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If you’re attracted to travel writing of a more personal nature, you might be interested in Steven McCurdy’s film A Year in Italy. McCurdy’ film is a 2 disk, 4 hour piece that spans the breadth of his experience in Italy.
Rather than meticulously ticking off must-see destinations and facts about Italy, McCurdy’s film plays like a rolling impressionist piece. More than anything, it is a personal meditation on one man’s experience in Italy – almost a love letter to the country.
The film is loaded with lush colorful imagery that sets quite a romantic tone, bringing the viewer closer to the personal voice of the film. However, McCurdy gives ample time to more sober issues like the ravages of history and the weight of the tidal wave of tourism on the local culture.
The film showcases the unlikely gems found over McCurdy’s slow deliberate movement through Italy. The out-of-the-way, quirky, and unlikely destinations highlighted in the film are the same novelties that pique the interests of many vagabonders.
The film retails for US$34.99 and is available through Questar Entertainment and Amazon.com.
“Travel is mostly about dreams — dreaming of landscapes or cities, imagining yourself in them, murmuring the bewitching place names, and then finding a way to make the dream come true. The dream can also be one that involves hardship, slogging through a forest, paddling down a river, confronting suspicious people, living in a hostile place, testing your adaptability, hoping for some sort of revelation.”
–Paul Theroux, “Taking the Great American Roadtrip,” Smithsonian, September 2009
At some point in our travel planning, many of us consult a guidebook. How much we each rely on it differs, of course—from those who give a cursory glance early in the process to those who carry it around like a totem from place to place. And some have thrown over guidebooks nearly entirely for Web content.
But however we consume the information inside it, what’s left when we return from our travels? Is it a trusted source or something to be recycled?
I often hang onto mine for a little while—to fill in place names I may not have written down in my notebook. But ultimately, I give them away to a friend or a shop for used books. Even if it wasn’t of particular use to me, it may be to someone else.
I have a friend who keeps his guidebooks like trophies. Looking at them on his bookshelf spurs memories of his travels, just like his photos or his travel diary. It’s just another medium for him. I wonder if at some point, he’ll begin to question this method because he’ll run out of storage space. But for now, he’s got plenty of room.
Another friend never returns with her guidebook. She tears out the pages she needs while she’s on the road, and gives the rest away to travelers who are in need. To her, it’s served its purpose in the field.
What do you do?
Matt Gross in Paris. Photo: New York Times
One of my favorite columns is “The Frugal Traveler,” written by Matt Gross for the the New York Times. He gives his final swan song in this piece:
Three things I’ve learned about frugal travel
It’s a great retrospective of his career as a travel writer. While I haven’t always agreed with his definition of “frugal,” I always found Gross to have an engaging narrative voice and that curious nature that all vagabonders have.
I definitely agree with his lesson that “friends are worth more than dollars.” There have been so many times when I’ve gone on a trip excited to see new places. Yet afterwards, it’s the people that I remember. He sums this up well:
“Meeting these people, hearing their stories and participating, if only for a few hours, in their lives have been the high points of my travels, and the prospect of encountering more fascinating individuals is what has kept me continually excited about being on the road.”
Like a true traveler, what’s first and foremost on his mind is where he hasn’t been yet. He gives big clues on where his future destinations might be. Budget Travel magazine says that he’s also heading to the small screen, in this report: Saying ciao to Matt Gross.
By the way, if you Google “Matt Gross,” the very first result is Vagablogging’s own interview with him. Check it out for more fun tidbits about how he got started as a travel writer.
Bangkok, Thailand
Most of us have tongues, and we keep them for the duration of our lives. There are exceptions to this, unfortunately, including the 300 individuals in Cairo who had their tongues cut out by Sultan Baybars al-Jashankir about 700 years ago (he didn’t like their political humor). But the average reader of this blog will keep his or her tongue for a lifetime.
And this is good for numerous reasons, not least because the tongue allows us to taste, and taste, along with hearing and sight, is a key component of travel.
Our tongues taste the concentrated saltiness of the Dead Sea in Israel or Jordan, the slushy delight of a pineapple shake on Bangkok’s Khao San Road, the spiced and roasted chicken at Abdu’s Restaurant in Siwa after a long day in the sun. They taste the fresh-squeezed orange juice available for the equivalent of 35 cents near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the ceviche at a roadside stand in Costa Rica, the okra in Islamabad and the naan in Delhi.
Our tongues taste the fullness of a meal offered by strangers, just as they taste the emptiness of temporary hunger, and the absence of a food we love back home. What our tongues experience can affect our mood, our health, our memories. It is your tongue as much as your sight that recalls the Rubik Cube chunk of lamb fat poor men honor you with in a village in Uzbekistan during a Ramadan feast, just as it is your tongue that recalls the amazing sensation of a cold bottle of water after hours in the desert.
All this to say, let us give thanks that the ill-humored Sultan Baybar died a long time ago and isn’t our ruler, and that the tongue will be one of the things we take with us everywhere we go.
After a year of collecting suggestions from over 32,000 people, the U.S Dept of State has unveiled a completely revamped source for travel information, travel.state.gov.
While most Americans may only interact with the Bureau of Consular Affairs when they obtain or renew their passports, their charter also includes assisting citizens who fall victim to crime, accident or illness in other countries, or just want to cast their absentee votes in US elections. They “deal with events and issues that have a personal impact: birth, death, marriage, adoption, child custody, citizenship, and relocation to another country” and they manage the visa applications of visiting foreign nationals.
Together, the CIA World Factbook and the State Dept site provide vagabonders with useful information when planning international travel, such as the history, climate, geography, political structure, economy, travel warnings, entry and exit requirements, crime, medical facilities, criminal penalties, and embassy locations of countries worldwide.
The new travel.state.gov highlights recent travel alerts on their front page, such as lifting a six month warning on Sri Lanka and noting a possible danger during the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. There are easily navigable links to hurricanes and emergencies, passports and visas, and of course, country information, where you can find out that “Traffic in Laos is chaotic and road conditions are very rough. Few roads have lane markings. Where lane markings, road signs, and stoplights do exist, they are widely ignored. Many drivers are unlicensed, inexperienced, and uninsured,” or that “An exit tax must be paid when departing Guatemala by air.”
The Finger Lakes Trail is deceptively simple. Looking at the map above, you might think, “What’s there to see?” It doesn’t trace a rugged coast, doesn’t piggyback on the spine of a mountain range, and barely even interlaces with the Finger Lakes. Neither elevation nor landscape varies much — it’s mostly rolling hills. Consequently, the southern half of upstate New York isn’t thought of as a major outdoor destination. And that’s exactly the point — the FLT offers wilderness and solitude in a time when both are getting trickier to find.
The FLT spans 561 miles from Allegheny State Park to the Catskills, connecting the North Country Trail to the Long Path. Side routes add another 351 miles, bringing the FLT system to over 900 miles of trail. The 4,600-mile North Country Trail actually co-opts 420 miles of the FLT (en route to the Adirondacks). The FLT also connects to Canada’s 500-mile Bruce Trail, and provides the northern terminus of the Great Eastern Trail (not shown on map).
According to the FLT Conference, only about 20 people thru-hike the trail each year. The total number of thru-hikers in the trail’s 48 year history is a mere 289. The trail takes about six to seven weeks to complete, and it’s easy to go an entire week without seeing another hiker.
Despite the light traffic, the FLTC maintains a family of maps and keeps them constantly updated. As seen here, there are plenty of updates due to the patchwork nature of the route. The trail hops back and forth between state land, state parks, and private land (often farms) . [UPDATE: According to nogods in the comments below, this back and forth leads to significant road walking.]
The trail’s diverse ownership, light traffic, and equally light political sway make it vulnerable to competing land-use priorities. Sections are closed for weeks at a time during hunting season, state lands are subject to clear-cuts, and private landowners can revoke their agreements with the FLT at any time.
The trail’s greatest threat is gas drilling development in the Marcellus Shale formation (see map on page two of this PDF). The FLTC is currently fighting for special protection, similar to that granted by New York State to the Catskills and the NYC watershed.
If you really want to get away — while helping the FLTC have a stronger argument for protection — how about spending a couple nights or weeks on the trail?
Image provided by Cayuga Trails Club.
Age: Late Thirties
Hometown: Vancouver, BC
Quote: “This is my dream, let me live it.”
(more…)
Everyone wants to get off the beaten path, to carve their own, unique experience out of traveling, but how do you do it? The internet is full of tips and guides to out of the way places, but in the end getting of the beaten path is less about where you go and more about what you do when you get there.
Lifehacker recently pointed out traveler Ahti Heinla’s rather interesting heat map of the world’s most touristy places (Heinla also has a travel blog, if you happen to read Estonian).
The map is based on the number of images posted to Panaramio photo service (there’s also a map showing the inverse, interesting remote places). Yellow areas are the most visited, then red, then blue. Grey area indicate no photos.
However, take these maps with a grain of salt. There doesn’t appear to be any normalization of the data (to account for locals uploading their own photos) and of course not every tourist is uploading their photos to Panaramio.
In the end what you’re looking at is not necessarily the most visited places in the world, but the most photographed by Panaramio users. There may be a correlation between the two, but not necessarily.
I trust Vagablogging’s readers will disagree with commenters on Lifehacker’s post who claim that these places are filled with tourists because “they’re the only places worth seeing.”
At the same time I cringe when I hear people boasting of how they skipped Angkor Wat or Machu Picchu because they’re “just full of tourists.” That may be true, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find your own space among everyone else.
So before you head off to the Road of Bones in Siberia searching for tourist-free vistas, bear in the mind that getting off the beaten path doesn’t necessarily mean you have avoid the world’s most treasured spots.
In Angkor Wat for example I avoided the tourists by visiting during the heat of the day, when most people were relaxing in cafes and waiting for the world to cool off. It still wasn’t tourist-free, but I managed to find myself completely alone in numerous temples.
Or consider Paris, which is, according to the heat map, another tourist-filled spot. Stroll down the Champs Elysee in mid-June and, yes, you’ll find hordes of other travelers, but head a few blocks East to the 3rd arrondissement and you just might find nothing but you and the locals.
In the end getting off the beaten path has nothing to do with where you go and everything to do with what you do when you arrive. So sure, if you’re looking for a place that’s off the beaten path, consult Heinla’s maps. But if you’re just looking to avoid the crowds, don’t forget to get follow your nose and don’t be afraid to get lost.
“An American asked why he calls the brothers of his parents and the husbands of his parents’ sisters by the same kinship term, is likely to reply, ‘Because they are all uncles,’ or he may ask, ‘What else could you call them?’ Were he asked why he doesn’t eat fruit salad or ice cream and cake for breakfast, his reply would likely be, that they wouldn’t be good, or that nobody does it, or that they aren’t suitable breakfast food. It is doubtful if he could make a Greenland Eskimo or a South Sea Islander understand how cold fruit juice, fresh fruits, boiled eggs, cereals with cream and sugar, or waffles with honey are particularly different from fruit salad, ice cream, and cake. If it isn’t the cold or the sweet, the fruit or the eggs, the cream or the flour — all of which we find acceptable for breakfast in other forms — then what is it? The simple fact is that people usually think, feel, and act as they do because they were brought up in a culture in which these ways were accepted, not only as good and right, but as natural.”
–Ina Corinne Brown, Understanding Other Cultures (1963)
