There are some images that just seem made for Backpacker Fiction. They combine images of travel with a double-take surrealism using a combination of colours that makes you want to live inside the picture. This one, courtesy of Thundafunda.com, is stunning.
Backpackerfiction.com is dedicated to exploring the intersection between travel and fiction and nothing made this connection so clear as my recent adventures with the Lonely Planet guide to Peru.Its pages, when matched with my experience, revealed mostly fiction.
Perhaps it is a result of L.P. being sold to BBC in 2007, or perhaps our culture's obsession with protecting ourselves from liability, or perhaps it's just plain caution, but this most recent 2007 edition of Peru was littered with off-set boxes labeled "Warning" or "Caution" - followed by reports of hijackings, violent robberies, and a dozen other boogie-man tails that basically encourage the reader to stay "on" the beaten path.
Example: "WARNING: The long and lonely section of road between Pucallpa and Tingo Maria is the only paved link between Peru's Amazonas region and the rest of the country. It can also be a risky road to travel on. Armed robberies have happened on many occasions and travelers have been caught up in the holdups....Buses do make the trip daily to and from Tingo, but you take your own risk. Holidays and feast days seem to be the worst times. The safest option is to fly to Pucallpa from Lima."
I wonder if the new edition of Lonely Planet Canada will include a similar injunction, urging foreign tourists to reconsider taking Greyhound buses on the Trans-Canada highway because of recent reports of beheadings on these desolate stretches of road.
Two Argentine guys hitch-hiked this perilous section of Peru, confirming to me that Tingo Maria to Pucallpa was a stunning drive through beautiful tropical scenery. I wonder how many travelers have been dissuaded from truly exploring our lonely planet because of the Lonely Planets in their hands. Khao San anyone?
I'm not a huge fan of travel lists because they can turn the experience of a place into a commodity - a mere notch in the belt, so to speak. But this one caught my eye because of its stunning high-quality photographs.
The 100 Most Beautiful Places in the World is just a starting point, and beauty, of course, is subjective (there was nothing beautiful about the crowds at Angkor, nor, I imagine, the lights of the Las Vegas strip.) I've been to 10 of these, and after my trip to Peru, that will make 12.
These potentially-not-so-surreal renderings by Studio Lindfor of modern cities plunged (literally) into a futuristic-looking Dark Age are presented by Inhabitat.com during a week where parts of both the U.K and Canada have been swamped by copious amounts of rain.
Such depictions of flooded yet inhabited cities call to mind the floating markets of Bangkok or Vietnam, the stilt communities along the Amazon River and the most touristed of all - Venice, Italy.
Prospects of underwater worlds draw attention to how infinitely explorable our planet is. Think you've been everywhere? Just wait a few decades until Tokyo turns into an aquarium and then start all over again...or wait a few dozen decades until inter-planetary travel becomes possible, then start collecting stamps in your galactic passport.
As the face of the globe changes, so will the places humans will want to visit, and ultimately write about. I think this bodes well for the future of travel writing.
One of the main reasons I love to travel is that we give ourselves permission to do nothing. Often we seek out modes of travel that force us to sit for hours or days in the same seat or train berth, knowing full-well that we can't and won't fill every second of that time with activity. iPods, books, journals and chit-chat only go so far before we settle into the passivity of staring out the window, or simply letting ourselves be present in the atmosphere of the country.
Part of my trip to Peru in December will include a four-day boat ride up the Amazon from Pucallpa to Iquitos. I've purposefully added this to my trail to force myself to lay back in my hammock and soak up the energy of the Amazon.
In Russia, I spent three days alone on the Trans-Siberian from Irkutsk to Moscow, having just said good-bye to three years of living in Japan and two close friends who continued down into Mongolia. That journey included a lot of "doing nothing" - despite the fact that I felt engaged in "doing nothing" the whole time.
The inspiration for this post came from the podcast I was listening to just prior. Gil Fronsdal did a dharma talk on the subject of boredom, which dissects this common feeling in a way that forces us to understand what's really taking place during those moments when we claim "I'm bored".
Personally, I'm looking forward to this long boat-trip up the Amazon. I plan to pack a few books and my journal, but mostly, I'm going to try and use these four days to actively engage in those still moments where I'm not "doing" anything.
Critical to any piece of writing that uses a country as one of its main characters, is a perfected and sustainable sense of place. I'm not talking about the overly sensualized, chapter-long descriptions of a single scene, but the pithy yet evocative concoctions of words that catapult the reader into the reality of an environment with seemingly minimal effort.
Here are six books that are as good as a stamp in your passport:
1. Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes.
Some of the most mouth-watering writing I've ever read, Mayes' always stops herself from sounding twee or try-to-hard. Restoring your own villa in Tuscany will be at the top of your life-list not two chapters in.
2. Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas.
Revolutionary Cuba never sounded so attractive. Arenas' unique style and mental-eye makes you feel as though you're part of a rum-swigging fiesta, booing Castro in the muggy underground Havanan arts scene.
3. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.
India's vibrant history is woven through with threads of magic-realism, capturing the intense and still-exotic experience of being on the sub-continent. Rushdie's voice is so strong that I can only read him in small stints, years apart, so that my own writing doesn't end up sounding like a cheap knock-off.
4. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.
Nirvana or bust: Kerouac's jazz-driven prose is at its best in this work. Road-side diners serving stacks of dripping pancakes and pots of black coffee, highway ditches crawling with bums who cook sausage over campfires, Kerouac writes a hymn to 1950's America.
5. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
1920's France and Spain are enviously cool. Absinthe flows freely. Cigarette holders dangle between the fingers of bored expatriates. You'll look in the mirror afterward and see a sunburn from an afternoon of bullfighting and need a quick siesta.
6. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson.
I include Carson's "novel in verse" because of the way her language transports and mesmerizes the reader. She plays visual jokes with her metaphors and conjures scenes as clear as a medium's crystal ball. South America comes alive and the adventure is real.
I came across the BBC documentary, Flipping Out, a few months ago. It contains some stunning and evocative images of both India and the Israeli backpackers who inhabit the notorious guesthouses.
Drug-use is prevalent among backpackers. From the full-moon parties in Thailand to the rave-soaked beaches of Goa, hash, coke, MDMA, LSD or heroin are the various drugs of choice. These substances are cheap, potent and readily available to young travelers in search of existential freedom from their mundane, lawn-covered suburbs.
Flipping Out dives a few fathoms deeper than I expected from a documentary on this subject. Besides interviews with ex-soldiers on "why they come" to India in the first place, only to be surrounded by other Israeli ex-soldiers, the film focuses also on the people who feel called to come to the rescue of those who've "flipped" - spiritual healers who attempt to re-member the shattered fragments of Self back into a functional consciousness.
Highly recommended, this documentary captures the essence of the quandary my writing deals with - that of what happens when paradise is permanently accessible to droves of outsiders.
Backpackerfiction.com is dedicated to exploring the intersection between travel and fiction and nothing made this connection so clear as my recent adventures with the Lonely Planet guide to Peru. Its pages, when matched with my experience, revealed mostly fiction.
These potentially-not-so-surreal renderings by Studio Lindfor of modern cities plunged (literally) into a futuristic-looking Dark Age are presented by Inhabitat.com during a week where parts of both the U.K and Canada have been swamped by copious amounts of rain. 
Such depictions of flooded yet inhabited cities call to mind the floating markets of Bangkok or Vietnam, the stilt communities along the Amazon River and the most touristed of all - Venice, Italy.
One of the main reasons I love to travel is that we give ourselves permission to do nothing. Often we seek out modes of travel that force us to sit for hours or days in the same seat or train berth, knowing full-well that we can't and won't fill every second of that time with activity. iPods, books, journals and chit-chat only go so far before we settle into the passivity of staring out the window, or simply letting ourselves be present in the atmosphere of the country. 
Part of my trip to Peru in December will include a four-day boat ride up the Amazon from Pucallpa to Iquitos. I've purposefully added this to my trail to force myself to lay back in my hammock and soak up the energy of the Amazon. 
The inspiration for this post came from the podcast I was listening to just prior. Gil Fronsdal did a dharma talk on the subject of boredom, which dissects this common feeling in a way that forces us to understand what's really taking place during those moments when we claim "I'm bored". 
Some of the most mouth-watering writing I've ever read, Mayes' always stops herself from sounding twee or try-to-hard. Restoring your own villa in Tuscany will be at the top of your life-list not two chapters in. 
1920's France and Spain are enviously cool. Absinthe flows freely. Cigarette holders dangle between the fingers of bored expatriates. You'll look in the mirror afterward and see a sunburn from an afternoon of bullfighting and need a quick siesta. 
