Travels in the Riel World

In May, I introduced you to the possibilities of a road trip through literary New England. It seems an ideal combination of activities for lovers of both travel and literature. Well, I figured it was time to explore a similar journey, only this time on the West Coast. So now I present to you a road trip through literary California. It takes you to the homes of six authors, from John Steinbeck to Jack London, while also delving into the life and times of the San Francisco Beats. Along the way you’ll get to sample some stunning scenery, as well, including the Big Sur coast and the wine region of Sonoma County.

I published the full article on Examiner.com. You can read my description of the journey here, and use this Google map to follow along or to plot your own version of this trip.

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It’s one of the most sublime sights in nature: a dark sky filled with thousands of glittering stars. Our ancestors were well acquainted with this spectacle, and most nights they could even gaze up to see a gallery of shooting stars and a visible Milky Way galaxy. Today, unfortunately, light pollution in populated areas tends to obscure all but a few hundred stars in the nighttime sky. If you really want to do some first-rate stargazing, however, a few regions of the world do stand out for their clear skies. I recently published an article for Matador Trips about the world’s best stargazing destinations.Here is an excerpt:

Chile- Chile’s Atacama Desert mixes high altitude, dry air, and an absence of light pollution — a perfect recipe for some of the world’s best stargazing. The highest desert on Earth is not necessarily an easy place to get to, but if you go you’ll be rewarded with some of the clearest skies on the planet. The Observatorio Cerro Mamalluca offers public tours. Or, for a more personal experience, book a room at the Hotel Elqui Domos, where seven geodesic domes feature upstairs bedrooms with detachable roofs so guests can enjoy a stunning view of the heavens from the comfort of their bed.

Hawaii- Hawaii is also a highly regarded destination for viewing the stars. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it’s relatively untouched by light pollution. The best spot in the island chain is the volcano of Mauna Kea on the Big Island. It’s also the future site of the Thirty-Meter Telescope, which will be the most advanced telescope ever built when finished in 2018. Hawaii beat out Chile for the honor of hosting this telescope after these two destinations were judged the best stargazing locations on the planet. Visitors should begin at the Onizuka Visitors Center, which runs free nightly stargazing programs.

The full article on the Matador site has a number of other stargazing recommendations.

On Monday I wrote about an online interview with me in which I talked about my view of sabbaticals and some of the reasons that my wife and I had decided to take a career break in order to travel. Well, here is a nice follow-up to that post: an article by Sherry Ott that details 10 good reasons for taking a career break. Here are two of them:

Retirement Doesn’t Always Reward You with the Time or Ability to Travel - Have you ever really thought about the person you will be when you are 65? What will your health be like, what will your sense of adventure be like, and most importantly, will your health be able to support your sense of adventure?

What activities are you saving for your retirement - bungy jumping in New Zealand, climbing mountains in Nepal, hiking the Great Wall of China, or horseback riding in Mongolia? Will these things really be possible at retirement age? We spend all of our life waiting, waiting, waiting…until we are free from the shackles of work. However what if when we are unshackled, we can’t do it? Consider taking a mini-retirement now, while you know you can trek the Inca Trail.  If people can have a mid-life crisis, then why can’t you have a mid-life retirement?

Cure your Hurry Sickness and Return to Simplicity - Many Americans are plagued by ‘Hurry Sickness’.  The more we speed up, the less we can slow down. Not only do we multi-task at work but we multi-task our leisure time as well - watching TV and surfing the web, or working out on the elliptical and reading a magazine. We are no longer capable of simply doing one thing and being happy about it.

This has also made us a very impatient society – some may even say rude. How many times have you pressed the “door close” on the elevator, even though someone else is trying to get on? And how often do you catch yourself tapping your foot and huffing away while standing in line for something? We always seem to be in a rush to get nowhere fast.

A traveling career break will force you to slow down and learn to be patient again. As you immerse yourself into other cultures you will observe simplicity and patience that Americans have somehow lost. Sure it can be a frustrating experience letting go of how you expect things to get done, but it will open up your eyes to how the rest of the world operates. In the process you will actually have time to take it all in and appreciate a new, simpler way of doing things.

See the entire article for eight more reasons to consider a sabbatical.

If you’re interested in knowing more about my travel experiences or my book, you might want to check out an online interview with me that was just published by Andy Hayes, who is a traveler, writer and photographer himself and who publishes the excellent Sharing Experiences blog. Here are my answers to two of his questions, dealing with our decision to take time off to travel and my view of life sabbaticals:

You started your world-wide travels with (and I quote) “deciding to take a chance in life”. Could you give us a little background into that decision-making process?

Well, my wife and I were both over 30-years-old and entrenched in our work lives when we decided to take our first round-the-world trip. Frankly, we weren’t sure we were ready to stop everything in order to do this and then re-start our lives when the trip was over. We also had to get over the normal doubts over how others would perceive our decision. In the end, though, we also didn’t want to go through life knowing we had passed up an opportunity to have an adventure together and to do some long-term travel.

The way we dealt with it was for my wife to ask for a leave of absence from work. Her employer was gracious in granting her the leave and keeping her job open. Since I was already making a transition to being self-employed, it was easier for me to manage the time off. Of course, by not stopping work completely we didn’t have as much time available to travel as we could have had by simply quitting altogether. Our trips were measured in months, rather than years. I have to say, if Twitter had been around a few years earlier and I’d been introduced to all of these other amazing people who were managing long-term travel between jobs, then our outlook might have been different.

Still, it was a good compromise given where we were in our lives. And it did have an unseen benefit, in that we began looking at our travels in a particular way – not as an open-ended adventure, but rather as a sabbatical that would be limited in time but that would have a lasting influence on our lives.

You also refer to the term “life sabbatical.” What does that phrase mean to you?

As I mentioned earlier, the fact that our trips were not open-ended encouraged us to view the experience as a sabbatical. Academic sabbaticals stem from the notion that there is value in taking time away from the everyday rigors of a job in order to rest, reflect or conduct research. The goal is to return to work with renewed energy and ideas. And the word sabbatical derives from the word Sabbath, with every seventh day meant to be devoted to family time and contemplation.

So I took to calling our trip a “life sabbatical” because it seemed to imbue it with more meaning than if I simply looked at it as a travel adventure. It helped us to view our journey as a way to learn about ourselves and the world, while also recharging our energies for the next phase of our lives. I actually think it would be a great thing if more people were able to schedule these “mini-retirements” periodically through life. Not only can we not bank on being able to fulfill all of our travel dreams during the traditional retirement years, but this time away from work really does give us an opportunity to recharge and even re-evaluate where we are in our lives and careers.

See the entire interview for my answers to a number of other questions. While you’re there you should also browse through his collection of interviews with other travelers and writers.

There are obviously many cultural differences between the United States and China, which stem largely from the fundamental fact that one country has an individualistic view of the world and the other is a more group-oriented society. In the U.S., individual rights and self-realization are highly valued, while in China considerable importance is placed on hierarchy and respect for societal norms. It’s not a surprise that these differences even show up in the educational system, a forum where cultural values are both reflected and molded.

I recently came across two news stories that emphasized the differences between the U.S. and Chinese styles of learning. The first was a New York Times article that discussed the increasing prevalence of young Americans who are finding jobs in China after college. Within the article, there was a quote from a Chinese executive on some of the business strengths that Americans bring to the job, based at least in part on their educational backgrounds.

Willy Tsao, the artistic director of BeijingDance/LDTX, said he had hired Ms. Berman because of her ability to make connections beyond China…Another dynamic in the hiring process, Mr. Tsao says, is that Westerners can often bring skills that are harder to find among the Chinese.

“Sarabeth is always taking initiative and thinking what we can do,” he said, “while I think the more standard Chinese approach is to take orders.” He says the difference is rooted in the educational system. “In Chinese schools students are encouraged to be quiet and less outspoken; it fosters a culture of listening more than initiating.”

The second article was a profile of some Chinese students who are now enrolled at the University of Arizona. The students are part of a cultural exchange program that allowed them to take classes in China from adjunct professors prior to transferring to the United States, thus getting an upfront taste of the educational differences.

The students took classes from UA adjunct professors while completing their senior year at the prestigious high school. The professors taught English, writing, American government and geography, and taught in a highly interactive way that encouraged group work and discussion.

In China, most classes emphasize a learning style of lecture, reading and memorization, said Scott Bird, associate program director with Yangtze International Study Abroad, which organized the group. ”Unlike many of the international students coming here, they have an advantage in that they’ve had a little taste of it already,” he said.

If you’re interested in learning more about Chinese and American cultural differences, check out the book Encountering the Chinese: A Guide for Americans by Hu Wenzhong and Cornelius Grove.

Many of you are no doubt familiar with the travel writing of Rolf Potts, and perhaps of his website Vagablogging. My travel memoir, Two Laps Around the World, was recently reviewed on Vagablogging by another writer. Here is an excerpt from the review:

As a writer, Riel has a painter’s eye for the color and mood of life on the road. Here, for instance, is his description of an African sunset: “It began with streaks of light shooting down from thick clouds. As if the heavens had opened and hundreds of golden Masai spears were thrust down into the pale green dusk of the plain. Then a sunset exploded across the sky in streaks of mango and purple.”

As a result, veteran travelers will enjoy revisiting favorite places through his prose, while other passages can serve as a primer for your wish list of destinations. A freelance writer and consultant, Riel lets his own story unfold slowly through the book, which correspondingly ‘grows’ on you with a series of anecdotes and vignettes. If you love that sub-genre of armchair travel that involves stories of everyday adventurers circling the globe, then Two Laps Around the World is a keeper.

You can see the entire review here, and read more about my book, including some sample chapters, here.

If you have any interest in learning more about the Cold War, or the dawn of the nuclear age, there are now a number of locations open to tourists that represent that period in history. From museums to sites that once functioned as missile or nuclear testing grounds, a window has been opened into an historic time. In fact, a number of these sites are located in the neighboring Southwestern states of New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, which makes it possible to construct a unique road trip through an era of 20^th century history.

I recently created a road trip through some of this Cold War history, which takes you to an underground Titan Missile complex in Arizona, the site of the first nuclear test in New Mexico, the headquarters site of the World War II-era Manhattan Project, and museums dedicated to nuclear history. You can read my description of the journey here, and use this Google map to follow along or to plot your own version of this trip.

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Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The Ta Prohm temple in the Angkor Archaeological Park near Siem Reap, Cambodia. An 800-year-old temple, not far from the more famous Angkor Wat, that has merged with the jungle. It’s an eerie but strangely beautiful sight.

In 2007, there was much hullabaloo over voting for the seven wonders of the world. It was a well-conceived campaign by the New 7 Wonders organization, which wanted a contemporary list to replace the fabled seven wonders of the ancient world, of which the Egyptian Pyramids are the only survivor. I then wrote in January that there was a new campaign underway, this one to pick the seven natural wonders of the world. Well, 28 finalists have now been named, and the world has a chance during the next year or so to vote for their seven favorites.

This particular contest began with a list of 440 suggested locations, which was reduced to 77 in a previous round of voting and now to 28 finalists by a panel of experts. The seven winners will be announced sometime in 2011. If you’d like to vote, you can do so at the New 7 Wonders website.

So, who are these 28 finalists? It’s an interesting collection of well-known and lesser known sites. The Grand Canyon in Arizona, Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and other such internationally famous locales are included, along with the Mud Volcanoes of Azerbaijan, Bu Tinah Shoals of the United Arab Emirates, and a few other sites that fewer people are aware of. There were a few controversies, of course. The spectacular Victoria Falls in Zambia/Zimbabwe, for instance, didn’t make the final cut. But for the most part it’s an excellent list of some of the planet’s most spectacular natural wonders.

Check out the list of the 28 finalists and cast your own vote for the world’s seven natural wonders.

It does seem that more and more people these days are turning themselves into some version of a digital nomad. In a basic sense, this could simply be an individual who is disconnected from an office and prefers to do much of his or her work in local coffeeshops or other WiFi hotspots. But there are also a growing number of people who are either moving abroad to a cheaper and more exotic locale, or even ditching a home base altogether and running businesses from the road. These men and women are living a life that would have been unimaginable in previous decades, but which is now possible because of new technologies and the globally interconnected world in which we live.

Mike Elgan recently penned an article for Computerworld about this very trend:

Sell the house and the car. Put up all your possessions on eBay. Pack your bags and buy a one-way ticket to some exotic location. The plan? “Telecommute” from wherever you happen to be. Earn an American salary, but pay Third-World prices for food and shelter.

The digital nomad, location-independent lifestyle once seemed so impossible, exotic and unlikely that only a few people dared even attempt it. But now, a lot more people are doing it, and it seems like everyone else would like to. Could it be? Is the digital nomad lifestyle about to go “mainstream”?

I was asked to be interviewed last week by the producers of something called the Ideas Project, a Nokia-sponsored site that explores what the “big ideas” are for the future of communications. I could have talked about anything, but I chose to address what I think will be the single trend that will do the most to change how people work: The location-independent digital nomad trend…

A perfect storm of micro-trends are colliding before our very eyes to facilitate the lifestyle of traveling while working, and working while traveling. These include the usual suspects, such as the declining price of electronics and bandwidth and of an increasingly globalized economy. But they also include trends that don’t seem that obvious.

The biggest of these is that the technologies, products and services that digital nomads use to work while traveling are themselves becoming popular among everybody, even those who never travel…It will get to the point where the only difference between an ordinary white-collar worker and a digital nomad is an airplane ticket.

I love that line: “the only difference between an ordinary white-collar worker and a digital nomad is an airplane ticket.” Do you have any experiences with the digital nomad lifestyle, or do you know someone who does? What are your thoughts?

Where in the world would you go to see the most spectacular sunset or sunrise? Better yet, where could you have an incredible travel experience while at the same time watching the sun rise or set in the sky? I just published an article on Matador Trips that reviews eight of the best places in the world to experience sunsets and sunrises, from Mt. Sinai in Egypt to the Ganges River in Varanasi, India, to an East African safari. An excerpt:

Mt. Sinai, Egypt - To catch the sunrise on Mt. Sinai, travelers first climb a rocky trail from 2:30 to 5am, alongside Bedouin tribesmen and their camels. Then they sit and wait for the dawn’s rays to pierce the darkness and illuminate a jagged, lunar-like landscape. The sensation of being on Mt. Sinai as the sun appears in the morning sky is impossible to forget. Even if you’re not religious, you can envision Moses having a divine experience here. After trekking back downhill, stop at St. Catherine’s Monastery to see a direct descendant of the Bible’s burning bush.

Ganges River, Varanasi, India - Varanasi is believed to be one of the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, with a past that stretches back 3,000 years. Trudge its narrow, dirty streets in the predawn hours before emerging atop one of the ghats that line the sacred Ganges River to the sight of a vibrant sunrise and Hindu pilgrims bathing and praying at the water’s edge.

Check out my entire article on Matador to see the other six locations that I recommend.

Anyone can visit New York or Paris, lounge on the beach in Miami, or marvel at the ancient wonders of the Egyptian Pyramids. But there is also a secret joy to be found from having a wonderful vacation in a lesser known, less crowded, more tranquil destination. What would be on your list on underappreciated destinations around the world? Sara Rossini just took a stab at coming up with a list of seven destinations that are a bit off the beaten path but still well worth visiting. An excerpt:

Howth, Ireland - This sleepy town in eastern Ireland is a perfect hideaway for those looking to escape the hustle and bustle of Dublin City. The affluent suburban peninsula is just 30 minutes from Dublin by DART and allows for a proper view of “the rest” of Ireland through a pleasant day trip or overnight stay. The town’s most notable attractions are included in a three-hour cliff walk which rings the peninsula connected by quiet paths around hills of health and stunning cliffs. Stroll through the ruins of 14th-century St. Mary’s Abbey, walk to the lighthouse, which housed literary giant Salmon Rushdie, or walk down to the water’s edge and admire the Irish Sea.

Oregon Coast, USA- The Oregon Coast is a magnificent, 350-mile stretch of undeveloped beaches, park, hills and forest with rugged coves and craggy cliffs. The hauntingly beautiful coastline is best appreciated from the string of state parks that forms to preserve the oceanside running the length of the state and are best traveled via car or bicycle.

The main route of Highway 101 closely follows the contours of the seaboard offering many turnoffs for postcard-worthy water views, and some quiet country roads allow for peaceful pedaling. The Oregon coast is typically broken into two parts: the North Coast, from Astoria through Lincoln City, and the South Coast, running from Lincoln City through Brookings. The south is considerably less developed and more rugged than the northern sections with far fewer visitors. The rocky beachside scenery and small working-class towns lends the place a tangible authenticity, one not likely to be forgotten by anyone interested in having experiences off the beaten path.

See the entire article for five more underappreciated destinations.