Common Sense and Whiskey

Don’t Let “Experts” Tell You Where to Go This Summer

Americans love to visit London, Paris and Tuscany, but there are so many compelling places to go in this world. I say, go and discover someplace obscure!

There are 192 U.N. member states. Kosovo, Taiwan and Vatican City aren’t U.N. members, so add them. Add South Sudan, to be born as the world’s newest country on 9 July. That’s 196 countries, and there are dozens and dozens of territories (Greenland is Danish, Tahiti is French, Aruba is Dutch and so on) and odd bits and specks of land all over the globe. There are plenty of places to choose from.

So, how to pick your destination?

First, don’t rely on glossy travel magazines – and they know who they are – for travel advice, or you’ll never get out of the London/Paris/Naples/luxury hotels cocoon. All that press a few months back about Tibet as the new hip destination – that was all because the Starwood chain (Sheraton, Westin) opened a new high-end St. Regis hotel in Lhasa. See Travel+Leisure, for example.

Now, next time we’re in Lhasa maybe I'd like to stay at the St. Regis, too. But be aware of what you’re getting as travel advice from the glossy magazines. As a rule of thumb, be wary of anything in a magazine that’s bracketed by ads for Tag Hauer watches and Louis Viutton luggage. Whatever it is, it’s just marketing words.

Don’t be overly swayed by guidebooks and their “dangers and annoyances” sections. It’s no surprise that there’s the danger of pickpockets in poor African countries. The answer to that: Don’t carry valuables in your pockets.

Keep an open mind. Do your online research. Pick a spot and just go. Buy a ticket, get on the plane, and go see what it’s like. Our world is a great big, sprawling pageant of color and chaos and diversity, and you should go out there and see it.

And this summer, don’t let “experts” steer you onto the too-well-trodden path. Imagine: No more sitting in a left bank café disdaining the waiters who disdain you right back for trying to use your high school French. It’s liberating.

Tomorrow I'll link to a few tools I use to start the process of deciding where to go.

Serbia: No Hurry to Change

Laurence Mitchell, who's soon off to update the Bradt Guide to Kyrgyzstan, writes this week about Serbia. He says that the National Tourism Organisation of Serbia's new promotional video does little to flatter the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and concludes that:

"Perhaps all (the) things that I hold dear are considered a bit too backward and Old Europe for the marketing people."

He and I agree that Serbia's (and the larger Balkan region's) Old Europeness is precisely it's draw. One of the great pleasures of getting out in the world is experiencing the 'apartness,' the dissimilarites to home. Let us not be in a hurry to make everything shiny and new. 

The River Danube at Belgrade.

 

 

Where to Go, Why, and What to Read.

Travel ferociously. Get out there. Engage people. Witness events. Explore the world. Bust a move. See all you can see. But when you’re at home and calm, sanguine and reflective, back in the part of the house where people don’t come unless you invite them, in that one little spot where only you rule, that’s where you can see most clearly.

Back there in that room, I saw our trip to Sarajevo as a conceit. We decided we’d go and see the aftermath of war and then we would think about it. And we saw the burned out houses on the airport road. We saw children at play beneath a hand-painted sign warning of “snijper” fire over there, in that direction.

We stood on a hill above town with an old woman and her little granddaughter and a vast field of Muslim graves behind them. We took pictures of SFOR soldiers (NATO’s ‘Stabilization Force’) taking pictures. And in the end, we didn’t really understand it any better. Or at least, we didn’t Glean Wisdom.

I read and read, before and after Sarajevo, and we went to see it, and we had a view of the bombed out parliament building from the Holiday Inn hotel, where we paid in advance, in cash, in Deutschmarks, right up front, for our entire stay.

The parliament building from the Holiday Inn, Sarajevo.

The elevator opened to carpet ripped by gunfire.

The main reconstruction work in Sarajevo was in busting down curbs and rebuilding them with wheelchair ramps.

We walked up and down the open air Markale market where a random, direct shelling killed 68, wounded two hundred on a rainy Saturday in February, 1994 – the bloodiest attack in the then twenty-two month long conflict. We saw bricks and mortar blasted from the side of the hotel next door. People bustled about the market that day, selling flowers, buying fruit, and we took it all in, but still we didn’t Glean Wisdom.

Kabul's Safi Airways In-Flight Magazine

It's not everyday you see an ad for armouring cars ... in an in-flight magazine. But then, this one comes from the Safi Airways in-flight magazine, and Safi Airways flies out of Afghanistan. The magazine features breezy articles about Herat ("People Smile") and Kabul, and lists eleven Kabul hotels from which to choose. It's interesting reading. Check it out. The whole thing is online here.

Northern Lights

 The TV just told me that right now in Yellowknife, Canada, it's 40 below fahrenheit. Weather.com backs 'em up:

A while back, we posted resources for planning specialty travel that included travel to see the northern lights, including this neat aurora forecaster, which shows as I write that for aurora viewing, Yellowknife would be a great place to be right now. Check out, too, this informative Guide to Seeing the Northern Lights on GeckoGoneBlogging.

Coincidentally, the Wandering Aramean has just been in Yellowknife in the last week or so and has several posts, some including pictures, and this one including pictures of the northern lights. His succinct review: "Downtown Yellowknife does not have a lot to recommend it."

Books: The Atlantic

The book to buy this week is Simon Winchester's Atlantic. It's another in a string of books by Winchester about One Big Thing. This review puts it like this:

"Veteran journalist Simon Winchester has, in recent years, taken to writing what might be called geological blockbusters. His method is to focus on a relatively contained event — the eruption of Krakatoa, say, or the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 — and envelop it in several layers of context, social, scientific, historical, political."

Winchester has done the Atlantic before. In the fun little book, The Sun Never Sets (reissued in 2004 as Outposts), he visited the odd remnants of the British Empire, including, in the Atlantic, islands like Tristan de Cuhna and St. Helena, the Falklands and Ascension and Bermuda. The new Atlantic is the story of the entire ocean writ large.

(Photo of a sunset somewhere south of the equator in the Atlantic Ocean, en route between St. Helena and Ascension islands. Photos from these two islands in the St. Helena and Ascension galleries at EarthPhotos.com.)

Atlas of Remote Islands

Here's a pleasing little book for dreamers and inveterate travelers.

They say members of Washington's political class turn straight to the index of new bestsellers, to see if they're mentioned. The hard core traveler will turn to this atlas's contents straightaway, to see how many of the islands they've visited.

Atlas of Remote Islands is subtitled Fifty Islands I have Never Set Foot On and Never Will, suggesting its author is an armchair traveler. She gives each island a map and a little vignette.

Three samples:

- Howland Island: "She is tall and thin. Next to her, standing lke a shy, diligent girl, is her navigator, Fred Noonan."

- Napuka: "When they finally sight land after fifty days, they find nowhere to drop anchor, and the boats that they land on the island discover nothing to satisfy either hunger or thirst. They name the islands the Disappointment Islands...."

- Amsterdam Island: "No one is allowed to settle here, so the personnal at the research station changes constantly. Some of the men stay for only a few months, but most for a year and a half.... There is no boat. Where would they take it?"

The Southern Caucusus Part Four: The High Caucasus & the Russian Border

Earlier in this series: The Southern Caucasus, Part One: From the Eventual Book & The Southern Caucasus Part Two: Yerevan to Tbilisi & The Southern Caucasus Part Three: Tbilisi and the Georgia Military Highway

The sides at either end of Kazbegi square comprised nothing much, with a road wandering off in each direction, one the direction from which we’d come, from Tbilisi, the other to Vladikavkaz in Russian Ingushetia. On the fourth side of the square, opposite the hotel, a half dozen desultory kiosks all sold the same things, the petty little consumer goods necessary for life. All had tissues and matches and drinks, but not cold – there wasn’t refrigeration anywhere in the whole lot.

The wares on offer jammed all the window space, inside and out, so that the salespeople sat back invisible behind a little open window in the middle. You wouldn’t call the collective attitude among these six tiny kiosk capitalists sullen. Crestfallen might be the better word.

Kazbegi itself rose on a low hill behind the kiosks. A morning walk among the houses revealed bright flowers on windowsills and suspicious, smoking men in caps seated on low benches with a wary eye and a nod of the head to a stranger. No vehicle traffic. Massive amounts of trash just cast onto the ground in the street, and pigs snuffling through it.

A dump truck sized Kamaz truck lumbered by, an unlikely family vehicle which disgorged a scarf-clad old woman and a basket down at the bottom of the hill.

At any particular time, six or eight or ten old Russian-made cars congregated at the center of the makeshift square, their drivers in little knots smoking and waiting for the odd passenger to here or there. Zaza hired a red Lada Niva, strong with a high undercarriage. Just the right vehicle to haul us up to the Holy Trinity church, way up at 2200 meters. We’d drive up and walk down.

Coming Up Next

In a month we'll be off on our summer holiday. This time, after a week at our little cabin on the lake in Finland, we'll sail on the two-hour fast boat the Tallink from Helsinki across the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn, Estonia, reprising our first visit, in 1991, when Estonia had regained its independence for scarcely three months.

For the next week we'll cross the Baltic republics by bus (a really nice bus), car and train, from Estonia to Riga, Latvia to Vilnius, Lithuania to Minsk, Belarus. From Minsk we'll fly (our old buddy) Austrian Airlines to Zurich, enjoy a couple of nights with a nice view of the peaks Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau at the Hotel Eiger in the automobile-free Alpine village of Murren, and then the Glacier Express train from Brig to Chur, ending with a few last days in Munich.

Afterward, we'll have four new Countries Galleries to add to EarthPhotos.com, bringing the total to 98.

It's not as off-the-beaten-path as some trips, granted. But it's built for pleasure. Please join us via these pages, beginning in August.

Travel Lists & Visited Countries Maps

Much of a perfect spring Sunday morning here on the farm was spent posting a chronological list of our travels to the web site Passportstamp.com (here's how we did). It's another one of those sites, like Douwe Osinga's Visited Countries project, that allows you to compile a map of your travels. Here's our PassportStamp map, followed by our Douwe Osinga map:

Close enough to the same that I'm wondering why I spent multiple hours on a gorgeous morning painstakingly clerking in every trip all the way back to my first drive to Canada in 1980 (Or maybe it was 1979).

But I know why, really. It was in the spirit of competition. See, you'll be ranked among the other site members, stacked up against the competition, sized up and told where you stand. And our results weren't bad:

105 countries visited, ranking 109th overall. Our most-visited countries are the predictable European ones, and many are because they were transit stops on the way elsewhere. The top ten: Germany 11 visits, Finland 9, Austria & France 8, Thailand 7, Italy, Russia, Switzerland & the UK 6, and China 5.

The trouble is the arbitrary rules.

Would You Sleep in a Truck with 18 Others to Get Photos of Polar Bears?

Okay, not exactly a truck truck. A tundra buggy.

The other day we were on about how spending days in close quarters with the same people - like on a cruise - can get to be just the least bit stifling. Now here are some truly close quarters: Much as I would dearly love the chance to photograph polar bears on Hudson Bay in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, I'm not so sure about spending several days with 37 others in the Tundra Buggy Lodge. 

From the web site: "The lodge consists of five large, modular units on huge tires, linked together like a train with a large-scale interior. The five units consist of two sleeping modules (complete with shared bathrooms and shower facilities), a lounge, kitchen and dining unit and a module which houses supplies and the camp's power station."

Maybe. I'm just not sure.

Here's a couple of screen grabs from a video on YouTube, which you can watch here.

   

Cats!

The consistently interesting site Mongabay.com has a story, with photos from camera traps, called Photos: highest diversity of cats in the world discovered in threatened forest of India. If you're in for an adventure vacation, as we've just learned many people are, it ought to get you going. The site IndianTiger.org has a just-the-facts page on wild cats.

When we eventually get to track the Bengal Tiger I've already got the lodging picked out - we'll stay here.

(Photo from the Animals and Wildlife Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. You might also check out the South Africa Gallery. The wild cat in the photo is a cheetah, and the photo was taken on an afternoon game drive at the very nice Mkuze Falls Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa.)

Safaris Are a Top Goal for that "Trip of a Lifetime"

We've waxed editorially about the overuse of the marketing words "of a lifetime" a couple of times. Now Alexia Nestora, who runs a blog called Voluntourism Gal, has published a study that gets past the marketing to have a look at what people really decide to do when they take what they describe as their trip of a lifetime.

Key finding: "70% of respondents said they are most interested in visiting natural and man-made wonders on a once-in-a-lifetime trip such as Machu Picchu, the Pyramids or Victoria Falls. Beyond that, 53% said they were very interested in going on safari...."

Also: "52% of respondents organized their lifetime trip independently, 18% join a tour group, and 16% use a travel agent to organize their trip."

Have a look at her summary, or download the whole report.

And while we're on about research, in a journal called Applied Research in Quality of Life, the study "Vacationers Happier, but Most not Happier After a Holiday" claims something confirmed travelers could have told you in the first place. As the New York times quotes the lead author of the study, “The practical lesson for an individual is that you derive most of your happiness from anticipating the holiday trip.” 

And, I'd add, from reliving the experience with your photos after the trip.

The study author has a tip most of us can probably agree with: “What you can do is try to increase that (your happiness) by taking more trips per year. If you have a two week holiday you can split it up and have two one week holidays. You could try to increase the anticipation effect by talking about it more and maybe discussing it online.”

*****

(Photo is an HDR of a tree climbing lion in the Ishasha Wilderness, Uganda, from EarthPhotos.com. See more in the Uganda Gallery and the Animals & Wildlife Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Trans-Siberian Railroad: The Urals to Irkutsk

No need to leave home. Google Russia has posted (in English) the entire six day, 5752-mile Trans-Siberian railway journey. As the Guardian writes, "You can choose different sounds to accompany it: the rumble of wheels, sugary Russian pop tunes, or the evocative playing of a balalaika. Alternatively, you can listen to readings of Russian classics (in Russian) of Leo Tolstoy's 1,400-page War and Peace or Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls.

"Along the way are Russia's most picturesque vistas: Siberian rivers, the elegantly curving Lake Baikal, and the hazy Barguzin mountains. There is also a lot of steppe."

Which presents a great opportunity for us to share the story of part of our trip in 2001. Hope you enjoy it.

The kiosk, alongside a tram stop, was just big enough to be a walk-in affair, not big enough for four, let alone our steamy tensome.  The boys in front argued over what beer and candy to order one each of. I motioned for six litre-sized bottles way up high on a shelf, consternation rippling through the mottled impatience behind me.

In a few hours Mirja and I would climb aboard the Trans-Siberian railroad to Ulan Bataar, Mongolia.  We’d be a week en route, so we needed stuff. In a snap, though, I calculated we could get everything else at the train station.  Six litres of water is heavy.

In the United States, today was Labor Day. On the edge of Siberia, autumn held full sway. E-kat's denizens plodded cold and damp in an insistent, heavy shower. A lot of the older folks wore long coats. The rain beset.

Passing the afternoon waiting to climb aboard the train, a cheerful Novosti TV story captioned “Dagestan” showed pictures of exploded railroad track.

On Hotels: Why People Stay Where They Do

Everybody knows what they like. Everybody has their own approach to where to stay on the road.

Compare this gentle rant against high-end hotel properties with this list of favorite high-end properties. What we have here are two writers headed in different directions.

But I agree with both.

We've all got our stories on the anti-expensive-hotel side. In December, 2006 the hotel just outside the O. R. Tambo International terminal at Johannesburg (which was not then an InterContinental Hotel as it is now) charged us for every last beer, orange drink and tonic water in the minibar. All of them.

That was because we cleared all of them out and placed them in the cabinet beside the minibar so that we could store food we brought back from their restaurant. When it was time to go we reassembled the minibar, but it was one of those pressure-sensitive models which charges you for anything that's lifted from its assigned place.

Of course we were adamant that that wasn't right and would not stand, and it didn't. But we had to send a member of the front desk staff up to confirm all their Pepsis were in place, all momentum came to a screeching halt for fifteen minutes at checkout, and the ill will transformed what had been a pleasant enough stay to an experience I'm still writing about today. Just far, far too mercenary.

Careful There, Sonny, Them's MARKETING Words

Last fall I saw a photo contest offering the winner a trip of a lifetime to Australia. Now, Australia is a lovely and photogenic place. How many people, asked to think up their own personal trip of a lifetime, would choose Australia? Maybe not many, but some for sure, and that’s the thing. There are as many trips of a lifetime as there are lifetimes. Google “trip of a lifetime” and you’ll get 4,600,000 hits.

Emily and Jonathan’s trip of a lifetime happened in 2007. Kyla and Nick's happened in 2008 & 2009. Islands magazine/Orion Expedition Cruises "Trip of a Lifetime" contest winner was Justin Lechwar of Missouri, who will be enjoying a "dream cruise this March through the islands of Melanesia." Meanwhile Dallas-area teen amputees enjoy the trip of a lifetime skiing in Colorado.

Advertising aside, there's no such thing as a single "trip of a lifetime." Everybody gets to decide on their own.

*****

There are two basic types of traveler: Those who find their place in the sun and return there again and again, and those who try someplace new just about every time. We're type #2. For type #2's, every successful trip tries to get close to an "of a lifetime" element - that is, a bit you're likely as not never to do again - that you're only doing once in a lifetime.

Our most recent trip had one specific "of a lifetime" element.

The BBC Discovers Remote British Imperial Outposts: St. Helena Edition

The question of whether there will ever be an airport on the British Overseas Territory of St. Helena is a perennial. Judging from the opinions of the crew of the RMS St. Helena (which has a vested interest, since it provisions the island), the consensus answer is no.

The Christmas issue of the St. Helena Independent weekly newspaper chastised the current British Labour government for kicking the decision six months down the road (and likely, into the Tories' laps) with yet another study (Download the issue "20091218.pdf" here.) This empty building, on the island's main street down near the harbor, also suggests frustration:

As we boarded the RMS St. Helena at Jamestown for the two day run up to Ascension Island Saturday a week ago, some customers at Ann's Place, our favorite little lunch spot, saw our camera gear and asked if we might be BBC. A BBC crew was expected, but we'd been told they weren't due for another week.

Now they've been there. Read their story on their web site. Be sure to watch the video featuring Mia, the ship's second officer. She gives the bridge tours on the ship, too.

(More photos from St. Helena here on EarthPhotos.com.)

Government Sanctioned Photo Trip to Cuba

Photographers who fancy a trip to Cuba: Painet, the picture resource service for photo buyers, sends this, which I pass along in its entirety:

"Successful travel and stock photographer Bill Bachmann will be directing another Cuba Photo Mission from March 28th thru April 9th, 2010. This trip is Bill's third 13-day directed trip with the opportunity to see time stand still in Cuba from the 1950's before the embargo started. This will be a wonderful opportunity to take photos of all the old Classic 50s autos, colorful people, colorful music, and fabulous old buildings before the embargo gets lifted and Cuba changes forever.

His group will have a special Humanitarian Visa to fly directly via 45-minute charter American Eagle flight to/from Miami to Havana. Bill has traveled extensively throughout Cuba four times and several Painet shooters just returned from a wonderful adventure with his last trip in October, 2009. The price is right and we also will bring much-needed medical supplies to this colorful country and people.

This trip will fill up quickly, so for more information, look at Bill's website www.billbachmann.com . Bill is on assignment this month in Tunisia in the Sahara Desert, so if you want all the information about the trip, email him at his traveling email billbachmann@yahoo. com and he will get back with you with the itinerary, pricing, and all other information. This is a rare opportunity, so don't pass it up."

Photo of the day

Rome, Italy landscape from 30 December, 2009.

The Journey Ahead

We're battening down the farm now to head toward Walvis Bay, Namibia, which is the point of African land on the map.

En route we'll stop in Switzerland and Italy, then on 1 January, 2010 we'll fly JNB - Walvis Bay to board the RMS St. Helena and sail to the islands of St. Helena and Ascension.

We'll be posting our thoughts here on CS&W and our photos here on EarthPhotos.com. Please come along with us.

In the meantime, you can read up on the local news in:

- Coastal Namibia: The Namib Times

- St. Helena: The Independent

- Ascension Island: The Islander

And here's "The Pierhead Webcam" live from Ascension, updating every five minutes. Looks tropical.