’Tis the season for vacations, so let me make my pitch that the best travel is not lounging at a beach resort but rather journeying into a different world. We all need relaxation at times, but nothing beats the thrill of a trip of discovery and the education that comes with it.
Mark Twain once observed that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” In that spirit, I’ve long urged young Americans to take gap years before college or junior years abroad. (One high school reader of such an essay, Spencer Cohen, ended up taking a gap year partly in Japan, became an Asia hand and is now a colleague at The Times.)
Still, there are risks, less of violence (the U.S. has more guns than other countries) than of having your passport and credit cards stolen. So I preach both travel and prudence, and on a recent book tour, I found myself often asked about travel advice I had mentioned in my memoir. So let me share a few tips for the vacation season:
1. The most memorable travel often involves encountering something unfamiliar, so consider escaping the herds parading through Paris. Indonesia, Ghana, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia are generally safe, far cheaper than Europe and offer indelible experiences. I’ll never forget venturing deep into the Potosí silver mines in Bolivia, exploring a grim slave castle in Ghana that dispatched prisoners to slavery in America, learning how to use a blowgun while staying with families in their longhouse in Indonesia’s Borneo rainforest. The world awaits us!
2. Some of the places that you find most culturally distant may be right here in the United States. A teenager from an affluent family in the New York or Boston areas would step into a different world by taking a ranch job in Wyoming. And this is the kind of travel that is not only affordable but actually pays for the experience.
3. Be spontaneous. As a law student in 1982, I spent five weeks backpacking through the Middle East and met a couple of Palestinian students on a West Bank bus; I jumped off at their stop and spent a memorable day with them in their refugee camp hearing about their frustrations and dreams (I wrote about reuniting with them last fall). And while on a bus in the Sahara, I accepted an Algerian man’s invitation to visit his village — which turned out to be a warren of underground burrows to protect families from the extreme heat, the most unusual residential architecture I’ve ever seen. In each case, I was with a couple of friends, which made it seem safer to put myself in the company of people I’d just met, and obviously one should be as judicious as one is spontaneous.
4. One occasionally hears that adventurous travel is just for men, but some of the most accomplished foreign correspondents and overseas photographers are women, as are a majority of Peace Corps volunteers. As a man, I don’t face the same risks that women face, but I have seen female travelers — disproportionately from Australia and New Zealand — thriving as they backpack through the most remote places. Some have suggested the purchase of a cheap wedding ring; a $20 band and a fabricated husband can help keep pests away.
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