The best of travel seems to exist outside of time
The best of travel seems to exist outside of time, as though the years of travel are not deducted from your life. –Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (2008)
 |
|
The best of travel seems to exist outside of time, as though the years of travel are not deducted from your life. –Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (2008)
Today is my last post on Vagablogging. After nearly two years of being a freelance writer, I’ve gotten to a place where my plate is overfull—and I have to make room.
Thanks to you all for your comments and feedback over the past 22 months. Thanks also go to Rolf, Scott and the Vagablogging contributors for the opportunity to work with such wonderful travelers and writers.
“Abandon your mobile phone, laptop, iPod, and all such links to family, friends, and work colleagues. Concentrate on where you are and derive your entertainment from immediate stimuli, the tangible world around you. Increasingly, in hostels and guesthouses one sees “independent” travelers eagerly settling down in front of computers instead of conversing with fellow travelers, they seem only partially “abroad,” unable to cut their links with home. Evidently the nanny state — and the concomitant … Read more »
Cairo, Egypt
“Spirit,” wrote the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, “is not in the I but between I and you.” He wrote this in a 1923 essay translated into English as I and Thou. Here’s another line from the essay: “Egos appear by setting themselves apart … Read more »
Many of my best travel experiences have come about through recommendations from friends. The Taiwanese guy who took me to a stylish lounge bar in Taipei with the hidden entrance; the Australian expat who showed me his favorite ramen restaurant in Tokyo; and the list goes on.
Thanks to the Internet , old-fashioned word-of-mouth is now exponentially more powerful. Instead of being limited to our own circle of friends, we can tap a website’s entire … Read more »
Trent McCay
Age: 24
Hometown: Birmingham, AL
Quote: “Vacations are comfortable, adventures are not.”
Have you ever been frustrated with your travel bag? Thought, "hey, you know what? I could do better than this"? Well that’s exactly what Jeremy Cohen and Fred Perrotta were thinking somewhere in the middle of their extended trip through Europe. At the end of the trip they decided to take matters into their own hands and … Read more »
While packing for my next trip, I came across the ticket stubs from my last trip. It’s not an uncommon occurrence, but this small discovery caused all the memories from that trip to come flooding back as if it had been just yesterday—and not five weeks ago.
I don’t know if the gray sky today has given my brain a tinge of melancholy, or if there’s … Read more »
“One of the cul-de-sacs that a travel writer has to continually watch out for is the pervasive assumption that poor people are intrinsically nicer than rich ones. It looks silly in print but on the ground, in the dust, it’s more seductive. A fond belief that poverty is synonymous with dignity, that kindness, politeness and humor as shown by the less privileged is somehow quantitatively more valuable because they come tempered by hardship. And there’s … Read more »
It may be hard to imagine in this techno-heavy world we live in, but people once traveled without the benefit of electronic gadgetry. No mobile phones, no netbooks, no iPads – not even a calling card to use at a payphone. In some cases, people travel nowadays to escape the sort of technology that makes us feel overloaded at home – but there are some technological resources that can help you travel better, too.
A … Read more »