No one likes a well thought out reading list more than I do. They obsess me, it’s true. But they also serve to focus my efforts, reveal themes and dialogues that pass from author to author, and expose me to new writers I might not otherwise have read. I’m just a few books away from completing the Modern Library’s Top 100 Books of the 20th Century—a project I’ve been...
As a professional travel writer, people often ask me about the tools of my trade. I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about my notebook. “Your notebook?” you might ask. “What the hell for? Isn’t one piece of paper as good as the next?” Au contraire, mon ami. Ask a craftsman who works with wood if one hammer or chisel is as good as another. Ask an...
This is the first in a multi-part blog on North Korea… Many readers have asked about my time in North Korea. Why did I go? How did I get in? What was I thinking? I’ll start at the beginning. It was August 2001, a month before 9/11 changed the world forever. I was living and working in Tokyo. Summer vacation was coming up, and I planned to visit a friend in Indonesia. The problem is...
We’ll get to North Korea soon, I promise. I’m in London at the moment and wanted to share something with you. Spent some time searching for the tomb of one of my heroes. He’s buried in a marble replica of a Bedouin tent in a little cemetery in Mortlake… Captain Richard Francis Burton lived a life people today would hardly find believable. He spoke some 29 languages...
Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios. This incident took place in the Peten region of Guatemala… The light through the window lay across my chest in a square pattern, broken by the lazy sweep of a ceiling fan. It was a picture straight out of Joseph Conrad; a movie version of a...
Islands are places where different destinies can meet in the fullness of isolation, and in their own time. Island time doesn’t match the time of other places. The ideal island is a whole world, and even a tiny island may contain multitudes.
I’m 31 feet below ground at the Delta One (D-01) launch facility, standing in a reinforced concrete tube, behind a foot-thick steel blast door. A loop of Cold War tunes plays in my head: The Final Countdown, followed by 99 Red Balloons (the English version, with that sexy accent). I’m facing a grey metal control panel with several bakelite telephones and a number of switches —...
Road Wisdom represents a way of travel, a way of seeing the world. Road Wisdom is an absence of preconceived agendas, short of going deeper. Road Wisdom is the collection of lessons imparted by the all-knowing road, if only you loose your grip long enough to get out of your own way and simply follow wherever it might lead you. Road Wisdom has no time for the mundane, the 9 to 5, or the...
Enormous trees with wide buttressed roots propped up the canopy: giants draped with vines, mosses and epiphytes which hung in tangled green confusion. All the way down to the impenetrable jungle floor, life grew upon life in one symbiotic Gordian Knot. The forest floor absorbed our footfalls: mine and two Embera hunters from a tiny village deep in Panama’s Darién Gap. The jungle crouched...
Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios. This incident took place in the highlands of Guatemala… One night, sitting in my room, I heard a woman sobbing. It echoed through the courtyard, sounding heartbroken and forlorn. I imagined a lover’s quarrel or a breakup, a young girl...
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