The future is uncertain, the end is always near.
On the Road
To travel is a culture in itself. You are detached from the notions of whom you have to be, and the locals and other travellers are as curious about you as you may be about them. Making the most of your time immersed in strange, ever-changing environments is an art. Let go of the assertiveness of your beliefs, share in the customs, learn some of the language, and you’ll emerge transformed.
Travel Guide Books
The evolution of the travel guide books was always going to be bad news for the planet. They’re responsible for a generation of consumer travelers who talk about ‘doing’ places ...
Around the World Travel Guide - Getting far away for a long time
Working in the real world has got you down? Feel like you’ve been at school forever? With the stresses and strains of modern society it’s easy to feel like we’re ...
How to Carry Money when Travelling
Now that you’ve worked for 6 months cleaning toilets, waiting on snotty customers who don’t tip at restaurants and creating future spinal complaints picking fruit, the last thing you want ...
The Rainbow Gatherings - Hippy Paradise
Those who think that the age of hippies has died have obviously never attended a Rainbow Gathering. Hippies, freaks, musicians, jugglers, and all kinds of weird and wonderful people congregate ...
Travel Scams Guide
Wouldn’t it be great if love really did make the world go round? Alas the path of the righteous traveler is set with scams, cons and hustles to leave you ...
First Time Travel Guide
So you might have been away with your folks before or even been on a weekend trip to Paris but getting on the road for real is something else. To ...
Learn a New Language For Free
What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
Bilingual.
And what do you call someone who speaks only 1 language?
An ...
Saint Patrick's Day - The Drunken Saint of Travelers and Irish
Once upon a time the role of the Irish was fairly well defined; they were good for dying by the dozen while they built the English some castles, they grew ...
Airports are a Waking Nightmare
I recently took a whole bunch of flights from South East Asia to Europe and I spent days in planes and airports, falling asleep to surreal dreams and waking to ...
Travel Insanity
I’ve seen a lot of crazy people in my time on the road. People convinced that they were a new incarnation of Jesus Christ, King Arthur or Buddha ...
10 Murphy’s Laws of Travel
Variously called Murphy’s Law, Sod’s Law or just a typical day on the road, the basis premise familiar to anyone who ever hit the road is this:
Anything that can go ...
Top Ten Backpacker Destinations
1. Thailand and Laos
It’s just so easy to be a backpacker in Thailand. Everything is cheap, everything is available. You want drink beer, you want banana pancake, you want ...
Italy Rainbow Gathering - Hippy Refugee Camp
By the time we arrived in Italy none of us in the van were on speaking terms. Six days on the road from Southern Spain had stretched our nerves to ...
Travel - The Saddest Pleasure
Paul Theroux called travelling the ‘saddest pleasure´. Poetry aside it’s only when you’ve been on the road for some time that you can identify with these kind of ambivalent feelings. ...
World Poverty - Rich and Poor
In the jungle in Mexico recently I met a security guard who was working for a museum of ethnic craft. He was sitting beneath a tree with sprawling ...
Hostels Travel Guide
Hostels are both the bane and the salvation of the budget traveller. On one hand they can be an excellent source of information; notice boards advertise what’s going on ...
The Traveler and World Injustice
I remember as a boy I once sat listening to an old traveler as he told me about the world. Whilst he knocked back beers and chain-smoked cigarettes, I hung ...
Consumer Travel, Guidebook Hype
Countries crawling out of the mayhem and destruction of civil war are often the preferred tramping ground of the budget traveller. The shattered economy ensures that it will be ...
Spain Travel Hippie Village
I trekked up the stony path beside the tumbling river and the almond trees in flower accompanied me to either side. I reached the carpark where there were stationed trucks ...
Vegetarian India Travel
I’ve always harboured a secret respect for vegetarians. There’s something inherently distasteful about rearing an animal, nurturing it, then killing it so you can eat its flesh. I’ll freely admit ...
Sailing for Travelers
I still remember the day I got onto my first sailboat. It was a few years ago, making a small passage through the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. We ...
Travel and Languages
I think I must have picked up a survival vocabulary in about 15 languages since I started traveling. The Kurdish, the Arabic and the Korean have disappeared without trace but ...
Theft and the Traveler
There are many dangers faced by the traveler on the road – violence, illness, losing one’s grip on reality etc. But one of the ever present perils is that ...
