Win a trip to Antarctica

by Sean McLachlan on

If you’re a teacher in the U.S. or Canada and you care about the environment, you may be in luck. Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, is offering to send one teacher on a free tour of Antarctica led by Robert Swan, the author of the upcoming book 2041: My Quest to Save the World’s Last Wilderness.

Swan is the first explorer to walk to both the North and South Poles and will lead a group of 80 teachers, students, business leaders, and environmental scientists on a tour of Antarctica’s various ecosystems in order to teach them about the challenges facing the frozen continent. Highlights will include whale watching, camping overnight on shore, and visiting a giant colony of Gentoo penguins.

To get a chance to win you need to fill out this form and write a 500 word essay on why you want to go and how you will pass on what you learn to your students. The winner will be chosen in October, just before the release of Swan’s book.

Not a teacher? Don’t despair. You can win a trip to Antarctica by blogging about it.

Traveler’s Bookshelf: A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean

by Sean McLachlan on

When I see a book written by someone associated with a graduate writing program, I generally avoid it. There’s something about that culture that encourages carefully crafted, elegant prose that never manages to say anything. Gary Buslik, who teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Chicago, manages to avoid this all-to-common pitfall. Sort of.

A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean, published by Travelers’ Tales, is a refreshing antidote to the overly precious writing of most English professors and MFA students. Even Buslik advises in an interview with Vagablogging that any aspiring young writer should get as far away from college as possible.

Buslik’s book is a collection of short tales of his adventures through the Caribbean, usually accompanied by his long-suffering yet completely unforgiving wife. Our hapless hero accidentally pees on ousted dictators, pukes during a guided tour, and gets into arguments with beggars. While the writing is funny enough that it made me actually laugh out loud in places (a hard thing to do) Buslik’s self-portrayal as an uneducated, oafish tourist rang a little hollow considering he has a Ph.D. in English and teaches at a major university. He is much more convincing when he gets serious, like when he tracks down an old friend of his literary hero Hemingway, or when he is shocked by the brutality of a cockfight. Then we’re with him, seeing his trepidation at meeting Hemingway’s aged friend, feeling his stomach turn as the cocks rip away at each other behind some West Indian shack. These pieces really grip the reader and hint that this is the real Buslik. They are well worth the cover price; the funny bits are just an added bonus.

I wished there had been more of the serious pieces and less of the silly (yet genuinely funny) romps through Touristland. I came away with the impression that Buslik has compensated too far in the other direction and sometimes forgets what so many of his colleagues also forget–that the best writing comes when the writer is being genuine.

Travel Read: Step Back from the Baggage Claim and book giveaway

by Jamie Rhein on

To win a signed copy of Step Back from the Baggage Claim, follow the directions at the end of the post.

For Jason Barger, an airport is not only a place where people depart and arrive on airplanes in their quests to get from one location to another. Airports are a metaphor about life. In his book, Step Back from the Baggage Claim, a slim volume that is a perfect size for slipping into a carry-on, Barger does a tidy job of illustrating how we might make the world a nicer place by starting at the airport. Airplane behavior is included in the mix of what can make or break us as a society.

To test out his theory about the power of air travel and airports, Barger hatched out a plane to travel to seven cities in seven days with the goal of never leaving any of the airports. Along the way, he’d be the observer, testing out his ideas. He figured that in in the midst of airport activity he’d find people from different backgrounds, cultures and ages–all going to or coming from somewhere for a variety of reasons. In the process of their arrivals and departures, Barger theorized there would be behaviors that would illustrate each person’s version of the world.

The result was he logged 6,548 miles, 10,000 minutes, 26 hours and 45 minutes of sleep, and a whole lot of writing fodder to condense into palpable bites. Throughout the book–which I’ve read twice, Barger weaves in details about his life that prompted this undertaking.

Barger is is a guy who notices things. Like when the ding goes off on an airplane to signal that retrieving bags from the overhead bins is a-okay, who leaps up, who stays put and who helps others? It’s not just about what other people do, but what do we do?

At a baggage claim, who lets the older person struggle, and who offers a hand? In Barger’s world, wouldn’t it be a lot easier for everyone if we all just took a few steps back from the conveyor belt and worked together? He saw that system work with a group of adolescents he traveled with. Instead of each elbowing his or her way to the circling bags, those in the front, passed bags back making the task easier for everybody.

Even though the book is a missive in a way of doing better, but Barger also looks at the circumstances that creates a situation where we might not try harder. Frustration is a big one. (I have to put in a plug for stupidity.)

Seriously, haven’t you wanted to lob a shoe at someone while you’ve been stuck at an airport? I have. But, there is always the high road option of flowing more easily with a smile, no matter our circumstances. Barger saw the pinnacle of great decorum, for example, when one woman’s neatly packed carry-on was rummaged through by TSA as part of a random check and her belongs left in a pile for her to repack. Instead of fuming and fussing, she remained pleasant, repacked and dashed off to catch a flight–still buoyant.

Even if you want to remain a crab when you travel, Step Back from the Baggage Claim offers a glimpse of the various airports where Barger headed, and what it’s like to hang out in them for extended periods of time. After reading Barger’s book, I don’t think I’ll be throwing elbows anymore as I haul my own bag out of the mix of belongings that are circling by. (Actually, I don’t think I ever have thrown an elbow. Maybe growled, but nothing more.)

Oh, yeah. Where did Barger go? He started in Columbus to Boston to Miami to Chicago to Minneapolis to Seattle to San Diego and back to Columbus.

Here’s one of Barger’s thoughts to take with you when you travel. It might help you have a much better day.

“I’m going to embrace the quiet moments an airplane seat offers us. When the ding sends most into a frenzy, I am going to sit still.”

To read more about Barger and the book, here’s an article that was published in the business section of The New York Times.

To win a copy of the book Step Back from the Baggage Claim:

Leave a short comment about an act of kindness you witnessed while traveling. Maybe it was your act of kindness–or someone else’s. Even the smallest act counts. The winner will be randomly picked.

  • The comment must be left before Friday, May 1st at 5:00 PM Eastern Time.
  • You may enter only once.
  • One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
  • The winner will receive a signed copy of the paperback book Step Back From the Baggage Claim, (valued at $14.95)
  • Click here for complete Official Rules.
  • Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, including the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.

    • Talking travel with David Grann

    by Brenda Yun on

    David Grann, author of the now New York Times Bestselling book “The Lost City of Z” and contributor to various publications such as The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe, was gracious enough to set aside some precious time to correspond with me via email to talk travel and his latest travel and writing endeavors. This correspondence took place a few weeks ago, but I’ve only just now had the opportunity to post this Q&A.

    BY: Thanks for taking time away from your busy book tour to correspond with Gadling. Where are you now, and what are your travel plans (both book and non-book related) for the coming year?
    DG: I’ve been working on an article for The New Yorker that has led me to Texas and Oklahoma, two places I’ve never spent much time. I don’t yet know where my next destination will be, as I tend go wherever each new story leads me.


    BY: Can you briefly describe for our Gadling readers the kind of traveler you are? How often do you travel? Where is your dream destination? What is your preferred mode of travel?

    DG: As I describe in “The Lost City of Z,” I’m not an explorer or an adventurer. I don’t climb mountains or like to camp. But while I’m working on stories, I tend to go places and do things I never would otherwise. I’ve chased giant squid in a violent storm off the coast of New Zealand, crawled through tunnels thousands of feet beneath the street of Manhattan, and searched for a lost city in the middle of the Amazon. I never think of any of these places as my dream destination, but perhaps that is partly why I’m so drawn to them: they transport me into an unfamiliar world.
    BY: Based on all of the failed missions to the Amazon to uncover the truth behind the Lost City of Z, why did you feel so compelled to embark on an expedition of your own?
    DG: When I first started researching what has been described as “the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century,” I never thought that I would venture into the jungle. My intention was simply to write about Fawcett and the countless numbers who had perished trying to find evidence of his missing party and the City of Z. But one day, in the house of a Fawcett descendent, I uncovered a hidden trove of Fawcett’s diaries and logbooks. These held new clues about his fate and the whereabouts of Z. It was only then that I decided to do something totally out of character and head into the jungle.

    BY: How would you qualify “The Lost City of Z” as a traveler’s tale?

    DG: The book is partly a travelogue about a little known part of the world; it is also a biography of a once legendary explorer who has since been largely forgotten, and a guide to some of the archeological research that is exploding our perceptions about what the Americas really looked like before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

    BY: What did you learn about yourself as a writer/traveler? Would you do anything differently if you had another opportunity to travel in a similar fashion?
    DG: I learned a lot about the nature of obsession. I had read about biographers who had been driven slightly mad by their subjects, and that’s how I sometimes felt chasing the specter of Fawcett. And if I could go back in time, the one thing I know I would do differently is make sure that I never became separated from my guide and got lost in the wilderness.


    BY: The opening of your book describes an experience you had in the jungle when you felt you were in over your head. You asked yourself, “What am I doing here?” This is something nearly every traveler thinks at least once in their lives. Despite the fears and anxieties one might feel abroad, do you feel traveling is an essential part of the human experience? How so?

    DG: I think that the desire to venture to distant places, and to hear stories about such journeys, are deeply ingrained in us. There is a reason why quests are so central to ancient myths and fairy tales, and why people for centuries have made journeys even at the risk of their own lives.

    BY: What do you hope readers and travelers will learn from reading “The Lost City of Z”?

    DG: I hope that they will learn not only about Fawcett, who was one of most daring and eccentric explorers ever to set foot in the Americas, but also about the Amazon-a wilderness area virtually the size of the continental United States. Even today, the Brazilian government estimates that there are more than sixty Amazonian tribes that have never been contacted by outsiders. Sydney Possuelo, who was in charge of the Brazilian department set up to protect Indian tribes, has said of these groups, “No one knows for sure who they are, where they are, how many they are, and what languages they speak.” In recent years, archeologists, using satellite imagery and ground penetrating radars to pinpoint buried artifacts, have begun to make discoveries that are overturning virtually everything that was once believed about the Amazon and its early inhabitants.

    BY: What will be your next project? Has this book made you more or less ambitious to explore other parts or histories in the world?

    DG: I’m still not sure what will be my next book. As with “The City of Z,” I often don’t realize I’m fully in the grip of a story, until I’m doing something I never thought I would, like following in the footsteps of an explorer who disappeared in the jungle some eighty years earlier. Yet researching the book-including studying the Victorian era and staying with many of the same Amazonian tribes that Fawcett had on his fateful journey–has only deepened my curiosity about the world.

    Mr. Grann’s latest news and events can be found HERE. You can read my review of “The Lost City of Z” HERE. I would like to thank Mr. Grann taking time from his busy book tour and writing schedule to correspond with me, and look forward to his next installment.

    Book give-a-way and travel read: The Open Road, the Global Journey of the 14th Dalai Lama

    by Jamie Rhein on

    When Pico Iyer was growing up, his father was a friend of the Dalai Lama. That was the beginning of Iyer’s own relationship with a person that many seek out as a spiritual rock star of sorts. In his book The Open Road, The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Iyer gives insight into what it’s like inside the Dalai Lama’s circle, as well as, what it’s like being inside Iyer’s life.

    When the book first came out in hardcover last year, I gave a heads up. This month the Vintage Press paperback version was released.

    The publisher has given us two copies to give-a-way. For details, go to the end of the Talking Travel interview with Iyer and post a comment there. You have until tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. to win.

    Iyer is a global traveler and a careful observer which makes his books a sensory exploration into the worlds where he ventures. Landscape, people, and the hum of life are woven together into a lush reading experience for anyone who picks up his work. I’ve happily discovered this book does the same.

    The backdrop this time is the landscape of the world where the Dalai Lama lives and travels in relation to where Iyer has also ventured. The result of Iyer’s observations is an intriguing examination about the people and places that surround the Dalai Lama’s life and work, as well as the Dalai Lama’s perspective on it all.

    Along with certain conversations Iyer has had with the Dalai Lama, including a disinterested version when he was a teenage boy, Iyer weaves throughout the book his observations and musings about Tibetan Buddhism, life in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama’s speaking engagements where Iyer sometimes sits in the audience and the changes in the scenery and intentions of the Dalai Lama’s work that Iyer has noticed over the years.

    I was particularly captivated by the sections where Iyer describes Dharamsala, India a place I have also been, and as luck would have it, one of those people sitting in the courtyard at the monastery where the Dalai Lama lives listening to one of his talks. This book is a welcome companion to that experience because it fills in all the behind the scenes details such as what happens in his life when he is not addressing an audience. Because Iyer’s thoughts were gathered in various personal conversations that range from the Dalai Lama himself to his family members, helpers and random people who Iyer has come across in his travels of meeting up with Dalai Lama in various locations, the result is an unusual, intimate look at places people may have visited themselves, read about or seen pictures of in a lush coffee table book. Iyer brings such scenes to life.

    One of Iyer’s purposes for writing The Open Road was to give readers another perspective of a remarkable man about which there has been much written before. I say he has succeeded, as well as, offering the reader another opportunity to see the world through Iyer’s eyes. Every time I spend a few hours enjoying the world the way Iyer sees it, I feel I understand a little bit more the visual cues and subtleties one encounters in a traveling life.