Kachin recruits in training / Photo Ryan Libre

In 2006, the great travel writer Robert Kaplan gave a seminal speech at the Columbia School of Journalism.

Kaplan argued that mainstream journalism suffers from an obsession with soundbites, and that journalists should take time to steep themselves in the sort of local knowledge that only first-hand experience can provide.

Here’s my favorite part of the speech:

“Journalism desperately needs a return to terrain, to the kind of firsthand, solitary discovery of local knowledge best associated with old-fashioned travel writing. Travel writing is more important than ever as a means to reveal the vivid reality of places that get lost in the elevator music of 24-hour media reports.”

Today, with the venerable old house of traditional journalism ablaze, Kaplan’s message is more relevant than ever.

Enter The New Reporters

Travelers have a profound responsibility to report on what they experience abroad. Travel writing, a discipline that can be flaky, shallow and commercial, can also be a powerful form of journalism and a force for social change.

In this brave new world, we are all foreign correspondents. We are all investigative journalists. We are all photographers and videographers with the ability to snap an iconic image that can change the world.

We are all citizen journalists, able to shine a bright light into dark corners. With a keen eye, a digital camera and a blog, we can grab the attention of people around the world and make them care.

Reporting From Inside Burma

A few months ago I crossed into northern Burma in the company of ethnic Kachin rebels and spent one month reporting on the Kachin freedom struggle and teaching underground journalism workshops to college students.

A soldier laughs / Photo Ryan Libre

Few countries are as repressive as Burma, and to go to Kachin State under the auspices of the Pulitzer Center was a unique opportunity to shine a light on a place that does not receive much media attention.

Any traveler to Burma can, to some degree, help shine this light. Any traveler can post blogs, take photos and expose the fateful links between the totalitarian Burmese regime and immoral companies like Chevron.

However, going to Burma and acting as a citizen journalist bears an enormous responsibility. You are unlikely to be thrown in jail or tortured, but Burmese innocents who talk with you could bear serious consequences.

Travel as a Political Act

The prolific travel writer Robert Reid addresses this issue yesterday in a must-read essay at Worldhum.

Reid is the author of the Lonely Planet Burma guidebook. In the essay he discusses his own personal struggle with the question of whether travelers should even go to Burma. For Reid, the decision to go to Burma, and promote travel there, comes down to the ability of travelers to be effective citizen journalists, because ultimately:

Travel writers are in a position to fill information gaps and ask overlooked questions.

Right on, Mr. Reid. It’s up to all of us to fulfill that responsibility.

Community Connection

Read 5 Compelling Reasons To Visit Banned Countries, and Tim’s moving report: Kachin Christmas: Finding Faith In Myanmar

Loud voices jolt me awake. It’s past midnight and I’m here in the Himalayan foothills of northern Myanmar illegally. Adrenaline pumping, I roll under the bed as shouts shake my hut’s thin bamboo walls:

“Happy Christmas! Merry Christmas! Jesus Christ is born!”

I check my clock. 12:10 am on December 1st. Here in Kachin, the Christmas season has begun.

Unlike ethnic Burmese, who form the majority in Myanmar, the six tribes collectively known as Kachins are devout Christians. Their faith has bound the Kachins together as one people and helped them endure decades of repression, suffering and loss.

For me, a nominal Christian, living among the Kachins opened my eyes to the enduring power of religious faith.

Faith In Hard Times

Hardship is a fertile ground for faith. The world’s major religions were founded by prophets who sought out suffering in their quest for God. For Christ and Buddha alike, self-denial was the key to spiritual grace.

Religion provides comfort in hard times. Faith enables the devout to connect their personal tragedies to a broader sense of shared sacrifice. Religion is a prism through which tragedy acquires meaning.

I’ve heard cynics claim that religion is the cause of suffering in the world, but it seems more accurate to say that suffering is the cause of religion.

Photo by Ryan Libre.

At daybreak, cadets at the Kachin military academy stand at attention and recite the five oaths of the Kachin Independence Army.

Twice, they honor the martyrs who gave their lives for the nation and people. When the oaths are finished, they file into the canteen and say grace, giving thanks for the morning rice.

Martyrdom is the pinnacle of grace for many believers. While the Kachin never engage in suicide attacks, their faith helped them withstand the loss of thousands of young men in battles with the Burmese military.

A Political Pastor

Late one night, I spoke with a young pastor from northern Shan state whose hometown was recently destroyed in fighting. He had traveled far to meet me and spoke with care.

“A pastor has no business in politics,” he said. “But politicians cannot speak freely in Myanmar. In my sermons I can make implications about politics. I can organize my congregation. It is very dangerous, but I feel a duty to my country.”

The Kachins celebrate Sweet December on the last night of November. Before the midnight carolers jolted me from bed, I sang Christmas songs at the Kachin Independence Organization headquarters.

The hall where we sang was decorated red and green, the colors of both Christmas and the Kachin national flag. We stood in the pews and sang the same songs over and over.

“This is good for community,” said my Kachin friend. “This brings us together.”

Photo by Ryan Libre.

When the carolers were gone, I thought about the white church on the Common in Craftsbury, Vermont. My family goes there once a year, on Christmas Eve, but it’s been five years since I was home for Christmas.

My land, my future homestead, is just a two minute walk from the white church on the Common. I had never planned to attend services.

Dignity and Hope

There’s hopelessness in Kachin, fed by grinding poverty, brutal repression, a heroin epidemic and the constant threat of war. The Kachin Church is part of the social fabric that holds the nation together, that gives the people dignity and hope.

Destinations

Community Connection to Myanmar

The Kachins don’t have much, but their faith provides an excuse to dress up, to sing, and to meet the neighbors. When suffering comes, as it inevitably will, their faith provides much more.

Growing up, most of my friends were dismissive of religion, and of Christianity in particular. It’s easy to ridicule the religious right in America, and for coddled children of the ‘80s, flooded with Christmas presents, there was never much need for faith.

In my crowd, observant Christians were Jesus Freaks, a slightly suspect minority.

I thought about the Christians I had met in Kachin, their sincerity and goodwill, and I was ashamed of my dismissive attitude. I realized that although my friends and I never needed faith growing up, we probably will someday.

Are You A Christian?

On one of my last mornings in Kachin a man asked if I was a Christian.

“My family is Christian,” I said.

“I see,” he replied.

I thought I had dodged the bullet, but then he asked again: “And you?”

I pictured the white church on the Common in Vermont and heard the choir singing at midnight on Christmas Eve, the sound of the bells in the cold December air. I pictured the gentle smiles of Kachins who had nothing but their faith in God.

I made a decision and said “Yes.”

“Yes. I am a Christian, too.”

It wasn’t an awakening. There were no angels, no organ music, no slanting shafts of light. I simply decided to accept my Christian heritage for what it is – a community that will be there, waiting for me when I go back home.

Tim’s reporting trip to Myanmar was made possible by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Photo by tnarik

On the surface, the stories featured in this week’s edition of Tales From The Road don’t have much in common.

The slopes of Mt. Kenya are a long way from the clubs of Buenos Aires, and a hike to exhume corpses in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Colombia is a far cry from a day hike in the hills outside Seattle, Washington.

The common thread in these stories, aside from literary excellence, is a deep commitment to the story on the part of the authors. So much writing these days is either commercial fluff hammered out on a deadline or unreadable and self-indulgent crap.

What makes these stories rare and valuable is that the authors didn’t have to write them, but did anyway. There’s no ego, no hyperbole and no hidden agendas. The stories stand on their own merits, gifts from the authors, windows to the world.

Enjoy!

1. A Climb To Conquer Two Obstacles by Jeffrey Gettleman

In the aftermath of brutal violence in Kenya, a group of traumatized students bands together to conquer the heights of Mt. Kenya. This account of their triumphant journey by the terrific New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman is one of the most inspiring stories I’ve read in a long time.

2. Synths Of Resistance by Eve Hyman

For music hipsters, it doesn’t get much cooler than digital cumbia in Buenos Aires. This piece by Matador member Eve Hyman is a rapturous and intimate portrait of the BsAs music scene, the kind of story only an insider could produce.

3. Close To The Bone by Matthew Fishbane

This rather gruesome but beautifully crafted story of death in the Colombian jungle is captivating from the very first sentence:

I’m trudging down the lower slopes above the city of Santa Marta with a black plastic bag of human bones dangling like a scarf bundle from the handle of my shovel.

4. A Conflict Of Interest by U Shwe Yoe

The Irawaddy is the finest source of news and perspectives on Burma, but sadly the website has recently come under attack by the Burmese regime. It might be difficult to get this story to load, but it’s worth the effort for a candid, unguarded and literary peek into political discourse in the most repressive country in the world.

5. Mt. Si dayhike by David Miller

My friend and colleague David Miller has a little girl named Layla who just turned one year old. His simple blog post about hiking up a mountain with Layla overflows with the uniquely affecting love of a father for his baby girl.

BONUS! Check out my interview with David Miller, one of many interviews with travel writing personalities that you’ll find in the BNT archives.

Have you come across any great travel stories lately? Share in the comments!

Shooting the doc / Photo filmmakers

One of the biggest oil booms in U.S. history is now underway around the town of Stanley, North Dakota.

North Dakota doesn’t normally get a lot of attention, but last summer two young Matador members traveled to Stanley to make a film about the oil boom. The footage they shot is truly striking, and “Crude Independence” will no doubt be an important record of this moment in American history.

Filmmakers Noah Hutton and Sara Kendall recently chatted with BNT co-editor Tim Patterson about their experience shooting “Crude Independence” in boom-town North Dakota.

Tim: How did you initially decide to shoot a documentary in North Dakota?

Noah: I first heard about the oil boom in North Dakota when I read an article about it in the New York Times published in January. It was not a very lengthy piece but it caught my attention right away. I had a feeling there was a film to be made.

I was still on winter break from school so a few days later I flew from New York to Minneapolis, rented a car off of Craigslist because I wasn’t yet 21, and drove to the small town of Stanley, North Dakota.

After shooting some location footage and talking to farmers, oil workers, and local officials, I came back to the east coast and spent the spring raising money to make the film.

I knew from the moment I got out of the car in North Dakota that this was a story worth telling.

Sarah: How often do you have those conversations that start with the phrase, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?”

It wasn’t until Noah called me on his way to North Dakota that I realized he was driven enough-and impulsive enough-to actually make this happen.

Later that semester I was awarded a research grant through my college to spend the month with him, helping him with the film while also working on a piece of creative nonfiction about our project.

Tim: Did you have an idea of the movie you wanted to make before you went, or did the story evolve in unexpected ways?

Oil pumper at sunset / Photo filmmakers

Noah: I knew I wanted to take a human angle on the oil boom– to explore how lives are changing because of the discovery of a resource so far below the surface.

I wanted to talk to farmers who own the rights to the minerals under their property, those that do not own their rights, the landmen researching mineral deeds in the county courthouse, and the oil workers themselves who crowd the bars, motels, and jails.

The unexpected evolution of the story was driven by the characters we met along the way. As much typecasting as we did ahead of time, we tried to be as open and flexible as possible to what unfolded while we were there.

We ended up finding some ecstatic moments– from a boisterous group interview with out-of-state oil workers behind a local bar to a late afternoon spent with local farmer and oil well owner John Warberg, who showed us the original wooden shack that his grandparents homesteaded in when they arrived with the first wave of Norwegian emigrants to North Dakota over one hundred years ago.

They never had a water well, but now the decayed windows look out upon Warberg’s oil well.

There were also memorable situations we created for ourselves, like the night Sara and I crawled through a wheat field to sneak footage of a drilling rig. There’s perhaps six seconds of that footage in the film but it was certainly worth the thrill.

Sara: Noah had articulated a pretty clear vision for the film, but it was based on the idea that our story would be driven, more than anything, by the experiences of people living and working in Stanley.

In that way, the project demanded a certain amount of flexibility that we found as exciting as it was maddening.

And while our initial vision never changed all that drastically, at some point our footage definitely started to take on a sense of authenticity and humanity-I’m picturing our friend Leroy, a landman, singing karaoke at the local bar and winking at our camera.

Moments like that were impossible to anticipate.

Tim: Sara, you grew up in Manhattan, and Noah, you’re a student at one of the more liberal colleges on the East Coast. Was there some culture shock to deal with in North Dakota? Were you able to really connect with locals and roughneck oil workers? How?

Noah: We anticipated a culture shock, but I can’t say it ever happened.

You have a beer, play some pool and sing some karaoke with the oil workers and all of a sudden where you’re from doesn’t matter–it’s about whether or not you’re willing to have a good time.

I have to say that the transparent and down-to-earth values of many of the people we met in North Dakota were very appealing to me.

It doesn’t take much to connect on a basic human level with honest people.

Sara: The disorientation I felt had more to do with the landscape than the culture, I think. The sky was bigger than I’d ever believed possible, and the winds were more severe. It was a geology stripped bare, and it couldn’t have felt further from the anonymity of a big city.

There was also a different culture of food, and at some point— I think after a few days of eating only chicken burgers and cheese burgers at the restaurant in town– I started to dream of fresh vegetables.

Tim: I’m not surprised you guys got along with the locals while shooting the film – that sense of unguarded authenticity really comes through in the trailer.

Another feeling I get from the trailer is an eerie sort of foreboding, often associated with the tools of oil production. No doubt your audience has very mixed feelings about energy companies like Halliburton, in light of global warming, oil wars and government corruption.

Did you have any assumptions about oil production when you arrived in North Dakota, and how did they evolve while making the movie?

Filmmakers Noah and Sam

Sara: That’s a complicated question. I definitely have a knee-jerk reaction to big name oil companies like Halliburton, and I can’t help but connect the sight of a drilling rig to the invisible structures of corporate greed and power so embedded in the oil industry.

But our goal was to focus on the social impact of the oil boom, the human experience on a local level, rather than taking any sort of overt political stance.

We learned quickly that holding onto a certain amount of neutrality would allow us to hear a much wider range of perspectives— I can’t tell you how many times we were asked if we were making an environmentalist movie, as if the e-word were some kind of slur.

So it was important to us that we approach people working for the oil companies as people effected by the boom rather than as characters through whom we could push an agenda.

Still, my general sense of corruption and gluttony in the oil industry went pretty unchallenged. We didn’t have the most positive relationships with oil company officials, who consistently ignored us or turned down our pleas for access to a drilling rig.

Although I left with an understanding of the growth and opportunities that come with a boom, I also have a more intimate sense of the possibility for economic collapse — the inevitable bust.

Noah: I don’t have anything to add to Sara’s last response. I think she nailed it.

Tim: What did you learn from the people of Stanley, North Dakota that you hope to communicate to the people who watch your film?

Noah: I have no generalizations to make about the people of Stanley, North Dakota, because everyone is handling this situation in their own specific way, and I think our film communicates that point.

The central issue of the film–what drove us to make it and what I hope people respond to–is the question of how a natural resource so far below can so dramatically affect life on the surface.

I can say generally that the people of Stanley were incredibly welcoming to us, and most were more than willing to give us interviews and show us around. I think the film reflects that welcoming spirit. We were able to include a very diverse collection of voices from the community.

Sara: Noah’s right. It made our job a bit more difficult, but it was impossible to generalize or simplify the range of voices we heard in Stanley.

Instead of trying to wrap things up into any one lesson or argument, we wanted to communicate the impossibility of doing exactly that. I think, in the end, it’s that embrace of multiplicity that will make viewers feel like they can relate to the community of people they see in the film.

On the other hand, we were asked by a few local residents in Stanley to convey one message in particular— that everyone should buy more canola oil— because canola is one of the main crops grown in western North Dakota.

Tim: Buy more canola oil, right on. Thanks for chatting guys, all of us at Matador can’t wait for the film.

Community Connection!

Do you have a question for the filmmakers? Please join the conversation by leaving a comment below, or check out Sara and Noah’s Matador profiles.

McCain looking glum.

If elected, chances are that John McCain would preside over disasters far more bloody, expensive and misguided than those of President Bush.

McCain sees himself as a warrior, eager to go down fighting in a blaze of glory, destroying his enemies without mercy. He’s a gambler.

It’s easy to imagine McCain in the Oval Office, grumbling like Nixon after a bad day, ordering the Joint Chiefs to ‘bomb the enemy, wipe ‘em out, get the nukes ready, we’re going all-in.’

After witnessing one too many of McCain’s furious rages, a Republican Senator famously said, “I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”

A Confused Old Fighter

John McCain’s eagerness to go to war is the wrong answer at a time when we need international cooperation to solve tough problems like terrorism, economic crisis, and climate change.

Even more troubling, however, is the fact that McCain is confused about the identity of the enemy.

McCain forgets who American troops are fighting against and where. He has an idea of some amorphous, terrifying and depraved enemy, and he’s willing to drop nuclear bombs to destroy that threat, but he doesn’t have a grasp of the real dangers of the 21st century.

John McCain is simply out of touch.

Economic cluelessness is just the tip of the iceberg.

Decades spent flying on his wife’s private plane from Washington meetings straight to one of his luxury vacation homes has kept McCain in a sheltered bubble of wealth.

All the man can do these days is stand in front of bright lights and say things like “The fundamentals of the economy are strong,” or “We’ve made great progress economically” under President Bush – clueless statements only a rich, corporate Republican could believe.

McCain’s economic policies are the same as those of President Bush. His economic adviser ran her company into the ground and then unashamedly collected over $20 million dollars. His big-money donors are old chums of President Bush.

“I Hate the Gooks”

McCain on the mic.

McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam is often cited as proof of his credentials. Sadly, his time in prison also made him hateful and prone to fits of rage.

Do we really want a President who stands by his statement “I hate the gooks” conducting diplomacy with Asia?

Does a man who allegedly calls his wife “you cunt” and “trollop” have the moral character to serve as President?

Incidentally, does anyone use the word “trollop” besides angry old aristocrats and English Lit. professors?

Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran

John McCain is itching to start bombing.

America is blessed to have the best military in the world, but we must choose our battles wisely. As thousands of grieving American households know all too well, rash decisions and unnecessary wars have bloody and expensive consequences.

American bombing can save lives and create peace, as it did in Bosnia, or it can precipitate genocide, as it did in Cambodia. John McCain has made one thing clear: he will not hesitate to bomb countries regardless of whether or not they ever actually attacked America.

I’ve had too many friends die in Iraq to think more reckless bombing is a good idea.

Hope For Change

I’m confident Americans will elect Barack Obama in November. Obama is a true statesman with the potential to become the most inspirational president since JFK.

But I’m worried, because McCain is letting Bush political veterans run the sleaziest and most dishonest presidential campaign in modern history.

John McCain will go down fighting. Let’s hope he doesn’t get the chance to take America down with him.

Community Connection!

This is a critical moment in history. We must work hard to elect Barack Obama. Please, call your friends and family and tell them why their vote matters.

Are you traveling now? Please read 7 Things Americans Abroad Can Do For Obama.

If you haven’t already read up on Obama’s policies and character, please visit BarackObama.com.

Passge Back to India / Photo Anne Cushman

The best sort of travel writing works on at least two levels: one narrow and personal and one broadly illustrative.

Good travel writing must be intensely personal. The writer needs to reveal herself, so that narrative can unfold through the lens of a familiar and established perspective. The story-teller must be present in the story, or else the work becomes featureless and flat.

There’s danger, though, in focusing too heavily on personal experience.

We all know the travel blogs that nobody reads, the ones that start off with the line – “Sorry I haven’t updated the blog more, but so much has happened in the past two weeks!” – and then launch into a breathless refrain of “and then I, and then I” that knocks the reader out cold quicker than blows from a police baton.

Illustrating a travel story isn’t about listing every last detail; it’s about choosing the details that resonate.

The writer needs to empathize with the reader, to know which mental snapshot will set off a train of emotional memory and which detail will fall flat. The ultimate question is always: Can the reader relate?

Even if you’ve never fled from a hurricane, bused to Mexico City or searched for a loved one in an Angolan war zone, I guarantee you’ll find something you can relate to in the stories collected below. Enjoy.

1. “Remembering Katrina, Waiting For Gustav” by Eva Holland

Eva Holland’s account of a hasty exit from New Orleans is the best kind of travel blog, one that’s already there, inside the author, and just starts flowing when she sits down to write at 4 am, forming a story that’s raw, clean, honest and beautiful.

2. “Slumming In Rio“ by Rob Verger

The growing phenomenon of slum tourism makes many people uncomfortable, including Rob Verger, the author of this emotive travelogue from Worldhum.

Whatever your reaction to packaged poverty tours, it’s hard to deny the literary quality of this essay. There’s a lot more left to write about slum tourism, but Rob’s perspective is personal, balanced and reflective.

3. “The Aviators” by Xan Rice

The new online presence of Granta magazine is great news for aficionados of fine travel writing. In the words of another reviewer, “Granta has its face pressed firmly against the window, determined to witness the world.” Xan Rice’s detailed, evocative and heart-wrenching story of a father and son lost in Angola epitomizes this ultimate goal of bearing witness.

4. “A Passage Back To India“ by Anne Cushman

Retracing her steps through the India she traversed a dozen years before, Anne Cushman reflects on how she and India have changed in the intervening years.

At turns both deeply personal and lyrically descriptive, Anne’s story is simultaneously a love note to India and a contemplation of how the past flows into the present, and how love and heartbreak can lead to greater depths of understanding.

5. “Sixty Hours To Mexico City” by Justin Nobel

I’m not a fan of interminable bus rides, but for some reason I’m a sucker for travel narratives of those bus rides. The conversations, the towns captured in one or two details, the billboards, the stream of human drama, always passing through…

Jason Nobel’s account of his trip from San Francisco to Mexico City is a classic long-distance bus narrative, one of dozens of fine travel essays in the archives of the standout online publication The Smart Set.

Have you found any great travel stories on the web? Share in the comments!

Photo by art_es_anna

China and Tibet are getting a lot of media attention. Passions are running high, and simple truths are tough to come by.

What do we English speaking travelers know about China and Tibet?

Few of us have been to Shanghai, or Lhasa, and fewer still can understand any Mandarin Chinese, let alone Tibetan.

In the modern world, what happens high in the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas will impact every one of us, from Sydney to San Francisco. Therefore, it’s important that we actively seek an understanding of China and Tibet that goes beyond packaged news clips and knee-jerk reactions.

As any government propagandist worth his salt knows well, history is malleable. In the PR game of politics, history must be controlled even as it’s being made.

In the interests, then, of genuine, cross-cultural, person-to-person understanding, the kind that’s unfiltered by institutions, this edition of Tales From the Road features dispatches from some of the best writers of our time, reporting live from China and Tibet.

These are the stories that need to be told.

1) “Give China Some Face” by Sascha Matuszak

Sascha is a story-teller vagabond who now lives in Chengdu, a city in the foothills of the Himalayas near the center of the recent Chinese earthquake. In “Give China Some Face” he asks an important question:

Is it possible to have a benevolent, peaceful wave of patriotic love that could surge across China’s borders? I think that entirely depends on how the world reacts to a nation bursting with pride and emotion, as China is now.

Also check out Sascha’s stories of real-life legends of the Tibetan foothills: Crouching Tigers, Rara Gyata and The Lady In The Red Dress.

2) “Tibet Through Chinese Eyes” by Peter Hessler

Peter Hessler is the best native English speaking writer now living in China, and the best suited to articulate the Chinese perspective on Tibet.

3) “A Monk’s Struggle” by Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer’s new book on the Dalai Lama, The Open Road, is one of his best works yet, a labor of many years by one of the world’s greatest living travel writers. “A Monk’s Struggle” is a concise version of the full manuscript.

4) “What Goes Around: A Short Walk In Eastern Tibet” by Mark Jenkins

The great Mark Jenkins doesn’t write much about Sino-Tibetan relations in this beautifully crafted story, but his tale of a journey to a sacred lake high on the Tibetan plateau is just too eloquent to leave out of the round-up.

5) “The Terrified Monks” by Nick Kristof

The intrepid international journalist Nick Kristof snuck into historically Tibetan regions of western China to report on the Chinese crackdown on Tibetan monks for the New York Times. His conclusion?

China is emerging as a great power in this century, and it is famously concerned with saving face. But it loses far more face from its own repression of Tibetans than from anything the Dalai Lama has ever done.

It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. Let’s start an open discussion below!

I also invite everyone to join the discussion of Matt Kepnes’ excellent article published last week here on Brave New Traveler: Why It’s Useless To Boycott The Beijing Olympics.

Are you a student who wants to learn more about China and Tibet? Check out David DeFranza’s authoritative guide to study abroad options in China.

You can also get in touch with Matador’s Tibet expert, phishtopher, an anthropologist currently researching Tibetan narratives in western China and India.

After an explosion of confusion and outrage more typical of Zimbabwean politics than the normal, good-humored tone of this little travel magazine, the Thomas Kohnstamm affair is finally fading into the rearview mirror.

We should have seen the firestorm coming.

After all, the BNT editorial team wasn’t exactly shy about throwing gasoline on the flames (the photo of Thomas in hell didn’t seem so clever when we learned that he allegedly received death threats).

Given that much of the outrage was provoked by misinformation, in retrospect some of the more inflammatory comments are clearly out of line.

That said, we have few regrets about publishing the post, and feel that with the dust settled, there is much we can learn from the experience.

Reacting To The News

Here’s one thing we want to make totally clear: Eva’s original post was a response to a developing news story, not a news article in its own right. There’s a big difference.

The facts in the mainstream newspaper and wire service publications that first reported the story were sensationalized and exaggerated to the point of serious distortion. Why this was the case remains unclear, although all parties involved had an interest in making the biggest media splash possible.

As a reaction to the story, Eva’s post was right on the money. So, for the most part, were the opinions expressed in the commentary as the story evolved.

Instead of reacting in the heat of the moment, should we all have stopped writing, taken a deep breath and let the facts fully emerge before responding? Perhaps.

Then again, perhaps not. After all, the fire did a pretty thorough job of burning away the exaggeration, and when all is said and done, we’re a lot closer to the truth than when we started.

Where’s The Real Story?

Kohnstamm comes out of this scandal looking like a mildly sleazy character, but it’s pretty clear that titillating goodies like table service, drug deals and helpful Colombian chicks are just sugary fluff meant to sell books.

So where’s the beef?

In his response to Eva’s post, Kohnstamm wrote the following:

“I am trying to write a book about the truth in travel writing, not some plagiarist who is trying to turn a fast buck off of being an asshole.”

Putting aside the questions of whether Kohnstamm is a plagiarist or an asshole, what does this scandal reveal about the truth in travel writing?

Can You Handle The Truth?

Kohnstamm argues that guidebook writers are often poorly paid, inexperienced writers who sometimes engage in unprofessional behavior.

Having just finished a guidebook assignment myself, I can unequivocally state that Kohnstamm is exactly right. The sharp decline in quality across the guidebook industry in the last decade is hardly news.

These days, the professional guidebook writer is a dying breed, and assignments go to eager, inexperienced writers willing to work for flat fees of a few thousand dollars per assignment, with no benefits or royalties.

Lonely Planet, Fodor’s, Rough Guide and all the other guidebook publishing houses aren’t going to disappear anytime soon, but the time gap between (often shoddy) research and actual publication, not to mention the years between updated editions, means that print guides will struggle to compete with interactive online travel guides that offer real-time information.

Here’s a dirty little secret: the guy writing a travel blog about his trip to Colombia is probably no less qualified to give travel advice than the guy who got paid to write a guidebook chapter on Colombia.

Plus, the first guy’s advice is published instantaneously and his contact information is no doubt readily available for readers who want to ask questions.

Traditional guidebooks just can’t compete.

The Rise Of Online Travel Guides

Thomas Kohnstamm contemplating the future.

To me, the real story behind this scandal is the decline of traditional print guidebooks and the rise of interactive online alternatives.

The online reaction to Kohnstamm’s confessions shocked everyone involved, but the swift rush to uncover the truth is indicative of the powerful potential inherent in online travel communities.

Some guidebook writers are already on top of this trend. Robert Reid, a consummate professional and Lonely Planet veteran, recently passed up the opportunity to update Lonely Planet’s Vietnam book.

Instead, Reid went to Vietnam on his own dime and published his research online as soon as he finished his trip. Reid’s online Vietnam guide has everything one could possibly need to plan an itinerary.

In addition to guidebook-style listings for restaurants, sights and accommodation, there are forums, videos and a regularly updated blog. And it’s all available for free.

The Future Is Now

Reid is a prominent pioneer in the switch from print to online travel guides, but he’s hardly making the transition alone. Even Lonely Planet is rushing to get its content online, offering steep discounts on PDF chapter downloads and fostering the development of one of the most helpful travel forums on the web.

Other examples of upstart online guides that rival mainstream guidebooks for usefulness and practicality include ArgentinasTravel.com and TalesOfAsia.

Then there are the online travel communities, like IgoUgo, Trip Advisor and Matador, all of which depend on enthusiastic users to share their travel recommendations.

Who Can You Trust?

My Mom, bless her heart, isn’t quite sure about this whole online travel writing business.

“There’s so much junk on the Internet,” she says. “How do you know who you’re dealing with? When I travel, I want a source I can trust.”

Well Mom, I agree that making travel plans on the basis of a random stranger’s blog isn’t a smart idea. But in the best of these online travel communities, the bloggers aren’t random strangers. They’re people – fascinating and passionate – and by reading their profiles and blogs, it’s easy to get a sense of who they are and where they’re coming from.

If I was going to Puerto Rico, I’d talk to Julie. If I was going to San Francisco, I’d hit up Ross. If I was going to Ottawa, Eva would get me the latest tips.

If I was going to Colombia, I’d talk to Richard. He lives there. And I have an inkling that he knows the place a hell of a lot better than (former) Lonely Planet author Thomas Kohnstamm.

Do travel writer’s go to hell? Nah. They go online.

Photo by Yambushi

What does this latest batch of quality travel stories have in common?

Aside from flawless description, intrepid reportage and the all-important inclusion of details that resonate with the reader and illuminate broader themes, each of these stories was blogged or featured at WorldHum.com.

WorldHum is the first place I look for quality travel writing online, and one of only a few sites that I check every single day.

Founded in 2001 by the accomplished travel writers Jim Benning and Michael Yessis, WorldHum chugged along on a shoestring budget for years, developing a well-earned reputation for literary excellence before being acquired by the Travel Channel.

While the Matador / BNT team hopes to someday challenge WorldHum for the designation of “Best darn travel writing Web site, period,” we’ll always be thankful to Jim and Michael for pioneering online travel media – and recognize that only WorldHum is truly “av og for intellektuelle vagabonder”.

Enjoy the stories.

1. “The Mecca Of The Mouse” by Seth Stevenson

Seth Stevenson, a good writer with a nose for irony, voluntarily (shudder) spends 5 days in Disney World, on a mission “to figure out what the hell’s going on in this place”.

To your faithful editor, who spent the better part of today in a hammock reading Brave New World, Seth’s take on the Mouse Empire is downright creepy:

I’ve come to the conclusion that Disney World teaches kids three things: 1) a meaningless, bubble-headed utopianism, 2) a grasping, whining consumerism, and 3) a preference for soulless facsimiles of culture and architecture instead of for the real thing.

Soma anyone?

2. “China’s Instant Cities” by Peter Hessler

The most important story of our time is the uncontrolled economic growth ravaging China. The best magazine in the world is National Geographic. The best American writer who specializes in China is Peter Hessler.

Little wonder, then, that Hessler’s latest National Geographic article on China’s economic explosion was recently nominated for a National Magazine Award. It will electrify you.

3. “The Serenader” by Steve Wilson

Anyone who has ever worked the night-shift or drunk-dialed a lover will appreciate this story. Roberto is a mild-mannered Mexican serenader who plays guitar outside women’s windows at night at the behest of their guilty husbands or lovelorn suitors.

A snatch of digital audio in the midst of the story is an unexpected extra treat.

4. “Revolutionary Road” by David Lamb

Former Vietnam War journalist and peacetime Hanoi correspondent David Lamb follows decades of tragic history along the former Ho Chi Minh trail. Lamb uncovers bodies, bomb craters and stories of stoic heroism, but also finds that the Vietnamese are ready to pave over the wounds of history and trade in their water buffalo for motor-scooters.

5. “Black Gold and the Golden Rule” by Jeffrey Taylor

Finally, here’s a WorldHum original about petro-state repression and one man’s inexplicable capacity to turn the other cheek.

[His] livelihood depended on his service to an industry that was poisoning his land and polluting his water, on the resource that fueled the high life in the West and helped keep his people poor.

When I asked if he was angry, he shrugged.

“I just try to manage, to help Mama and manage. No time to think about big issues.” He swatted a blood-battened mosquito on his neck. “I’m lucky to work, and I’m thankful to God. Thankful to God.”

Come across any great travel stories on the web? Share a link in the comments below! ]]> http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/04/01/tales-from-the-road-china-vietnam-nigeria-mexico-and-disney-world/feed/ 2 http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/03/28/7-more-common-mistakes-of-first-time-backpackers/ http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/03/28/7-more-common-mistakes-of-first-time-backpackers/#comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:00:08 +0000 Tim Patterson http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/03/28/7-more-common-mistakes-of-first-time-backpackers/ Having fallen into every one of these traps at least once, here are 7 mistakes to avoid for the newbies on the road.

Photo by elle_rigby

I’m writing from behind the reception desk here at El Diablo Tranquilo hostel in Punta del Diablo, Uruguay.

Every day a new group of travelers arrives in this chill little beach town. Some are seasoned solo travelers, like the sea captain who cleaned out a group of earnest Swedes in Texas Hold ‘Em last night, or the Alaskan mountain guide who winters in South America. Others are backpackers, traveling in groups, red-faced under their massive mochillas.

I have a blast hanging out with all the travelers who pass through Punta del Diablo, but I can’t help but notice how the travel style of the experienced vagabonds is much more simple and elegant than the “messily enthusiastic” methods of the newbie travelers.

While I’m still more like a naive gap-year backpacker than a world-wise traveler (the sea captain took my pesos too), I’ve learned a thing or two about travel over the years.

Deep in the BNT archives, there’s a fine article by Kirsty Henderson entitled 5 Common Mistakes Of First-Time Backpackers.

Kirsty beat me to the punch by identifying several common pitfalls, like packing too much, trying to see too much, and planning too strict an itinerary.

So, I now give you 7 MORE common mistakes made by first-time backpackers. I speak from experience, having fallen into every one of these traps at least once.

Hopefully, by reading this article, you’ll manage to avoid them.

1. Too Little Research

Make an effort to try other lodging options, such as camping, couchsurfing, home-stays and even short term apartment rentals.

Doing too little research is even worse than planning too strict an itinerary. At a bare minimum, you should learn a few words of the local language, have a sense of the cultural norms and history and know the basic geography of your destination.

The more research you do in advance, the more you will enjoy your trip. Guaranteed.

2. Sticking To The Hostel Trail

Traveling from hostel to hostel in the company of other backpackers is the easiest thing in the world. Don’t get me wrong – hostel life is a lot of fun. But by sticking to the hostel you lose out on opportunities for local interaction and original experience.

Make an effort to try other lodging options, such as camping, couchsurfing, home-stays and even short term apartment rentals.

3. Flaunting Wealth

If you’re traveling the world, you’re richer than 90 percent of the people in it. If you travel in cheap destinations like Latin America, India or Southeast Asia, you may not spend a lot of money, but you are still astronomically wealthy by local standards.

Flaunting wealth in such places can be as seemingly innocuous as listening to an iPod or taking photos with a digital DSLR. Strive for discretion and modesty.

4. Getting Stuck Without Money

Having no money is a heck of a lot worse than showing off by spending too much. Be sure you have at least two ways to access money on the road. A debit card is good, but keep some traveler’s checks also, along with cash. Store your money in separate places and have a backup plan in case your belongings are stolen.

5. Drinking Too Much

Photo by Satbir

It’s easy to drink too much while traveling, not only because many travelers are in the ‘vacation’ mindset, but also because travel is stressful, and alcohol is a simple way to (temporarily) relieve stress.

Make a conscious effort to drink wisely. You will save money and energy, and lessen your chances of getting robbed or injured.

6. Checking Facebook Every Day

You will miss your friends and family while traveling. So write letters. Write blogs. Call home on Skype once in a while. But don’t get sucked into the gossip of Facebook, or check e-mail three times a day. Traveling means leaving home behind. Leave your homepage behind too.

7. Ignoring Advice

Even if you agree with all the advice I’ve just passed along, I’m sure you’ll leave for your next trip with too big a pack and too strict an itinerary. I bet you’ll be updating your Facebook status, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find you drinking too much in a hostel bar.

Why do I have so little faith in your ability to follow sound advice? Well, to be honest, I don’t follow my own advice half the time.

Traveling well demands a combination of spontaneity, confidence, humility and discipline that can be difficult to balance.

We can never hope to master the art of travel, but by learning from our mistakes and doing our best to follow the advice of others, we can avoid some common pitfalls.

What travel mistakes have you learned from? Leave a comment below!

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Since 1962, Burma has been ruled by a brutal, self-serving military junta, but recent news suggests the peace-loving people of Burma may finally rise up to demand an end to military rule.

Processions of Buddhist monks are courageously marching in the streets of major cities to protest the junta. These marchers risk torture, imprisonment and death, but they speak with conviction and carry their banners high.

Perhaps their courage will be rewarded. It’s crucial for the outside world to stand with the marchers of Burma.

If we turn a blind eye to their plight, the junta will be free to unleash a firestorm of violent repression. If we pay attention, even from a distance, the military may be unwilling to risk global outrage, and a peaceful resolution might be achieved.

This edition of Tales From the Road is focused on travel narratives from Burma, but I also encourage you to read and respond to breaking news. At the bottom of this page I’ve included links to some good news articles, and a Google News search will no doubt turn up others.

Your thoughts and comments are especially welcome.

1) “From Mandalay to Pyin U Lwin” by Sean McCarthy

Sean McCarthy’s rattle-trap narrative about his journey from Mandalay to the small town of Pyin U Lwin gives a good picture of what independent travel in Burma is actually like.

McCarthy’s writing isn’t as exact as it might be – he refers to the pro-democracy protests of 1988 as violent, when it was actually the repression of those protests which led to hundreds of deaths – a crucial distinction.

He does have an eye for telling detail, however, and writes with honesty and good humor.

2) “Lingering a Little Longer With the Lotus Eaters” by Michael Meadows

“Of all the countries I’ve traveled in, I’ve never enjoyed and respected a people as much as I do the Burmese,” writes Michael Meadows in this casually eloquent travel narrative.

Meadows displays a good ear for language and imagery, and although he sometimes falls into the trap of personal travel blogs – “we met plenty of other interesting characters and had a great night” – the piece reads smoothly and contains plenty of concrete observation and useful cultural context. Great photos too.

3) “Native Eye for the Tourist Guy” by Rolf Potts

Emperor of Vagabonds Rolf Potts once rode a bicycle across Burma, but this story is more about the oddities of backpacker fashion than the people and places he encountered along the way.

Rolf managed to destroy his pants during the ride and replaced them with a traditional Burmese skirt, or lungi. After an awkward initiation, Rolf was able to wear his lungi like a native – so why the laughs on Khao San Road?

4) “The Ghost Road” by Mark Jenkins

Wow. Nobody writes like Mark Jenkins. This heart-breaking adventure story about his attempt to travel through Northern Burma on the old Stillwell Road reads like a confession and rolls hard for 8 full pages.

Jenkins risked his life to write this story, but it’s the profiles of the people he met along the way that are most wrenching.

For decades the Burmese military has brutalized ethnic minorities. Their suffering reminds us how lucky we are, and how travel – even the most hardcore adventure travel – is ultimately a selfish luxury.

5) “The Walk From Burma to Northern India” by Jagjit Kohli

Jagjit Kohli is not a writer, so far as I know. In this essay, she simply tells her story, a tragic story of epic dimensions boiled down to a few hundred plain-spoken words.

Kohli became a refugee during World War II and fled through malarial jungles from Burma to Northern India. She then became a refugee for a second time during the creation of Pakistan.

“We were worse than animals in those days,” she writes. “But these things do happen.”

News articles about the monk-led protests in Burma:

On 9/26 the military cracked down on peaceful protesters, arresting hundreds and swarming the streets with riot police. The New York Times has a solid article.

Here’s a CNN article about the global reaction to the protests and crackdown.

And finally, here’s a short piece quoting an opposition leader who “fears more loss of life.”

Until next week…

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

“You’re sure?” I replied. “Thanks.”

And with a new tube in my rear tire, I pedaled off along the St. Lawrence in the general direction of Halifax.

It’s not the places you go, or the things you see when traveling that are most memorable. It’s the people you meet – the helpful strangers along the way who remain in your thoughts for years to come.

Last night, I had the great pleasure of staying with Claude LeMay of Baie St. Paul, Quebec.

Claude put me up in his house overlooking Isle Aux Coudres, and we stayed up late in front of his woodstove, talking about the artists of Baie St. Paul and the mining town in Labrador where Claude grew up.

A few hours before, Claude had been a stranger, a random profile on the hospitality sharing website www.couchsurfing.com. When we said goodbye this morning, he was my friend.

This edition of Tales From the Road is about people – soldiers, farmers, BASE jumpers, record breakers and a Lady in a Mountain. It’s dedicated to strangers, who, as we travel, become our friends.

1) “The Penitent Legionnaire” by Robert Ward

In this gem of a story from the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Northern Spain, Robert Ward writes of his encounter with a modern day penitent, a retired French legionnaire.

In conversations about his past – fighting in the jungles of Africa and trading gunfire with a Mossad agent in Lebanon – the former warrior shares the wistful sort of wisdom that comes from a life spent fighting secret battles in distant lands.

Ward’s careful use of detail and unassuming tone allows the story to unfold naturally, capturing not only facts and dialogue, but the feel of the encounter as well.

2) “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” by David Miller

In chapters 1 and 2 of a 4 part series, David Miller profiles the denizens of “Primal House,” a home-base for extreme athletes in Squaw Valley California.

Primal House is not your typical A-Frame – there’s both a climbing wall and a trampoline, and as Miller writes “the trick was to jump from the loft, bounce off the trampoline, then grab one of the holds, and stick it.”

David sticks the writing in this profile, serving up a dose of inspiration so strong you might just paint your face black and jump off the side of a mountain.

3) “Letter to a Volcano” by David Wallis

I always mean to write letters to the people I meet on my travels, but somehow my best intentions always fall prey to distance and lack of urgency. Not David Wallis.

He was so struck by his encounter with The Lady in the Mountain on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, he wrote her a letter – and published it too!

Of course, since the Lady in question is a volcano, I hope David isn’t holding his breath for a reply.

4) “Record Collector” by Tim Zimmerman

In all the media hullabaloo over Steve Fossett’s mysterious disappearance in the Nevada desert, a true portrait of the man and his motivations is lacking.

Tim Zimmerman rode shotgun with Fossett during his record breaking voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 2003.

Zimmerman’s article, published in Outside Magazine, is a tightly written adventure story, but also a reflective profile of a man driven relentlessly toward risk, always pressing higher, faster, farther.

5) “Land, Farmer, Community: A Sacred Trust” by Lisa M. Hamilton

It’s not a travel story, exactly, but Lisa Hamilton’s elegant portrayal of Japanese farmers devoted to building World Peace through a mutually respectful and fulfilling relationship with Mother Earth really moved me.

When I lived in Japan, I met a man named Benzo who was 90 years old and lived in a house he built himself from the wood of trees he planted himself decades before. Everything Benzo ate, he grew in his garden.

Benzo is the happiest, most energetic and healthiest old man I’ve ever met. This article is about farmers like Benzo, and the deep joy and contentment that can be found by living with the land.

6) Bonus! “Backcountry Fly-Fishing in Yellowstone National Park” by Tim Patterson

As a little bonus this week, here’s a link to my latest story, a narrative travel guide to backcountry fly-fishing in the Lamar River valley, one of the most remote areas of Yellowstone National Park.

I hope you enjoy reading about my trip, and use the information in the guide to catch some trout in Yellowstone yourself!

Until next week!

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

These stories celebrate the joy of spontaneity, channeling the blazing roman candle spirit of Jack Kerouac, but they also take time to consider deeper themes: the effects of economic globalization on traditional culture and the proper place for trust and fear.

In the words of writer Ben Brazil, whose story from the jungles of southern Mexico rounds out this week’s edition, travel is most magical when it’s approached as an “unscripted journey open to chance encounters and random weirdness.”

So hit the trail, prepare for epiphany and hardship, rot-gut and revelation. Open your minds and hearts and trust in the power of the open road. Just remember the importance of trust, and the necessity of fear.

Happy reading!

1) “Let’s Spend the Night Together” by Chris Epting

There’s nothing like a good ghost story to raise goose-bumps on your arms. When a ghostly tale is combined with a travel pilgrimage and set to old-time rock ‘n roll, the result is a great story that will tingle your scalp and stoke your wanderlust.

Chris Epting tracks down the ghosts of music legends like Janis Joplin and Gram Parsons by staying up late in the motel rooms where they died, listening to their last albums and reading their most soulful interviews.

His story is one of the best in a terrific new edition of the online magazine Perceptive Travel, which regularly features smart, edgy and funny travel writing that you just can’t find in mainstream travel publications.

2) “The Distance Between Then and Now” by Bill Belleville

Worldhum.com is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac’s inspirational Beat manifesto.

The exuberance of On the Road still resonates today, but like an exploding Roman candle, Kerouac’s fiery brilliance burned out too fast.

Bill Belleville’s reminiscence about a not-quite Kerouacian road-trip of his own is a great story, not just because it’s an entertaining travelogue, but also because Belleville writes about his spontaneous road-trip from a perspective Kerouac never achieved: the content nostalgia of responsible middle-age.

3) “Learning From Ladakh” by Josh Kearns

Bravenewtraveler.com contributor Josh Kearns just completed a home stay program in a remote farming village at 12,000 feet in the Northern Indian province of Ladakh.

I’ve been waiting for a blog from Josh for a long time, and “Learning From Ladakh” doesn’t disappoint: it’s hands down the best thing I’ve read in months.

Josh offers a sweeping critique of the global economic system, informed and contextualized by his experience living and working among traditional farmers in Thailand and Ladakh.

The article is long, but stick with Josh until the end – his is an important, articulate and truly inspiring message.

4) “The No Fall Zone” by Dave Hahn

What does it take to ski down Mt. Everest? Experience, oxygen, cash and “the right mix of fear and confidence.”

Mountaineering guide and travel writer Dave Hahn was on top of the world when Kit and Rob Deslauriers and photographer Jimmy Chin strapped on skis and carved down the summit ridge to the Hillary Step.

You don’t need to ski down Mt. Everest to have a great trip (or write a great travel story), but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

5) “Chiapas, Without Reservations” by Ben Brazil

Putting together Tales From the Road each week, I’ve discovered some travel writers who I can always count on for a a great story. Ben Brazil is rapidly becoming one of my favorite story-tellers.

He seems like the kind of guy I’d like to travel with – someone who isn’t afraid of sticking out his thumb and seeing where the road will lead.

In this story about traveling the Chiapas Highway with his new wife, Ben celebrates the thrill of spontaneous travel, setting off on an “unscripted journey open to chance encounters and random weirdness.”

Until next week…

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

It comes from breaking out of routine and finding yourself some place new, where anything can happen.

The feeling is a silly sort of glee, a giddy wave of adrenaline that tickles your stomach and crinkles the corners of your eyes and makes you want to yell and wave your arms and act like a fool.

Of course, all travelers are fools of one sort or another. Who in their right mind would fly halfway around the world to sit on a cranky camel and eat sand soup in the Sahara?

And yet, we keep chasing that rush, bumbling on to new adventures and grinning all the while.

I found a wonderful quote while putting together this round-up. It’s by a traveler named Peter Fleming, who went to Xinjiang in 1935:

“He who starts on a ride of two or three thousand miles may experience, at the moment of departure, a variety of emotions. He may feel excited, sentimental, anxious, carefree, heroic, roistering, picaresque, introspective, or practically anything else; but above all he must and will feel a fool.”

This week’s roundup goes out to traveling fools, to all wayfarers chasing enlightenment and glee.

1) “My Best Holiday Experience” by Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is the unofficial poet-laureate of travel writing, a master of language and insight who has captured sights, sounds, smells and flavors in countless corners of the globe.

In this essay, Iyer recounts the first moment travel seized him and would not let go. Playing hooky from an office job in New York, Iyer set off for Asia and found himself utterly enraptured.

Few of us have traveled as widely as Iyer, but we can all relate to that exhilarating feeling of wide-eyed wonder he describes so well.

2) “Yurts, Yak-Hair Patches, and a Wary Uighur Separatist” by Greg Grim

This is the last and best installment in a 5 piece travel narrative entitled “Three Knuckle-Headed Guys Cycle the Silk Road.”

I love to travel by bicycle; it’s slow enough to notice interesting details, fast enough to cover serious ground and hard enough to generate plenty of endorphin epiphanies.

Grim and his buddies rode from Istanbul to Western China, and the resultant tale is equal parts ridiculous and sublime.

At the end, Grim stares into a mirror somewhere in the vast frontier of Western China. He’s sunburned, chapped, wind-blown and wild-eyed, but he’s still smiling. Read the story, and you will be too.

3) “Jay Peak: Redefining the Ride” by Chris Weiss

I love finding great travel stories in obscure blogs – it’s like stumbling across a terrific hole-in-the-wall restaurant in a new city.

“Redefining the Ride” is the story of a snowboarder desperate to salvage a season lacking in snow, who convinces an erstwhile friend to join him for one last trip to the mountains.

The two set off from New York City at 8 pm and drive through the night in a blinding snowstorm all the way to Jay Peak, a blue-collar resort at the Northern edge of Vermont. Luckily, powder awaits at the end of the highway.

“The atmosphere at Jay was a rich, rare treat,” writes Weiss. So is this story.

4) “Escape to Mount Kenya” by Matthew Powers

As Matthew Powers discovers, climbing Mt. Kenya is no easy feat. But for three Italian prisoners of war captured by the British and languishing in a prison camp, climbing was the easy part.

Before attempting the mountain, they first had to break free.

Few readers of this column are prisoners of war, but anyone working in an office can relate to the impulse for adventure that led the Italians to embark on their audacious gambit:

“In order to break the monotony of life one had only to start taking risks again.”

5) “Burma or Bust” by Mark Jenkins

There are better writers than Mark Jenkins, and there are more daring adventurers too. But there aren’t very many people who are superior in either category, and none who can top him in both.

“Burma or Bust” is a classic adventure tale, an ambitious and illegal trek across Eastern Tibet to Northern Burma, with the goal of making the first ascent of a peak called Hkakabo Razi. Whether or not the journey is successful or not is somehat beside the point.

As Jenkins notes:

“I’ll be the first to admit that this expedition to Burma was half-mad from the beginning and that the chances of success were perhaps small. So what? If you’re sure you can do it, what’s the point?”

Anyone up for a road-trip?

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

As the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times, one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world, Matt gets to travel across the country and around the globe and share his adventures with hundreds of thousands of readers.

It’s enough to make me green with envy.

A few weeks ago I got Matt’s attention by calling him my “nemesis” in an edition of Tales From the Road.

Problem is, it turns out that Matt isn’t just a great travel writer with an amazing job – he’s also a really nice guy, totally accessible, candid and down-to-earth.

In a moment of petty, jealous spite I called him “a hopelessly untalented writer of dubious integrity” – he responded by inviting me to a travel writer’s get-together in Brooklyn.

In the following interview, Matt talks about the intersection of travel writing and the Internet, the importance of humility and why he tries not to spend his days chatting with off-duty prostitutes.

It’s been a privilege to interview Matt and we both welcome your thoughts and comments.

TIM: What’s it like to be a travel writer for the New York Times? Do you modify your style when you’re writing as the Frugal Traveler, instead of for a ‘cheeky’ publication like TripmasterMonkey?

MATT: What’s it like? Well, people regularly tell me I have the best job in the world, which makes me a little uncomfortable, but I guess that’s what it is-awesome.

For the most part, I get to write about wherever I want, however I want. Which is not to say I simply do whatever I want. At the Times, there is some sense that the articles should be useful to prospective travelers, so I try as much as possible to balance that mandate with readable, enjoyable adventure.

But while I write for the Times in the persona of the Frugal Traveler, a character who’s almost exactly the same as Matt Gross, at TMM I write pretty much as myself, if a little unhinged. I can be sarcastic, obtuse, insulting, ridiculous, impractical, clever and opinionated.

It’s quite cathartic, but it’s also just a different beast from the Times. In any case, when you write for multiple publications, the challenge is always to “get” the voice of the publication while maintaining your own unique style. As you can imagine, that can be tricky.

So as a travel writer you modify your voice to match the tone of various publications. Do you find yourself doing a similar thing as you travel, adjusting your personality to fit places and cultures?

Adjust my personality? Maybe a little. I try-as I imagine most travel writers do-to imagine myself as something of a “normal tourist.”

That is, if I were paying for this vacation, what would I hope to get out of it? A good meal or two, a comfortable hotel, the “better” (i.e. less touristy) tourist sites and a few places, events or activities that are unusual but let me feel like I’m somehow getting to the heart of the destination.

For me, personally, as Matt Gross, maybe I’d do things differently on my own dime-go skateboarding, or spend the day chatting with off-duty hookers, or track down a sketchy-but-great restaurant near the warehouse district.

Or maybe I’d do the destination just as I would as the Frugal Traveler. It’s been such long time since I’ve traveled on my own that I can’t quite remember what I actually do when I’m abroad.

But again, when it comes to the writing, it’s all about balance: I want the column to be accessible, but to reflect my own occasionally quirky interests. I want it to fit into the Times, but I want to put my own stamp on it.

I want some mainstream activities in there, but I also want to discover (or at least bring to light) new options. The last thing I want is to become a self-indulgent travel writer, imagining that every little thing I do is of interest to readers. Yeesh.

Well, self-indulgence is one thing, but you’ve certainly developed a following among readers who get to know you through your columns.

How has the Internet influenced your career, and the way you interact with readers?

I owe everything to the Internet.

Obviously, there would be no way to file my stories, photos and videos without it, but it also lets me reach infinitely more people than the ordinary paper does, and lets them reach me.

The readers seem to love being able to shape my journey-God, look at all those comments!-and sometimes I wish there were deeper ways to involve them. “Instant online poll: Should Matt go north or south? Eat Chinese or Italian?”

And I guess writing for the Web creates a kind of intimacy with readers as well. I get Facebook and MySpace requests pretty regularly, and am happy (usually) to have these people as both online and real-life friends; I never say no to meeting strangers.

Still, the readers rarely hear from me directly. I may occasionally answer questions in a formal setting, or I may incorporate their suggestions into an article, but I don’t generally talk back.

For one thing, I don’t want to get involved in the arguments that inevitably arise, but I also want to maintain some distance-some air of mystery about myself.

It’s strategy: Make people wait for you, anticipate you. If you’re everywhere all at once, available on IM and Skype 24 hours a day, then maybe the readers will get bored of you.

The Internet has definitely revolutionized travel writing. Do you think online media is in the process of replacing traditional magazines and newspapers?

No.

Okay, a longer answer? The revenue generated by online media is still not great enough to fund the reporting you find in traditional print media, so until it reaches that level-or we run out of trees-there will always be magazines and newspapers.

They can all coexist, along with TV, movies, radio and whatever gets invented next year. I don’t understand the inter-media battles at all.

I ran across a great quote the other day, by a traveler named Peter Fleming who went to Xinjiang in 1935. It goes like this:

“He who starts on a ride of two or three thousand miles may experience, at the moment of departure, a variety of emotions. He may feel excited, sentimental, anxious, carefree, heroic, roistering, picaresque, introspective, or practically anything else; but above all he must and will feel a fool.”

Thoughts?

Nice quote, but it’s a shame he limits it to “the moment of departure.” Me, I felt like a fool-an excited, sentimental, anxious, carefree, heroic, roistering, introspective fool-every moment of every day of the trip.

I think it may have been Socrates who said, “I know nothing but the fact of my own ignorance,” and that’s as good a philosophy for a travel writer as any.

For more Matt Gross, visit his feature Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip. He also edits for TripMasterMonkey

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

It can be an exploration of animosity, or a ride to the chapel on your wedding day.

This week Tales of the Road explores a brutal jungle of hidden, festering horrors; a moral wasteland where blood-sucking fiends skulk in the shadows, a place so nightmarish that the author who explored its darkest corners is unwilling to identify himself.

That’s right…prepare to venture into the world of the American business traveler!

Oh – and there’s also a lovely article from the jungles of Papau New Guinea, where American soldiers once battled malaria and the Japanese Imperial Army.

“I would have taken an enemy bullet before going back into those mountains,” said one veteran after hiking across Papau New Guinea on his way to the battlefield.

As for me, I’d rather slog through the leech-infested jungle than press flesh in Shanghai.

Read on, and make up your own mind…

1) “Of Courtesans and Kings” by ‘The Professor’

I’m intrigued whenever an author hides behind a pseudonym. A refusal to identify oneself with a story is, ironically, a mark of honesty in my book, a tell-tale sign of truth shrouded in the darkness of a confessional space.

Just think how many juicy stories start with a furtive dart of the eyes and the disclaimer: “You didn’t hear this from me, but…”

‘The Professor,’ as our mysterious truth-teller is known, is an American business traveler who specializes in China. Few people have more influence over our global future than deal-makers in the Pearl River delta, but their’s is a secretive world.

Backpackers spill every mundane detail of their trips in blogs, but when was the last time you read a tell-all account of a business trip to Shanghai?

‘The Professor’ doesn’t spill any sensitive trade secrets, but he happens to be a fine writer, and his story provides a small window into the pin-striped universe of the business traveler.

2) “A Lake of Pure Sunshine” by Scott Calhoun

Scott Calhoun does not fit the typical profile of a flower-peeper. In this rollicking narrative about searching for wildflowers in California, Scott dishes on everything from immigration policy (let immigrants who open good restaurants stay) to Motel 6 (”we’ll flip over the ashtray for you”).

He even compares Joshua trees to Keith Richards (”I’ve had a long night, sweethearts, but I’ve managed to send up these fabulous bayonets for your enjoyment. God I need a nap.”) This story is pure, sunny enjoyment.

3) “Walking Off the Karakoram Highway” by Jeffrey Taylor

Worldhum.com has published some absolutely terrific travel stories recently, which makes my job a lot easier!

“Walking Off the Karakoram Highway”, by the renowned adventurer Jeffrey Taylor, is a gutsy, meaningful travelogue that spares no descriptive detail yet doesn’t waste a single word. In tone, content and literary quality, it reminds me of Rory Stewart’s incredible book about walking across Afghanistan.

Taylor doesn’t just travel off the beaten path; he ventures into places where the danger is real, and writes well enough for those of us back home to feel traces of his wistful uncertainty and gnawing fear.

4) “Chasing Ghosts” by James Campbell

Outside magazine consistently serves up some of the finest adventure travel writing in the world. “Chasing Ghosts” is no exception.

Campbell’s story recounts his experience as a member of an expedition that retraced a brutally difficult hike through the wild, mountainous jungles of Papua New Guinea – a trek undertaken by American soldiers during World War II.

If the first paragraph doesn’t suck you in, I don’t know what will:

“I’m lying in a bark hut surrounded by strange men. One sits smoking pungent tobacco rolled into a long, fat spear, a caricature of a Rastaman’s joint. Two others chew betel nut, their mouths a bright, frothy red. Curled up in the corner, my friend George Houde is sleeping the sleep of the dead while rats play at his feet.”

Sounds like fun, right? Well, at least it makes for a good read!

5) “Eloping, Italian Style” by David Farley

A couple of weeks ago I had the great pleasure of meeting travel writer David Farley and his lovely wife Jessie in a bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

David and Jessie are actually both writers, who split their time between New York and a medieval Italian hill-town.

It seems like most travel writers are a friendly bunch – to survive in this business, you need friends – but David and Jessie stand out as especially accessible, funny and genuine.

“Eloping, Italian Style” is David’s story of their wedding – it’s a great read that will make you laugh, make you a little mushy and no doubt leave you smiling.

And as a little bonus – here’s Jessie’s story of how she met David, which was recently published in the Modern Love section of the New York Times:

6) “A Friendship Too Tight for Breathing Room” by Jessie Sholl

Until next week!

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

One thing I’ve learned since quitting my day job and becoming a full-time travel writer: the future of travel writing, travel guides and travel communities is online.

It’s nice to get published in traditional print media, if only because it gives me something to show my technologically oblivious Grandmother, but there’s no doubt that we’re at the tail-end of dead-tree press.

World travelers are a tech-savvy and adaptable bunch.

While there will always be room for a beat-up copy of On The Road in the bottom of our packs, the ease of publishing and accessing information on the Internet is quickly making old fashioned travel publications obsolete.

At the forefront of this revolution is MatadorTravel.com.

Matador combines the community oriented features of a social networking site with quality travel writing, insider destination guides and a growing index of grassroots organizations looking for travelers to lend a helping hand.

The New Golden Age

I’m a genuine fan of Matador – signing up last spring from an Internet cafe in Cambodia was a key step in making it this far as a travel writer. But I don’t want this post to sound too much like an infomercial, so (full disclosure) here’s why I’m taking the time to write this article.

Both Brave New Traveler and Matador share a similar audience – thoughtful, independent and open-minded travelers with a social and environmental conscience.

It makes sense for Brave New Traveler readers to tap into the resources Matador offers, and, likewise, Matador users are a natural audience for this up-and-coming online magazine.

Another thing I’ve learned in the past year is that building a successful media outlet takes two things: great content and a lot of publicity.

Brave New Traveler and Matador already have solid content. I’m writing for free, because I want both websites to succeed and (ahem) reach the point where they can pay their writers (like me) enough to cover travel expenses AND health insurance.

Supporting Travel Writers

Ever dreamed of getting published? Matador recently launched a new feature called the Bounty Board, which is a list of paid travel writing assignments in need of writers.

Thinking of backpacking in Africa? Matador will pay you $200 to explore the coast of Mozambique. Know a few underrated ski resorts in Canada? Share the secret powder stash, and Matador will cover the cost of your lift tickets.

Amicable Authors

There are some excellent articles and guides on Matador already, but this hardly makes the site unique; you can find lots of travel stories and destination reviews online.

The biggest problem with this sort of online information is anonymity – you don’t know who the author is and whether or not you can trust their advice.

Matador transcends this issue because it is first and foremost a community of travelers. Every user fills out a profile, with photos and blurbs about their favorite places and individual travel style.

When you read an article or guide on Matador, you know who wrote it and where they’re coming from.

Find Your Long Lost Friend

You know how sometimes you meet a fellow traveler in a guesthouse or on a long bus ride and stay up all night swapping travel tales and recommendations? Matador brings thousands of those passionate travelers together.

If, like me, you’re planning a trip to Argentina, just search for people who are traveling there now, introduce yourself and ask for advice. You’ll get the kind of up-to-date, honest information that even the best guidebooks can’t provide, and if you’re lucky, you might even make a new friend and travel partner as well.

Passionate Founders

Over the past few months I’ve become friends with the people working behind the scenes at Matador.

Ross, Ben and David are travelers like you and me. They’re good guys, dedicated to building a community that will bring people together and make a positive impact in the real world. Matador partners with small NGOs and outreach groups, helping travelers find organizations in need of energetic volunteers.

Last year in Thailand I was very lucky to have a friend who knew about a remarkable sustainable community by a National Park near Chiang Mai.

Now, information about that secret spot is available on Matador for all curious travelers who want to get off the tourist trail.

Matador is a member of the One Percent for the Planet network too; the founders are consciously modeling the philosophy of ecologically sound business owners like Yves Chouinard, the founder of the Patagonia clothing company.

All the content on Matador is free, and will stay that way. It’s a real community, full of great people, and I honestly feel lucky to have discovered it early. Now is a perfect time to stop by, check out the scene and join in.

Thanks for reading, and please drop me a comment if you feel inclined.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer and his very own Matador Travel profile.

Get down on your hands and knees and poke around, dig into the muck-heap, grab on to something and pull it out into the light.

After you wipe off the grime, you might just see a buried treasure, a story full of hope and resonance and truth that most people would never think was there.

This week Tales From the Road gets down and dirty, hitting up backpacker ghettos in Hong Kong and Bangkok and diving deep into the garbage dumps of Cairo before swinging back to the Americas and passing out at a Jamaican reggae concert.

The roundup wraps up with an emotional punch, a tribute to the mothers of Argentinian activists who were tortured and killed by a military dictatorship during the “Dirty War.”

Got all your shots? Then come down from that sterile tour bus, breathe in the stink, dirty your hands and open your mind. There’s wonder to be found….

1) “Hope and Squalor at the Chungking Mansion” by Karl Taro Greenfield

I’ve never been to Hong Kong, but friends assure me it’s an absolutely stunning metropolis, the sort of place where you can meet just about anyone and do just about anything in the process of fulfilling all sorts of fantasies.

If Hong Kong is a gleaming city of the future, then Chungking Mansion seems like the grimy flip-side of the new utopia, a vertical slum of endless possibility, a melting pot forgotten on the stove, full of bits of charred, unidentifiable and probably carcinogenic (but still delicious) scraps stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Greenfield’s profile of the Mansion is as hectic, uncomfortable and appealing as the place itself. It’s rare for a writer’s style to match the character of the place he describes, and when it happens, it makes a good story shine brighter than a diamond.

2) “Goodbye, Khao San Road” by Rolf Potts

When Emperor of Vagabonds Rolf Potts gets in a contemplative mood, the resultant essay is always a special treat. In this article, penned in a cafe on Khao San Road just before leaving Southeast Asia, Potts waxes philosophical on the new demographics of travel in the 21st century.

Khao San is “a place that slithers inside its own stereotype,” writes Rolf, “an apt symbol of a travel revolution that began a decade ago and has almost been completed.”

Indeed, Bangkok’s famous backpacker ghetto is a phenomenon that has transcended the very idea of authenticity, and no one analyzes the atmosphere of contradictions better than Emperor Rolf. This story should be required reading for all backpackers.

(P.S. Don’t miss my previous interview with Rolf Potts).

3) “Future’s So Bright” by Sascha Matuszak

Here’s an uplifting story from an unlikely place – the garbage heaps of Cairo. The zebaleen are a community of Coptic Christians who work as garbage collectors and pig farmers in the modern Egyptian capital.

“In overwhelmingly Muslim Egypt, Christians are tolerated, garbage collectors despised and pig farmers abhorred. The combination of all three kept the Zebaleen on the fringes of society.”

But as Matuszak documents, the children of the zebaleen are moving up in the world through a concerted program of education. I finished this story full of respect for the garbage collectors of Cairo.

Matuszak’s excellent article is proof that great stories often turn up in unlikely spots, if you just take a moment to look beneath the surface.

4) “Excerpt Bob Marley? Everything is Everything in Jamaica” by Victoria Brooks

A friend of mine makes a good argument that Bob Marley is the most popular musician in the world. It’s true that the sweet notes of reggae music can be heard just about everywhere these days – from Thai beaches to South African nightclubs to Ivy League fraternity parties.

But nowhere is Marley’s legacy more alive than in his native land of Jamaica. Victoria Brooks has written a flawless, languid travelogue that floats through a history of Marley’s career, touches the concrete floor of a Jamaican concert hall and walks nervously through the fearful alleyways of Kingston.

Like any true travel story, the picture Brooks paints isn’t black and white, but shaded and confused, tinged with uncertainty and a peculiar sense of nostalgia.

5) “As Long as We Live: A Profile of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo” by David Miller

During Argentina’s Dirty War, thousands of young political activists were kidnapped by the military government and whisked away to secret detention centers, never to be seen again.

To this day, the mothers of the disappeared march through the Plaza de Mayo in their children’s memory. Why do they march? “That there is no more bloodshed.” How long will they march? “As long as we live.”

This is the sort of story that weighs on your soul, that descends to the depths of human depravity and rises back up to demonstrate our capacity for redemption, and remind us that there is nothing in this world so strong as a mother’s love.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

My roommates in Colorado went to Patagonia last year, and kept talking about this one valley, a place like paradise that was so beautiful they almost couldn’t leave.

Then, last Monday, I met up with MatadorTravel.com editor David Miller, who told me about a fertile valley south of Bariloche, with trout streams and breweries.

As it turned out, both David and my roommates were talking about the very same place. The next day I booked a ticket to Buenos Aires with the last of my frequent flier miles. Home for the (Northern) winter will be a small cabin casting distance from enormous rainbow trout in the valley of El Bolson.

Despite my vague impressions of tango, steak, pampas, trout and mountains, I know very little about Argentina. What better way to get a sense of the country than by reading travel stories?

Thus, I give you the first single country edition of Tales From the Road. Who knows – maybe reading these 5 great stories will convince you to migrate south for the winter with me….

1) “Does This Guy Look Like a Model To You?” by Ben Brazil

In 1999 Ben Brazil was “looking to postpone life and have an adventure.” His strategy was basic – as in basically non-existent. Ben “simply got on a plane and moved to a different hemisphere.”

As it turned out, two weeks after his arrival in Buenos Aires, Ben scored a gig as an international fashion model – despite being “built a bit like a rubber chicken.” His story is absolutely freakin’ hilarious, chock-full of all the random, weird events that make travel such an unpredictable and exhilarating adventure.

2) “Aconcagua: the Whole Empanada” by Ross Borden

I love stumbling across travel stories where the writer’s enthusiasm comes through loud and clear – the sort of breathless narratives that are banged out in dingy Internet cafes by someone traveling hard, in the zone, who is just getting the story down while it’s still fresh and alive.

Ross Borden’s mountaineering tale about his assault on the highest mountain outside the Himalayas on his 23rd birthday isn’t the most polished travel literature you’ll ever read, but his enthusiasm and honesty pour right off the page.

Ross’ description of the struggle up Aconcagua makes me feel like I’m right there with him – braced against 80 mph gusts of wind and watching the setting sun light the sky on fire.

3) “Making the Most of Those Long Argentine Nights” by Matt Gross

My nemesis has done it again: Matt Gross beat me to Argentina by 6 months. To make matters worse, he wrote a terrific story about the awesome Buenos Aires nightlife.

I don’t know whether to gnash my teeth because Matt got there first, or to get even more excited to experience a night out in a place where the party doesn’t really start until 2 in the morning.

4) “Real Happy Feat: Penguin Cruise” by John Flinn

Shackleton he’s not, but John Flinn evidently had a great time on his cruise to the end of the earth. Of course, it can’t have hurt his mood to drink Johnie Walker on the rocks at 8:30 in the morning while chilling with penguins and elephant seals.

Mr. Flinn’s gorgeous description of the landscape of Tierra del Fuego are enough to awaken the inner explorer in all of us.

“It’s a world of almost unnerving beauty and tempestuous grandeur,” he writes – “of ribbony waterfalls streaking down misty mountainsides, of stone fingers thrusting into the clouds and colossal glaciers tumbling to the sea.”

Umm, word. Pass the whiskey, Mr. Flinn.

5) “Expatriate Games” by Allen Salkin

OK – this isn’t exactly a travel narrative, but it IS a terrific piece of travel journalism that explains why Argentina, and Buenos Aires in particular, are so appealing to North American ex-pats.

With the Argentine peso still recovering from an economic crisis, it’s possible to live well in Buenos Aires for a fraction of the cost of expensive cities like New York, Vancouver or London. Of course, there are lots of cheap destinations in the world, but as Salkin discovers, few places can match Buenos Aires for rocking nightlife, vibrant culture and functional urban design.

The only drawback? Apparently hearty bacon ‘n egg breakfasts are hard to come by in Argentina. Guess I’ll have to get used to sweet pastries.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

When my boss wasn’t looking over my shoulder, I searched for travel stories online. I still remember the first time I found travel writer Rolf Pott’s website and weblog.

It felt like the world was suddenly more open and accessible. Here was someone who wrote for me!

Rolfpotts.com is a treasure trove of entertaining and perceptive travel stories. Rolf travels slowly around the world, jotting down notes, shifting context and writing about the exhilarating joy of new experience.

Rolf hit the big-time in 2003 when his book Vagabonding was published by Random House. Vagabonding is a practical and inspirational guide to long-term travel that has spurred thousands of people to broaden their horizons, make room for travel in their lives, and set off to experience the world.

Rolf frequently publishes feature articles in major print magazines like Outside and National Geographic Traveler and popular travel sites such as Yahoo News and Worldhum.com, where he recently chronicled the death of the mile-high club.

In the following interview, Rolf shares his thoughts on travel writing for the Internet, the intoxicating “hum of possibility” that travel generates and why “speeding off toward the horizon with a sack full of Benzedrine is not always the best way to approach a journey.”

TIM:

Where in the world are you now? Do you have any exciting projects on the horizon?

ROLF:

I am in Paris at the moment, where I teach a creative writing workshop each July at the American Academy. I rent an apartment at the edge of the 5th Arrondissement, not far from the Jardin de Plantes and the Paris Mosque.

This is the third consecutive year I’ve done this. One twist this summer is that I am hosting my parents here for two weeks. It will be their first time in Europe.

After Paris, I’ll head back to the States, visiting friends and working on stories in New York, California, Oregon, Louisiana, and Kansas. Then late this fall I will head to Brazil and Argentina in the hopes of studying samba and tango.

TIM:

USA Today once called you “Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age.” How does your approach to travel writing match with the lifestyle Kerouac glorified fifty years ago in ‘On the Road’ and ‘Dharma Bums’? And what does it mean to be a writer for the Internet Age?

ROLF:

I think the comparison to Kerouac was more metaphorical than practical or literal. Kerouac introduced a generation of Americans to the joys of open-ended travel, and I’m trying to do the same.

Past that, it’s difficult to make applied comparisons, because travel – and society in general – has changed a lot in 50 years. Biographically and philosophically I don’t always follow in Kerouac’s footsteps, but I share his belief that travel anywhere carries this amazing, potentially life-changing hum of possibility: that there is so much to be gained by just mustering up the courage and hitting the road.

As for writing in the Internet Age, this might be a tough thing to analyze, since I got my start in the Internet Age, and I owe the genesis of my writing career to the Internet.

Hence I don’t really know what it was like to be a pre-Internet Age writer. Granted, I also write a lot these days for traditional newsstand and bookstore media, but the Internet is still my core outlet.

This allows for immediacy of reportage – some of the stories I’ve written for Salon and Slate went live just hours after I lived them. Plus, through my website, each story becomes part of a greater narrative of my accumulated wanderings.

Twenty years ago, an interesting magazine article about someone’s journey might have been read, enjoyed and quickly forgotten; now, someone who reads my stories online in Slate or Outside or World Hum can link to my website and read 70-80 more stories from other parts of the planet.

This inadvertently adds to the Kerouac mystique: instead of seeing me as a journalist writing a one-off story from some part of the world, my readers can easily discern that I’ve made an entire lifestyle out of travel.

TIM:

The USA Today blurb tying you to Kerouac always struck me as misleading, since you come off as a clean-cut, hard-working, intelligent guy whose message is that extended travel isn’t such a radical lifestyle choice after all, whereas Kerouac played up the shenanigans, and his drug-fueled image did nothing to raise the profile of vagabonds in mainstream culture.

ROLF:

You’re right, but it can be kind of tricky to criticize Kerouac, since over the years he has come to symbolize something that is different from whom he was as a person.

In a way, Jack Kerouac is a lot like Che Guevara: a handsome, passionate, contradictory man who is wildly romanticized for reasons that have more to do with image than reality. Like Che, Kerouac was a man who found his first success at the exact right time in history, and then wound up skewed by that success, which was something he could never quite replicate again.

And just like Che is adored more for the vague, reactive notion of “revolution” than a verifiable track record for improving the lives of poor people, Kerouac is lionized out of a hazy association with spontaneity and personal freedom – when in fact he was a rather melancholy and self-absorbed soul, even in the pages of his own books.

So while being compared to an icon like Kerouac is certainly flattering at an image level, my approach to travel is a lot quieter and more deliberate than his was.

I have nothing against spontaneity, but I think one has to take one’s long-term self-interests into account, and speeding off toward the horizon with a sack full of Benzedrine is not always the best way to approach a journey.

The counter-cultural act of creating time for travel in an overworked society is a joy not because it’s a radical or symbolic, but because it’s a sane and enriching lifestyle choice.

TIM:

I want to explore the idea of ‘possibility.’ In a previous interview you said, “travel carries this amazing, potentially life-changing hum of possibility. I’m sort of addicted to this idea of possibility.” What do you mean by the “hum of possibility?” Can you describe how it feels?

ROLF:

The “hum of possibility” is the feeling that anything can happen at any moment — a heady openness to the new and unexpected. It’s hard to experience this feeling at home, since home life is made more efficient and manageable by certain self-insulating patterns and routines.

That’s why at home we fall into these little rituals of low-stakes possibility, like going to bars to meet people, or dabbling in new fads or hobbies. That’s all great; I’m not knocking the patterns of home-life. But on the road the potential for new experience is so much more powerful and real.

You can challenge yourself: reeducate yourself, reconsider yourself, reinvent yourself if you want to. Embracing this sense of challenge and newness — which may be nothing more complicated than wandering off the obvious tourist trail — can send your worldview and even your outlook on life into new directions.

It’s a somewhat intimidating, yet invariably intoxicating feeling that follows you as you travel.

TIM:

I hear you’re working on a new book-length travel narrative. Can you tell me about this project? When will we see it on shelves?

ROLF:

I probably won’t say much about the book project right now, because the book seems to veer into a new thematic direction every time I try and explain it. I will say that it’s a travel narrative, set in Latin America over the course of several seasons. Given the lead-time on books, it will probably be 2-3 years before you see it on shelves.

For more Rolf Potts: www.rolfpotts.com

This is the second interview in a series exploring travel writing in the 21st century. Read the previous interview with MatadorTravel.com Editor David Miller.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

First Rory Stewart’s instant classic about walking across Afghanistan kept me from getting a wink of sleep last night, then David Farley’s Bulgarian Beach Odyssey made me laugh so hard I strained a stomach muscle and got weird looks from everyone in this coffee shop.

But I don’t mind the risk, because digging up the very best travel writing on the web is just too much fun. I learn all sorts of interesting facts about everything from hermaphroditic tropical fish to how one can treat a jelly-fish sting to the genitals.

Take a deep breath, buckle your seat-belts, stock up on coffee and make sure no one will be overly startled when you begin to giggle, gasp and guffaw.

Ready? Dive in….

1) “From Montana to Wyoming on Foot” by Matt Gross

Matt Gross is my nemesis. Last year, we were both in Cambodia. I caught amoebic dysentery; Matt scored a regular travel writing gig with a mildly prestigious publication called The New York Times.

Last month, Matt and I were both backpacking in the wilderness around Yellowstone National Park. I lost my lucky hat; Matt went skinny-dipping and drank scotch with a “little 20-year-old” named Mary Ellen.

Matt is a hopelessly untalented writer of dubious integrity and will no doubt be out of a job and searching for cubicle work by the end of the summer. Enjoy it while you can, Mr. Gross.

2) “Counting Fish in the Caribbean” by Elisabeth Eaves

“Counting Fish” is a classic ‘laugh-and-learn’ travelogue, a story that goes down easy, cracks you up and leaves you awash in tidbits of knowledge about spotted scorpion fish and flying gurnards.

Eaves is a likable traveler from the start. Even when she strays into the travel writer’s morass of self-analysis you can’t help but commiserate. After all, who wouldn’t envy the golden hamlet, a happy little hermaphrodite “that’s capable of mating with any other member of its species.”

(For another perspective on the island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, check out Sebastian Junger’s masterpiece “The Whale Hunters,” which I included in the second edition of Tales From the Road.

3) “The New Civil Service” by Rory Stewart

“You are the first tourist in Afghanistan. It is mid­winter — there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee. Do you want to die?”

The next time a well-meaning loved one tries to discourage you from traveling somewhere dangerous like Colombia, Zimbabwe or Saskatchewan, give them a copy of Rory Stewart’s magnificent travelogue “The Places in Between“.

Stewart walked across central Afghanistan in January of 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban. “The New Civil Service” is an excerpt from the book, which is hands-down the best travel narrative I’ve read in years. I started it last night at 10 pm and turned the last page as the sun came up this morning. It’s that good.

4) “The Coast of Bohemia” by David Farley

Maybe it’s because I haven’t slept in the past 30 hours, but I had a fit halfway through this story. I’m in a busy coffee house so it was kind of embarrassing. The fit started with this line:

“I’ve been bitten by–how do you say–fish of the jelly–in the penis!”

I recovered from that, but then the next line set me off again until everyone in the shop was wondering if I needed help. I think I’ll go somewhere else to finish this round-up. You’ve been warned – Farley’s Bulgarian Beach Odyssey is dangerously funny.

5) “A Story From the Naked Country” by Robin Andrea

“Everyday so many things happen, little things and big things, things that take our breath away, things that compel, delight, or make us scratch our heads and wonder. There are more stories than we can tell, so most of the time we don’t tell any of them at all…”

This heartfelt little story is a reminder that great travel writing is a product of curiosity, empathy, honesty and attention. You don’t need to go to Mongolia to be a travel writer. You just need to open yourself to possibility, cultivate your natural sense of wonder and take a walk – down the street or through the woods or even just as far as the backyard.

Think about what you see and feel and write it down as truthfully as you can. That’s all there is to it.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of Tales From the Road! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a glass of water and a nap.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Matt Gross. I just want his job, that’s all.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

An example: Are Bonobos really the grooviest, most sexually liberated primate? In this edition of Tales From the Road, Ian Parker travels to the depths of the Congo to answer exactly that question.

Some travelers don’t embark with specific questions and are spurred to explore foreign lands by a vague sense of curiosity and wanderlust.

Joe Reynolds decides to bike across El Salvador on a whim; Joshua Kurlantzic wanders from the discos of Ulaan Baattar to the high steppes of Mongolia.

Together with gems of nature writing from Iraq and an interview with Pico Iyer, their stories make this one of my favorite editions of quality travel writing yet.

1) “Swingers” by Ian Parker

The New Yorker magazine’s Far Flung Correspondents consistently deliver some of the most intriguing and tightly-written travel stories of our time. In “Swingers” Ian Parker attends a Manhattan Bonobo fund-raiser to “Save the Hippie Chimps.”

Curious about the mysterious Bonobos, said to be peace-loving and bi-sexual, Parker travels Heart of Darkness style deep up-river to a research camp in the Congo rainforest. His companions include a dour German primatologist and his assistant, “a devotee of the annual Burning Man festival” whose “equipment included a fur hat, a leather-bound photo album, an inflatable sofa, and goggles decorated with glitter.”

2) “Birding Babylon” by Jonathan Trouern-Trend

Previously, I linked to the best feature I’ve read about Iraq since the war began almost five years ago.

“Birding Babylon” stands out as a close second, if only because it’s such a refreshing change from hard-bitten journalism about body counts, political corruption
and corporate misconduct.

Reading Trouern-Trend’s lovely descriptions of warblers, storks and wood-pigeons provides a whole new perspective on the Land of Two Rivers. It’s a welcome reminder of nature’s remarkable capacity to produce beauty amidst the ugliness of human folly.

3) “Mongolia: No Tourist Hordes” by Joshua Kurlantzic

Wow. I need to go to Mongolia.

Joshua Kurlantzic’s terrific article gives a complete portrait of Genghis Khan’s old stomping grounds, pulling the reader along from discos crammed with Russian mobsters to “high alpine cirques where the Tsaatan live in teepees.” Forget Burma. Anyone in the mood for mutton?

4) “Cycling Across El Salvador” by Joe Reynolds

“On a whim, with no previous training, I decide to ride a bicycle across El Salvador…”

Roadjunky.com is a great place for honest, entertaining travelogues that feature half-baked schemes and misadventures all of us can relate with.

Joe Reynold’s story about touring El Salvador on a balky bike named Mamacita Rita is one of my favorite Roadjunky tales, and judging by all the gushy reader comments, I’m not the only one.

5) “Pico Iyer is Lost” by Mark Mordue

OK. I cheated. “Pico Iyer is Lost” isn’t a travel narrative. But when one of my all time favorite contemporary travel writers gives a terrific, thought provoking interview, I can’t resist sharing the news.

Iyer is one of the most thoughtful and eloquent of travel writers in the world today, a master of precise, polished prose. If you love to travel and love to read, this is one interview that’s well worth your time.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of Tales from the Road!

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

When we travel, we step beyond our comfort zones, into a realm of uncertainty. For a writer trying to capture the essence of a place, it can be tempting to assume a tone of artificial confidence. Jangly nerves, upset stomachs and genuine observations are lost in favor of breezy, artificial suavity.

When that happens, as one contributor to this week’s round-up says, “the bullshit comes right through on the page.”

The stories below stand out not only for literary quality, but also as examples of true writing. One piece, Bill Simmon’s “Queasy in the the Big Easy,” was so honest it almost got him lynched in New Orleans.

Sometimes, true writing stands out in descriptive details, like Bruce Northam’s precise paragraphs about sea gypsy culture in Burma’s Mergui archipelago.

Other times, true writing requires the acknowledgment that human motives are never clear, and epic journeys, like walking across America, can lead to more questions than answers.

I hope you enjoy this week’s selections and look forward to comments!

1) “Around the Globe With No Clothes On” by Michael Yessis

I once lived near Canadian World, a bankrupt and abandoned theme park in rural Hokkaido, Japan. It was downright weird to explore the dusty, overgrown grounds of Canadian World, but Michael Yessis’ experience in Osaka ups the weirdness ante dramatically.

Yessis visited Japanese renditions of Italy, France, Finland and Greece in only 3 hours. And he was naked the whole time.

2) “Lost in America: Steve Vaught’s Staggering Journey To Find Redemption” by Steve Friedman

Regular readers of this column know I’m a big fan of the Best American Travel Writing series. “Lost in America” was recently selected for inclusion in the 2007 edition of the Best American anthology, but it’s still available online for free.

It’s the story of a troubled, intelligent and overweight man who decides to walk across America, and whose journey leads to fame, fortune, poison oak and, above all, to more questions – about happiness, commitment and moral wisdom.

Steve Friedman’s writing strikes exactly the right tone, and although this is a long article, it will hold you to the end.

3) “Burma: Drifting With Sea Gypsies” by Bruce Northam

I’ve always been fascinated by the Mergui Archipelago, a vast island region in the Indian Ocean, off the southwest coast of Burma. Bruce Northam’s outstanding article about the Mergui islands and the sea gypsies who live there is heartfelt but not sappy, descriptive but not too wordy, informative but never boring.

It’s easily the best piece of writing on the Mergui islands I’ve encountered, and now I’m more excited than ever to explore those deserted beaches, mangrove forests and sea gypsy encampments. Anyone up for an island adventure this winter?

4) “Growing Queasy in the Big Easy” by Bill Simmons

Babbling Bill Simmons is easily one of the most entertaining and successful Internet writers, a master of conversational, witty blog posts that make for ideal bathroom reading.

Simmons started out making cracks about the Red Sox and Celtics on his own tiny website, and is now one of the most popular columnists on ESPN.com. A few years ago Simmons went to New Orleans to cover a Super Bowl and ended up writing an article that nearly got him lynched at the time, but now stands as a poignant monument to pre-Katrina New Orleans.

5) “Arkansas River Notes” by David Miller

David Miller’s latest blog proves that you don’t need to venture too far from home to write a great travel story. Sometimes, a trip can even be a way of coming home again, finding yourself naked and grinning by a river in a field of wildflowers.

If you missed my interview with David last week on BNT, check it out here.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

You’ll laugh your way through a lesson on orgasm control and learn how NOT to deal with inflated charges for hotel room pornography, but like all great travel writing, these stories mix education with entertainment.

Why do Japanese high-school baseball players take the game so seriously? Is it really such a big deal to order afternoon cappuccino in Italy? And what is the secret of tantric sex?

Read on and get in the know!

1) “Miami in Heat” by Dave Mondy

Poor, pale Dave Mondy is stuck on Miami Beach, “sautéing all day long in a slow simmer of lust.”

Bedazzled by the beautiful beach people, he hopefully wanders into dance clubs and swank hotels, nearly gets picked up by Hillary Duff’s sister and ends up paying $72 for hotel-room pornography.

Dave’s story is honest and self-deprecating in the comic tradition of David Sedaris and Bill Bryson. “The trouble is,” he writes, “I’m stupid and hope springs eternal.”

2) “Horse Latitudes” by P.J. O’Rourke

Kyrgyztan makes P.J. O’Rourke “run out of adjectives.” Readers familiar with O’Rourke’s hilarious travelogues know that he rarely has trouble finding the right word, but we can cut P.J. some slack this time.

After all, it’s not easy to engage the mental thesaurus when stuck on a hillside somewhere beyond the Hindu Kush, with camp and vodka supplies on the wrong side of a landslide.

The sentiment he finally manages is sparse, but evocative: “I wasn’t dead. And I wasn’t dead in a magnificent place.”

3) “One in 4,000: High-School Baseball in Japan” by Scott Lothes

When I lived in Japan I sometimes practiced with the baseball team at the local high-school. It was embarrassing, because even the tiny 9th graders hit better and threw harder than I could. Scott Lothe’s perceptive article makes me feel better about myself.

In Japan, baseball is taken very, very seriously. The 9th graders who politely schooled me in every aspect of the game had been taking batting practice and fielding ground balls for years before I arrived on the diamond.

No wonder Daisuke Matsuzaka and Ichiro Suzuki play with such focus and intensity.

4) “When in Rome, Don’t be a Slave to Common Wisdom” by John Flinn

Ordering an afternoon cappuccino in Rome? Laughable! Barbaric! Only the most ignorant of tourists would consider such an inappropriate beverage! Everyone knows that. Right?

John Flinn arrives in Italy determined to challenge conventional cultural wisdom, only to realize that tourists get more worked up about coffee than the locals do. When in Rome, the truly wise will chill out and drink what they want, when they please.

5) “Tantric Sex for Dilettantes” by Rolf Potts

I’m not the first critic to appreciate the combination of raw humor, lush description and acute insight into traveler culture that makes “Tantric Sex” one of Rolf Pott’s very best stories.

You’ll also find it anthologized in the 2006 edition of Best American Travel Writing. Only Rolf can write a story about sex, monkeys and urination that makes you feel smarter, not dumber, by the end.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

I crossed paths with David Miller on Independence Day in sunny Boulder, Colorado. He pulled up in a van with a beat-up orange rodeo kayak in the back and greeted me with a fist-bump, smiling wide through his trimmed dark beard.

We found a coffee shop on Pearl Street, ordered ice teas and spent two hours talking about surf-camping in Baja, backcountry hikes in the Rockies, the qualities of literary travel writing and David’s new job as Editor of MatadorTravel.com.

David brought along a map of the mountain range beyond Boulder, which he spread out on the terrace of the coffee-shop.

“I always try to get a feel for a new place by following the water,” he said, tracing a finger up Boulder canyon and into the high peaks.

“This snow-field, up at the top, is the southern-most glacier in North America. Make that your destination. It’s where the water’s born.”

On the connection between carpentry and writing:

“There’s something about hand-work as a means of concentration that makes it very curative for me. Like most writers, I have the tendency to over-analyze; working with my hands allows space to reflect and focus.

Sometimes, when I arrive on a job-site in winter after a snow storm, the first thing I’ve got to do is just shovel snow and clear everything away before I can start work. I try to approach the work of writing in the same way, clearing my mind before setting down words.”

On corporate culture and ‘android behavior’:

“My attitude towards ties and suits is born out of a total lack of trust of anything that’s not based on a personal, eye-to-eye relationship. Human relations based on title, or appearance, or what’s printed on a little plastic insurance card have always bothered me.

People are good at little mechanical tasks like flipping remote controls to start their cars, but that strikes me as sort of android behavior. Especially in contrast to people like these Brazilian fishermen, who carve beautiful canoes, the same way their great-grandfathers did, who work in the bays with a style that’s just fucking timeless and beautiful.

Whereas the life of a guy doing stock trades based on bits of numerical data seems tragic-comic to me.”

On MatadorTravel.com:

“I’ve learned to look at computers as just another tool. Matador can serve on so many levels. There’s a lot on the site to help travelers find places that fit their comfort level and link up with like-minded people.

The article section has great potential to showcase events and places that might not get as much attention in the mainstream media. An article we just published about the G8 summit in Germany is one example.

Hopefully Matador inspires people to go out and take some risks, meet the locals and travel with a heightened sense of awareness. The site serves as a nexus, a virtual map that goes beyond the traditional idea of magazines and guidebooks to create a sort of hyper-map – a super detailed way of accessing information.

I think we’re at the very tail-end of traditional forms of media and the new forms present a different way of seeing things.”

On quality travel writing:

“As an editor I look for stories with a literary quality – narratives that explore a universal theme with which the reader can identify.

What makes a good submission? Just tell me the story. Be willing to dig deep and take risks. Try to find the connections, tell me how the things you experienced fit in the local landscape and community.

The real story isn’t this crazy Elvis shrine somewhere, or that someone is wandering around the world with a backpack – what’s the sub-context? What’s the story of the traveler’s past and the community past? Literary travel writing needs to be rooted in a deeper context.

To be honest, I can almost always tell from the first sentence of a query what sort of article is coming. Even the first few words give me a good idea of the honesty, self-confidence and professionalism of the writer.

There’s your standard, journalistic style – setting down facts and playing it safe – and that’s fine; good solid travel information is a big part of what we look for at Matador.

But I’m always on the lookout for people willing to take chances, writers who might be unsure of themselves, but are up front about that uncertainty. What needs to come through is real honesty about their emotions and perceptions.”

On writers to emulate:

“Read Raymond Carver. He’s one of best at capturing a particular emotion and saying the most in the fewest words.

Jim Harrison is a master of perspective. He’ll focus on the minute – bring it to the middle distance – and then go all the way out to the universal. He covers the whole spectrum of perspective, which helps deepen and expand the narrative.

A lot of beginning writers stick with one middle focus throughout the story. You’ve got to stretch back into the past and extend out to the future. It’s always more edifying to read something that goes in multiple directions.

For quality description an author who comes to mind is Kent Haruf, who wrote a book called Plainsong.

Annie Proulx is a Wyoming writer who is great at using vignettes to bolster the narrative drive, writing simple crisp anecdotes that give the reader an appreciation for the character’s position and foster that all-important sense of empathy.

Gay Talese is a really important influence on my own writing, especially as a magazine writer. He’s the absolute master of the portrait. I should also mention Wendell Berry as a writer who, like Jim Harrison, excels in all forms of writing: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.”

At this point in the interview David excuses himself to answer his mobile phone and has a short conversation in Spanish…

“My wife, Laura. She just woke up. I can’t give her a hard time about sleeping late – she’s seven months pregnant.

When we first met I was living as a Pitayero on the beach in Los Cerritos, Baja, Mexico, down there just surfing, fishing, hanging out with local kids.

I met this woman from Buenos Aires – Laura – who would eventually become my wife. Anyway, I invited her down to my little bachelor camp and we started traveling together.

Thinking back on it, the root of our marriage was the desire to make a life out of just what we had – which was very little…traveling together, finding our way.

In the end, it’s not about a surf-break or a beach or whatever – it’s about people and context, exploring a culture and experiencing a place.”

More David Miller:

• Why every writer should study Sherman Alexie
• David’s Matador Profile

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

Despite Cheney’s fetish for secrecy, I’ve tried to learn more about places he wants to keep out of the public eye.

What better way to gain an understanding of what’s really happening in spots like Guantanamo Bay Prison and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge than by reading great travel stories written by some of America’s most eloquent voices of truth…and a few Red Sox fans.

I hope you enjoy this week’s picks. Comments are welcome!

1) “The Road to Guantanamo” by Ted Conover

Ted Conover is one of the most perceptive, successful and important travel writers of modern times.

Unlike most journalists who approach an issue or place from the outside, Conover is a participatory journalist, a traveler who actually gets inside the cultures he explores.

Conover assumes an identity – Mexican migrant worker, prison guard, hobo – for months at a time, then writes about the experience with tremendous honesty and insight.

Conover wasn’t undercover when he visited the U.S. prison camp and military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but his story is the most vivid account of Gitmo I’ve encountered to date.

The surreal Orwellian double-talk Conover reports is blood-chilling.

2) “Inside the Endangered Arctic Wildlife Refuge” by Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen is not just a great travel writer; he’s one of the best writers of the 20th century, period.

In this heartfelt article on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Matthiessen expresses the beauty of place and nature with great clarity and depth of prose. Hands off, Halliburton!

3) “Babylon by Bus” by Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann

Two college dropout Red Sox fans need an adventure and decide to move to Baghdad:

“We wanted to go somewhere that mattered, a place where we could observe, firsthand, that holographic concept known as the Global War on Terrorism.

Thus, through a combination of political curiosity, a willingness to work for nothing, and our enduring love of bad schemes, we got serious about going to Iraq. I recall saying to Jeff, ‘We can stay home and do nothing-blow money at bars and sleep until noon. Or we can go see what interests us most.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Hemingway didn’t stay home. Orwell didn’t.’ A date was set. We’d spend New Year’s 2004 in Tel Aviv, then press on to Iraq.”

4) “Unmentionable No Longer” by Hank Stuever

Talk about undercover journalism! Hank Stuever reports from Salt Lake City, Utah on the deeply mysterious issue of….Mormon underwear.

I’m not sure whether this piece quite qualifies as travel writing, but I figure it’s too hilarious and edifying to matter.

5) “Dangerous Minds” by Wendy Knight

The U.S. State Department warns against travel to Colombia. Wendy Knight’s friends can’t believe she’s planning to take her teenage daughter to the land of kidnapping and cocaine wars.

Of course, government paranoia turns out to be overblown and mother and daughter have a blast in Cartagena, a lovely old city on the Caribbean, but it’s Knight’s account of what happened when she arrived back in New York that really hits home.

BLATANT SELF PROMOTION ALERT!

6) “From the Ground Up: Planting Seeds in Northern Thailand” by Tim Patterson

I’ve got an extra story for you this week – one of my own!

It’s about a lovely little village at the edge of a National Park near Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. The village is home to a group of organic communities and natural building centers.

It’s a place I felt truly privileged to find – one of my favorite spots in all of Southeast Asia – and I share it with you in the spirit of mutual trust and good will.

Until next week!

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

The web has enabled a budding renaissance of quality travel writing, with sites like Worldhum.com, PerceptiveTravel.com and MatadorTravel.com leading the revolution.

Of course, you can still find first-rate travel writing in the traditional print media. Outside, New Yorker, Get Lost! and Wend are four examples of traditional magazines that regularly feature outstanding travel narratives.

Even better, many magazines archive some or all of their stories online, freely available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Then there’s the travel blogosphere. Finding well-written travel stories in this boggling bubblebath of breathless blogs can feel like panning for gold in the Mississippi, but there are at least three great things about finding a compelling story on a little known blog:

1. No hidden agenda - you get the story straight up, unedited and honest.
2. Ease of conversation – bloggers will almost always appreciate and respond to comments or questions.
3. The thrill of discovery – finding a great story on an obscure blog is like exploring a Thai island and stumbling on a hidden white sand beach.

Each week in this column I’ll link to five quality travel stories I’ve discovered online.

Whether you’re in the office, at home or checking e-mail in an Internet cafe in Nairobi, these stories will stoke your wanderlust and keep you entertained. So without further ado:

1) “A Very Long Way to the Hong Kong Cafe” by Daisann McLane

Daisann McLane’s story about her discovery of a Chinese restaurant – and a Chinese chef – among the sled-dog pens of Ilulissat, Greenland is a prime example of a detailed, perceptive and entertaining travel story that so rarely makes it into the pages of certain mainstream magazines and newspapers.

2) “A Day of Discovery” by Richard Preston

Take it from me, Northern California’s massive and majestic redwood trees are even more awe-inspiring than man-made wonders like Angkor Wat, St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Great Pyramids.

In this story from Orion Magazine, two naturalists bush-whacking through dense rainforest in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park discover a previously unknown grove of titan trees. Richard Preston takes you there and makes you feel their sense of wonder.

3) “Journey to Dolpo” by Michael McCarthy

Ever since I read Peter Matthiessen’s classic travel narrative “The Snow Leopard” I’ve been intrigued by the Dolpo region of Nepal, one of the most remote places on Earth and a last refuge of Tibetan culture.

Michael McCarthy undertook an epic journey of his own to Dolpo recently, trekking over high passes and dodging Maoist rebels to reach the impoverished villages of Upper Dolpo.

McCarthy was on a mission to collect children for an orphanage in India, a cause that makes me uncomfortable, but regardless of the moral implications of his journey, the tale makes for an excellent read.

4) “India” by Jeff Vize

Jeff Vize sets off for India on the bus from Kathmandu, scared and tantalized by the sensory assault that lies ahead. His thoughts will be familiar to any traveler who has contemplated a journey to the sub-continent:

“India occupied a legendary position in my mind. It was the place everyone talked about; the place we all simultaneously loathed and loved. Mere mention of its name evoked groans of ecstasy and pain. One traveler would sit you down, look you in the eye and beg you not to go; another would swear that somewhere among its seething mass of humanity there existed the key to enlightenment. India. I couldn’t figure it out, so I had to go.”

5) “Wish You Were Here” by Mark Surkin

Here’s an off-beat leftover from last week’s Pink Floyd themed edition.
The first paragraph made me scratch my head, the second made me smile, but by the third I was grinning and nodding along. Kind of like listening to The Wall.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s round-up. If you come across a great story with a travel theme, please contact us for possible inclusion in next week’s edition of “Tales From the Road.”

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

If these stories “make your head explode with dark forebodings,” I also threw in a light-hearted tale from the legendary Pink Palace, where my older brother Andrew Patterson once set a record for ‘most plates broken over one’s head at a time.’

1) “Dark Side of the Moon in Iran” by Rory MacLean

Rory MacLean arrives in Isfahan, Iran hoping to experience the same emotion the great travel writer Robert Byron expressed after his visit to Isfahan – a “rare moment of absolute peace, when the body is loose, the mind asks no questions, and the world is a triumph.”

Instead, MacLean runs into some local Pink Floyd fans, possibly associated with the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center, who gleefully remind him – “If your head explodes with dark forebodings too / I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.”

2) “Last Photographs” by Ashley Gilbertson with Joanna Gilbertson

Wow. “Last Photographs” is far and away the best story I’ve ever read about the Iraq War. For Gilbertson, who has chronicled the war for over 5 years, Iraq is an obsession. His story hit me hard, right in the gut, and when I finished reading I wanted to throw my laptop against the wall.

3) “The Whale Hunters” by Sebastian Junger

In this Outside Magazine classic Sebastian Junger chronicles the last of the Caribbean whale hunters with writing as hard and sharp as the blade of a brass harpoon. Whatever your thoughts on the practice of whaling, it’s impossible to read Junger’s vivid description of the whale hunt without being awed by the sheer audacity and practiced grace with which the whalers pursue their magnificent prey.

4) “Kick Boxing for Pride and Peanuts: Muay Thai Fighters in the Sticks of Thailand” by Antonio Graceffo

Who says tough guys aren’t sensitive? Antonio Graceffo whirls and kicks and punches his way through a small time kick-boxing tournament on the Thai/Burmese border, but it’s the end of his story that brought tears to my eyes.

5) “A Greek Romance” by Rolf Potts

Emperor of Vagabonds Rolf Potts reports from the legendary Pink Palace party hostel on the Greek island of Corfu. Amidst shots of pink ouzo and flying shards of broken plates Potts comes to a deep realization:

“Some people travel the world for spiritual reasons; others travel to shop exotic markets or take interesting photos. But a great many people, most of them young, want nothing more than to drink and flirt and make noise on a warm beach far away from home.”

I hope you enjoy my selections and I’d love to hear your comments. If you come across a great travel story online, contact us for possible inclusion in next week’s edition.

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.

We all love a great travel story, but the truth is that truly inspiring and entertaining reads are few and far between. And who has the time to search out the diamonds in the rough?

You can hit the bookstore and pick up a hard copy of the Best American Travel Writing series, or you can keep reading this post and check out the five stories with the links below.

Some are by established writers and originally appeared in well known magazines; some I culled from the depths of the blogosphere. All have one thing in common: quality.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading these travel stories as much I enjoyed finding them.

1. “My Chinese Clown” by KateMonster

MatadorTravel.com recently announced the winners of their first travel writing contest. “My Chinese Clown” received an honorable mention. It’s the story of a romance between a young American woman living in Beijing and her new crush – who happens to be a clown.

The story gets better and better with each sentence, building to a tender conclusion. “Beautiful, deceptively simple storytelling,” said one commenter. Also check out Matador Editor David Miller’s piece “Notes on Los Pitayeros: Surf, camping and hallucinogenic cacti on the Pacific Coast of Baja.”

2. “The Path of Apprenticeship: The Zen of Yellowstone” by Mark Jenkins

Mark Jenkins is one of the best adventure travel writers on the planet. His article about cross-country skiing in Yellowstone National Park leads into a profound discussion of skill, balance, pace and craftsmanship. The writing is so freaking good that I want to excerpt every single paragraph – here’s one:

“Through this motion, this mantra of muscle, I slip into a state of grace. Everything fits. The darkling sky mirrored in the violet snow. The snow feeding the trees and the hidden creek. The creek cutting the mountains. The mountains and me. We all dovetail together.”

3. “Turbulence” by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is one of my all-time favorite writers, a genius at crafting poignant, funny, self-deprecating stories from everyday experience. “Turbulence” was originally published in The New Yorker magazine. It’s awkward, perceptive, hilarious and witty – Sedaris at his very best.

4. “Stranded in Kathmandu” by Josh Kearns

While we’re on the subject of air travel, here’s a well-considered rant from a traveler waiting for the Royal Nepal Airlines plane to Bangkok. Royal Nepal only has two planes, and one is in the shop for repairs.

Josh has plenty of time to ramble about everything from Kathmandu cafes to airport “security ogres” to high maintenance British women with “freshly painted claws” before bringing it all back around to how air travel relates to Buddhist teachings on egotism. A terrific, rollicking read.

5. “Some days in the life of a Siberian Cyclist” by Rob Lilwall

Rob Lilwall is in the midst of a multi-year bike ride from Eastern Siberia to his home in England – via Australia. His journey is awe inspiring, but the post above is especially noteworthy for its spare understatement.

Like the explorers of old, Rob and his partner endured absolutely brutal conditions, but Rob relates the whole epic Siberian experience in barely 1000 words.

Got a story that blows my picks out of the water? Do tell! Post the link and a short introduction as a comment below, or e-mail us for inclusion in the next edition of Tales From The Road!

Tim Patterson travels with a sleeping bag and pup tent strapped to the back of his folding bicycle. His articles and travel guides have appeared in Get Lost Magazine, Tales Of Asia, Matador Travel and Common Language Project. Check out his personal site Rucksack Wanderer.