Travel Reads - ilivetotravel's travel log

Travel Inspiring Reads – Or Is It??

20 May 2014 by Raul 1 Comment

My book for this installment of “Travel Inspiring Reads” may seem to actually be the opposite. It is called “The World’s Most Dangerous Places.” But, oh, did it made me want to see those places! This book certainly made the adrenaline rush within me just by going through it. I liked how it classified danger by different vectors, like crime or just being a “forbidden” place.

What’s funny is that I read this book in its 1997 version and, looking back, some of the levels of danger in the places cited have abated whereas others not discussed have likely become “dangerous.” For example, Myanmar was classified as forbidden but very recently that has changed. Other places remain in the right category; again, in the forbidden grouping lies Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and North Korea.

One of my favorite writeups in the book is Albania. Classified under the forbidden group (something which no longer seems to be applicable), it is presented as a place that is “oil and water” with the mix of the Albanian majority with a small separatist Greek minority. More interestingly, he says has “nasty” neighbors in Serbia and Greece. Maybe the former made sense in 1997 but I never would have thought Greece would be a nasty neighbor (Turkey aside, perhaps?). Apparently, at the time the book was written, there was some unrest from a small group of ethnic Greeks. Either it has subsided or it is just not covered in the news we get through major news outlets (who are likely talking more about some dumb starlet or bad boy athlete than real news… soapbox!).

In terms of pure danger, some of the places the book called out were and remain dangerous. Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan to name a few. But mercifully, I can re-read this book years later and be thankful that places like Cambodia, Peru, Colombia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and The Philippines have become safer and great places to explore and visit while feeling safe (or as safe as one can be anywhere).

I also enjoyed the book’s self-awareness as it identifies its key weakness: the moment it is published, it is already out-of-date. Cleverly, it points out “coming attractions,” or those places likely to appear in the book in the future. Some of the places called out were called out correctly as things turned out, others did not (at least, not yet). On the former: Mali and Zimbabwe have become messy places indeed. On the latter: the Basque country has not exploded but instead remained fairly calm; Bangladesh has not fallen to civil war; China did not break up after Deng Xiaoping died; and Panama did not get re-taken by the Noriega crews nor became a mess after the Canal turned over in 1999.

I should seek out the latest version of the book and see what places feature prominently as dangerous. And see if the adrenaline kicks in like when I first read it so many years ago!

Filed Under: Travel Reads Tagged With: adventure, Albania, crime, dangerous places, forbidden, good reads, travel book

Travel Inspiring Reads – In the Empire of Genghis Khan

3 April 2014 by Raul 1 Comment

Stanley Stewart shares with us in his book about his travel through the lands of Genghis Khan. Even before he gets to Mongolia, you get to enjoy his anecdotes from traversing what is to me an obscure corner of our planet: Central Asia. And, I may add, a part of the world I am dying to explore myself, inspired partly by another book I reviewed earlier: The Alluring Target.

Stanley, or “Stalin” which was the closest some people could get to his name, shares about his journey which started in Istanbul, crossing the Black Sea on a ship where he met some interesting characters. Two of those characters in this ship, which was no cruise liner, Anna and Olga, were described as a “dramatic illustration of the way that Slavic women seem unable to find any middle ground between slim grace and stout coarseness.” And this will be the freedom that he uses along the book to describe his experiences and the sights. His observations are funny and truly helped me picture the scenes.

He hits Sevastopol, recently in the news to the Russian invasion of the Crimea, and eventually trains his way across parts of Russia eventually exiting it at Kazakhstan. Perhaps Russia invaded the Crimea this year to get Sevastopol because, as he explains, back in Soviet times, Russians from Moscow would go down there “just to look at the vegetables.” LOL, Putin just needs some fiber! He also finds -and shares with us- wisdom he gets from a Russian: “In Russia, everything takes time. We have a saying: ‘The first 500 years are always the worst.’ ” Good news: no dictator lasts even a fifth of that, right?!

In any case, the author keeps moving east and begins talking more about the focus of this epic journey: Genghis Khan. He explains how Genghis could not respect towns as he was a nomad from the steppes, who viewed townsfolk with pity, from “a position of cultural and moral superiority” while viewing settled farmers as nothing more than a “flock of sheep.” The freedom of the nomadic life was highly valued. Therefore, destroying these settled peoples did not trouble good ole Genghis. Mongols were seen at the footsteps of Vienna but like the Ottomans later, they did not make it there. No, it wasn’t a Polish king that saved Vienna from the Mongols (like from the Ottomans) but it was an odd thing that kept them out: the Khan of those days died; and all the Mongols had to haul back to the capital to be part of the election of the next Khan. So just like that… poof! … they left and Europe was spared further destruction.

One of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much is this mixing of the observations of a traveler with the historical info, all giving me enjoyable insights into this part of the world. For example, he describes Bishkek, the not-well-known capital of not-well-known Kirghizstan as a “sweet provincial place of tree-lined streets” – it only makes me want to see this place along the Silk Road with my own two eyes.

In another part of the adventure, he describes visiting a highly isolated monastery of only two monks who seemed to have barely escaped the 11th century… and stayed at the 12th century. Further on, he describes flying into Mongolia since there was no land route with an open border in that corner where Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia meet. The plane was from a company with only one commercial flight that was clearly not regulated by any aviation authority. No, no, it was not Aeroflot. He lands in the town of Olgii which proves to him that “Mongolians are not very good at towns.” He elaborates that it had “an apocalyptic air,” a town “built by people who hate towns.” Good stuff!

Through his time with his Mongolian guides, he learns about the Mongolian worldview. Choice stuff. Like: “We hate the Chinese… And the Chinese hate us right back.” Stanley points out that no better evidence of the latter than the Great Wall itself, to keep the barbarians out: “To the Chinese, the Mongols are the neighbors from hell.” I am not sure about that. Let’s ask the Tibetans, shall we? Another great nugget into this relationship is the Chinese saying he shares: “When Mongolians party, the rest of Asia locks its doors.” So the Mongolians, it would seem, would belong in the SEC if they had a college football team.

And the insights into how Mongolians live are aplenty. For example, we read about the wrestling competition where the jackets worn by the wrestlers have long sleeves but are open in the front. That’s to be sure no women wrestlers pretend to be men. You see, he explains, women wrestlers are well feared in Outer Mongolia and, this way, they keep men wrestlers from getting hurt… Another insight is why jeeps tend to have no door handles on the left hand side of the vehicle: jeeps, like horses, should only be mounted from the right hand side. A final insight I will share here is how nothing “horrifies Mongolians quite like the admission that foreigners, like animals, regularly consume raw leaves.” Horrifies me too.

Now, I am NOT going to take that crazy flight into Mongolia by a local airline with one plane… Nor am I looking to spending weeks on horseback, much as his crazy horses sound like a barrel of laughs… But I have to say that the anecdotes, the observations, and the facts shared make me wish I’d been right along him -not all the time- in this journey and feed my hunger to meet Central Asia some day!

Filed Under: Asia, Travel Reads Tagged With: adventure, book, central asia, good read, Kazakhstan, memoirs, Mongolia, travel

Travel Inspiring Reads – Conquering the Fear of Flying with “Ask the Pilot”

12 March 2014 by Raul 9 Comments

I admit it. No, I confess it. I am a nervous flyer. The more I fly, the nervouser I get. Is it that the odds are infinitesimally less in my favor? Is it that I can better recognize abnormal sounds? Or is it just the fault of that off-duty flight attendant gripping our shared armrest during turbulence over northern Florida? Surely, it is non-sense to worry about being propelled at 35,000 ft of altitude in a metal cylinder loaded with fuel, right??

It is probably a little bit of everything and, maybe, some superstition mixed in for good measure… I totally get the concept of aerodynamics. It is a basic concept and one does not have to be half a rocket scientist to grasp the physics involved. You know, roll down the window of a moving car and put your hand out. As you tilt your hand in different ways, you can find that one position where all of a sudden your arm is about to fly up and back. That’s how a plane flies (OK, maybe grossly over-simplified). It is all so elementary that technically a plane can glide down on no engines (this actually happened to an A330 in 2001 and it ended up landing at an island in the Azores). Clearly, this is not the recommended way to fly but it illustrates the point.

Enter, stage left, Patrick Smith’s “Ask the Pilot,” a no non-sense look through the many bad thoughts a nervous flyer can have. With the authority lent to him by his experience as a passenger and cargo pilot, he walks the reader through all these mis-conceptions or fears.

My favorite section of the book is the one that deals with turbulence. Of all the things to worry about when flying, turbulence is about the most normal thing, to the point many pilots don’t even feel turbulence we passengers fret about. As Smith points out, “A pilot worries about turbulence the way a sailor might worry about the waves.” Turbulence is simply crossing wind currents. For me, the problem begins because that first shaking startles me. And then, if it continues, it is almost like I don’t have a chance to recover from being startled. Let it go long enough (and not too violently enough) and I can come back down from the “scare.” As Smith puts is somewhat comically (except I wasn’t smiling when I read it!): “In the mind’ eye of a rider in coach, the plane is plummeting… In reality vertical displacement is infrequently more than fifty feet. and the plane will not be snatched away and stomped into the ground.” Oh, OK.

He doesn’t completely soft pedal the matter and does share than serious turbulence is possible and can be damaging but stresses it is infrequent. He also covers items like wake turbulence, hitting a bird during takeoff or landing, and other important topics like why is the pilot walking around the plane doing that when it barely seems he is inspecting anything (it is not the only check that is happening and that quick visual is like you looking at your car’s tires before a road trip).

Not everything he cover is about fear. He covers topics like how JFK‘s (formerly Idlewood) design came about. The briefing babble. Pilots’ pay. Unions. Flight numbers. He explains why it sounds like engines rev up immediately after landing (he explains how it is not a 180 degree reversal of engine power). He uses great humor as he shares anecdotes such as the time a cargo plane crew member dumped, not thinking straight, a bag of dry ice into the toilet… A volcano-like fountain of blue toilet liquid filling the restroom and beginning to flow all over the floor of the main level. (They survived.)

The book appealed to me as I had heard it did a great job calming this nervous flyer. What I discovered was a fun read that I highly recommend to any flyer out there (frequent or not!).

Are you a nervous flyer?? Am I the only one?? 🙂

Filed Under: Travel Journal, Travel Reads Tagged With: air travel, airplane, book, fear of flying, good read, inspiration, pilot, travel, turbulence

Travel Inspiring Reads – “Dark Star Safari”

17 February 2014 by Raul Leave a Comment

“Dark Star Safari – Overland from Cairo to Cape Town” presents the story of Paul Theroux’ overland crossing of Africa, quite the safari! (“Safari” means journey in Swahili.)

I enjoyed this book because it presented interesting topics:

Thought-provoking questions
Rich descriptions of places
Horror stories
Good history nuggets
Ideas for off-the-beaten-path places to visit.

Let’s go through these briefly…

Thought-provoking questions

While a book about travel, certainly part of travel is gaining an understanding of the local situation (at least for me). The author helps the reader gain an understanding of the current state and what makes it difficult for Africa to break bad cycles. For example, he points out how education in some of the countries suffers because those that have education and could be teachers are pulled by foreign NGOs for other activities (though I think he misses the point that often what those people go do is to try to help while also further developing capacity in these would-be teachers). He also discusses with people he meets the issues introduced by corruption and mis-management without writing a dissertation about it.

One thing that was unfortunate is that the author seemed interested in putting down NGOs (“the agents of virtue in white Land-Rovers”) wherever he could which is unfortunate since many do very good work on behalf of those in need (even if not all are perfect; many have learned and evolved their approaches). It is unfortunate in my opinion since it gives the impression that he has a chip on his shoulder and, as a reader, that diminishes my appreciation for his critical thinking (though it does not impact my appreciation of his writing effort). Also, I would worry that readers unfamiliar with the questions and topics involved may just take his word for it.

Rich descriptions of places

The rich descriptions he captures of what he sees make you want to explore the places he visits. For example, this is his description of Bayna l-Qasrayn, a street in Cairo:

“Perhaps the oldest inhabited street in the high-density city of Cairo, one thousand years of donkey droppings, hawkers’ wagons, barrow boys, veiled women, jostling camels, hand-holding men, and hubble-bubble smoker, among mosques and princes’ palaces, and a bazaar with shops selling trinket, brass pots and sack of beans…”

I also enjoyed relating to some of his observations, not dissimilar to my own. For example, in many hotels in Egypt there are metal detectors. I often wondered what were they really good for should someone just decide to park a truck full of explosives in front of a hotel. He is much more eloquent than me as he shares his observations on security while in Aswan:

“There were metal detectors at the entrances to most buildings though they were seldom used and seemed more symbolic than practical… Certainly the electricity supply was unreliable and there seemed to be a labor shortage. The armed men, with assault rifles slung at their sides, meant to reassure the tourists simply looked sinister and added to the atmosphere of menace.”

Horror stories

His description of travel through southern Ethiopia and Kenya to Nairobi is filled with frustrating anecdotes and mis-adventures. Unhelpful government people, bad roads, vehicle breakdowns, touts and thieves, etc. all color this part of trip. You suffer with him and then remember to be happy you are not him. Good reading though!

Good history nuggets

The book also included great nuggets of history which certainly pleased this fan of history. It informed me about Italy’s horrible choices when it came to Ethiopia since the late 19^th century – a story I had never heard about. In 1896, the Ethiopians trounced 20,000 invaders from the Italian army at Adwa (a place I had never heard of). Those poor young men, sent there by crazy leadership ill-equipped, for no good reason, to die or otherwise suffer. Unfortunately, all these created resentment that the Fascists in the 1930s wanted to act on. So off they went (with poison gas and all) to invade Ethiopia whose fighters were still using the same weapons from the 1896 era… (Don’t mean to pick on Italy, by the way… History is loaded with ugly decisions by many!)

Ideas for off-the-beaten places to visit

The book introduces a reader like me to places I had never ever heard of but that I may enjoy visiting. For example, his inclusion of Lalibela in Ethiopia where there are twelfth century Coptic churches carved into the mountains adds to my already-existing desire to explore Ethiopia!

Favorite quote

One of the pieces of wisdom he heard in north Sudan during this safari struck me as universally true and is my favorite quote of the book:

“The criterion is how you treat the weak. The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.” – Sadig el Mahdi

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While the author can come across a little self-absorbed or sanctimonious, the story of his crossing Africa overland is gripping and well-written, sharing a lot more than just a narrative of adventures and mis-adventures. I wish I could do that trip… Maybe.

Filed Under: Africa, Travel Reads Tagged With: adventure, Africa, Cairo, Ethiopia, inspiration, journal, reading, travel book

Travel-Inspiring Reads – The Alluring Target

29 November 2013 by Raul 3 Comments

We all find travel inspiration from different places. It could be TV shows (Rick Steves, Samantha Brown, Anthony Bourdain, etc.), Eyewitness, Lonely Planet or other travel guides, friends, or our favorite blogs and websites.

Those are all great sources but some call to each one of us more than others, some grab our imagination more intensely than others. For me, some of those sources are books other than the standard travel guides, usually books that talk about a journey, an experience. I’d thought I’d share over time books that have inspired me in one way or another to travel and explore. So, for the inaugural travel-inspiring read, I present:

“The Alluring Target – In Search of the Secrets of Central Asia”

(Kenneth Wimmel)

This book, which I read in early 1999, made me hunger not only to see Central Asia but to have been one of the early companions of the early explorers the book presents (one of which is supposed to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones). This books tells the stories of these early travelers, way before TripAdvisor, electronic boarding passes, and, heck, even BEFORE flying. I wonder if I would have had it in me to do what these men and women did back then!

While it is a book about these explorers, it does present Central Asia in a different way than a travel book may. It helped me learn more about the importance of the region which, at the time these explorers went, must have seen an even bigger mystery than it is today. For helping me imagine travel to those parts so long ago, Mr. Wimmel, I thank you!

Whether here or in future post, please share with us what has inspired YOU to travel!