Or Rajasthan. Check out
this tour for bicycling
through a culturally fascinating part of India. The tour is run by World
Expeditions, one of the top companies in the engaged travel sphere. I have not used them myself, as I prefer while
I travel to organize everything on my own, but if you are up for a trip where you want the sites and
experiences put together for you, and yet don’t want to feel like you’re being pampered like some kind of
cruise ship sybarite, this could work for you. You’re not going to end up with a
bunch of rich, lazy retards, but you won’t have the satisfaction either of doing everything on your own, which,
granted, can be a pain. But the fact is, a great time can be had by folks who know an area, and this company comes
recommended.
Maps R Us
I love maps and am always in search of good ones. You can often buy them in
bookstores or travel stores, but they’re usually mass-produced, laminated and, well, kind of lame. Did
you know that the government has some of the best maps available and that you can buy
them at rock bottom prices?
The US Geological Survey makes thousands of maps available for
sale from their offices in Virginia, but also via the Web. Way back when, I lived in a house in Seattle (as
opposed to a one bedroom Manhattan apartment) and had the huge four panel world map on my wall. It was very cool.
The one I had still had the USSR on it, but I assume it’s now fixed. Anyway, you can actually spend hours on the USGS
site just looking at and reading stuff. It’s a huge site with massive amounts of information. And if you want to get
your rocks off (sorry!) by checking out some of the
geology education areas on their site,
by all means, do so.
Driest Place on Earth
If you were asked to name the driest place on earth, what would your answer
be? Probably the Sahara Desert, right? Wrong. The driest place on earth is the
Atacama Desert in Chile. It is also a haven for
outdoor adventurers, with great camping, hiking, and numerous fascinating locales that provide a vivid glimpse of
the region’s complex geology. There are emerald mountain lakes, cracked-dry desert plains, and the saline sprawl
of the Salar de Atacama. I was there back in 1993, and with amazing light and the clearest air in the world (several
major telescopes are found there because the air is so clear) I found it a photographer’s dreamland.
Glen Canyon Returns
A while ago, I posted this article on a film being
shown about David Brower of Sierra Club fame. One of Browers’ obsessions was Glen Canyon Dam, which was finished
in 1963 and subsequently held up all of Lake Powell. While Powell has become a recreational gem since then,
with kick ass water skiing and fishing, many greens rue the building of the dam as an act of man that ruined one of the
most beautiful sites in America, Glen Canyon. Well, in something of a allmighty bitch-slap to that act of man, an
enduring drought has now dropped the level of
the lake almost 200 feet, thus revealing for the first time in decades many of the glowing canyan walls that once
turned on guys like Brower.
Culinary Delights in the Outback
Doug Gantenbein, an experienced outdoors adventurer and freelance journalist, gives
Food for Thought in a great article
on eating well when packing lightly.
We all know that cooking in Mother Nature’s kitchen can be a challenge when you’re carrying everything but the
kitchen sink (including the stove) on your back. But Doug makes the good point that if your cooking skills are awful at
home, you can’t expect results on a mountaintop to be any better.
By learning to cook well (or at least palatably), you’ll know more about ingredients and have a better idea of how
to make good food for eating well outdoors. If you know how to make pancakes, for example, you can
measure out the dry ingredients you’ll need for each portion at home, and add water and oil on site for a campfire
breakfast. (I actually got out my kitchen scales for y’all: a cup of flour weighs 4.8 ounces, so Doug’s pancakes come
in at 7.2 ounces and should be enough for two people.)