“Our incessant commentary on others gives insights into the tourist or vacation mode of consumption. “Those other tourists” come to represent a commodified, fragmented tourism. Here we find a model of tourism as consumption, with vacationers moving along the shelves of the tourist supermarket, falling for today’s special offers, the well-advertised, the cheap, the easily digested, the standardized items of tourist experiences. The commentator sees himself or herself in other terms, not as a consumer but as a producer of experiences… What is it that makes some people define some experiences as shallow or rich, meaningful or meaningless, sublime moments of personal bliss or just another prepackaged item from the tourist industry? And how do we project our own interpretations of what happens in others’ lives?”
–Orvar Lofgren, On Holiday: A History of Vacationing (1999)

A shelf of books. Photo: Ian Wilson / Flickr

Without exception, every traveler I’ve met has been an avid reader.  Makes sense, as a keener interest in information and stories complement a curiosity to see the world. The natural next step is to pick up our keyboards and write stories of our own, in travel blogs.

The website Travelllll.com had a post titled, Good Travel Blogging: Seven Ways to Read Better.  There is a good mix of advice.  The writer recommends where to find good articles for inspiration, how to read with a critical eye, and more.

My favorite is tip No. 1: Read #longform. Following @longreads on Twitter has been a revelation.  The articles there are found through a crowdsourcing process. Fellow reading addicts submit their favorite stories by marking them with the hashtag #longreads.  Then the main editor tweets out his selections from @longreads.  I’d recommend following both the Twitter account and the hashtag so you don’t miss a story.

Taking that step further, an awesome website for long-form journalism is Byliner.  It’s a social network where people can find and share the best reads on the Internet.  The site is so addictive for inveterate readers that it should come with a warning.

What do you read to inspire your blogging?  Please share your advice in the comments.

“I saw a crocodile in this part of the Niger, close to the bank; it looked just like a small boat. One day I went down to the river to satisfy a need, and lo, one of the blacks came and stood between me and the river. I was amazed at such a lack of manners and decency on his part, and spoke of it to someone or another. He answered, ‘His purpose in doing that was solely to protect you from the crocodile. By placing himself between you and it.’”
–Ibn Battuta, Travels (1355)

“‘Getting off the beaten path’ is still a negotiation (even if a contrarian one) with the pre-formed idea of a place, rather than with the place itself. And soon enough, it becomes incorporated into the approved, expected experience: witness the advertisements for SUVs and sporting gear that now use that phrase as a slogan. Indeed, the presumption of location-aware technologies is that place can be a sort of consumer artifact, a packaged item in a showroom awaiting evaluation and purchase.”
–Ari N. Schulman, “GPS and the End of the Road,” New Atlantis, Spring 2011

There are so many different steps to a RTW trip that it’s sometimes difficult to know where to begin. First you have to get through that first stage of actually making the decision to go. Finding inspiration shouldn’t be terribly difficult in this technological age we live in, but actually taking that plunge is a whole different story.

But once you decide that a RTW trip is right for you, where do you go next? Where’s the best place to get started? How do you sift through all the information out there to begin planning your trip of a lifetime?

The folks at BootsnAll have been hard at work these last few months developing the most comprehensive RTW travel guide around, and the massive planning section is at the forefront. This guide takes potential RTW travelers through all the necessary steps of planning a RTW trip. If you’re overwhelmed by the thoughts of planning a long-term trip, then start at the beginning of the guide. You can read it like a book or jump around to the articles that interest you most.

Where Do I Begin Planning a RTW Trip gets you started by getting you to ask yourself all the right questions. Starting there, they take you through all pertinent steps of planning a RTW trip. If you like to read things in sequential order, you can click on the red button at the bottom right corner of each page for the next article in the series.

There are 23 articles in the planning section alone, which covers all you need to know. They answer the big questions, like how to save money for a trip like this and what to consider when making the decision to buy RTW plane ticket or point to point tickets. They even look at the nitty gritty of planning an epic trip like this. No one likes to think about things like immunizations and what to do with all your stuff while you’re gone, but both are necessary steps when planning a RTW trip.

If you’re in the process of planning a trip around the world, be sure to check out BootsnAll for all your RTW travel needs. They have been working hard at developing the most helpful guide around, and they are always looking for feedback regarding their content.

Are you going on a Vagabonding trip or planning one now? If so, I’d like to talk to you and get your opinion on the vagabonding planning process and our RTW Travel Guide. If that describes you, contact the RTW Wednesday column writer, Adam Seper, at adam@bootsnall.com.

For more RTW travel information, including RTW ticket deals, be sure to sign up for their newsletter.

Sleeping in a plane. Photo: Ian Mackenzie / Flickr

It’s a common traveler’s dilemma: to avoid jet lag after a long-haul flight, you should really sleep on the plane. That way, you can wake up refreshed and already be on local time. The problem: you can’t sleep on planes.

If you’ve ever arrived at an airport feeling groggy like Bill Murray’s character in the film Lost in Translation, you’re not alone. Seth Kugel, who writes the “Frugal Traveler” column for The New York Times, decided to get to the bottom of mystery of sleeping in the skies: Cramped in coach, or the science of sleep.  Kugel interviews a doctor and a psychologist to learn why someone dozes in the clouds, and find any solutions.

A German friend of mine likes to go dancing in a nightclub until he has to go to the airport. He swears it gets him nice and tired, so as soon as he gets in his seat, he goes to sleep immediately.  I’ve done the opposite, try to wake up extra early so that I’m eager to get back to snoozing.

Do you have trouble getting rest in the air? How do you solve this problem? Please share your tips and tricks in the comments.

“So many Americans, for one reason or another, they watch the news and it doesn’t really give them the idea of the world. Or they don’t read or travel. They have no idea that America is part of the world and not the world itself. And so anything from the travel stories I tell, that’s what I’m trying to get across. That you have to realize there are other people, other economies, governments, cultures, religions, and destinies going on at the same time as yours. You have to widen the scope of your lens and start seeing more.”
–Henry Rollins, “Patriot Missile,” Guernica, May 2008

“I came to the conclusion that some more ascetic reason than mere enjoyment should be found if one wishes to travel in peace: to do things for fun smacks of levity, immorality almost, in our utilitarian world. And though personally I think the world is wrong, and I know that in my heart of hearts that it is a most excellent reason to do things merely because one likes the doing of them, I would advise all those who wish to see unwrinkled brows in passport offices to start out ready labeled as entomologists, anthropologists, or whatever -ology they think suitable and propitious. But as this book is intended for the Public, and is therefore necessarily truthful, I must admit that for my own part I traveled single-mindedly for fun.”
–Freya Stark, The Valleys of the Assassins (1934)

A wrestler in a supermarket. Photo: Hernan Garcia Crespo / Flickr

One of the great things about travel is how even ordinary errands can become cultural adventures. For example, the simple act of going grocery shopping. Ben Groundwater, who writes “The Backpacker” column for The Sydney Morning Herald, waxed poetic in this article: Culture shop: the joy of supermarkets.

Groundwater recounts his memories of his favorite supermarkets. He admits that he sometimes remembers them better than the sightseeing landmarks.  Taste and even smell are powerful senses, often intimately linked to our memories.  The bite of good kung pao chicken will always send my mind back to a certain Szechuan restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan. The taste of a particular cheese brings back visions of France. The list goes on.

Have you ever been to any supermarkets or street markets that made an impression? Please share your stories in the comments.

“Travelers continue, in ever larger numbers, to make trips to exotic, non-Western lands, which seem to answer to some of the old stereotypes: that simpler society, where faith is pure, nature pristine, discontent (and its civilization) unknown. But paradise is always being lost. One of the recurrent themes of modern travel narratives is the depredations of the modern, the loss of the past — the report on a society’s decline. The nineteenth-century travelers are noting the inroads in the idyllic life in, say, the South Sea made by the modern money-economy, for travelers who would never dream of living like the natives generally still want the natives to stay wholesome, rustic, sexy, and uncomfortable.”
–Susan Sontag, Where the Stress Falls: Essays (2002)