It's the beginning of the month, which means the new special deals for multi-stop airline tickets are available on BootsnAll . Here are the deals on offer through April 30, 2007: New York - Los Angeles - Tokyo - Singapore - Delhi - Rome - New York, US $1499 plus taxes West Coast USA -...

The rich have the Paris-Dakar Rally, an often-criticized race, where professionals compete to drive from Europe to Dakar, Senegal. For the not-so-rich, there is the Plymouth-Banjul Challenge , unofficially dubbed the “Ultimate Banger Challenge”, a 3,000-mile-long course from Plymouth, United Kingdom, to Banjul, Gambia. Participants are not allowed to drive expensive and well-equipped vehicles. With...

WikiMapia is a project aiming to describe the entire planet, according to creators Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev. Inspired by Google Maps and Wikipedia, the two created the site, which relies on users to describe places. Users zoom in and click on a place to learn about its mapping coordinates, historical information, local attractions, and...

We've talked up staying with locals when you travel as a good way to help you get a better feel for your destination and save money. Here's more on the saving money part. With the dollar still tanking, for Americans, traveling overseas – especially in Europe – is more and more expensive. So begins the...

Five minutes to use the Internet in a café abroad -- so much to do! Bills to pay, bank balances to check, the obligatory “I’m still alive” e-mails to send home. A weary and hurried traveler sits down after paying only to be faced with an utterly unfamiliar keyboard. Hunting and pecking at mysterious figures,...

Shoestring-budget travelers are always looking for a cheap way to see the sights around a city. Sometimes entrance fees, tour prices, or other activities can be a little deep for our pockets (especially when you’re trying to find food and a bed for under $25 a day). It can be difficult to find city sights...

Killing any excuse for having nothing to do this weekend, Web site sixnewthings.com sifts through all the latest restaurant, museum and what-have-you openings to bring you the best of what's new in North America. All hail the information age. Each month, 6NT reports on (you guessed it) six new things of interest to curious travelers...

The first Matador Travel Writing and Photography contest is currently underway, with a prize of $500 for the winning entry. The deadline for articles (1,000-2,000 words; must be accompanied by at least three photographs) is May 15. Matador, an emerging online travel community, aspires to be the “Craigslist for Travelers.” The SmallWorld Travel Classified section...

Soon after Scotty and Fiddy graduated from college, they decided to hitchhike across the country, visiting all 50 state capitals in 50 days. Yes, 50, that includes Alaska and Hawaii. The intrepid duo formed Hitch 50 Their definition of hitchhiking includes any transportation that benevolent strangers donated, so it is not limited to flagging down...

Good news for America-bound vagabonders: New discount bus line Megabus is now offering one-way fares on routes between major cities in the Midwest for as little as $1. Jack Kerouac, eat your heart out. Megabus works like the discount bus and air lines in Europe. Tickets are only bookable online, and are cheaper the earlier...

People like me (that is to say, people with sociology degrees) tend to be fond of breaking large groups down into two or three generalities for easy discussion purposes. It's a kind of stereotyping, and usually not the best way of understanding people, but it can sometimes be helpful in the beginning. When we travel...

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, when one million "Irish for the day" will descend on Dublin, turning it into "the party capital of the world", according to Dublin Tourism . It sounds like fun, like a wee little Mardi Gras. Trouble is, writes Austin Kelley in a Slate piece on the global explosion of faux...

Ten minutes. Name the 192 United Nations members. Go ! A quiz making the internet rounds (from a Linux programmer named Andy's webpage) pits players against a clock to name all the United Nations member nations in 10 minutes or less. The biggest challenge is spelling every country correctly, since the program will not recognize...

When Gregory Hubbs posted about The Joys of Reading Literature while Traveling not along ago, I got to thinking about the books we read when we travel and how they influence us. With so much good travel literature out there, you can usually find lots of choices specific to your destination. Not only is there...

Here's thanking Rolf for this insight into the art of travel, from the last installment in his Slate series on aboriginal culture in Australia. As much as my visit to indigenous Australia has been an implicit quest for cultural novelty, true aboriginal authenticity was never mine to discover. This is because authenticity anywhere is an...

There are just about as many reasons to travel as there are travelers. It could be as simple as checking off sites on your "must-see" list, or it could be an emotional journey tracing family history in the mother country. The "why" of travel can be a complicated question, and for some it's never fully...

Award season is here! While Hollywood is honoring people who spend enough money partying one glamorous night away for the average vagabonder to travel for a decade, the independent travel community is handing out some awards of its own. In addition to the Travvies , the travel community recently honored the world’s best hostels with...

You're planning a big trip and you don't want to worry about finding accommodation on the ground. You want to have the best possible travel experience, so you want to sleep in places that have some character. You're overwhelmed by the huge and growing number of online room-booking services. You need to check out Lonely...

It's the beginning of the month, which means the new "special fares" for multi-stop airline tickets are available on BootsnAll . Here are the deals on offer through March 31, 2007: New York - Beijing - (surface transportation) - Shanghai - Moscow - (surface transportation) - Saint Petersburg - Brussels - London - New York,...

Well, Vagablogging didn't win Best Group-Written Travel Blog at the Travvies this year. But if we had to lose, at least it was to some fellow vagabonders. So, with a tip of the hat, here's offering big congratulations to the winners, The Lost Girls . Who are these Lost Girls? In their own words ,...