Only one piece of carry-on luggage allowed? Make it this book.

Dear Readers, as you head into that great American tradition, a long, lost weekend of drunken pyromania family, friends, and tasty BBQ, take a minute to consider the less fortunate, like adventure travel writer Carl Hoffman, whose new book  ‘LUNATIC EXPRESS: Discovering the World…Via its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes’ has just hit the shelves, despite his many apparent efforts to off himself while reporting it. Hoffman just returned from Thailand, where he traveled to write a piece about his 81-year old father’s restaurant in Chiang Mai. We caught up with him just as the jet lag was wearing off.

In one sentence, please defend your sanity. Thank you.

I did not jump out of a plane or climb a mountain or plunge down a waterfall in a kayak; I merely bought tickets on regularly scheduled buses, boat, trains and planes that millions of people take every day.

Seriously, should travelers throw caution to the wind and take their own Lunatic Express trips? What is it about moving around the world through these kinds of corridors that you found so compelling?

The whole point of the journey wasn’t some death defying macho thing, but to use those conveyances as a window through which to see and understand the world as it is for the majority of its people.  The world is changing rapidly and huge numbers of people, mostly poor, are on the move, traveling from countryside to city, from one end to the other of enormous cities, from country to country, on epic and often dangerous and uncomfortable journeys.  If you’re looking for an authentic travel experience, if you’re looking to meet people and plunge deeply into the world, than there’s no better place than an overcrowded Indonesian ferry or a jam-packed Kenyan Matatu or Mumbai commuter train.  And I found that the further off the beaten path I got, the more I put myself into places few westerners went, the more gracious the people became and I was treated with great care and hospitality.  So, in a word, yes.  Everyone should take their own Loony journey.

Any points in your reportage when you thought, ‘Feck. Now I’ve really done it. Goodbye, world.’ What happened next?

A few times I felt really, really out there – when I squeezed into a shared car in the Peruvian Amazon or when I boarded a small ferry in the Molucca Islands of Indonesia for a place called Buru, and I had no idea where I was going or what I’d find when I got there, and I carried no map or even extra food or water.  But those times were the best!  I felt a total freedom and exhilaration at moving through the world into this great unknown, and at giving up control and surrendering to whatever lay ahead.  And on a bus through Afghanistan, well, it broke down for a bit in a bad area and that was the only time I though, ‘uh oh, I’m stupid and if I die or get kidnapped it won’t be fun and what was I thinking?’  But then the bus coughed to life and off we went.

What’s the most important item in your bag or suitcase, aside from your passport?

My notebooks.  Everything else was replaceable, but those weren’t.  I kept them in sealed zip lock bags and close at hand, hoping if the ferry sank or the bus plunged off a cliff, I’d be able to keep them safe.  And something to read.  And Ibuprofen.  A must for hangovers.

Why do they hate us?

They don’t.  They love us.  They’re dying to know everything about us and they all want to move here.  The only people who hate us are urban Europeans, and that’s because they’re really so much like us.  And maybe a few Taliban, but they secretly all want to move here, too.

I’m a fan of writer William Boyd. His debut novel ‘A Good Man in Africa’ made me howl. What fiction and non-fiction travel-themed writers do you love the most, and why? Do you see yourself writing fiction? What’s next?

I love Tobias Schneebaum, a gay, New York artist who shed his clothes and disappeared into the Amazon in the 50s, and then lived with the Asmat in Indonesian Papua in the 70s.  ‘Keep the River on Your Right’ and ‘Where the Spirits Dwell’ are haunting, unbelievable books, and they’re all about the outsider in his own culture who seeks connection in the exotic, and sort of finds it, but not really, because a white Westerner is even more of an outsider with a bunch of natives than he is at home.  Naipaul’s old stuff like ‘A Bend in the River’ and ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ really take you into the Congo and Trinidad, and Ryszard Kapuscinski’s African books are wonderful.  I loved Lawrence Osborne’s ‘The Accidental Connoisseur’.  John Burdett’s thrillers like ‘Bangkok 8′ and ‘The Godfather of Kathmandu’, about a half Thai, Buddhist detective in Bangkok, are pretty insightful about Thailand and fun to breeze through.

You seem totally unafraid of riding trains like the one on your book cover, overloaded with thousands of death-defying maniacs clinging to the roof. What are you afraid of in the United States?

I always get scared when I tip over my sailboat in the middle of the Potomac River.  Which is ridiculous, because the River is about four feet deep and warm and full of boats and only a mile across.  But it always freaks me out.

What’s the best skill or piece of local knowledge you’ve picked up from your book project?

I always jump into the front seat of taxis; it establishes a little dominance and rapport.  Never be afraid to eat street food or to walk into that dingy, crowded little restaurant.  And when in doubt, keep your back to the wall or keep moving.

Any countries you’re still dying to get to? Why?

So many!  All of Africa, especially the weird, crazy little countries of West Africa, like Liberia and Sierra Leone that are full of music and life and are recovering from horrible wars.  Ethiopia, because its landscape and its people are beautiful.  Burma, because its hot and wet and in a socialist authoritarian time warp.

My father used to tell me when I was little about DC’s inner city: Don’t be afraid; they’re just like you and me, only poor.’  I never forgot that and it’s true about the whole world.

The worst?

Don’t go there, it’s dangerous.

[Journalist Carl Hoffman traveled 159 days in 2008 and 2009 for The Lunatic Express, published by Broadway Books on March 16th, 2010. Buy it here. He is a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, Wired and Popular Mechanics magazines, and his stories about travel, adventure and technology – and often the nexus between them – also appear frequently in Outside, National Geographic Adventure and Men’s Journal. His first book, Hunting Warbirds: The Obsessive Quest for the Lost Aircraft of World War II, was published by Ballantine Books in 2001.]

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Excuse me, but are you Betty White?

I was on vacation in France in September 1999 when my friends and I headed south to a wonderful small town called St. Remy de Provence.  We happened to arrive just before their “Ancient Festival” in late
September where the locals, dressed in traditional outfits, celebrate their heritage. There was a parade
through the village complete with shepherds with their sheep and goats, carts with shepherdesses pulled by donkeys, the French cowboys on horseback and women dressed in long gowns and mantillas on horseback. Delightful!

We had noticed signs posted throughout the town with bulls and “Attention” in large letters. After the parade we watched while the locals attached tall, sturdy metal fencing from building to building and it was explained in broken French/English that there would be a “bull demonstration”. The trip was getting better every minute.

Then suddenly with a massive  cannon boom the bulls were loose in the streets, buck wild and running in every direction. The cowboys rode with the bulls, goading them on with long poles, and the local men, now dressed in white and red sashes were running in front, by the side and behind the bulls.

Since this was a vacation, I decided, after watching a couple passes of the men and bulls, that this was an opportunity of a lifetime….

(more…)

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Look kids, a real live bear!

To hear most family members tell it, the annual camping expedition of 1997 was a total disaster. First off, we took our local Catholic priest with us. He stole bread and wine—body and blood to most people we knew—from the church’s sacristy. After a thirteen-hour drive from Kentucky to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, within the hollow walls of the Ironwood Motel, we held mass. We asked for a blessed trip.

The summer’s worst storm began the next morning. To reach our campsite, we canoed the winding channels of Crooked Lake, portaged to High Lake, cut a diagonal, and established camp in the pine trees. I was thirteen that year, and by then the woods were as familiar as my backyard. Usually, the trip and set up took five hours. That day, fighting fierce headwind and spears of drizzle, we clocked ten.

Still, Dad insisted we proceed with all rituals. Before leaving Crooked Lake, he wrestled my brother’s new fishing pole from the bottom of his canoe.

“The honors,” Dad said, handing the pole to Father Dave.

“Been since Boy Scouts,” Father Dave muttered, grinning. He experimented with the reel’s release lever in his palm. He heaved forward and at the peak of his cast, instead of releasing only the lever, released his entire grip. Rod and reel dove together to the lake’s bottom.

My brother extended his small fingers, as if to catch it. “My pole,” he whimpered. (more…)

(6 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Will you scratch my back? (Shown: the author's; photo: Bill Hatcher/Outside)

First law of adventure-travel survival: Heed not the blasé reassurances of locals when you raise issues of life and flesh.

Case in point:

I was headed to the Amazon rainforest of northern Peru to do a survival trip with a local guide. We’d live off the land, forage for food, build our own shelter. I’d report for a feature article for Outside magazine.

What would I need to bring?

Nothing but a machete, per the cheery owner of the jungle lodge who set up the trip for me.

Uh, but what about bugs? Jungle = mosquitoes, no?

“There’s a marvelous natural repellent that indigenous people use,” said the lodge owner. “Moises (the guide) will show you.”

So I didn’t include more than a dram of bug juice in my cheat bag, which also included a toothbrush and iodine tablets. If the locals have survived for eons without DEET, I could last a week.

By the second day of the trip, I found myself constantly waving off an ether of flying bugs. I’d sweated away my tiny bit of 100-proof repellent in short order. “You drink too much water,” Moises informed me. But I wasn’t sure that dehydration was the best prophylactic for biting insects.

“Hey Moises, what about that natural insect repellent Paul told me about? Think we could scare some up?”

Moises nodded. And not soon enough, he paused and pointed to a giant carbuncle growing on the limb of a tree. A termite nest. Here’s the drill: You stick your fist inside it and wait for a steady queue of termites to scuttle down your arm, shoulder, and neck. Then you rub the critters into your flesh. That’s right—simply squash them into your pores.

The result is a pleasant-smelling, woodsy cologne. Termites, after all, eat nothing but wood. I smelled like freshly gnawed tree. Nice.

Next logical question: “Hey Moises—how long does this stuff last?”

“Oh, about 10 minutes.”

And he was right. The truth is, indigenous people only use termite juice to disguise their scent while hunting. Insect repellency is a short-lasting side effect.

I spent the rest of the week at the mercy (none) of the bugs. Or in the river. (Piranhas were preferable to mosquitoes.) Or covered inside long sleeves and trousers while surrounded by the desperate din of airborne cannibals. I.e., rainforest-sauna hot.

I stopped itching after two weeks. —Robert Earle Howells

Robert Earle Howells’s website is Surefire Writing: http://www.surefirewriting.com. You can read the full account of his rainforest experience at http://www.bobhowells.com. The film he made about it can be viewed at http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/the_rainforest_wisdom_of_moises_chavez.

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...