Travels in the Riel World

Have you heard of the Lost Girls? They’re three twentysomething New York friends who left their jobs and hit the road together for a one-year journey around the world. Along the way, they blogged about the trip and are now back home working on a book about the experience. Sort of like Sex and the City meets On the Road. They recently stopped by the Vagabonding site to chat about their travels and their writing. An excerpt:

What are each of you up to now?

Despite our passion for full-time vagabonding, the three of us accepted desk jobs in order to restock our bank accounts (boring, but necessary!). Amanda is a nutrition editor at a health magazine, Jen does integrated marketing for an independent film/television channel, and Holly now taste-tests chocolates all day for a major candy manufacturer (well, that’s her dream job…she’s actually a freelance writer and editor for several national publications).

Recently, both Jen and Amanda approached their individual bosses about the possibility of going part time in order to focus more attention on book writing. And to their shock—both supervisors agreed to the arrangement! We’ve realized that if you put in the time and hard work to cultivate a successful career, your company/boss is generally more willing to allow time off to travel, or to rearrange your schedule to accommodate special project.

Now, all three of us spend our Fridays together at a coffee shop in Union Square, so we can make the task of book writing a collaborate process—and a fun one, at that.

Do you still crave a life on the road?
Absolutely. After living out of a backpack for a year, we found that we craved the stability and comforts of home. But now that we’ve been back in NYC for a while, all three of us find that we miss the freedom and ever-changing nature of life of the road.

Travel brought us rewards in the form of new friends, discoveries, and cultural experiences. It’s kind of fun never knowing where the day will take you, and we can’t wait until our next adventure.

Are there any trips in the works?

When we finished our year-long trip, we vowed to take a Lost Girls Getaway together once a year for the rest of lives. Since returning, we’ve planned a few weekend excursions together in the United States, and have traveled independently to Antarctica, Ecuador and the Bahamas. For the next six months, we’ll be staying close to home in order to write and promote the book. Once we finish the first draft of the memoir in January ’09, we’re planning to return to Argentina, the country that inspired our around-the-world adventure.

Now, this is the way to travel around the world. Matt Harding’s latest dancing/travel video…

You can read more about Matt at his website, or in this recent NY Times profile.

Last week, I provided you with a page of information on life sabbaticals. Today I have sort of a companion piece to that, with an overview of round-the-world travel. An excerpt:

Sure, you can spend a few months traveling around Europe. Or Australia and New Zealand. Or Southeast Asia, which is more of a bargain these days than are some more traditional destinations. There’s nothing wrong with any of those choices. But have you considered a round-the-world trip?

Believe it or not, a round-the-world journey is both easier to plan and easier on the budget than you might have imagined. Following is some information and resources to get you started.

Why a round-the-world trip?

*      Well, for one, do you know that list you keep in your drawer of your dream destinations around the world? Can you imagine visiting several of them during a single trip? It’s possible if you plan a round-the-world adventure, which would enable you to skip across several continents on one journey.

*      It’s also a fascinating way to experience multiple cultures back to back. Spend some time in Europe and Africa, or Asia and Latin America, or the Caribbean and the South Pacific. There is also some nice symbolism involved – you travel in a circle around the globe and then return home with an abundance of experiences and memories.

*      Because it’s a dream of yours. Lots of people fantasize about a journey like this, but few of them follow through and make it a reality. You can.

There is much more information on my round-the-world travel page, including tips on planning and budgets, some sample itineraries to get you inspired, and links to additional books and resources.

2007 has been a big year. I recently wrote about the birth of my first child. Now, I’m here with news about a different type of birth - that of my first book.

Two Laps Around the World: Tales and Insights from a Life Sabbatical is now on the market. The book is about the experiences that my wife and I had when we decided to take a few months off from our careers to travel. The experience was so incredible that we repeated the experience less than three years later and so ended up traveling around the world twice - once in each direction.

You can read more about the book here. There are excerpts from a few chapters, a reading guide for book clubs, and information about how to buy an autographed copy. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope you’ll check it out! And when you do, please let me know what you think.

Just last month, I linked to a Boston Globe article about an organization called Couch Surfing that connects people around the world by offering free places to stay in each other’s homes. Apparently, couch surfing is the new hot thing, because now the NY Times has published a long article about the topic, which seems to bring together the worlds of social networking and travel. Check it out.

…the Couch Surfing Project, at couchsurfing.com, a three-year-old global community built on a MySpace/Facebook model of personal profiles connected through a network of “friends.” According to statistics on the site, it has well over 300,000 members from more than 31,000 towns and cities around the world.

The group’s philosophy is also its method, which might be summed up this way: I will offer you my couch free, along with the company of my friends and a tour of my favorite spots in my city. In return, you will give of yourself, and not just slink into my home at 3 a.m. after you’ve done your own tour of my city. In this way, we will be friends, if only for a day or two.

Or, as its mission statement proclaims: “Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time.”

Couch surfing takes an ancient notion of hospitality and tucks it into a thoroughly modern paradigm, the social networking Web site. But, as its members say sternly, it is not a site for dating, or for freeloaders.

There seems to be a couch surfing subculture that has developed, with its own ethos and, inevitably perhaps, a novel about the experience.

A Kerouac mind-set inspired Ms. Huckabee to write a novel about her couch surfing experiences. Three years ago she was a lawyer in Charlotte, divorced for some years and facing an empty nest, as her children had left home. “It was a huge reconsideration of self,” she said. “Who was I if not wife, mother, etc.? I wanted to find a sense of carrying my home with me, and to do that I needed to let go of the sense that there was a home somewhere waiting for me.”

She gave away most of her belongings and set off on what was to be a three-month tour of Italy. That’s where she discovered couch surfing.

What kept her surfing were the sorts of details that delight a writer’s eye: the Algerian host in Paris who slept with a poster of Monica Bellucci above his bed so he could imagine falling asleep in her arms each night; a Bulgarian family’s grim Soviet-era concrete housing, which, when you opened the door, was like a tropical island, painted in bright greens and blues; the northern European woman who had not worked in three years and had not cleaned her bathroom in that time, either, it seemed, yet who nonetheless borrowed a bottle of wine from a neighbor to welcome Ms. Huckabee…

In an age of cheap airfares and porous borders, where nearly every corner of the earth, from Bulgaria to Bhutan, is open for tourism, the home is the final frontier, the last authentic experience. Instead of being in some sanitized hotel in Hanoi, said Erik Torkells, editor of Budget Travel magazine, “…if I couch surf I could be on some cool ex-pat’s or local’s sofa.” He added: “I’ve already leapfrogged barriers. It would take weeks under ordinary circumstances to get in someone’s home.”

With regard to “the whole MySpace thing,” he added: “This is a generation that’s all about talking to strangers. And why stop there? Why not crash at their place?”

Travel is always interesting, no matter how you do it. But the chance to interact with locals tends to take the experience up a level. So I was interested to read this article in the Boston Globe about an organization called Couch Surfing that connects people around the world by offering free places to stay in each other’s homes.

On a recent Saturday morning, five twentysomethings huddle in a cozy living room to map out their day. Two are from Montreal. Another is from Chicago. The hosts, Jesse Fenton and Erin Benoit, have lived in the apartment for three years. The guests have had plans to visit for more than a month, but their only contact with their hosts has been through computer screens.

The five met through CouchSurfing.com, an online network of travelers, mostly in their 20s, who are tired of staying in hotels and hostels and who want to see the world with a free place to crash — often on someone’s couch. But what sets CouchSurfing.com apart from a bevy of similar free services such as hospitalityclub.org is its focus on its mission, which according to the group’s website “is not just about free accommodations” but about human interaction.

“It makes the world a smaller place,” says Benoit, 25, a medical technologist at Boston Medical Center. “Eventually, we’ll have friends all over the world.”

First came the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Then the Travel Channel decided to base a television series around the concept and selected a Denver couple, Albin and Melanie Ulle, to embark “on a 14-week excursion across 13 countries.” The Ulle’s experiences were filmed for the series, which premieres March 29, according to this story.

The Ulles came back changed by the experience:

When Albin and Melanie Ulle are asked about their favorite places … they talk less about the destinations than the people they met:

• The maitre d’ in France who proudly wore an American flag on his lapel.
• The Bhutan citizens who measure “gross national happiness” rather than the gross national product.
• And a poor black South African woman who single-handedly put four girls through private school during apartheid and later ran for mayor of her township.

Even some of the small lessons affected the way the couple now looks at things:

“There are all these little things that have changed for us,” Melanie says, noting one. “I notice that I don’t want to (do) drive-through coffee anymore. I enjoy drinking coffee, and people all over the world treat it as a ritual. I know its so minor, so dumb, but that means something.”

Albin adds: “We’re so rushed a lot of the time, and I think we all kind of know that, but to see people actually slow down, sit and talk and laugh. Good things can come from slowing down sometimes.”

The story notes that experiences such as these are part of a growing trend for people to take sabbaticals to travel or have other life experiences. And if you follow my blog, you know I’m a believer in that.

Sure, round-the-world travel has gained a certain measure of popularity.  But most people do it by plane, train, bus or motorized boat.  No one has ever before circumnavigated the globe completely under their own power — that is, until Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei recently completed a two-year journey by biking, rowing and walking their way around the planet.  For that accomplishment, they were named National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year.

The goal of circumnavigation is hardly new, but no explorer - not yesterday’s Magellan, not today’s Steve Fossett - had ever done it by human power alone, without the aid of diesel or wind or sun.

The journey included biking from Vancouver to Alaska, rowing the Bering Sea, hiking, biking and skiing from Siberia all the way to Portugal, rowing the Atlantic Ocean, and biking from Central America to western Canada.  You can see a map and more details about their journey here.  You can also check out National Geographic’s other choices for adventure travel heroes, or its list of 25 trips for 2007.

Well, here’s a rare and unorthodox way to fund a round-the-world trip…

In 2003, Matt Harding posted on his website a video of himself dancing in a dozen countries.  As the video made its way around the web, it found its way into the offices of Stride gum company. The company then offered to fund a six-month trip anywhere Matt wanted to travel if he would make a travel-dancing video that could be marketed in conjunction with their new gum.  So Matt went off on a journey to 39 countries on seven continents.  Underwritten by a gum company.  And all he had to do was get in front of a camera and dance somewhat badly.  Nice work if you can get it.

If you want to see him doing his little dance in front of the ruins of Macchu Picchu in Peru, atop the sand dunes of Namibia, with a turtle in the Galapagos Islands, with villagers in Rwanda, or at any one of several dozen other places around the world, you can check out his website. You can also read an interview with him in the Washington Post. An excerpt:

Which places were the most difficult to dance in?

The hardest dance was on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I spent nine hours climbing up to the peak, I vomited eight times on the way up and I just had nothing left by the time I got up there. The most complicated to shoot was underwater in Micronesia, diving in front of the propeller of a Japanese shipwreck that was sunk in World War II. That was complicated because I discovered that you can’t talk to the camera person when you are underwater. And the most terrifying was on the Kjeragbolten rock in Norway; it’s just a tiny rock wedged between two faces of a chasm 3,000 feet up and only a few feet across. Dancing on that rock, yeah, I came very close to killing myself.

Were people inspired to join in your dance?

The only time that happened was in Rwanda. I went out to this village and started dancing, without any explanation of what I was doing. As soon as I started dancing, kids started joining in, and within a couple minutes, all the kids in the village had circled around and we were all dancing together.

Would you encourage people to go tour the world and do a little dance?

Absolutely. It proves the point that I did want to show, which was that there’s really nowhere you can’t get to in a small amount of time. We’re all stuck here together on this small planet.

Sure, a round-the-world trip can sound daunting.  But it can done more cheaply than you might imagine, and a few months (or more) on the road and away from home is a great way to reinvigorate yourself while having a few adventures and discovering a thing or two about our planet. 

Now, the NY Times seems to have discovered the benefits of such a journey.  They sent one of their reporters on a three-month trip that went from southern Europe to the Balkans, through Turkey and Georgia, and then into central Asia and China.  The result was a print and online series called “The Frugal Traveler Sees the World,” complete with tips for a do-it-yourself adventure.

On May 11, I’d left my home in New York City to circle the globe as the Frugal Traveler, seeking high adventure on a low budget. Over the course of 96 days, I covered more than 21,000 miles, sprinting through 12 countries and some 36 cities … I chronicled my adventures (and misadventures): I wrote about escaping crowds in Venice and tending apple trees in Turkey; drinking Montenegrin mountain wine and riding the rails through China; and, along the way, sharing strategies for traveling on the cheap.

If you want to read about my own personal experience with round-the-world travel, you can check out the blog I maintained last year during a trip that I took with my wife, Lisa.  Or, if you want additional resources, you can go to Rolf Potts’ website, or read his book Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.

Ever wanted to know what it’s like to travel in rural Africa?  Joshua Berman and his wife are in the midst of a round-the-world journey and just spent two weeks visiting villages in northeastern Ghana.  He writes about their experiences on his blog, the tranquilo traveler:

We returned to Accra last night, stiff and loopy after the 16-hour “luxury” bus ride from Tamale, and I am reeling from all that has happened in the two weeks leading up to (and including) yesterday’s long ride. From everything we saw (mud-hut compounds, maize and ground-nut fields, and leather-sewn jujus) to everyone we met (Muslims, midwives, malaria patients, village chiefs, and children) - and all the sounds, smells, and tastes in between.

In short, this trip opened my eyes to a much deeper Africa than I had yet found in our previously Accra-centric experience; and with its hot, dusty rural-ness and rich blend of West African tribes, languages, and colors, the past two weeks took Tay a decade back to her own Peace Corps days in the Gambian bush. She is ecstatic that I am finally sharing at least a few sensory nuggets of her experience (the bitter, biting taste of kola nuts, the sensation of simultaneously enthralling and frightening young children by our white-ness). Through it all, I am simply overwhelmed by yet another world that I am lucky enough to visit and to know.

Almost one-quarter of U.S. businesses offer some form of paid or unpaid sabbaticals to their employees, and many companies are finding that it can be a valuable tool for both rewarding loyalty and helping employees to recharge.

I can personally attest that sabbaticals are a great idea. Lisa and I took our first round-the-world trip because she was able to get a sabbatical approved by her employer in Massachusetts. When it was over, she returned to her job and was a happy and productive employee for several more years, finally changing jobs only because she had a chance to move back to her home state.  Our experience was so positive, in fact, that when we found ourselves with another window of opportunity during a cross-country move in 2005, we decided to travel for several more months.  You can read about our 2005 journey in a blog I published during the trip.

Do you watch the Amazing Race?  Michael Yessis and Jim Benning, co-editors of World Hum, debate whether the show is worthwhile television (Michael) or a lame depiction of travel (Jim).  I’m on Michael’s side.  I watch the show, and any program that shows the world to Americans has to have value.

Michael and Jim do agree on the value of another travel television show, Globe Trekker, which does a great job of showing independent travelers in action around the globe.  Unfortunately, since it is on public television and doesn’t involve a race for a million dollars, it draws a decidedly smaller audience.

Unfortunately, the NY Times doesn’t allow on-line access to its op-ed columns, except through the subscription-only Times Select program.  But today’s paper has an excellent column by Nicholas Kristof about the educational benefits of travel.  (The article is .  A few brief excerpts:

Universities are - oh so slowly - recognizing that they need to prepare students to survive globalization. But most overseas studies programs are both too short and too tame.

So here’s my proposal.  Universities should grant a semester’s credit to any incoming freshman who has taken a gap year to travel around the world. In the longer term, universities should move to a three-year academic program, and require all students to live abroad for a fourth year. In that year, each student would ideally live for three months in each of four continents: Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

The cost of a year of travel would be far less than the annual cost of attending many colleges in the U.S. And students would get far more out of a year of travel than a year in classrooms.

Later, he notes that he is sponsoring a contest and will take a college student with him on a future African reporting trip. I think Kristof is on to something. My only quibble is that his proposal shouldn’t be restricted to incoming freshmen. Why not give credit to any college student who undertakes such a journey? My wife and I have been fortunate enough to embark on two different round-the-world journeys of a few months each, and some of the most amazing and educational experiences we’ve had have been in still-developing countries, such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Egypt. So go - travel!