You Can't Go Home Again

In the 1970's, author Andrew X. Pham and his family escaped from Vietnam in a leaky boat.  They nearly died on the water, but were rescued and taken to a refugee camp in Indonesia, ultimately making their way to California by way of Louisiana.  The story of his family and their lives since emigrating is both typical and anything but.  It comes with a lot of unresolved issues, emotions, and the constant struggle for identity in a new world that forces you to redefine who and what you are.  I picked up Catfish and Mandala looking for a story about a journey through a country I was fascinated in.  I got that physical journey and so much more.

Pham relates the story of his childhood in Vietnam and his upbringing in the US as he bikes through Vietnam as an adult.  He has traveled there to find himself--not in a hokey New Age way, but in a genuine attempt to understand the struggles of his family as refugees living in the United States. His family has reached something of a crisis point and he wonders if they had stayed would things have been different or were they always destined to be as they were. 

His welcome to his homeland is anything but warm.  Viet-kieu, or those who left Vietnam during the war,  are not well thought of by many.  Many assume is Korean or Japanese because his is clearly not Vietnamese.  He is insulted often and nearly physically attacked several times when they realize he is Viet-kieu.  At the same time, however, many offer him generous hospitality and quiz him endlessly about life in America. The journey itself becomes a test of endurance, almost a physical punishment.  He rides over 1000 miles through difficult conditions and his own illnesses.  He visits his old home, major cities, and tourist attractions and views them all from a very unique perspective.  He sees the scams, the hustles, the opportunistic entrepreneurship of the people and their poverty and is able to understand it all.  It is both foreign and natural. This was his home but it is unrecognizable to him. Still, Pham finds a better  understanding of his family, his parents, and of himself as he re-discovers his homeland.  He is asked what he will do when he returns to America.  "Be a better American." he replies. 

The journey Pham takes (both physical and spiritual) sounds extremely unpleasant but it was incredibly uplifting and revealing. Vietnam itself, as described in the book, is much the same.  It is a place that might sound unappealing given the arduous journey, food borne illnesses and abuse that Pham endured, but I came away more fascinated by the country than ever. His perspective provided amazing insight into the land and its people.  Is the journey to Vietnam one I will ever take?  I don't know.  But I do know I am very glad that I took the journey along with Pham.

The Sands of Time

Does travel literature ever become outdated?   That was the thought running through my mind as I started Baghdad Without a Map by Tony Horwitz.  It is an account of his time living in and reporting from the Middle East.  This is a region of the world that has changed so dramatically in the past year so I naturally wondered if the 1980's vignettes in this book would be relevant or sadly outdated.  Like all great travel literature, however, this is an outstanding portrait of a place and time period that makes for entertaining reading no matter when you happen to be turning the pages.

The book is a series of chapters that detail his experiences in various countries as he worked as a freelance reporter based in Cairo. Some chapters focus on the ordinary lives of everyday people.  He chews qat with men in Yemen, he visits a strip club in Cairo, crosses the river of Jordan, and flies the incredibly dangerous airlines that serve the region.  (His tale of getting out of Khartoum, Sudan via Air Egypt is truly frightening.)  Other chapters are of his experiences covering big events.  He and a number of other journalists travel to Libya at the request of the government to "verify" that the country is peaceful and happy.  Libya in "The Colonel's Big Con" reminded me of the stories of life in North Korea that I read in Nothing to Envy.  The amount of self delusion that life under a dictator requires is utterly heartbreaking.  Similar images come from his visits to Baghdad under Saddam, during the Iran-Iraq war, and later, just before the first Gulf war.  Baghdad, however, brings much more menace as Horwitz is taken into custody and interrogated by officials after a paid informant reports him for being a journalist.

This was risky business, freelancing in the Middle East, but Horwitz finds humor in it all and makes even Khartoum (possibly hell on earth) entertaining reading.  But he reminds us that the risks he takes are nothing compared to the daily lives of residents.  One story, "To Beirut:  jusqu'au Boutiste" is the tale of a ferry ride in the dead of night to the besieged city.  Many on the boat are returning to their home despite the near constant shelling (and shelling directed at their ferry), because it is just that: home. 

So now, 20 years later, peace has come to some areas, war to others.  Dictators have fallen, new regimes have arisen and some struggles stay exactly the same despite endless conflict.  In this region the past is always the present, making this a very timely read indeed.

The Seedy Underbelly of History

I think I want to take a trip with Tony Perrottet.

Why?  Well, he is Australian for starters.  That is always good for fun and adventure.  Also,  he speaks several languages, knows a great deal about European history, goes to completely obscure places of stunning beauty and can talk himself into almost any secure location.  Sounds like an exceptional traveling companion, I think.  Of course, there is that slight obsession with ancient erotica to deal with...

The back of this book reads, "Sex and travel have always been intertwined..." but if I am honest, I didn't pay too much attention to the description of this book before I requested a copy.  Instead I knew I liked a previous book by the author (Route 66 AD)  and the title sounded fabulous:  The Sinner's Grand Tour.  What it turned out to be was a tale of a family tour through Europe to look at all manner of historical erotica and visit significant sites in the history of licentious behavior.  (Well, he looked at it, anyway.  For the most part the kids were happily engaged elsewhere.) There was a notorious "self abuse" club in Scotland, former brothels in Paris, the home of the Marquis de Sade, Casanova's prison in Venice, the site of a notorious clerical sex scandal in the remote Pyrenees, the Swiss summer residence of Lord Byron, the isle of Capri and the Blue Grotto and a bathroom painted by Raphael with a collection of erotic imagery that is located inside the Vatican.

It is all very tastefully done (though there are a few pictures some may wish to avoid) and it conveys a wonderful sense of historical significance to the simplest of places. The lost brothels of Paris, for example, hosted many a historical figure, inspiring more than a few artists, scandalizing more than a few citizens.  They were notorious throughout the continent and now they are ordinary buildings on hidden streets having been shut down after the second world war.  While little of the history that happened there was pretty their story, among others, is all a fantastic reminder of the fact that history is more than just boring facts and political events.  History is filled with passion, with people, with cruelty and poverty, with dirt and ugliness, greed and pettiness and, it would seem, a great deal of debauchery. Many thanks to Tony Perrottet for the journey behind closed doors to experience it.

The Great Southern Frontier

In Patagonia
by Bruce Chatwin

It is sometimes easy to forget that the closing of the American frontier actually opened up a new South American frontier.  Argentina was flooded with immigrants from around the world.  The Welsh, the English, the Germans, Italians, the Russians, and many more arrived in large numbers, searching for the freedom that they felt they had lost in their homelands.  These immigrants are among the people that Bruce Chatwin visits with in his classic travelogue, In Patagonia.

I decided a few months back to read some of the classics of travel literature that I had managed to miss.  Chatwin absolutely had to be first up, especially with a teaser that mentioned Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Butch and Sundance were among those who sought out the new frontier.  Chatwin delves through their history in South America, but also into that of other immigrants through conversations with long time residents from all cultures present in the region from indigenous, to Russian Jewish, to sheep farmers.  The conversations are not related in depth.  Instead they are more like vignettes that paint a scene from the country at the time--a country in the midst of (and recovering from) a great deal of political turmoil.  We also get literary quotations, journal entries, and assorted scenes from along the road.  At first it is a bit unusual, difficult to grasp a hold of, but once you do, it is as entrancing as the many reviews promised it was.

Modern travelogues are rarely so disjointed.  There needs to be some sort of gimmick, purpose or, heck, just a linear narrative. There also needs to be a personality at the center.  This is completely missing in In Patagonia. This book started with a personal journey--to visit a land much studied in his childhood, but book isn't about his visit.  Instead, the book is about the land and it's people, not the journey, not the experience. Chatwin himself is almost incidental to the story. He seeks out the story of Patagonia and finds it in bits and pieces.  He makes no judgments, no conclusions, but leaves the reader to assemble his or her own picture.  It is a thought provoking and very literary experience.  It is quite simply one of the best travel books I have ever read.

Modern yet Traditional

Sideways on a Scooter:  Life and Love in India
by Miranda Kennedy
 

I sometimes say that I will go anywhere.  That isn't entirely true.  I won't go to India.

I have heard wonderful things about India.  I love Indian food and both the culture and land are intriguing.  The tea plantations in the north sound wonderfully interesting as do the beaches of Goa.  But for each of these wonderful things, I have heard something equally bad--the chaos, the poverty and begging, the lack of hygiene, the sectarian strife...I think it was all summed up in a story I read in an anthology once.  It was about someone on their first trip to India and was entitled, "Trying Really Hard to Like India."  In the end, they did not succeed.  I am pretty sure I wouldn't either.

Nonetheless, virtual travel to India is still of great interest to me.  Much of the travel stories I come across on India, however, focus on how the western author was transformed by a given aspect of traditional Indian culture--yoga or living in an ashram, helping the poor, meeting a wise guru...  As I have previously discussed that doesn't interest me and, accordingly, I was more than a little nervous as I started this book.  After all, it was written by an NPR staffer.  Would I be facing another Radio Shangri-la?  Was this book not for me?  As it turns out, the book was for me.  Because though the subtitle reads "Life and Love in India" and the book is full of life changing events, they are not those of the author.  Instead this is a fascinating insider portrait of women in Indian culture.

Miranda Kennedy lived in India for a decade as a freelance reporter.  During that time she met and became friends with a collection of local women from a cross section of society.  Each one is very different but there are similar expectations of marriage, children, and familial duty.  We see the traditional middle class through Geeta who is expected to marry as soon as possible but struggles with a desire for independence and a more modern lifestyle.  The more upper class Parvati shows us the consequences of rebellion against all expectations while Radha and Maneesh illustrate what life in the lower classes and widowhood will bring.  Kennedy even meets a number of Muslim women at a local gym/social center and gets a window into their very private lives.  At the same time the author must struggle with her own issues as an unmarried foreign woman in that same society.  As she interweaves her story with those of the other women she uses the dominant cultural medium (the plots of Bollywood movies) as a guide to the idealized expectations of society.  It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does and it is utterly absorbing.

I didn't read this book to understand modern India, but in some ways it offers a very realistic portrait of how rapid societal changes are affecting the every day lives of modern Indians.  It is a book similar to Country Driving by Hessler, which I read a few months ago which did much the same for China.  This story is more personal though, as the author provides a truly intimate view inside the household that few get. Despite the modern elements rapidly entering society, few things change slower than the culture and traditions surrounding family.  There is no better, no more revealing place to examine a society.  It was a pleasure to take this trip to India. 

I am still not booking a plane ticket, though.

Travel Without Judgment

Returning from my second solo trip abroad I was standing in the customs line when the woman behind me suddenly began to recite a rather amazing litany of complaints about the city we had just come from, Rome.  It was hot, dirty, chaotic, and so on and so on...she was so glad to be home.  I turned around and stared at her in astonishment.  Was it all of those things?  Yes, but it was Rome!  Learning to navigate the chaos, running through the torrential downpours, getting a heat rash, watching the hustlers...these were all amazing memories for me and part of the experience of a place.  I absolutely loved Rome and I felt sorry for anyone who returned from that city having decided to focus only on the bad.  That is no way to travel the world.

Rome has nothing to do with Russia, but I mention that experience because of a phrase that Frazier uses in the brilliant Travels in Siberia.  Early in his explorations, he wonders how a Russia can be so horrible and so great at the same time.  More than 15 years of travel in the country do little to answer that question.  He relates his travel experiences honestly--the bugs, the trash, the bribes and bureaucracy, the sanitary conditions, the ecologic devastation, and the brutal past is all front and center.  Yet he never loses his wonder at the grandeur of the landscape, the painful history of many a city and the people, his attempts to master the language.  Quite simply he is in love with Russia and all of Siberia and accepts it warts and all.  His experiences and observations from his multiple trips combined with the history of the country make for an absolutely beautiful travel experience--no matter how horrible it seems at time--and a fantastic read.

This Book Was Not for Me

Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan The Happiest Place On Earth
by Lisa Napoli

Here is what I learned by reading this book.  I learned that I don't care what other people learn while traveling.

That sentence makes it sound like I didn't like this book and for that reason I hesitated writing this post.  But here is the thing, it wasn't that I didn't like the book.  I did enjoy parts of it.  I initially picked up Radio Shangri-la as I had only read one other book that involved Bhutan, namely The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner (interestingly, also an NPR journalist like Napoli).  Reading it,  I was fascinated with the portrayal of ordinary lives in a country I knew so little about.  Napoli really did have an opportunity to see beyond the expensive tourist trail and get to know the real Bhutan as she worked at Radio Kuzoo, doing not much in particular.  She was even fortunate enough to be present during the historical transfer of power from a King to his son and from a Monarchy to a Democracy enabling her to witness the change in both the people and the nation.  I cared about that.  I did not care about the two men who threw themselves at her, her midlife crisis, or her professional ennui.  I didn't care that this 6 week impulsive leave of absence "changed her perspective on life".

None of this has any reflection on the book or the writer.  This was actually a perfectly fine story of a personal awakening that is well written.  The fault here is all mine.  This book was not for me and I failed to observe the very obvious hints.  I should have known this was not the book for me when the author was relating her experience in an experimental workshop on positive thinking.  Or perhaps I should have realized when she described the instant thunderbolt connection with a man at a party. Actually, the subtitle was a clear indication of the fact this book wasn't for me. But, no, I was interested in Bhutan and continued on.

But in reading the book, and in thinking about my reaction to it,  I did come to fully understand why I am an armchair travel reader, perhaps even why I am a traveler.  It is all about a sense of place not a sense of self.  It is about a physical journey, not an emotional one.  I know I want to explore, taste, and try new things.  I want to remove myself from what is comfortable and familiar and immerse myself in a strange new place.  I want discovery of a new world when I read, not discovery of inner peace.

Can inner peace and happiness come from travel, ala this book and others (Eat Pray Love would be number one on the list)?  Absolutely.  It just isn't something I, personally, am interested in reading about.  Every book has its reader, however, and though this book is not for me,  this book would be perfect for someone who is interested in personal growth and discovery through travel and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to that person. 

Peril in the North

Magnetic North
by Sara Wheeler

I haven't had a chance to do much actual travel reading for the past month as I have been, well, traveling.  I was driving around the northern half of the state, showing off the sights to visitors.  It was an odd experience, looking at familiar sights through their eyes and it gave me a new perspective on my home as well as on travel.

Despite all the fun and joy of this, I was eager to dive back into the pages of some travel literature.  This weekend I jumped right into the deep end with Magnetic North:  notes from the Arctic Circle by Sara Wheeler.  I call this the deep end of travel literature because reading about extreme environments is never easy.  They are gripping, though provoking, and often foreboding, featuring many reminders of the perils faced by the planet.  I have read several books about the Arctic in the past, most enjoyably The Last Gentleman Adventurer by Edward Beau Maurice and An African in Greenland by Tete-michel Kpomassie, which is in fact referenced in Magnetic North, and is one of the great gems of travel literature.  Also, I have read this author's previous book, Terra Incognita:  travels in Antarctica.  In all these books the environment takes center stage because everything single element of existence must adapt to it or die.

In Magnetic North, Sara Wheeler takes a clockwise journey around the Arctic circle.   She illustrates how those living in the southern latitudes have done their utmost to ignore the adapt or die message shouted by the region.  People have come North attempting to conquer the environment with mixed success and much failure.  They have come to convert the "savages" and succeeded in destroying a way of life that was essential to survival.  (This conversion from subsistence economy to cash has been done all the way around the Arctic circle.  No one society is blameless.) They have brought wars and politics and thrown up boundaries on nomadic populations of people and animals.  Now they look to exploit the wealth of resources trapped under the ice, possibly destroying all that is left of this delicately balanced ecosystem.  But the Arctic is getting its revenge.  Already, the concentration of pollutants is higher in the Arctic than anywhere else due to weather patterns.  The ice is melting dramatically fast at both poles, something which will affect life on the entire planet.  Though we don't live in the extremes of the polar regions, everyone on Earth must adapt to the needs of these environments or we will die.

So, yes, this was a difficult and depressing read at times, but it was also a joy to visit the remote places of the North, some of which I had never heard of (The Svalbard chain of islands), learn of explorers and their fatal hubris and of societies long since gone because they didn't adapt.  There was a great deal of introspection in Terra Incognita, a portrait of a much more desolate environment.  Magnetic North, however, is an external portrait of the societies that we all live in.  Societies that touch on, even depend on the Arctic.  It most definitely gives us all something to think about.

Paris Underground

Paris Underground from NPR on Vimeo.

        I had a beautiful trip to Paris a few weeks ago.  Well, a virtual one, anyway.  I was driving home when a story on the Paris Underground came onto the radio.  It was a collaboration between National Geographic and NPR and it absolutely mesmerized me.  If the story hadn't ended just as I turned into my street I would have had a driveway moment.

        I had assumed when the story started that it would be about the catacombs, the skeletons, and so on...much the stuff of many a guidebook and tour.  I should have known better--I mean this is NPR and National Geographic after all!  Instead of the well known portions of the sewers and catacombs, this was a journey into a world just below the streets traveled by so many tourists and one that few see.  It offers caving experience to university classes, a place to hold raves for the youth of Paris, and an undiscovered secret world for the daring among us to explore.  It is apparently addictive for some and the cause of a police record for others.  It is illegal to enter the Paris Underground and more than a little dangerous.

         The radio program was a companion to the cover article in the February 2011 National Geographic, something which I searched out at the library the following week.  The article was accompanied by maps, diagrams, giving extensive details about the history and more of a scientific viewpoint than the 17 minute NPR story did.  The photos also gave me pictures of the cataphiles (those who love and explore the Underground) and their adventures to put with the audio.  It all got me thinking...

        When I read travel literature, or any book, I don't get the sounds and smells of the journey.  Sometimes there aren't even pictures.  Yet with the best books I am still transported.  All my senses come alive through descriptive and emotive writing and I may well end up cold on a summer's day if that should happen to be what I am reading about.  Multimedia opens many doors to experience a place, and without it some feel bored.  To me, though, sometimes the simplicity of imagination is even more beautiful.  To combine the two as radio does, well, that is perfection.  The magazine story was full of outstanding information and great visuals, but I preferred the NPR audio story.  The missing visual element somehow made the trip that much richer.  My personal experience of Paris combined with the narration and sounds of the story to create an amazing virtual journey.  Thank you to both NPR and National Geographic for the experience.

Opening Closed Doors

Nothing to Envy
by Barbara Demick

One of the things I take into consideration when selecting travel literature is whether or not I will ever travel to the location in question.  In the case of Nothing to Envy, the chances of me doing that are pretty much non-existent.  North Korea is the most closed country in the world and is, needless to say, not a place for a relaxing vacation.

Oddly, I have read a story about travel in North Korea before.  It was a chapter in Bad Lands by Tony Wheeler.  In that book he traveled to some of the most dangerous places on earth including North Korea, Libya, and Iraq.  While none of the stories in that book were especially gripping and thought provoking, each did provide a window into a place that I will never see.  In the case of Nothing to Envy, however, it isn't just the window.  No, the door to North Korea is thrown wide open as Demick relates the lives of those who survived the famine of the 1990's and managed to defect to South Korea.  The lives are those of ordinary people and the stories of those ordinary lives are absolutely heart breaking and yet utterly absorbing.

Demick does an excellent job keeping a neutral stance as she lets the defectors tell the story of their life.  She doesn't provide analysis of how the government manages to hold power and the apparent devotion of its citizens.  Instead each defector relates how they felt and how those feelings slowly changed in the face of total economic collapse and widespread famine.  It is difficult for the western reader to fully understand the total lack of choice and appreciate the situation of each of these ordinary people and I very much appreciated Demick letting me do it myself. I truly found myself transported into their lives.

The journey here is a bleak one, but eye opening.  To me, it truly demonstrates how important travel can be.  Who is to say you know the true story of a place and a people until you have seen it for yourself.  It also demonstrates the gift of freedom, a word which has been much abused in our society of late.  Maybe to truly know freedom, we need to experience a total absence of freedom?  All I know is that I don't want to ever go to North Korea, but I would like the citizens to be able to come here.

Driving Change

Country Driving
by Peter Hessler

China is a frequent topic of travel literature these days.  I can't even begin to keep track of how many books I have read in the past couple years.  The most recent would include The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester, Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows, and now Country Driving by Peter Hessler.  Country Driving, which was mentioned on several best of the year lists, is the third in a trilogy that begins with River Town and Oracle Bones.  I have not read either of these first two books, but they are definitely on my TBR list now.  I absolutely loved Country Driving.

In this book, Hessler has just obtained his Chinese driving license, something that an increasing number of Chinese citizens are now able to do.  Not owning a car, he rents a variety of cars and explores far beyond the boundaries of his rental contracts.  The book is divided into three sections, each touching on a different aspect of the rapid changes China is experiencing and demonstrating how that change is so fast, the culture and infrastructure of the country cannot keep up.  He starts by tracing the ancient history of China with a travel route along the Great Wall.  He visits many small and dying villages, some of which are older than the wall itself, some bearing delightfully descriptive names such as Smash the Hu.  In the next section he relates his experiences as a part time residence in a village on the outskirts of Beijing, a village that in just a few years almost completely transforms and becomes part of the suburbs.  The final section relates the story of a small factory owner in one of the industrial districts, an area that was built and working before any infrastructure, such as roads or off ramps, had been completed. 

Hessler tells his story in part through Western eyes.  From that perspective, it is sometimes easy to laugh at the bizarreness of China--the wacky 50 yard driving test, the driving schools, the lack of off ramps on a freeway, the custom of negotiating payment for minor accidents there in the street.  It is also easy to condemn the environmental disaster that is China today, but is it really any different than the Industrial Revolution in the West? The US and Europe probably changed just as rapidly and as destructively. 

Hessler, a long time resident of China, is also able to give us the insider's viewpoint, telling the story of ordinary Chinese citizens who are working hard to get ahead even as the ground changes underneath them.  The way of life has shifted literally over night, leaving many physically behind in the villages as the young go forth to the cities.  The second section relates the story of a family running a small business to take advantage of the changes in their town.  Their child is born into the old ways, but being raised in the new.  It is a tale that makes it easy to condemn the West of today rather than China.

Hessler's ability to offer both perspectives absolutely mesmerized me.  He captured the contradictions, the insanity, the beauty that is China today.  Where is China going?  No one seems to know, the forces of change may beyond anyone's control.  It is going to be a fascinating journey, however, that, if nothing else, is crystal clear.

Deep Deep Deep Underground

Blind Descent
by James M Tabor

I hear about books from various sources.  I read reviews, browse books at the library, read articles, and get personal recommendations among other things.  I am an adventurous reader for the most part, but rarely do I actually read the adventure genre.  Travel is adventure, of course, but travel to the depths of the earth?  That is an adventure of exploration I am never ever going to take and not particularly interested in reading about if I am honest.  Blind Descent, however, showed up on several "best travel writing of 2010" lists and that intrigued me.  It was on the shelf at the library so I checked it out.

The story starts out with a death, displaying how truly unforgiving an environment is found in extreme caving.  The inexperienced need not apply or they will never become experienced.  From that doomed expedition the story divides up into two separate quests to discover the deepest place on earth.  One takes place in Oaxaca, Mexico and the other in the Ukraine.   The two expeditions are near opposites in terms of the people who lead them, the cave environment, and the end result of the mission.  Both, however, involve unbelievably dangerous risks. 

Much of the story focuses on the cavers, in the case of Bill Stone, a driven, almost obsessive personality who comes to dominate the book even when the pages were deep underground in the Ukraine.  His quest to conquer the sumps and invent a re-breather for cave diving was fascinating and very illustrative of the dangers of the Chevre Cave in Mexico.  At the same time, Alexander Klimchouk in the Ukraine, was so solid and resolute the actual cave itself seemed to lack drama despite the fact that it was the deepest place on earth at more than 2100 meters below the surface.

Because of the focus on the cavers, I never really felt transported by this book.  It was simply too grounded in the reality of the earthbound personalities.  At the same time, I will admit that caves are not likely the most vivid of environments.  How do you paint a picture of a place that has no light to illustrate it?  How do you capture the oppressive nature of the weight of thousands of feet of rock above you?  It is so alien, so forbidding, it sometimes literally drives people crazy.  I just didn't feel that as I read this book, though it was a good story.  Then again, I don't know that I want to go that far underground, so perhaps it was for the best.