Much to be thankful for don't you agree? Happy Thanksgiving Ya'll!

Since you are reading our blog - Thanks!!

On the side of our blog their is a tab called cluster maps. It is a really neat tool for seeing how we really are connected by less than 'six degrees of separation.'

If you have not visited our blog world map lately, would you check it out? We love knowing that we are reaching people around the world. Thanks to you for spreading the worldwide word.

Our world just gets smaller.

Also, if you are interested in reading about how other travelers are seeing their world check out the Lonely Planet's blogosphere at blogsherpa.com. They are publishing lots of cool travel related blogs - including ours. So, with that, this is a Thanksgiving blog.

We want to send out thanks to all of you who read, subscribe to, and share our blog. Thank you!! Special thank you shout outs to our friends who just recently started checking out our blog overseas in:

Antigua and Barbuda, Lebanon, Iran, Haiti, Djibouti, Azerbaijan, Brunei Darussalam, Maldives, Benin, Trinidad and Tobago, Bangladesh, Uganda , Oman, Jamaica, Jordan, Zambia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Jersey, Timor-Leste, Chile, Estonia, Latvia, Angola... thanks for reading our blog!

We all have much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving Ya'll!

Read more...

Global Harvest - Entrepreneurial Energy Bears Fresh Crops of New Ideas/Actions

Everywhere we have been, entrepreneurial energy bears fresh crops of solutions to emerging opportunities and constraints that our world community bears together. We have to continually relearn that we have enough products/projects here on the planet already to serve as remedies. for our hardest problems. There are ideas which need refinement, updates, distribution - but, we have only to scientifically rearrange conditions/circumstances to save our planet. We are finding our resolution. We are acting with fresh energy and actions.

As Brittany and I make our circumnavigation of the planet this year, we have encountered many friends and colleagues old and new who illustrate for us a great creative propensity. to use their skills and resources for the benefit of the world. In 20th and 21st Century fashion, these creative entrepreneurs exist independently, working at existential projects. They act as individual units (though some manage people and 'portfolios'). Each are radicalizing responsibility in their own way - but not as hermits or recluses. They are generally aware of coexistence and cooperative ideas - they self-market and microenterprise as individual actors - economically competitive yet aware of collective self-interests.

We are more aware than ever of what a powerful group of friends we have made. These are the change agents of the world: While their aims can solve many societal social, environmental, and economic problems (if and when they would be organized) the psychology of their core business principle is a new interest - to act collectively; and save the planet.

The people we have met are a new power base - their efforts are in producing bi-products to save the planet.

Take Benson, an industrial engineering production specialist in China - he helped us to understand the power of science and sources of energy. His proposal to prevent catastrophe from global warming - giant ice generators pointed at the Greenland Ice Cap.

Jessica and Martin. Jessica can manage consumers, labor, and the internet. Her other half Martin can create a capitalist world trading net tying consumers in China and the West to purchasing in ways that build actions of sustainability and fair trade economics.

Roddy is training our governments to accept LBGT human rights campaigns and tying these rights and freedoms to liberation of other marginalized and repressed groups in Asia and worldwide.

Rajib Roy is extending life through inventions in health and green urban sciences.

Perry is connecting volunteer labor to new and emerging markets of western economy to build new responsible forms of tourism and retirement.

All these friends came before our recent entrance and subsequent rush across Europe from Cyprus through Turkey, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Riviera to Gibraltar. It is expected in our western economies that we share efficiencies, values, and critical analysis. Because of our mutual assumptions, we can work off of each other.

Since then we have met Tim in Bulgaria, trying to find time between starting and running small businesses to applying himself to really learning to live by the rules from the 4-hour Workweek. There is Clivia in Marseille producing functional purse art from tape (mostly duct tape). Or Mohamed, in Marrakesh, who is not only an importer of unique quality Morrocan products to USA; but, in either country he is surrounded and admired by other entrepreneurs, industrialists, biotech start-up chiefs, and local sales and tour vendors - trying to scratch off a little of his huge luck and charisma. So many different ideas for businesses that are connecting to each other. Our friend Natalie in France, for example, would help us to link programs we hope to create when we get back home, Ashrams of service, voluntourism, ecotouristic business enterprises.

Between us all we can close the loop. As we develop new economies of mutual collective self-interest, our business ideas and productivity grow together.

What do we all have in common? In a tiny taste of an immense world of dense hardworking and compassionate human societies, we have met Turkish land tycoons, evangelist collectivist socialists, microimperialists, postmodern economists. Taken as individuals, they were all devoted believers in doing the most good with what they had each been given. But, taken as a group, and, moreover as a random sampling of ethics, values, efforts, and attitudes, they are a remarkable and forceful lot with a message to share with the world... [**** Footnote #1]

Maybe you know an unrecognized entrepreneur whose day in the spotlight has not come. Write about them here. Tell them you admire them. Threaten to tell the world how brilliant their ideas are if they don't make them public. Social network them. Suggest to them that they should connect, distribute, self-promote, integrate and collaborate these good ideas and projects with others. There is a rising tide of good works. Our acts are becoming increasingly interconnected.

**** Footnote #1
...as we rushed, we did so at times with a Zen footing. Forgetting the stones and shale, we ran blindly on the edge of an impossible steep precipice. The Abyss, Death, would not accept us. Our (ill) communication blindly driving the sands of our fates in front of us. Blind, our shadows, ran.

Read more...

Going Guidebook-less

If I may be so bold, I would say that we have become exceptional travelers. We haven’t always been this good….it’s a skill that has developed in the last five months on the road.

When we began this journey in December, we carried with us a Lonely Planet India Guidebook. Let me note that we didn’t arrive in India until three months later, and additionally, let me specify that the LP India weighs about four pounds. It was a bone of contention between us, but once we left home with it, why would we dump it before arriving in India? I was delighted to pawn it off on our good friends in Jabalpur in our last few weeks in India. We learned a few lessons from having that guidebook: 1) it is way too heavy for backpackers; 2) that we oftentimes used the guidebook to determine where we DIDN‘T want to go, since every other foreigner was also there; and 3) that we oftentimes set ourselves up for disappointment when the prices listed for hotel and transportation were vastly incorrect. While great for some, and mandatory for many types of travelers, they just don’t seem to help us that much.

So, we bagged the whole guidebook thing. We use the space in our bags to tote a few, quickly devoured, pleasure books, some short pamphlet-style literature from Ghandi’s Ashram, and plenty of our own writings. This isn’t to say that we aren’t interested in browsing through a guidebook should it cross our path, but we don’t seek them out. When we are trying to determine a direction, we look at our National Geographic World Map, stop by a travel/tour office and ask some questions (the people who work in these offices are notoriously bored and are happy to chat), or talk to the people that we meet along the way. We also sometimes save regional maps to our computer and use them for reference.

Last week when we left Accra, intending to head down the coast to Cape Coast, we arrived at the bus station only to find that the CC bus had left a few hours earlier. So, we just hopped aboard the next bus, bound for a town called “Takoradi.” Now, without a map, or a guidebook, or very positive customer service at the bus station, we hadn’t the slightest idea where Takoradi was….but we knew that it was in Ghana and only four hours away. Quick deductions told us that it wasn’t east (for Togo was only three hours), so let’s go North….or West….or Northwest….or wherever Takoradi is! Tickets purchased and window seats scored, we were soon delighted to find ourselves traveling west, along the Atlantic Coast.

Strangely enough, our bus passed right through Cape Coast, but since we’d purchased tickets on to Takoradi, we stayed aboard. We ended up staying three days in Takoradi, quickly establishing ourselves as regulars at the local restaurant and enjoying countless bowls of spicy groundnut (“peanut” for all you foreigners) chowder, wandering through the industrial port, browsing through the market, and spending ridiculously hot afternoons watching Tela Novellas dubbed in English on our hotel television.

After a few lazy days in Takoradi, we backtracked to Cape Coast, our original destination. Debarking from the bus, we coyly evaded the merciless taxi drivers and walked half a mile, then catching a reasonably-priced taxi into town. We told the driver that we wanted a hotel room for around 10 cedis ($8 USD) and he deposited us in a modest hotel with a fantastic balcony that catches the most spectacular evening breezes from the ocean. At night we relaxed in the fresh air and watched fruit bats the size of owls swooping in the gigantic tree outside of the balcony.

However, let our readers not think that each and every part of our guidebook-less adventure is pleasant. I can recall a few that weren’t so easy or carefree. I can even remember a few where we would have been delighted to have the address of a hotel….ANY hotel! But my selective memory is a gift and I remember more vividly the times when we unexpectedly arrived at a perfect place, of our own accord, with nothing to thank but hope, perseverance, and luck.

There is certainly a wealth of information on the internet, but we don’t really do much in the way of internet research either; most of our internet time is spent posting blogs, dealing with business from home, and trying to stay in touch with friends and family. When I am out exploring the world, I don’t feel inclined to spend too much of my time reading about other people’s explorations. There just isn’t enough time in the day; better to spend the hours wandering and talking to people and figuring things out for ourselves.

Read more...

A Guidebook Challenge

written by Nathan

The guidebooks of our world have made travel alluring and inviting, and have encouraged our travel to a myriad of places. In the process, and partly as a result of their insights, the world scale has diminished, borders have become more porous, peoples have become more connected. Even for the armchair traveler who fantasizes of food, culture, travel and adventure from the comfort of their big-screen living room, travel is accessible.

I use Lonely Planet as the template for this blog, mainly as testament to the generally high regard I have for this publication. LP has been the best and most comprehensive guide for world travelers for more than a quarter century. Lonely Planet has, to my knowledge, done more than any other institution in the world to make the world smaller, more approachable, and more easily traveled. In doing so, they have opened the eyes and appetites of many to the wondrous world of travel. First publications began about twenty-five years ago, aptly timed at the confluence of events that benefited us travelers tremendously: the ending of the cold-war; a global airline industry, and the massive economic globalization of markets, LP grew new travel books as fast as countries would take down their Visa and border barriers. Now, LP has guidebooks for nearly every country around the world.

In addition to general descriptions, information, and pointers for popular activities or places, LP also mentions in most publications that it intentionally omits some information, in order to help preserve cultural or regional authenticity (those who are interested in the magical fantasy of this hidden gem theme are advised to watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘The Beach:’ a movie about finding a way out of the tourist scene in overly touristic Thailand in the 90’s). It is remarkable to find direct reference to social conscience within the pages of a glossy guidebook.

Guidebooks have made information and insight and access available to the world, but at what cost? As guides for travelers all around the globe, can these guide-companies live up to what started their creators as travelers? Can they use their travel to ‘pay it forward?’

We hereby issue a challenge to Lonely Planet, Footprint, Brandt, Fodors, Insight Guides, and tourists and tour operators everywhere: Use your power, influence, and profits to mitigate, through programs, education, volunteerism and micro enterprise, the damages done by tourism to cultures and economies and make travel more holistically beneficial for visitors and locals alike.

I challenge LP and other guides to come clean with themselves and their readers. Not only should they continue to describe becoming a ‘green’ traveler, the how-to’s of volunteer opportunities, ways to spend money locally, or how to interact with new cultures appropriately; they should put their power and resources where their money is made; they should invest some of their profits in education and economic touristic development initiatives that help visitors and locals to mitigate the negative impacts of tourism.

But, my challenge is also issued to those of us who travel: we the people who love diversity in the world, who eat international cuisines, love world music, or want to ‘get away from it all.’ I challenge us to mitigate our impacts. ‘Simple,’ you say? Perhaps simple enough that any of us can try. This challenge, I truly believe, can immediately begin to build a more democratic, just, and equitable world in a dramatic way. If we can all realize how and why we are impacting the world (when and to whom do we impact in our travel) and if we encourage and demand this thinking through our use of resources and challenges to others, then, through the sheer scale of our decision-making capacity, tourism can shift from an enormously dangerous and damaging force on the planet to one of beneficence for the people we are visiting and for preserving what it was that drew us to and made us fall in love with travel in the first place. It is not enough (in today’s world of homogenizing cultures) to mention that our footprints have effects on the people and places we visit, we must actively work to advocate the broadest understanding and application of how changing our behavior and actions, both at home and abroad, can build a better world for us all to share together.

Here are some thoughts on what we can do as world travelers:

Take only tours that are green (reducing carbon, staying in eco-friendly lodging, etc.) or consider creating your own tour that uses fewer resources or has a lessened impact (camping, using activated charcoal to purify water, or taking public transportation).

Buy locally produced products and consume local foods.

Volunteer

Stay local (use local housing)

Visit ‘off the beaten track’ places and be a ‘grassroots’ ambassador for your country and culture.

Engage your local hosts and make friends!

What else should be added to these challenges and tools for travel? How can we support positive changes to travel that accept political differences (conservative, liberal, egalitarian, libertarian, and the like)? How can we describe our challenges in ways that are inclusive, provocative, non-combative, and equitable?

We welcome your suggestions and incites! Please share with us your experiences.

***
This blog needs further research. I will be looking to find out what guides are doing already. Please look forward to a follow-up blog on this topic.

Read more...

Improving tourism and the touristic experience

As we become global citizens and see our lives intertwining with our peoples around the planet we want to become more respectful, better stewards, economically just, and culturally aware. Whenever onetravels to countries as far apart from our homelands, as China is from the United States, this may seem more daunting. This should not prevent one from traveling and taking on this challenge.

Brittany and I often have talked about the pain we feel when we visit beautiful regions in the world that have been exploited and inexorably altered by the power of touristic influences. In early experiences of travel, most backpackers rely heavily on guide books to help them navigate new cities, countries, and hard to reach areas. These books, (Lonely Planet, Footprint, Rough Guide etc), help reveal special places often recommended by other travelers experiences. However, there is a corollary effect to tourist and guidebook recommendations. After 'making the guide' influx impacts of new tourism on remote indigenous, culturally unique, environmentally pristine, or ethnically sacred territory often destroys exactly what made each great. Edward Abbey made good descrition of how this occurred in the development of USA National Parks in his book Desert Solitaire. New Orleans native, Mark Plotkin, draws a similar comparison to missionaries, drug companies, and tourist impacts on the last remote tribes on the planet in his ethnobotanical memoir Shaman's Apprentice.

I have lost track now of how many times I referred to those of us who began hostels in Colombia in the last 10 years in the following way,"We are in the tourism business; but, we do not want any more tourism." Tourism, it seems, is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

How can we behave differently as tourists and guides to mitigate the negative effects of too much tourism and facilitate sustainable travel?

Here are some ways of building positive touristic experience:

As the tourist:

1. When you reach the end of the road, keep going.
   In Latin America the tourist trail is referred to as the Gringo Trail. Travelers go to the same spots other travelers have gone before. As travel increases, tourist businesses develop to meet increasing demand. To reach nonimpacted areas all one has to do is go 2 km from any tourist route. Generally, one will find that one is welcomed as an honored guest, helped more eagerly, and given a more local and complex view of the area one is wanting to visit.
2. Respect local customs and yourself in the process.
   We are always ambassadors for the people who come after us and for the lands and people from which we have come. Lacking knowledge or language skills is not enough of an obstacle to being dignified, polite, and generous of spirit. Across the planet, observing how locals interact, treating people the way we hope to be treated, and engaging our hosts with thankful and joyful honesty opens doors for others to follow us.
3. Keep your game face on - and put your best foot forward.
   Travel is difficult, fraught with unexpected events, sudden changes, and uncomfortable new challenges. While one may feel overwhelmed, tired, or bemused in the moment, hold on to what is usually at the root of why we come in the first place: This place interests and intrigues us; and, while we may not be 100% at ease in every moment, our previous experiences (and the wealth of those who have experienced travel before us) all point to the overwhelming majority opinion that negative and uncomfortable memories are erased and our positive memories have staying power. We remember smiles and pleasant differences.

As the tourist developer:

1. Think 'green' locally, act globally
2. Behave outside the Box
3. Make your tourism unique
   Most parts of the world where tourism begins start off when someone recognizes that others would like to visit a place we have fallen for completely. Starting a business in this condition only insures that copycat businesses will follow and replicate your success. Not only does this present an annoyance and undercut your hard work's achievement, it utterly ruins the sacred place you aimed to share. Generally, if you have any business principles or memory this will force you out figuratively or literally.

Emerging Trends in Tourism: Ecotourism and Sustainable Development

In earlier blogs, we have discussed ZERI or Zero Emmissions Planning Ecotourism, Volunteer Tourism, and Zero Carbon Tourism are new ways travelers seek to fully engage new peoples, lands, and places while allowing their footprints to fade ecologically into the sands of time. Allowing tourists to take increased responsibility for their impact changes behaviors between locals and visitors. This also enhances the overall experiences of visitors and hosts.

The future is here, how do we embrace it more fully?

Read more...