Alternative travel — Road Junky?
I heard of Road Junky a while ago, but having forsaken travel-guidebooks for the last couple of years, I never bothered to look into it more until today when I stumbled upon its website.
With content positioned as resource for the independent traveler — “what the Lonely Planet doesn’t tell you” — the first impression of the website is disappointing (the design and formatting needs to be seriously fixed), but spend 10-minutes and you will find a lot of alternative-travel information alongside some quirky, off-beat travel-writing and odd travel news aggregated from various top news sources. Although they have travel-guides on certain countries (that claim to one-up the “conventional” travel guides), their feature content is what I thought gets the upper hand.
The more interesting sections are: “Romance & Dating” that gives you an intriguing low-down on what it’s like to date people when you travel (although scanty in information, whatever they had on dating an Indian was pretty spot on); “Religion & Soul” that summarizes the essence of different religions; and a section on “Travel Greats” that summarizes the life of great world travelers and “Travel Ideas” that gives you (for example) 10 Travel Destinations for Hippies, Freaks and Alternative Travelers.
They’ve just come out with a new edition for a $19.95 and I was curious to know if any of you have ever bought one of these? If so, what did you think?
February 19th, 2008 at 8:55 am
I haven’t bought one, but I am currently reading “Hand to Mouth to India” by Tom Thumb (aka RoadJunky), which is an entertaining story of him traveling from England to India with absolutely no money. Its available for free on his website, http://www.tomthumb.org.
And I view roadjunky.com as the “badass” of travel websites, saying how things really are and not glamorizing every single place like so many others do.
A pretty good video clip of Tom Thumb lies here: https://ryanishungry.com/2006/10/14/tom-thumb-roadjunkycom/
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I’ve been a fan of road junky for a while now. I’ve enjoyed the features you mentioned, and also the forums. I just recieved my copy of the hand book yesterday and wasn’t dissappointed. There are a few typos about the place, but have found it thoroughly entertaining and full of useful ideas for earning money while you travel. If you enjoyed the writing on the website, im sure you’d enjoy the book also..