they operated in New York or London the expenses would be sky-high.
The article doesn’t shy away from some of the challenges of working in China, namely government interference. Confrontations with the authorities bookend the story. Freedom of expression isn’t exactly guaranteed in the People’s Republic. The movie Avatar recently got kicked off screens there, according to another NY Times article. That’s probably the main trade-off for getting those low costs.
Do you know any artists who’ve taken their lives overseas? What did they think of their experiences, the good and the bad?
Besham, Pakistan
Early on in Khaled Husseini’s book The Kite Runner, the main character says, “To this day, I find it hard to gaze directly at people like Hassan, people who mean every word they say.” The reader can’t read this line without conjuring up some mental image of Hassan, and that image will likely be centered on one thing: his eyes. (Alright, you could argue that’s two things.)
A delight of travel is to see the eyes of other people and absorb not only their beauty but also what they convey about the breadth of human experience. The Pakistani man in this photo, for example, is Sikander, who I met on a minibus in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Sitting next to me, he expressed concern for my long legs in the confined back seat, and he asked if I was warm enough as the van puttered upward into high mountains and a thunderstorm. At the end of the long day’s journey, I took this picture as we drank tea together, lightning ripping through town on the streets outside. Sikander had just invited me to spend the night with his family, which he hadn’t seen in a year (he worked in Bahrain and was on his way home for an annual one-month break). He was a man of few words but his eyes filled in the gaps. They expressed a kindness, a familiarity with hard work, a rootedness.
At the end of an extended period abroad, particularly to a region where eyes rest in rugged faces, I find that my own eyes feel different. It’s hard to explain really, but I suppose something happens when we allow our eyes to connect to other eyes. We shape one another.
One of my favorite photo essay sites is Boston.com’s The Big Picture, which will lay out the world before you in all its startling beauty and horror. Check out the 46 images in their “Faces of Haiti” essay. If interested in more of my own images of faces in Asia and Latin America, you can find a few on youtube at “Faces of the World and some Bob Dylan.”
Some of the original vagabonders were captains at sea who dared to sail between the shipping lanes, tacking between storms and Men-o-War. Rebelling against dependency and striking out on your own was a pirate’s reason for living. Perhaps their methods were suspect, but we can admire their decision to forsake the familiar shackles of society in favor of the freedom of the sea and exploring the world. Today’s adventure-seeker is much the same.
To cross oceans then meant spending months at sea. An around-the-world trip would take three years because it had to. Today I can be in Australia in under 20 hours. Even though the era of commercial jets opened up access to the world, if an intrepid traveler wanted to stay in touch with anyone, a conversation might still take days or weeks due to different postal systems and limited telephone service. Today they can not only be in real-time contact with their loved ones, but with millions of people. Cellular and broadband networks have made it possible to remain connected in the unlikeliest of places. The Sahara for example.
Beyond the emails home or the blogs updated, what contributes more to the growing counterculture of vagabonding is that this intersection of technology allows for travelers to find each other.
Swapping stories, providing tips, and offering encouragement, Twitter is where the new generation of explorers are going to share their wanderlust. “ONE WEEK LEFT OF WORK. Nope. Not excited.” noted one soon-to-be traveler earlier today. Yesterday, another person announced;”quit job. booked for Venezuela, lookin at Ecuador/Peru/Chile then meet friend in Thailand.” One of the biggest features of twitter is to be able to follow global conversations known as hash tags. They can be anything from #Haiti to #SOTU (State of the Union) to #LOST (the show) to #iPad (the hype), providing just enough context for holding a topic together in 140 characters or less.
One conversation that I’ve been following lately has been #RTWsoon, “started” several weeks ago. A few dozen modern nomads-to-be have been actively talking about itineraries, vaccines, low-fee ATM cards, and backpacking music mixes, all the while supporting each other as they resign from their jobs in anticipation of traveling various parts of the world.
Cecil says that pirates with parrots on their shoulder is likely a myth, but today’s vagabonder can have a bird in their pocket.
You might have heard that 2010 is a Jubilee Year on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage route that filters into Spain from all over Europe. The number of walking pilgrims is expected to double to 200,000, all because St. James‘ Day falls on a Sunday. Demand won’t only be running high for beds: More hospitaleros (volunteer innkeepers) will be needed to care for pilgrims along the route.
If you’ve walked the Camino, you’re eligible to volunteer as a hospitalero. (If you haven’t, maybe you can pass this information on to a friend who has?) The Federación Española de Asociaciones de Amigos del Camino de Santiago administers the bulk of volunteer hospitalero opportunities, but requires that all volunteers train at a Federación-approved hospitalero course.
The process, simplified:
Walk Camino > Train > Apply to Federación > Get Assignment > Volunteer in Spain
Here are some upcoming training sessions:
Italy
March 12 – 14, 2010 in Monteriggioni, Siena (for Italians only). Contact: movimentolento |at| itineraria.eu. Information (in Italian).
USA
March 16 – 18, 2010 at The San Pedro Center in Winter Park, Florida. Contact: Daniel DeKay, hospitaleros |at| americanpilgrims.com. Information here. (Another training session for Fall 2010 is in the works…)
Canada
April 23 – 25, 2010 in Calgary, Alberta. Contact: Tom Friesen, tomfriesen |at| hotmail.com
Registration form: PDF or Word
Spain
April 23 – 25, 2010 in Logroño. May 7 – 9 in Pobeña (Vizcaya). May 28 – 30 in Cercedilla (Madrid). Contact: hosvol |at| caminosantiago.org. Information (in Spanish).
UK
Volunteer opportunities are also negotiable by applying directly to the owners of a refugio rather than to the Federación, such as the CSJ for postings at Gaucelmo and Miraz, above.
I volunteered in 2007 after training in the U.S. Being a hospitalero not only offers a chance to reciprocate for the aid you received as a pilgrim, but gives a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the mechanics and magic that sustain the route. (Disclosure: The folks running the U.S. and Canada courses are friends. And they rock.)
If you don’t have the time or money to train, you can go to Spain and walk the Camino until you find a hospitalero who could use a hand. This option is easier than you might think, and is my recommended method for volunteering if you haven’t walked the route before.
Lastly, I might be wrong about the demand for hospitaleros. There could be a matching rise in volunteer applications this year. Even if you don’t find a spot in 2010, remember: The Camino’s been here for 1300 years. It’s not going anywhere.
I’ll take a shot at any questions in the comments section. If you know of other training sessions, please share! And if you haven’t walked the Camino, next week I’ll post about the route’s many vagabonding options.
Sometimes, despite the most careful screening, you may find yourself stuck with a travel partner that you just don’t mesh with. Maybe circumstance threw you together, or perhaps you just didn’t realize how much you differed in your travel styles until you were on the road together. But now, you’re locked into at least a few days of travel with this person. Here’s how to cope.
1) The “whatever you want to do is fine” travel partner.
This person allows you to do all the research and all the planning. He or she then tags along on your trip, but then has no qualms about criticizing your choices. At that point she”ll turn to you and ask for more options or ask you to make a last minute change in plans to accommodate her whims.
How to deal: Ask him or her for input on the travel plan, and if she doesn’t give you any, just plan the trip you want to take. If she later complains that she had no say in the planning, offer to go your separate ways for a few hours or few days so that you can each do what you want to do.
2) The clingy travel partner.
The clingy travel partner wants to spend all day every day together, which can be fine if you get along really well, want to do all the same things, or are traveling for a shorter period of time. But even your best friend can start to grate on your nerves after weeks on end together.
How to deal:Set boundaries ahead of time and make it clear that you expect to spend some time apart. If you need to be sneaky, plan some activities that you enjoy but that you know that person doesn’t like and tell him or her you’ll just take a few hours to yourself to go do the activity without him. Or plan to get up an hour before he does on a few mornings so you can enjoy some quiet time alone.
3) The embarrassing travel partner.
Sometimes it seems like the person you knew at home disappears once you start your trip. Suddenly he becomes intolerant, says embarrassing things, or acts like a drunken buffoon. No one is perfect, but if the behavior becomes a pattern, it’s easy to get annoyed, especially when people begin to judge you by the actions of your friend.
How to deal: Give your friend the benefit of the doubt and try to set a positive example through your own actions. If he or she doesn’t take the hint, it’s time to sit down and have talk. Don’t attack your friend but make it clear that his actions are making you uncomfortable and if they continue, you may not be able to continue traveling with him.
4) The cheapskate travel partner.
The cheapskate travel partner promises to pay his or her way, but then always seems to come up short. She skimps on the tip, shorts you on gas money and always fails on her promises to “get the next round.” You find your own budget stretched to accommodate her.
How to deal: You are being taken advantage of, plain and simple. You don’t necessarily need to have a confrontation though. When she asks you to spot her, just say that you are short yourself and don’t have the extra cash, start requesting separate checks at restaurants, and speak up. When it’s her turn to pay, say so, and don’t keep picking up the budgetary slack until she kicks in her share.
5) The over-planning travel partner.
The over-planner schedules every day down to the minute. He or she will spend the entire trip running from place to place, trying to see as much as possible. If that’s your style too, there’s no problem. But if you prefer to slow down and see less in favor of experiencing more, you’re going to have a conflict when your friend tries to drag you along on his mad-dash through the city.
How to deal: This is another time when going your separate ways for a few days or hours can save the relationship. Offer to spend one day rushing through the sites with your friend and then spend the next slowly wandering through the village or relaxing on the beach. Or divide up your days – mornings sightseeing with your friend, and afternoons on your own.
Photo Credit: Dave Schumaker via Flickr
Unless you were born into money, your travels are probably funded like mine — by scraping together what you can and doing without many of the gadgets, luxuries and stuff that your friends are likely accumulating and, yes, enjoying.
Some people take pride in this (possibly forced) asceticism, others find it difficult. Certainly stuff can be fun, but it can also get in the way of your life, particularly if you’re looking to travel the world.
Still, there’s no denying the surface appeal of stuff. You might like to think you don’t really have much stuff, that accumulating stuff is something other people do. Or, as George Carlin says in the video below, “have you ever noticed that [other people's] stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?”
But, whether you like it or not, we all feel the pull of stuff to some degree, but we also, at the same time, tend to feel the ultimate emptiness of stuff — so how do you resist falling for the sometimes seductive allure of stuff?
How can you really convince yourself that you don’t need that new camera before you travel the world no matter how much you think you want it?
Well, one way might be to reverse the usual thinking, forget how much stuff you own — how much does your stuff own you?
Matt SF over at Steadfast Finances has post about Visualizing How the Things You Own, End Up Owning You that breaks down how many days of the month he spent working to pay the mortgage, the car payment, credit card debt and so on.
The end result? Only three days a month were spent earning money that wasn’t already accounted for by stuff he had already purchased.
That means 22 days a month were spent working to pay for stuff (and Matt’s figures are post tax, include the government’s cut and your stuff owns you for far longer).
Perhaps you don’t have huge mortgage or similar large, fixed monthly costs — how much does you stuff own you in that scenario? Matt details the process he used to chart his own stuff so you can do the same. It’s not difficult — it took me about 20 minutes to plug all the data into a spreadsheet — and the results are illuminating.
In fact, I’ve never done any exercise that so made me want to get rid of any and all the stuff I own (which isn’t much to begin with) and never buy another thing as long as I live.
If, after running the numbers on your own stuff, you should find yourself roiling the self-loathing that lives beneath all that stuff, here’s a bit of vintage George Carlin to cheer you up. Maybe. As was often the case Carlin’s humor cuts through much of nonsense we tend to take for granted (caution, the video is probably NSFW).
[photo credit: Steadfast Finances]
Sandhya Tamang, the transgender Beauty Queen of 2008, posing with Madhav Kumar Nepal, Hon'ble Prime Minister of Nepal on World AIDS Day 2009
With the Ugandan anti-gay death penalty legislation raising international ire (like Sweden cutting $50 million aid funding), and Argentinian transvestites suffering kidnapping and torture by the local police, it might feel like the whole world’s against gays these days. Even Thailand’s famed gateu-i, while widely accepted on the street, are required by law to maintain their birth gender on ID cards, leading to discrimination and humiliation. So where’s the next out-and-proud GLBTQ destination?
Nepal.
The traditionally conservative country’s Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex are natural persons irrespective of their masculine and feminine gender and they have the right to exercise their rights and live an independent life in society.” Nepali homosexuals are afforded all of the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, and Nepal has even offered a “third sex” option for its national ID cards. Gay and gay-friendly clubs now abound in Kathmandu and the Blue Diamond Society keeps the gay, lesbian, and transgendered community appraised of relevant information with a brightly-colored and cheerful website.
Sunil Babu Pant, an openly gay legislator (and Communist), has also started the travel agency Pink Mountain Travels and Tours, which is offering gay marriages atop Mt Everest, among other enthusiastically gay-friendly outings. So if you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer, and looking for a friendly vacation destination…Nepal is opening its arms to you.
(Thanks to Brett for turning me on to this whole Nepal situation)
As the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region begins to shake off its wintry stranglehold, France’s epic Carnaval de Dunkerque is already underway. Dunkerque is a small city in the North of France, right along the Belgian border. The festivities are a longstanding tradition whose roots trace back hundreds of years to Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday was a day of celebration and feasting before the coastal town’s fishermen set off to sea.
Today the celebration is spread out over 6 weeks. The city comes alive with free concerts and DJs in the town square. The comprehensive list of balls, spread out over the weekends, are sure to have carnival goers boogying into the wee hours of the morning. The entire experience is capped off with a grand parade, traditionally led by a costumed giant called Reuze Papa. Many cities in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region have their own giant that marches in the procession. The streets of Dunkerque are packed, as men march wearing women’s dresses, women march in their ball gowns, and marching bands and other masked revelers make their way through the city.
The official dates of the event are January 23rd to March 6th, but pre-carnaval festivities have been going on around the city since January 10th. Scrawny Frenchmen in drag have been a regular sight for weeks! The procession and other outdoor events are free, so travellers to this area can enjoy the best of this amazing celebration at no cost. Ticket prices to the themed balls vary each weekend.
As someone who has found herself caught up in the endless revelry that depicts the local carnivals in Northern France, this is surely an event that is not to be missed. The carnival’s official website can be found (in French) here.
“When we accept uncritically what others counsel us, the path they prescribe for us, we risk losing for naught the one thing we possess in inevitable yet mysterious finitude: time, the numbered days of our lives.”
–Jeffrey Tayler, “Insanity and the Traveling Life,” World Hum, Jan. 21, 2009
@Backpack Foodie & Kim:...
