Feature photo by La Chiquita. Photo above by jonathan mcintosh.

It is a glorious Mexican morning. The sun is blaring down on bougainvilleas, you’re sipping a cup of coffee and strolling down a lazy cobblestone street…and then suddenly,

“Chhh, chhhhh!!! Hey, baby!!” A whistle and a wave from a passing truck remind you that you are in Latin America, machismo capital of the world.

At first, when I was traveling through South America, this was a novelty. Then it was one of those half amusing, half maddening nuances that are the very definition of “cultural differences.”

Now, it is simply infuriating.

Photo by ledpup.

I’ve heard the refrains many times: “It’s a compliment, a form of flattery,” or “It’s a cultural thing; you know, it goes back to the old days of gentlemen and romance,” and at first, I could buy it.

Now, however, with an awareness of the deeply embedded sexism in many Latin American societies, I don’t buy it any longer.

It is not flattery or romance, but rather domination, a male power trip, and one that echoes other male power trips with much more serious consequences than a pissed-off gringa tossing her mango at a passing truck.

The most serious of these consequences is rape.

Human Rights Watch women’s rights advocacy director Marianne Mollmann has stated that there are around one million rapes in Mexico per year.

Veronica Cruz, director of Las Libres, an organization that helps women who have been raped to get abortions, sums up the attitude of many Mexican men (and authorities) towards rape:

“They say the women invited the rape, that they’re easy. They say, it’s how you were dressed. They ask, did you like him or not? In Mexico, women are treated as sexual objects, not people. If a woman is walking alone in the street, anyone can insult her or touch her body.”

Perhaps most shockingly, in many Mexican states a girl under the age of 18 must prove she is “chaste and pure” in order to accuse someone of statutory rape. Such laws are indicative of what scholars describe as “marianismo”: the flip side of the machismo coin.

Marianismo refers to the idea that while men are tough and dominant protectors, women are virginal mothers. According to marianismo, the ideal woman should be a replica of the Virgin Mary.

Machismo and marianismo can not only lead to disturbing attitudes towards rape, but also to sexual, emotional, and physical abuse at home, and to the treatment of women as second-class citizens.

So how does this affect you, the traveler, walking down the street somewhere in Latin America? And what should you do when confronted with it?

The following are ideas for confronting machismo both in the immediate and physical sense (waiting for the bus, going for a walk) and in the more long-term, political and psychological sense (working to help local women gain rights and respect.)

Photo by furnstein.

Do not react

If or when you are harassed, do not shout or noticeably respond unless you feel you are in physical danger. I know firsthand how difficult this is, and I also know firsthand how grave the consequences can be.

I was punched in the face by a man after shouting back to him when he followed me down the street. I called the police; they came, and did nothing. The neighbors told me to stop “making problems.”

Men will still harass women who are walking with other men, and in this case responding can lead to harsh physical violence. As much as I hate to tell women to silence themselves, you should ignore any taunting for safety reasons unless you feel seriously threatened, in which case you should try to get as far away from the harasser as possible.

Also, as often as not men are trying to get a rise out of you, and will get a kick (to a certain point) out of your anger. It will only prove to them that they’ve dominated you. 90% of the time, ignoring them is enough to make them go away.

Not reacting also includes not smiling! Please, for the sake of women in Latin America, do not give the impression that this type of behavior is okay or is an acceptable way to interact with women.

Talk with local men and women about the issue

The benefit of being an outsider in a culture is that you can draw attention to cultural particularities both good and bad, and locals can get a glimpse of their culture through you.

In this case, having discussions with locals about how you feel and think about machismo can be enough to get people to realize that it is not something unchangeable or inherent, and that it can have widespread consequences.

You don’t have to go ranting and railing (as I sometimes admittedly do) unless you’re with a group of friends who aren’t going to be offended by you.

Mix up talk of machismo with talk of the things you really like about a place. Latin America has so many wonderful aspects-touch on them, but nudge concerns about women and machismo into the conversation as well.

Photo by lynnefeatherstone.

Volunteer with local women’s groups

There are excellent organizations throughout Latin America fighting for women’s rights and empowerment. Before traveling, check out idealist.org for volunteer opportunities, and don’t forget to take a glance at Matador’s Change site, which offers profiles of hundreds of non-profit organizations.

Set an example

Take pride in traveling as a woman. Avoid the advice to lie about a hubby back home (unless you’re in a really uncomfortable situation) and tell it like it is: “I’m traveling alone, and I like it that way.”

And even if you’re traveling with a companion, celebrate the strength it takes to travel and the way traveling can break you free of more traditional female roles.

Sometimes just the sight of me heaving my monster backpack onto my back at the bus station was enough to make groups of people gather in Peru. Hopefully, the thought flashed through one of their heads–”Damn, that woman has guts!”

Stand up for women’s rights!

This means not only supporting local women abroad-buying from women’s cooperatives, working with groups that empower women, making the case for women’s equality-but defending the rights of women everywhere.

Sadly enough, it took two years of living in Latin America to make me wake up and realize that women deal with unequal treatment at home, too, and that I’ve taken my independence and opportunities for granted.

Writing about women’s lives and rights, supporting women’s organizations, and acting as a strong, bold example of everything a woman can do (hike Patagonia! Cook! Learn 10 languages! Farm!) are all ways to counteract machismo.

Don’t let this article dissuade you from visiting Latin America. There’s a reason I seem to keep coming back here-the people are full of vibrancy and light, the landscapes will knock you out, the food is heaven.

But be prepared for that sudden shout from the back of a truck, for the hiss and the whistle—and when you feel that rush of indignation, use it to fight for change.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

Traveling alone as a woman has unique challenges in most (if not all) of the world. Read up on these Reflections from a Female Solo Traveler and join in the discussion! How do you handle harassment on your travels?

Photo: Andrew Ciscel

Stepping into an anthropological frame of mind, I’d like to take a crack at debunking a few of the myths that seem to cling to traveler consciousness, in the hope of getting beyond the same tired givens and conversations.

Before travelers become too easy to pin down, maybe we can create new variations on the myths that often form the center of the traveler worldview.

Myth #1: Cheaper is Better: Sleeping On a Filthy Mattress in a Hotel that Smells Like Urine Makes You A Better Traveler

Photo: Morrow Less

To a certain extent, this is true. The further towards comfort, familiarity, and privacy one moves, the closer to a globalized and sanitized version of culture one gets:

• Take a private taxi in China vs. a local minibus and save yourself the experience of peeing on the side of the road in the rain with 15 other people.
• Eat at a McDo in Mexico City and spare yourself the havoc the chilaquiles might wreck on your stomach, and the hectic experience of securing a table, flagging down the waitress, and briefly being the confused gringo at the center of attention.
• Stay at the luxury hotel in Malaysia and save yourself the buckets of sweat under a lethargic ceiling fan and the view of massive red underwear hanging on the balcony.

But then again, the McDo might turn out to be the chosen make out joint for Chinese teenagers. The luxury hotel might serve the most amazing Malay lahksa you’ve ever tasted, and give you the energy to go on a five-day trekking expedition through the jungle.

The private taxi might let you relax enough to notice the hills of pines wrapped in fog, the factories and the barefoot children outside of them, the soot that coats the walls of every town you pass.

Perhaps cost shouldn’t be the defining factor here-perhaps it should be contact and awareness.

Does a traveler having beers with other travelers every night on a hostel roof necessarily learn more than a tourist having a conversation with a Malay businessman over a plate of satay?

Does splashing out from time to time mean one is betraying some sort of inherent travel pact to suffer in the name of understanding? I don’t think I could travel standing on a Chinese train for 20 hours, but I don’t think that means it’s impossible to comprehend the fact that the majority of migrant workers do just that.

The key, I believe, is balance – not self-righteous, self-flagellation, or dependence on luxury and comfort that one grows immune to daily life in a place.

Myth #2: More is Less: Places Are Ruined by Tourism

I remember reading an article by a very well-known travel writer, who bemoaned the arrival of “the tourists” in Laos and reminisced about the “penniless” woman serving him, the sole traveler, a cup of juice in the street so many years ago.

He went on to rant, in typical fashion, about how places had been colonized by tourists on the banana pancake circuit.

Photo: indi.ca

Now, I’m not going to slip so far into relativism as to say that eating banana pancakes with a mishmash of Americans and Australians is just as “authentic” and eye-opening a travel experience as, say, sipping noodle soup in a dimly lit local joint with a Lao family.

When tourism begins to colonize a place to the point where local culture is nearly replaced by travel culture (hostels, internet cafes, banana pancakes), I find that troubling.

And yet, isn’t there a paradox for travelers here? In the idea that, while travel is a magically transformative experience that should be undertaken by (almost) everyone, and undertaken cheaply and independently and “off-the-beaten-track”, only they, the select few, truly have the right to experience and understand the off-the-beaten-track places?

There is an egotistical assumption here, that an elite group is privileged in its appreciation and understanding of travel and therefore should be uniquely allowed to experience it and decide its reach and limits.

They avoid being tourists; they avoid polluting an area with their culturally different presence and their gaze and needs as outsiders, because…because they suffered more on longer bus rides to get to more distant villages? Because they, and only they, appreciate the real, the authentic, the down and dirty of travel? Because they’ve never held 9-5 jobs?

A host of factors seem to select someone to be part of this group who bemoans the arrival of the other, the tourist.

And once a traveler of this way of thinking identifies with a place and starts the ranting about the arrival of tourism, a particular imperialist tone creeps into the discourse: the traveler somehow takes ownership of the place, waxing poetic about the need to protect it, to keep it poor, isolated, exotic.

A Fruitless Debate

This tendency of travelers to berate tourism as some sort of tragic, corrupting presence, is blatantly ironic and, in my opinion, fairly useless.

It encourages an irresponsible and selfish way of thinking that says, “Get there now, before they spoil it!” It is the rhetoric of a club of wealthy explorers who are in a race to be more exclusive, more exotic, the first; to control, intellectually if not physically, an area by determining what it should and should not be and who should or should not be allowed in.

Instead of focusing uniquely on the traveler vs. tourist dichotomy-a well-worn debate dealt with eloquently in this article- why not emphasize the way places can retain the culture that makes them unique and attractive to travelers in the first place? And the ways in which locals can have the maximum say possible in how tourism affects their communities?

This expands the dialogue from vain bitching among travelers to constructive conversation between the people who are actually being visited-the “hosts,” as anthropologists call them, and the visitors, or “guests.”

Myth #3: The More, the Better: The Longer, Farther, and Harder You Travel, the More You Learn

A travel conscript, as Claire Moss called it in her excellent article on the subject, is that hostel-goer with a weary look, who spends hours wistfully writing e-mails back home, who keeps going, boarding another tour bus, eating another plateful of something strange and spicy, sleeping in another strange bed, and counting the days, accumulating…what?

Notches on a stick? Anecdotes? Factoid after factoid? Bits and pieces of language, a “thank you” in Indonesian here, a “cheers” in Hungarian there?

Photo: Karen Sheets

There is a fine line between the thrill of creating new routines in new places – the walk with a cup of coffee through the strange half-familiar streets each morning, the hello to the same juice vendor, the mini-life in a foreign land-and the monotony of going through the routine of traveling, backpack, bus, bed, backpack, bus, bed, beer, backpack, bus, bed.

One can easily give way to the other.

I have felt that weariness several times and known, okay, enough. After awhile, traveling can become a 9-5 affair, just like sticking in the old punch card at the office.

It becomes a routine that blinds just like any other, carried out with a vague sense of boredom and repetition and obligation. The days pass more as sun-filled, distant films than as actual, fully realized experiences. There will always be another exotic destination, another bed in another dorm, another beer in another bar, another cultural event, tour, park, museum.

And when they turn into one spectacle, one forced journal entry after another, they are just as rote as tedious lessons recited in a lecture in which you’re half-asleep and hung over.

Sometimes, stopping in one place for awhile, or turning one’s travel eyes upon home, can be more rewarding than going through the motions for months, years on end.

As sites like Matador and the vastly growing array of travel literature can testify, the travel movement which has grown up in the past several decades has its own priorities, belief systems, and myths, just like the more static communities that have been the traditional focus of anthropologists.

Can we dissect ourselves anthropologically from the inside out? And, when we need to, remake our own myths?

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

Got strong opinions on the “Banana Pancake” trail? Join this discussion in the Matador forums: Is the “Lonely Planet Trail” really so bad? For more on Myth #3, check out Hal Amen’s article, Sounding Retreat: Why Seasoned Travelers Aren’t Afraid to Call it Quits. And for one Matador member’s perspective on the traveler/tourist debate, read Jay Martin’s blog post, The Travel Spectrum.

BNT: What differences-other than the length of time traveling-do you see between this trip and other trips you have taken? How has going overland (or across the oceans) changed your perception of places, people, and the connections between them?

Tom contemplates the Pacific crossing

LL: By traveling over the earth’s surface you get a true idea of just what a huge place this world is. The distances in China and Russia, for example, are huge, and the Pacific is larger than the whole of the earth’s landmass put together. By crossing it in a boat you really get a sense of that.

As well as a sense of scale you also get more cultural insight. It is fascinating to see how one country turns into another.

Overland transport in Cambodia

Of course, some border crossings can show quite stark contrasts between countries (like between Thailand and Cambodia), but often countries really do merge into each other and you realise quite how fickle some borders are, often stemming from political necessity rather than reflect the ethnic makeup of the region they straddle.

The differences between the south of the [United] States and the north of Mexico are very blurred: The U.S. influence is strong in the north of Mexico and the Mexican influence is strong in the south of the U.S. Then there are some peoples for whom borders mean little, like the nomadic Hmong, who came from China and now live in northern Laos and Vietnam.

If you just dash between places in a plane boundaries are defined for you. It is much more interesting to see them for yourself and gives a much greater depth into the history. Unlike Tom, I’m not a great one for reading history, but seeing the differences and mergers between countries made me want to seek out more information and learn more.

You also get to go to some places that plane tourists would never see. Planes tend to take you from tourist centre to tourist centre, but by using the local transport you can get to some really far out places. Like the south of China and the north of Laos.

Chinese alternative to strollers.

It’s about as wild as it gets, and looking through the bus window as we bounced along a tiny dusty road for hour after hour, crossing from China into northern Laos I saw how totally different people’s lives are compared to mine – it fills me with awe.

BNT: Can you identify any insights or realizations made possible by choosing to travel this way? Things that plane travelers miss, and that you feel are crucial, or at least helpful, to understanding particular places?

LL: I have definitely gained a greater understanding of the places I have traveled through. When you have a few days on a train cooped together with the locals you can’t help but become curious about each other and start a conversation, even when you don’t speak the language.

Like in Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway, people kept popping into our berth to say hello. It transpired that most of the men worked for the armed forces in some capacity. What with seeing their photos and videos of bomber planes and the like and watching the wagons of military machines go past in the opposite direction on the railway, I could see what an enormous military power Russia is, and was scared. I’m not sure I would have found that out if we’d traveled by plane from one side to the other.

The long journeys really are like living in the same house as the locals. You get to know their daily patterns – when they get up, what they eat, what they drink and other bizarre habits.

Like on the ferry from Japan to China. The Chinese passengers would always get up a couple of hours before everyone else and do their laundry (it was a two night crossing so why they had to do so much washing remains a mystery), they would be the first to all meals, wolfing it down in ten minutes and moving on, and they were so noisy! If you traveled on a plane you would be fed the same food at the same time and there would be no chance to wash your dirty pants! It was a great insight into the country that we were about to arrive in.

There are other side-benefits too. For example, we haven’t been as ill as we have been on other trips abroad to exotic places. I think this must be in part due to our bodies becoming more gradually used to local bacteria as we travel slowly, as well as being damn lucky!

Traveling by boat

Traveling by boat was also a great time to recoup. Traveling takes it out of you and after five months I really welcomed having two weeks to sort myself out: To eat regular meals, exercise daily and wash everything in and including my rucksack inside and out.

You rarely take time to stop and do nothing when traveling, so it was a blessing to have that enforced upon us on the ship.

BNT: What sorts of reactions have you received when you say, “We’re traveling around the world without flying.”? Do you see any marked differences between the way people react in different countries?

LL: Most people say “Wow” and are really interested, especially in how we cross the oceans. Lots of people do some of their trip overland, between countries, and enjoy it, and often say how next time they’d like to do a trip like ours.

The differences in reactions between countries: In Europe people weren’t that fazed, partly because it was the beginning of our trip, but also because traveling around by public transport is so easy there. Also in Russia people weren’t so impressed because there a lot of people who travel across the length of the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway, so eight days on a train aren‘t a big deal.

The Japanese, being an island nation, seemed a little confused as to how we had arrived and were surprised to know about the ferry between their country and Russia, but the slow boat to China is pretty well established (although most can afford the more expensive option of flying, and do).

In poorer countries like China and Mexico the reactions have been mixed. Some wonder why we are taking the slow route (by train or bus) when we could afford to fly, and others aren’t surprised at all because using public transport to cover big distances is quite normal to them.

Climate change also isn’t high on the agenda in many of the countries we’ve been to (e.g. Cambodia, Guatemala), so the environmental reasons for traveling as we do don’t translate.

In richer countries like the States and Japan people did seem more confused as to why we don’t fly when we can afford to. Using public transport in the States has a real social stigma attached; the attitude is that only poor people take the bus.

Tom taking his morning tea.

Others can see the potential for adventure it offers and some have been so interested in our trip that they have offered to give us lifts and beds just to be a part of it.

The further we get into the journey, the more impressed people are. Now that we are in the Americas, people are intrigued to know how we got here from England without flying and are amazed when we mention that we came the long way round across Asia and the Pacific. The Pacific crossing seems to spark people’s imaginations the most.

We’ve also had a lot of interest in our blog from people we’ve met along the way. They’ve been able to look up what we’re doing and some have even used it for information for their own trip.

BNT: It is evident… that both of you are interested in sustainable development and environmental causes. How do you feel travel can aide these causes? What do you identify as the benefits and the risks of this huge boom in travel in the past several decades?

LL: Travel makes a massive contribution to carbon emissions and tourism can be very harmful to the environment. However, it’s human nature to wander and people aren’t going to stop traveling.

We want to show how you can travel lightly, in a way that minimises environmental damage (by taking less carbon intensive modes of travel, refilling water bottles, etc.) and contributes to the local communities and economies.

There is no doubt that tourism is good for the economy. Talking to locals….they all acknowledge the money and jobs it generates, which helps improve the standard of living…. The important thing is to be able to contribute in this way without causing environmental damage.

The local economy in Guatemala

We have seen some very good examples of tourism done well, like in Laos, where the tourist industry is in its early days and is being developed with [sustainability] in mind. Tourism can also help preserve natural environments. For example, on the Mexican Pacific Coast parts of the mangrove swamps are being preserved as a tourist attraction instead of being destroyed to make way for a shrimp farm.

You can also use your time as a traveler to contribute to the country you are visiting by volunteering. We’ve done this in a few places – be it talking to Chinese students in their ‘English Corner’ or building a path around a lake in Siberia – you get so much more out of the country and give something back as well.

There are of course risks to poorly planned tourism booms. We’ve heard how other mangrove swamps in Mexico have been destroyed to make way for hotels, how sex tourists come to Cambodia to take advantage of the poor and have seen great swathes of land being concreted over to accommodate more tourist facilities.

Volunteering in Siberia

Even when we were building the Great Baikal Trail around Lake Baikal in Siberia I did at times wonder whether opening up the lake and promoting ‘ecotourism’ is a good thing, as the Russians who came to use the path, camp and enjoy the lake left behind huge piles of rubbish.

So even if the intentions are good, if the culture of the country is not mindful of the environment it can cause problems.

“Ecotourism” seems to be a massively abused word worldwide with no guarantee that an eco-hotel or ecotourism tour is any better than a standard one. So really it is up to the individual traveler to make sure that the journey they take and the decisions they make not only enhance the adventure and fun, but also benefit the locals and don’t inadvertently harm the environment.

BNT: What are your goals during and after this trip?

LL: Goals during the trip: To be nosy really. To have a look at how other people live their lives, eat different foods, gain conclusive evidence that English beer is the best and spend time on a paradise beach.

I also wanted to prove that you can travel lightly and have a good time. I’ve also been interested to see what’s happening across the world in terms of climate change, in actual climatic changes and people’s attitudes to tackling it. The blog has also been an ongoing goal, and has really helped focus my mind on what’s happening around me.

My goals after the trip – to publish a book about our adventures and demonstrate how you can travel around the world without such negative environmental consequences. It would be great if, as a result, some people were inspired to take the train instead of the plane on some of their journeys. I’d also like to try and grow an avocado tree.

TF: Back home, I seem to have an [voracious] appetite for books, magazines and television programmes about the various peoples and places of this planet and I’m always itching to get out there and meet them. I love to learn about other people’s lives and cultures, and perhaps also tell them a bit about my own.

I also fully believe the world’s problems cannot be resolved without education and the best way of doing this is to go out there and learn for yourself. Perhaps we’ve given some people a different perspective on things (we’ve met some people with incredibly misinformed views of the world/the UK) and likewise, it’s helped me to understand the mentality behind counties such as China and Russia.

We’ve made friends all along the way and these will be people we hope to stay in contact with, and perhaps see, in the UK or abroad, in the future.

Yes, the book is the big, immediate goal once we get home. We also got engaged, as I mentioned earlier, so there will be wedding bells next year.

A friend back home, on telling him about our trip, said to me: “Traveling? Haven’t you grown out of that?”. Likewise, my parents are hoping that this trip will slake my wanderlust and salve my itchy feet. I think they’re going to be disappointed.

Lara’s always accusing me of planning the next trip whilst not paying enough attention to the current one. I disagree, but I am harbouring ambitions to visit the Middle East – an area which has always fascinated me – so why not a smaller circumnavigation – of the Mediterranean? We’ll wait and see…

BNT: Any parting thoughts/insights/memories you’d like to share?

TF: Can I quote the world’s wisest teenager, Ferris Bueller?

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

From a long, long list, highlights I have to include:

Russia: Encounters with drunken Russian soldiers on the Trans-Siberian railway and discussing the finer points of Russia-West relations with airforce pilots using a picture book and hand gestures; taking a naked dip after a long hot day’s work in the chilly waters of Lake Baikal, whilst the sun sinks over the horizon and the moon and Venus come out to greet us.

Japan: Pruning large branches off trees with a rusty saw from the precarious platform of a tractor bucket; soaking in steaming hot onsen hot baths fed by volcanic waters in Hokkaido; meeting the many bizarre, eccentric folk of Tokyo and witnessing the phenomenon of the ‘salary man’, the motor of the Japanese economy; visiting Hiroshima, site of the world’s first nuclear bomb attack.

China: Staying in a traditional old hutong neighbourhood, cycling around the tiny streets, visiting markets and eating steamed dumplings.

Laos: Driving an elephant across a river, perched atop its neck, and visiting the phenomenal falls springing up from underground in the jungle during the rainy season.

Thailand: Spotting Giant Hornbills in a national park and hearing the incredible rush of their wing feathers as they flew over.

Cambodia: Coming face-to-face with, er, the faces at the famous temple of the Bayon.

Crew of the CMA CGM Hugo

Pacific crossing: The entire voyage, the sense of immensity, the sunrises and sunsets, the whales and flying fish, the companionship of the Filipino crew, learning about navigation, international trade and the utterly different living people make at sea, and witnessing the changing shifts in economic power in the world as we visited Chinese and American ports.

USA: Staying in Liz Taylor’s old house in Hollywood, having fun with five young chaps who’d left Chicago/Des Moines to come and ‘make it in the movies’; hitching rides across the spectacular, lonely scenery of southern California, Arizona and New .

Mexico: Spending Christmas with a Mexican family and 30 of their relatives, smashing piñatas and taking part in a traditional celebration.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION: For tips on planning a round-the-world journey by land and water, check out Lara’s and Tom’s tips here.

All photos courtesy of World in Slow Motion.

Photo: Tanya Dropbear

BNT: When did the idea for this trip start to form? How long did it take you to put the whole trip together? Any particular reasons for choosing the route you did?

TF: We can’t recall the exact moment when we came up with the idea but it was definitely in a pub somewhere in London when I suggested it to Lara. I’ve been keen on doing a long trip overland for quite some time, entertaining various ridiculous ideas such as driving from London to Cape Town in a London taxi.

Photo: orphanjonesr

More recently, as we’ve grown more aware of quite how acute the whole climate change problem is, and how aviation is linked to it, we’ve become more interested in other forms of transport. We thought… we could link these two interests together and maybe even help persuade a few other people of the joys of surface travel….

It obviously is a massive commitment, entailing leaving our houses, jobs, families, friends and indeed country, in order to undertake the trip, so we had to mull it over for a while – at least a year or so – before firmly committing ourselves. Plus there were, of course, our jobs to think about, and a lot of money to save up!

We set a date by when we had to decide for sure and as the day arrived – a cold Saturday morning in November – we looked out the window and said: “What are we doing, we can’t pass up an opportunity like this?” and went for it. Seven months later we were on the Eurostar to Brussels, day one of our trip.

The six months preceding this were busy with organising everything – booking tickets, finding a boat for the Pacific, finding specialist insurance, finding volunteer placements, sketching out a rough route…. Millions of things to think about!

There was so much information we needed…and it took a long time sniffing this all out (particularly with full-time jobs and busy social lives) – libraries, bookshops, websites, friends and contacts. That’s why we designed a website that offered more than simply an account of our adventures, providing useful information for other travellers as well, and that‘s why we’re… writing a book….

Photo: caveman_92223

There were several reasons for choosing the route we picked: visiting friends and family en route; particular interest in those countries; particular interest in places. The key principle behind the route was heading east, gradually, giving us time to take in and appreciate many of the changes en route – countries and places had to fit in with this.

Plus we set ourselves a limit of 10 months away (financial and family reasons) so our ideal route – south down through Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore-Australia-New Zealand-Panama and up to the US – had to be ditched. Far too much for 10 months; we had to be realistic. After all, this was in slow motion!

BNT:

Photo: Thirteen of Clubs

A lot of the negatives you list about plane travel–foul food, snoring adults, screaming babies– can be found on buses, trains and other forms of transportation as well. And to a certain extent, all forms of transportation… accelerate the amount of time it would take a human being to move between places….

What is it about the airplane that you particularly dislike, and that encouraged you to forgo plane travel? What makes airplane travel so different from travel on other types of transportation?

TF: I would say that travelling by train is far more comfortable and enjoyable; for buses, well it’s a bit of a mixed bag but at least you have the chance to get out and stretch your legs and look at something other than the back of the seat in front of you for a few hours…however I think I’d like to turn your question on its head… and say what is it I like about not flying.

We are not anti-flying, and we certainly don’t anticipate that people will simply stop flying.

There are some great things about flying: I love the sensation of flying, looking down at the planet passing below you.

But we wanted to do things that flying simply doesn’t give you enough opportunity to do, such as… watch the world change gradually around us. We have the opportunity to notice and appreciate the differences, large and small between towns, cities, regions, countries. We can watch the people change, the landscape change, the food, the climate.

It’s different. It’s less predictable. Possibly more adventurous and certainly more fun. We’re not always sure what lies ahead….

We follow a route less trodden, where we hope to happen across the new and unexpected. We’re not saying that we’re the 21st century equivalent of David Livingstone or Vasco de Gama, but it’s nice to try something different.

Of course, people travelled like this in the ‘olden days’ and it seemed more of an adventure then – think of all the wonderful travel accounts…are out there from such times. So there’s a bit of a romantic element about it as well.

Or perhaps that’s because I proposed to Lara on the container ship in the middle of the Pacific…(she said yes!)

Photo: tanvach

The same could go for train stations – they are often wonderful places, full of life. I love to visit them in Europe and look at all the different destinations on the departures board – you can just buy a ticket and saunter on. No long queues, no long, intrusive security check. Possibilities.

And who wants to hang around in an airport?

There’s always… the environmental aspect: Climate change is the greatest threat facing this planet, or at least our own existence as a species, and we all need to play a part in averting its more extreme effects.

Aircraft emissions are responsible for a considerable amount of CO2 and – perhaps more importantly – its proportion to overall CO2 emissions is growing rapidly. Factor in… the ‘warming’ effect of CO2, [which produces] far greater damage when pumped into the atmosphere at 30,000 ft, and you can see that the current trends of aviation are simply not environmentally sustainable.

We’re not saying that we’re never going to tread on a plane ever again, but we would only do this as long as it fits into our own personal carbon budget (a concept that many government and corporations are already moving towards).

LL: I personally don’t enjoy flying at all. I don’t like the check-in queues, the cabin air, the fact that your joints swell up when flying, the tightly packed rows of seats, and being fed bad food…all at the same time.

Being on a plane makes me feel like a commodity, not a person. Trains, buses, and boats seem to have more space and you can decide when and what you eat.

Before I left I was working in the field of sustainable development and for my own integrity I decided to significantly cut down the amount I fly.

BNT: How do you think airplane travel, and the huge increase in airplane travel in the past 30 years, has changed the nature of travel? How does it change the way people think about and experience travel?

TF: [P]erhaps it makes people take things a bit more for granted. You can just jump on a plane and be in Cairo or Sydney within a few hours.

But I wonder whether we lose something because of this as well as gain something. While planes massively reduce the effort you have to expend in getting to a place, perhaps they also reduce your appreciation of it once you’re there?

You have little time to savour the experience of getting there or noticing the changes that occur as London changes to Beijing. Instead it’s just one big culture shock – bang, you’re in China! By travelling slowly we have the opportunity to be gradually introduced to such places, noticing the first chili in our food, hearing the first Mandarin, seeing the first tuk tuk….

I guess we need to look at the question: Why travel?

Do we just want a holiday or do we want to see something different? A break from the routine, the mundane, the familiar, the predictable? Some people do, some don’t. And I fully understand worn-out parents and stressed-out executives who just want to get away from it all for a couple of weeks and lie on a beach somewhere hot.

But cheap flights and jumbo jets have certainly changed how we travel and how we think about it. They also are part of the creeping homogenisation of our world.

The world is so interconnected that some places are becoming carbon copies of others (like airports). It seems that some cities and cultures are blending into one in a great onslaught of homogenisation – I lost count of the number of Manchester United shirts I saw in Southeast Asia, the number of Coca Cola adverts I saw in Mexico.

Photo: larry&flo

And we’ve met people around the world who are keen to show us how eagerly they are embracing Western attitudes, businesses, clothing, and food, and seem almost embarrassed… to disclose the more traditional aspects of their culture.

If we are going to live in a world where we can just hop across the Prague for a night or spend five days shopping in Dubai aren’t we losing our sense of the world?

I’d rather enjoy the fantastic opportunities slow travel offers to appreciate the differences which, after all, make this world such a wonderfully diverse and endlessly fascinating place.

BNT: Do you have a particular travel philosophy, or notion of what traveling should be? How does traveling by plane fit within this philosophy?

TF: It’s different boats for different folks.

I’m not sure that what we think can be described as a philosophy and I don’t want to think that the way we see things is not so rigid that we can’t be flexible enough to give other things a try.

Photo: Sir Mervs

At present, I want to travel in a manner that allows me to interact with and appreciate the country and the culture we are passing through, not to view it from a… distance. We want to experience something different from life back home and document and celebrate these differences, whether it be a rickety old hamburger stall in West Hollywood or a Naxi matriarch in Lijiang.

These are the things that add up to make the world such a wonderful, varied, endlessly fascinating place.

Plus the act of travelling itself is important – it‘s intrinsic to our trip. Like the old adage I guess we often enjoy the journey almost as much as the destination itself….

We’re incredibly lucky to have this chance to spend months wandering around the world but most people don’t. And if you’ve only got two weeks to go on holiday most people don’t want to spend half of it on trains and buses.

Everyone should be given – and take – the opportunity to see another part of the world, but they shouldn’t do this at the expense of the environment, the life-support system that nurtures and maintains the very things we set out to see.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION: If you’re considering a round the world trip slow motion style, check out the companion article about Lara’s and Tom’s journey on The Traveler’s Notebook.

It often seems the highest compliment a travel experience can get is, “ohhh, how authentic.” Authenticity is the lauded stamp supposedly verifying the traveler has really made contact with another culture.

And yet, when Kenya’s Masaai hide their microwaves to dance for tourists, and a traditional Chinese tea ceremony filled with wide-eyed Europeans is more authentic than a KFC packed to the gills with Chinese families, what, really, is authenticity?

To me, it seems the authentic is often nostalgia for a simple and idealized way of life that most travelers have never experienced, and want to believe will never change. The authentic is the fixed, the traditional, the pre-modern, and most frequently, the poor.

This illustrates the first rule of seeing other cultures as they really are, by first traveling inward.

1. Redefining Authenticity

This idea of authenticity often reinforces the same set of power relations travelers hope to undo: the control of dominant, technologically advanced, “modern” countries over more “primitive”, poor countries.

Why is it that “modern” countries are free to change, to grow wealthy, to develop, but other cultures and societies are supposed to exist in a permanent pre-modern condition, living in ignorant bliss uncontaminated by the influence of the outside world?

Are people only authentic when they’re poor? When they don´t have access to the opportunities and choices that (significantly wealthier) travelers do?

How can we think about authenticity in a way that is not synonymous with poverty and unwavering obedience to tradition?

These are questions travelers need to ask in order to work for healthy, sustainable growth in the places they visit, and to escape this dichotomy of authentic, static, noble poverty vs. inauthentic wealth, growth, and change.

2. Challenging Personal Assumptions

Blonde poverty / Photo carf

“They may be poor, but they´re happy!” I cringe every time I hear this refrain.

I remember meeting an American professor in a Oaxacan café and telling him about the intense poverty in the Sierra Norte, where my husband is from. My husband’s brother had gone to the U.S at age seventeen and lived in a cave, working to support his parents and five brothers and sisters.

My husband’s parents both worked full time to pull in an income that could send only one child (my husband) to college. I said, “There are no opportunities in the Sierra”, and the professor replied, “Yes, but they are content, and opportunities is an American concept.”

An outrageous assumption: they don´t really want opportunities, they live in graceful, natural, harmonious poverty. We may enjoy the opportunity to travel across Mexico, but they are happier eating tortillas and living in tin roof houses.

Such a nice, heartwarming thought coming from someone who has never faced poverty.

One of the hardest things as a traveler is to accept that the way you want to see a culture may be very different from the way local people see (and want to see) it.

Inner travel should be the effort to move beyond assumptions, to free oneself of easy explanations and answers that come from what one would like to believe, and not what is.

3. Across the class spectrum

Chinese are loving it / Photo mcchronicles

I admit, I think the best places to eat are always the dumpling restaurants with two linoleum tables, a couple of stools, and a crate of beer in the corner.

I love morning taco stands, markets, and tiny restaurants packed elbow to elbow where one can eat for a buck and toast the guy at the next table.

But, sometimes, it’s worth it to pop into a McDo or the latest upscale fusion restaurant downtown: who’s there? What are they doing?

I went to McDo in Beijing for the first time at 3 a.m, just after a rock concert, to find it packed full of college students, asleep atop stacks of textbooks, with trays of tea and fries scattered around them.

It was a surprise peek at middle class Chinese culture; the up-and-coming cadres, doctors, and teachers snoozing under the golden arches.

Similarly, at an upscale Chinese restaurant (where I’d never have gone if the university where I taught hadn’t thrown a banquet) I saw Chinese who twenty years ago were in the full throes of the Cultural Revolution now eating Peking Duck and watching Imperial acrobatics, waited on by dainty young girls in red qipiaos.

This was an insight into modern China possible made possible by escaping the local dumpling joint. It is worth it to experience (if one’s budget affords) the whole class spectrum, to help jolt oneself awake to the past and future of a place, and to the complicated layers that compose it.

4. Witnessing Connections

Chinese worker / Photo jijis

“Made in China” takes on a whole new significance pulling into a Chinese factory town, with air so dense your eyes burn and a persistent cough claws at your throat.

Seeing people riding bikes under the gray haze of factory chemicals, seeing the grimness of life without sky or air, changes the way one thinks about all those familiar “Made in China” labels.

Similarly, knowing how much the average coffee farmer makes in Mexico or Colombia changes the way one thinks about the prices of an average pound of Mexican or Colombian coffee at home.

It is so easy to miss these connections; corporations and the media conspire to obscure them.

But travelers have the chance to connect their lives with the lives of people in the places they visit, to expose the injustice of these connections between rich and poor, developed and developing, and to potentially create sustainable, just connections in replace of exploitative ones.

5. Ways of Seeing

Coffee is not just coffee when it is a glass mug of Malay espresso and sweetened condensed milk, served on a sticky 85 degree day in a Kedai Kopi in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, with a steaming bowl of lahksa.

It is a full-on sensory experience that yanks all those dormant parts of oneself, the parts that go plodding through the day to day in familiar places without really seeing, to life.

The best way to experience “inner travel,” the process of moving oneself out of a familiar mental space, is to take no detail for granted.

Every place, even Columbus, Ohio (which, having grown up there, I had always assumed was the most boring place on Earth) is full of quirks and smells and sights and sounds and local particularities.

It can all be travel, even the same day-to-day bus ride to work, even the park where you walk the dog every evening, even the landscapes that are so familiar you barely see them, if you peer through the eyes of a traveler.

How has inner travel helped you experience other cultures? Share your thoughts in the comments!