A non-hypothetical question: What’s your relationship with tour groups? Travel blogs often debate the worth of these two, but I’m curious about the actual facts of your experience. How do tour groups factor into your travels, if at all?

An Indian friend of mine who lives in New York, no stranger to the vagabonding approach to travel, just got back from a two-week group tour through the American west. They cooked their own food, slept in tents, and covered about 3,500 miles in a ten-person van. He had a blast.

He chose to take the tour because he wanted to see a bunch of National Parks but didn’t have the time to plan it out. He didn’t want to drive, and wanted to meet like-minded adventurers. The group included people from six different countries, and the only American was the guide.

He found the tour company online and was confident to book with them based on the website alone. When the group got together, everyone seemed to have a similar Frugal Improvisation travel philosophy and friendships formed quickly.

Have you traveled with any tour groups lately?  Did you book it at home or abroad? How did it square with your usual approach to travel? How did the cost compare to solo travel costs? Would you do it again?

Photo © S. Arora

“The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong, that’s when adventure starts” -Yvon Chouinard

Quick, think of your most memorable travel experience.

Judging by the stories I hear from other travelers, and the ones I tell, what sticks out for most are the moments when things went wrong, when, for a little while, things became uncertain and perhaps even risky.

Such moments may not be noted for their “fun” at the time, but later they stick out. And they stick out I think precisely because they are more real. When things stop going as planned there is nothing to look forward to, there is just the moment your are in and that is where adventure starts.

The Chouinard quote above comes from a new film, 180 South, which is itself a tale of mishap and adventure. What makes 180 South worth seeing is that the mishaps, failed plans and resulting adventure is conveyed in a way you seldom see when camera crews are there to record everything.

180 South is refreshingly raw, allowing a genuine sense of adventure to come through even in spite of all the filters of time and space between that adventure and in you in your armchair, watching. What makes the movie different is that it doesn’t have the slickly manufactured adventure you’re used to from Anthony Bourdain’s producers or the editors of Survivorman. Nor is there the manufactured adventure you find pedaled by volcano tour operators, scuba dive shops or jungle guides the world over.

There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but to paraphrase Chouinard, until something goes unexpectedly wrong, none of those cultivated experiences will fulfill the reason you left home in the first place — some universal longing for a genuine experience, a real adventure.

Such things are hard to come by these days. There are no dark spots left on Google Earth. Travel itself has become so easy you hardly notice it happening. There is a scene in the movie Snatch, which illustrates today’s travel in less than five seconds — a cab door closes, the character throws back a highball, a jet engine roars, another cab door closes and the next scene begins.

That’s not too far off how most of us travel. The door to your house closes behind you, an airplane engine hums and you’re there, where ever there may be.

Which isn’t to say there are not upsides. It’s wonderfully convenient to be able to fly around the world and cheap travel is a more democratized travel, available to people that would have never dreamed of traveling in previous centuries.

But there is also a price. We have removed most of the risk from travel. We have eliminated one of the original appeals of travel — to rediscover the authenticity of life through hardship, adventure, mishap and survival.

Without risk we have no chance for things to go wrong, we allow ourselves no challenges to overcome and end up returning home the same as when we left. Perhaps a bit more culturally aware, perhaps having met interesting people, but fundamentally unchanged in our existence, lacking the suffering and hardship that shapes our character and makes new people out of the exhausted molds we’re desperately trying to leave behind on the road.

When our travels rarely take us out of range of Twitter it’s hard to feel like we have been anywhere. We have gone nowhere inside, merely swapping the background music for a slightly different tune.

Without risk we miss the chance to fail, we miss the chance to see what happens when the mast breaks, when the rudder is lost and the ship starts to go down. It is rare these days that any traveler risks death, and yet, on some level, we travel precisely in order to risk something — to survive our own adventures, persevere when our plans go wrong and follow those detours until we arrive somewhere. There.

Most committed vagabonds, myself included, harbor some dream of buying a boat and sailing around the world. Most of us probably will never have the money, but the dream is telling. It’s partly the freedom of it perhaps, but it’s also I think the risk of it. After all travelers still die at sea all the time. It’s the appeal of risk that draws many to sailing, it requires a constant attention to the now, making you forget your plans entirely and that’s increasingly hard to find in your travels.

On some level I think we all feel this loss of risk. We’ve even invented ways to add that risk death back to our lives — bungee jumping from bridges, hang gliding from peaks or taunting Great White sharks from a cage.

We create artificial risks when we arrive because we have removed the fundamental risk of the journey.

Rolf recently posted a quote from Marian Botsford Fraser, part of which reads:

The heroic is no longer compelling. There are few places under the sun that cannot be found with the help of global positioning technology. Almost anyone can get to the top of a remote glacier and send a photo home via satellite phone.

There is in fact nothing heroic or compelling about getting on a plane and then finding yourself atop a glacier. Just close the cab door, have a drink and you’re there.

However, I do not think that just because travel is easy that that means the heroic is no longer compelling. It may not be compelling in travel writing, which is what Fraser is referring to, but it is certainly compelling to each of us on an individual level.

Like many things — religion, politics, etc — the heroic has, for better or worse, shifted from the public sphere to the private. We have internalized our sense of the heroic and we must live up to it alone.

It may be that these days no one finds an unadulterated and wild land teeming with adventure in Patagonia. In the film 180 South the characters are not even seeking an uncharted, wild land; they’re after their own uncharted, wild experiences.

In that sense, the Patagonia of 180 South becomes not place, but a journey searching for the personally heroic. Travel has never really been about getting “there.” No matter how burned into our imagination the destination may be, it’s never the place that matters. If it were just the places that mattered we could all save a lot of money and watch the highlights in HD on the National Geographic Channel.

But we don’t. We have this need to see it for ourselves, a need which I believe stems out of desire to see how we react to it, turning the “there,” the places, into a way of traveling within ourselves.

In 180 South “there” is ostensibly Patagonia, but there is no cab door closing, no highball tossed back, no plane ride. The film moves slowly, one scene sliding into the next until things start to go wrong. The there of Patagonia begins to fall away. The there becomes Rapa Nui, the there becomes Pichilemu, Chile, the there becomes Santiago, until finally, as Gertrude Stein wrote, “there is no there there.”

By the end of the film Patagonia is just a word for what we are all looking for, but it says nothing of where you actually arrive, if you will arrive at all or who you will be when you get there.

Wicked Campers typical graffiti

After my previous post about grey nomads here in Australia, you might be inspired to travel by caravan…only you’re not grey.  You might be nomadic, though.  In which case, perhaps you might want to investigate the following: small campervans made out of DIThemselves converted minivans.  These wee inclusive vehicles include a queensize foldout mattress, fridge, stove, cutlery, bedding, storage, and in the case of the one I got, a DVD player and choice of free (terrible) DVDs from the head office.

The cheapest, wackiest of the rental options comes from Wicked Campers, whose graffitied panel minivans are no doubt returned reeking of patchouli and other, probably more illegal, odours.  They have rocking special deals and discounts, and can be found in Australia, New Zealand, Europe (specifically the UK), Africa, Thailand, and both North and South America.

Spaceships, the next step up for those in Oceanic regions, are slightly nicer although still a bit loose around the edges, and each come with their own moniker; mine was called WAR GOD.  The one next to it was called DR EVIL.  I appreciate any campervan company with a sense of whimsy.  These are only available in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, but on the plus side, you can say you’re renting a spaceship.

Jucy Campers, the well-polished green-and-purple vans easily visible in Australia and New Zealand, are also pretty funky, and provide a two-person and a four-person rental option.  The four person one has a pop-up top, presumably so you can put your kids on the roof and forget they’re there while you drive blithely down the highway.

The people of the north of France are said to be the friendliest and most welcoming in the country. The area also boasts a distinctly different culinary tradition, characterized largely by a sort of hearty “comfort food”. Here are a few budget-friendly dishes one should be sure to try when visiting this region.

Tartiflette: This baked casserole dish is a staple of the north of France. It is made up mostly of diced or shredded potatoes. The potatoes are boiled, then the whole thing is baked with a generous helping of bacon and grated onion, and a dollop of crème fraiche. Finally a yellow cheese, usually a reblochon, is baked to a golden brown on top. Some versions of this dish are made with a bit of dry white wine. This meal will leave you lingering at your table for an extra glass of wine while you digest.

Flammekueche: This dish looks like a huge paper-thin pizza. The dough is rolled incredibly thin, usually in a circle or rectangle shape. The most popular version of this dish is slathered in crème fraiche, and topped with onions and bits of diced pork (lardons). However, it’s becoming more popular to see this dish offered with a variety of toppings, from vegetarian friendly to sweet or smoked meats. This dish is usually found for little more than 8euros.

Frites: While most dishes throughout the country are often served with fries, the north of France really capitalizes on its proximity to Belgium and the area is littered with little Friteries in the Belgian tradition. There are countless corner fry shops, where customers can come away with huge cones of thick-crusted fries offered with a seemingly endless variety of toppings. This artery clogging decadence is available for around 2euros. It might not be the healthiest way to eat on the road, but it is definitely worth the indulgence.

Beer: Beer-loving Francophiles will love their time in the north of France. Once again, due to its proximity, all of Belgium’s finest brews are easily found at local cafés and brasseries in the region, and even at mega-marts like Carrefour. Those beers that run you $8-12 dollars back in the States are available here for around 2euros.

“Most travelers hurry too much…the great thing is to try and travel with the eyes of the spirit wide open, and not too much factual information. To tune in, without reverence, idly — but with real inward attention. You can extract the essence of a place once you know how. If you just get as still as a needle you’ll be there.”
–Lawrence Durrell, “Spirit of Place,” quoted in The New New Journalism (2005)

Celebrate summer with a harvest festival. That’s right. In Barbados, the exhausting sugar cane harvest ends in June, and Crop Over is an over-the-top summer carnival to mark the relief at the delivery of the last crop.

Started in the 1780s, when Barbados was one of the world’s most important sugar producers, Crop Over celebrated the end of backbreaking work on sugar estates across the island. But when sugar production waned in the 1940s, the festival was discontinued. In 1974, Crop Over was revived and continues as a long summer party beginning in late June or early July with the ceremonial delivery of the last canes of the season and the crowning of the king and queen of the festival—the most productive cane cutters.

Throughout the rest of the carnival, leading up to the final weekend in early August, there are parades, jump-ups, calypso concerts and contests, and a whole lot of celebration. Conserve your energy for the Cohobblepot (a huge calypso show) and the Grand Kadooment—an incredible party parade with colorful costumes.

Crop Over 2010 festivities begin before the opening gala on July 3, and end with the Grand Kadooment on August 2. If you’re considering joining the party, check the detailed Crop Over schedule.

Have you been to Crop Over? Share your experiences in the comments section.

iPhone running Google Maps. Photo: Marcin Wichary / Flickr Creative Commons

Looks like the guidebooks are heading for the really small screen: mobile devices. With the soaring popularity of the iPhone and other smartphones, guidebook publishers are moving to take advantage of new platforms, as this AP article describes: Guidebooks adapt to mobile download era.

However, they are running into a common problem in the tech world: compatibility. Mobile networks may not offer the same availability of apps from country to country. The cost of roaming is also a major dealbreaker, which can cause sudden spikes in phone costs.

The guidebooks may also be playing catch-up to popular websites like WikiTravel, VirtualTourist, and others that already offer similar information online. Will guidebooks on mobiles find an audience?  Or are they doomed to be left behind?

Do you prefer to get your information from the printed page or an electronic screen? Or how do you mix the two?  Please share your thoughts in the comments.

We like to think that as we travel the world, we leave it as we left it or better. However, an upcoming documentary by Pegi Vail, an anthropologist from Columbia University, looks at the impact that decades of backpackers have had on cultures, economy, and the environment in parts of Thailand, Mali, and Bolivia. A cautionary tale, GRINGO TRAILS is currently raising funds on KICKSTARTER for the film’s final shoot in Bolivia this summer.

The KICKSTARTER page has a short video trailer that paints a sobering view of Haad Rin, Thailand, which was a remote unspoiled beach 30 years ago, and is now home to a ‘Full Moon Party‘ that seems more like Burning Man on the night of the Burn.

The final segment, filmed in the Salt Desert of Bolivia, will offer a positive counterpoint to the situation in Thailand. One of several interviewees in the film, ecotourism pioneer Costas Christ (National Geographic Adventure) notes;

“Backpackers aren’t the bad guys. It really boils down to how we travel, and what the legacy is of that. We are guests in another culture, so the issue isn’t how do we stop tourism, the issue is how do we get it right.”

While Pegi and her team have already reached their pre-production filming goal, they are taking additional donations until July 11th to support their post-production editing costs.

When columnists try to explain why Americans (supposedly) don’t care about the World Cup, they turn to the same old examples. They point out qualities of the game: Too low scoring, no commercial breaks to grab snacks, no hands allowed. I think the real reason that most Americans aren’t into the Cup is because most Americans haven’t traveled. I’d guess that the more you’ve traveled, the greater your odds of World Cup mania — because aside from cheering on your team, you’re also hungry for a hit of travel.

The World Cup is one big travel fix. A surplus of faraway places, from Ghana to New Zealand to Uruguay. Flags and anthems. A sea of travelers and hosts channeling their passion into costumes and dancing. Whenever the camera pans to the crowd, it’s a glimpse of bunches of travel stories waiting to be told.

ESPN’s multi-accented announcers make your living room feel like a pub. Then there are the matches themselves: Even on paper, they hit you with pairings of countries from an absurdist itinerary: Switzerland – Honduras. Serbia – Australia. Ivory Coast – North Korea?

So many of the little lessons and themes of the World Cup also apply to travel. Here are a few:

Some folks have an easier time on the road than others.

Even the best of friends can get into fights.

Prepare for a sensory assault.

The impact of foreigners is debatable.

“Cooler heads will prevail.” — John Harkes on ESPN

There’s always a surprise. Trying to predict two weeks in advance? Good luck.

The longer you stick around, the greater your reward.

Been getting your travel fix from the World Cup? Tell us how. Abroad with some good spectator stories? Share away.

Photo by Axel Bührmann via Flickr.

UPDATE: After today’s win, ALL Americans are into soccer.

Damascus, Syria

I had seen the ads for television extras in Bangkok hostels, and I had spoken with travelers about their Bollywood background roles in Mumbai. But I had never made an effort to pursue this myself.

But last Monday at 9:00 a.m., while stepping out of the hostel to buy a bottle of water down the block, I passed a man named Iad sitting at a cafe. He stopped me, said hello, and then said something like, “I’m looking for foreign male extras for a Syrian TV series that is filming today. Can you do it? We pay $40 for the day.” Half an hour later, along with three others from the hostel, I was in a really nice van (plush seats, air-conditioned) en route to a film set several kilometers south of Damascus.

The series was set in the Ottoman period, and we foreign extras were dressed up as British colonial types (that’s me above, goofing off with a Syrian actor during a break). The day was hot and since the shooting was all outdoors we would sweat under our suits. But it didn’t matter. In between shoots we mingled with the other extras, the bulk of whom were local Syrians as well as an unexpected number of Iraqi refugees. The Syrians were fascinating, one guy as big as The Hulk and yearning for nothing more than an acting role in a Hollywood action flick. The Iraqis were fascinating — “I am Fallujah” one would tell me, or “I am Baghdad” would say another — as we talked about U.S. foreign policy and its impact on their lives. The Westerners were fascinating too, one middle-aged guy saying “You know what I miss about home? Porn,” or another guy, 23 years old, telling us a little about his year-and-a-half-long journey from Beijing to here and his gearing up to return home to Canada to start school in the fall.

If you want to meet interesting people, make a few bucks, perhaps watch a famous regional director in action, and maybe even get a free lunch and dinner, keep your eyes out for background roles in foreign series and films. If you are traveling in Syria specifically, contact Iad at di_do2(at)hotmail.com to learn if there are any openings that week.

And that’s a wrap.

Photo credit: Bram van Haver