Just a quick note of congratulations to World Hum for its recently recognized (but long-deserved) Webby Honoree status for best writing on the internet. Nearly a decade later, I’m happy to still be a part of it!
Archive for the Travel Writers Category
Congrats to World Hum!
Posted in Travel Writers, World Hum on April 25, 2010 by frankburesRebranding Nigeria
Posted in Africa, Arts in Africa, Books, Clips, Travel, Travel Writers, World Hum, Writers on April 24, 2010 by frankbures
On the road between Oshogbo and Abuja, as I traveled across West Africa, I noticed one of the old men in my taxi reading over my shoulder as I paged through my Rough Guide to West Africa. So I handed it to him, as well as my Bradt Guide to Nigeria. Partly out of embarrassment, I held back the Lonely Planet Guide to West Africa, which I’d also brought because I didn’t have time to photocopy all the countries I’d be going through. I know I’ve said I only bring eight books when I travel. But sometimes you just can’t decide what to leave and what to take.
Incidentally, though, this gave me a chance to road test what I think are the three best guide book companies: Lonely Planet had the best maps, but it was a few years old, and things in Africa change fast. The Bradt guides (For Nigeria and Burkina Faso only) had amazing depth, but also suffered from the pace of change. The Rough Guide had the best cultural information and was the most accurate, so I used it the most.
For a while, the old man and the others in the care passed the books around. “Very impressive!” he said of the parts on Nigeria. “If we had books like this about our own country, that would really be something!”
When I got to Abuja, Nigeria, I called a friend of a friend who’d invited me to crash at his place. His name was Jeremy Weate, and when I arrived, he saw my Rough Guide and asked how I liked it. I gushed: The Nigeria section, at 148 pages, with five pages about Nigerian literature, another five on music, and a wonderful section on food, was easily one of the best guidebook sections I’ve ever read.
“Well that’s good to hear,” he said, “because I wrote it.”
After we got back to his place, I sat down with Weate and asked him what it’s like to write a guidebook about a place as unpredictable, difficult and thrilling as Nigeria. You can read the interview here.
Around the World without a Plane
Posted in Books, Clips, Travel, Travel Writers, World Hum on April 8, 2010 by frankbures
Seth Stevenson was coasting into his 30s when he began to get that feeling many of us get. You know, the one that makes you want to take your life by the lapels and shake it, to heave all anchors weighing you down. It’s the urge to get out on the road.
Stevenson and his girlfriend gave notice. They tied up loose ends. They turned in the keys to their apartment. Then they packed two backpacks, went down to a harbor on the Delaware River, and got on a boat to begin a circumnavigation of the earth—without leaving its surface.
Stevenson writes about the trip in his new book, Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World, a great read and a fascinating look at the globe from a perspective few people see it nowadays: from freighters, ferries, bikes, buses and trains. “We’ve forgotten the benefit of surface travel,” Stevenson concludes. “It forces you to feel, deep in your bones, the distance you’ve covered; and it gradually eases you into a new context that exists not just outside your body, but also inside your head.”
Stevenson is a contributing writer for Slate, has received multiple Lowell Thomas Awards from the Society of American Travel Writers and has been included three times in the “Best American Travel Writing” anthologies. I interviewed him via email.
Interview with Peter Hessler: Country Driving
Posted in America, Asia, Clips, Travel Writers, World Hum on February 18, 2010 by frankbures
Back in 2001, Peter Hessler looked at his hands. He’d been living in China since 1996, when he began teaching English in a school in Fuling, an experience he recounted in his book, River Town. But now he wanted to go farther into the country. Since he had at least three good fingers on each hand (as well as both thumbs), he was eligible for his Chinese driver’s license, and he went in to take his test.
The test featured questions such as, “If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you should: a) not tell him; b) reply patiently and accurately; c) tell him the wrong way,” and, “If you give somebody a ride and realize that he left something in your car, you should: a) keep it for yourself; b) return it to the person or his place of work as quickly as possible; c) call him and offer to return it for a ransom.” Of course, Hessler passed, and his license was, in some ways, a passport into a China he’d never seen—a China that is changing so fast it may never be seen again. The trips he took resulted in his new book, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory, a triptych of pieces about his travels. I emailed Hessler and spoke with him by phone at his home in Ridgway, Colorado.
Best Travel Books of 2009
Posted in Books, Clips, Travel, Travel Writers, World Hum on December 26, 2009 by frankburesTons of great titles this year. See the list here.
The Walker and the Photographer
Posted in Asia, Books, Travel Writers on December 2, 2009 by frankbures
At the Open Book Center in Minneapolis, where I sometimes work at The Loft, I met writer Joel Turnipseed for coffee. Afterward, he insisted we walk over to Big Brain Comics, a great little bookstore, so he could get me a copy of The Photographer, a graphic novel/photography book that tells the story of Didier Lefèvre’s trip across Afghanistan in the 1980s, because it was such an amazing book. As it happens, I was reading Rory Stewart’s The Places In Between at the time, one of the best travel books I’ve read in a long 
time, and Stewart even mentioned running into Lefèvre again on his way across the country in 2002. But what his book has in terms of narrative, vibrancy and erudition, The Photographer has in visuals, clarity and raw honesty. Together, they give a picture of Afghanistan that you could never get from a million news items—the richness, the texture, the cold, hard edge of history. It’s all there. Turn off CNN, and pick up these two books, and you’ll find a place like you would never imagine.
The Death of the Idyll
Posted in America, Books, Clips, Travel, Travel Writers, World Hum on November 29, 2009 by frankbures
For many years now, the northern edge of the Mediterranean has been besieged by Anglophones searching for the good life. First Peter Mayle settled in Provence. Then Tim Parks met his neighbors in Verona. Frances Mayes looked up in the sky near Florence. And Chris Stewart ran over some fruit in Spain. The list goes on. As Matthew Kneale recently pointed out in the Financial Times, the tradition of what he calls “idyll memoirs” may go back even further.
Yet it is this most recent spate of blockbusters that has sent a frenzy of discontented Americans and Brits to sunnier climes. Now, perhaps mercifully, that era is coming to an end. With the publication of Ferenc Máté‘s new book, The Wisdom of Tuscany: Simplicity, Security & the Good Life—Making the Tuscan Lifestyle Your Own, it’s all but official. The idyll is over.”
The Final (no really, final) Frontier
Posted in Travel Writers, Video, World Hum on November 28, 2009 by frankburesI was talking to a friend about Star Trek, and Rolf Potts’ series on World Hum, when he mentioned an obscure Turkish remake of the original series. Well thank God for Youtube, because a quick search brought it right up. Great stuff:
Best American Travel Writing 2009
Posted in Africa, Books, Travel, Travel Writers on October 13, 2009 by frankbures
At an internet cafe in Bamako last spring, I got one of those rare emails that makes your day, or your week…or your year, depending on how exciting your year is. It was from Jason Wilson, letting me know that a story I did for Harper’s, A Mind Dismembered: In Search of the Magical Penis Thieves, had been chosen by Simon Winchester for inclusion in the Best American Travel Writing 2009. This is always nice to hear, of course, if only because it makes you feel like maybe you’re doing something right after all. In any case, I’ve got a copy of the book now, and I’m happy to report that it’s a great year for the anthology, with lots of fantastic work in it. I’ve talked enough about my story, so let me recommend a few others:
Matthew Power’s piece “Mississipi Drift,” is one I read when it came out, and it was awesome: The tale of some anarchist “boat punks” who build a raft to float down the river as a kind of metaphorical middle finger to powers that be.
While living in Germany, Chuck Klosterman wrote some thoughtful, funny dispatches for Esquire, like the one in which he compared America to a meth lab. Another of these essays, “Who is America?” is in the anthology, and is a great look at America through German eyes.
Bronwen Dickey’s story “The Last Wild River,” also just received a Gold Lowell Thomas Award, and rightly so. The story is a vivid meditation on the impact of her father’s book, Deliverance, on the Chattooga River, on the south, and on herself.
In “The Pervert’s Grand Tour,” Tony Perrottet takes us though the sex museums of Europe: The Marquis de Sade’s castle, Casanova’s prison cell and the British Museum’s “Secretum.”
And finally, although not in the actual anthology, listed in back under “Notable Travel Writing” is Katie Krueger‘s story “My Senegalese Cousin, the Rice-Loving Pig,” one of best pieces of travel writing about Africa I’ve seen lately, and a very fun read.
There are many more. But to read them for yourself, you’ll have to pick up a copy!
Interview: The Oregonian
Posted in Press, Travel, Travel Writers, Writing on August 30, 2009 by frankbures
Not long ago, I got an email from Shawn Donley, who writes a travel column for the Oregonian. He kindly asked if I’d do an interview for his column, and I said of course. But when I asked how he got started with his column, he sent me an article by an Oregonian reporter about his and his wife’s trip recent around the world. It’s a fantastic story and, as you can see from their photos here, will make you want to pack it all in, quit what you’re doing, and head out for the horizon. You can read the interview here, and Shawn’s story here. He’s also got a great blog from their trip, which is something I don’t say lightly.
