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Part of the fun of being on the road is the experiences to be found with the great new people you meet while traveling. The road can bring us some hilarious, wise, and challenging characters. However, like many vagabonders, I relish my solitary travels. There’s nothing quite like striking out on your own, literally all alone. Sometimes I find … Read more »
“For the past three decades, travel — especially when it gets written down — often has at its center a defining solipsism: the Self in search of itself in strange places promising to cast a different and edifying light on the Quest. In an era of self-absorption and self-gratification — Facebook and Twitter may be the ultimate in narcissism — such is to be expected. On a stretch of open road, a driver can roll … Read more »
If you’re in South America and looking for a grand cultural festival in June, head to Cusco, Peru, for the Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice. Every year, on June 24, more than 200,000 people gather at the Incan fortress of Sacsayhuamán for Inti Raymi—the celebration to honor Wiracocha, the Sun God.
The original festival was banned by the Spaniards, but then … Read more »
Communication technology is getting better all the time, but how about their human users? They may still lag behind the times, as globalization brings people closer, while they can’t speak to each other in a common language. Matt Gross, writer of the NY Times Frugal Traveler Blog, set out to find a way to improve his Spanish and Mandarin Chinese: Expensive language lessons? Doesn’t translate.
He looks at many options, from buying cutting-edge software … Read more »
Cairo, Egypt
The train rattling down the track as you lay awake in a sleeper car; the call to prayer sounding from a mosque as tropical birds outside your window also welcome the dawn; your name, so uneventfully and mono-syllabically said back home, suddenly turned into a two-syllable masterpiece by … Read more »
Horses, camels, elephants, dog sleds, and rickshaws. Bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, and Segways. Airplanes, helicopters, zeppelins, and hot air balloons. Cars, buses, boats, and ferries. Trains, cable cars, monorails, and funiculars. How many modes of transport have you used?
Our own two feet are the oldest means of transporting ourselves from place to place, and riding or being pulled by animals came second. Boats have been sailing the seas … Read more »
You can leave a place, but it doesn’t leave you. Quickly, at least.
Maybe you’ll bring back a few jolly pounds from samosas and sweetshops. You’ll have some of the country under your fingernails and clogged in your pores. Its exhaust will take a few days to clear from your lungs so your boogers might stay black for a bit. It floats through your blood for weeks, so … Read more »
Kyle & Bessie
Age: 30 (Kyle), 27 (Bessie)
Hometown: Chicago, USA
Quote: “It’s hard to travel just for the sake of traveling; there needs to be some other goal or reward beyond seeing all the sights there are to see. Eventually sitting on a beach will get boring and you’ll want to do something more valuable with your time.”
I caught the first two episodes of Ewan McGregor’s Long Way Around motorcycle journey the other night and was struck by the extraordinary amount of planning that went into the trip. Granted McGregor and Boorman had a number of concerns outside the scope of most of our trips — motorcycle repairs, film equipment, medical supplies for … Read more »
Looking for super-cheap flights in Australia and the Oceania region? Jetstar airlines, the local rock-bottom budget airline (ok, besides VirginBlue) is having a 6th birthday sale, which means flights between Australia, Oceania, and Asia are all extremely cheap. Planning a leg of a round the world trip? Living in Cambodia and want to get to Fiji? Buy cheap. Buy now!