A vintage Citroen in front of the The Metropole Sofitel in Hanoi.
When you wake up in a large room in The Metropole Sofitel Hanoi and sun is streaming in from the garden, it's already a perfect day. When your room-mates are snoring or buried beneath their down or fiddling with their crack-berries and you know you are first up in the luxury bathroom, it's a more perfect day. When you head downstairs to the colonial portion of the hotel and take in the buffet breakfast (take in visually and orally) and meet with new friends you have just met in The Lounge, then it's a very perfect morning. And that's just the start of the day.
View of Nilgiri and Annapurna range from The Red House.Photo by Everett Potter.
The Red House Lodge Kagbeni, Nepal
The village of Kagbeni, Nepal, is an ancient trading town on the old
salt route between Nepal and Tibet. The town is a warren of mud-walled
buildings, some topped with crude turrets, an architectural style
reminiscent of North Africa as much as Asia. The setting, however,
could only be in Nepal. Prayer flags flap in the incessant wind and
lammergeier (vultures with 10 foot wingspans) soar on the updrafts. The
town is set high above the banks of the Kali Gandaki River, which flows
down from the Tibetan plateau. The peaks of the Himalayas, especially
those of Nilgiri in the Annapurna Range, provide a sensational
backdrop. In the heart of this medieval town is The Red House Lodge, a simple
guesthouse frequented by trekkers on the Annapurna Circuit and those
heading north.
Jeff Greenwald is a veteran traveler, journalist, author (Shopping for Buddhas, The Size of the World) and arguably the most persuasive guy around for ethical travel. In fact, he co-founded Ethical Traveler, “a global community dedicated to exploring the ambassadorial potential of world travel.” I heard Jeff speak at the Adventure Travel Summit in Quebec in October of this year and later on, had a chance to ask him some questions.
Okay, so what exactly is Ethical Traveler?
Ethical Traveler, which I co-founded in 2003, is the first international alliance uniting adventurers, tourists, travel agencies and outfitters -- everyone who sees travel as a positive force in the global community -- into a single action group. We work to maximize the positive impacts of travel, and band together in the service of human rights and protection of the environment. Our mission -- and I admit it's ambitious -- is to empower travelers to change the world. We're working to create a shift in the way travelers view themselves, and their influence within the global community. The time is right, I think. Travel is now the world's biggest industry -- even bigger than oil. There's a growing ability and maybe an imperative -- for travelers to play a more active role. Our core belief is that motivated travelers, mindful of our planet's social and environmental concerns, can be instrumental in creating a better world.
Vajrayogini Mandala, Tibet; 18th century, Courtesy Rubin Museum of Art
Reviewed by Bobbie Leigh
Just as painted Russian icons are not intended to be solely artistic representations of saints, but objects of meditation and veneration, mandalas --- at least for the initiated --- are magic windows, pathways to the deepest possible Buddhist understandings of the cosmos and the self. The 70 staggeringly beautiful mandalas in the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) show, "Mandala: The Perfect Circle," are among the rarest in the world. Some are from the Rubin's own collection, others from the Met, the Musee Guimet in Paris, and private collections.
"Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. The mountains are in labor, and a silly mouse will be born." Well said, Horace, in your "Epistles, Book Two," but times have changed. Actually it's a Bosavi woolly rat, the world's largest (32" long, 3 lbs.), one of 40 new species found by the first scientists to enter Mt. Bosavi, the huge collapsed cone of an extinct volcano in the southern highlands of Papua New Guinea. Other new critters recently found along with the mild-mannered vegetarian rat: a frog with fangs, a new bat, and the Henamo grunter, a fish that makes grunting noises using his swim bladder.
The Deal: The new Peninsula Shanghai, which is set on the historic Bund in the heart of the city, opens on October 19, 2009 with the Peninsula Preview Rate.
THE DEAL: Incredible Royal Escape from Taj Hotels. WHY IT'S A DEAL: These properties are the iconic Indian luxury palaces. Prices start at $2,190 and include accommodations for two, daily breakfast, daily dinner,a 20% discount on food and beverages, and a 15% discount on spa treatments.
Jomsom Airport, with the 23,000 foot Niligiri in background
On a recent Sunday morning, I arose at 4:45 am in the dusty village of Jomsom, Nepal which sits on the northern edge of the Annapurna range at about 9,000 feet. I had spent nearly three weeks traveling around Nepal with Dr. Antonia Neubauer, founder of the adventure travel company, Myths & Mountains. More important, Dr. Neubauer also founded READ (Rural Education and Development), a stellar organization that has built libraries throughout Nepal, India and Bhutan. I had seen half a dozen of these libraries in the Nepalese countryside, testaments to community work, willpower and planning in a country where such things are in short supply.
But now it was time to go home.
I intended to make the 20 minute flight from Jomsom to Pokhara and then fly from Pokhara to Kathmandu. I would spend the night in Kathmandu, and then fly the next day to Seoul, overnight, and then continue on to New York via Korean Air the next day. A long trip, yes, but there are no shortcuts, especially in Nepal.
The flight into Jomsom
Three days earlier, I had taken the flight into Jomsom. It was the best flight of my life, a 20 minute thrill ride right through a pass in the Himalayas, close enough to the Annapurna range (26,000 plus foot peaks) that you feel as if you're in an Imax movie (with only slightly higher admission).
On this Sunday, I walked to Jomsom airport before 6, with my dusty, dirty luggage, which contained a few souvenirs, including a small piece of yak bone I had found while trekking to Kagbeni. At the airport, I waited in a cement room (amenities limited to his and hers pit toilets) behind locked doors along with a few westerners and a large group of chanting Indian pilgrims. They had flown up on a pilgrimage to Muktinath, one of the holiest Hindu shrines, which lies a few hours from here. We waited as the morning stillness gave way to a slight breath of air that shook the bush outside. Four hours later, that bush was bent sideways. By 10 AM in Jomsom, the dust-laden wind is usually blowing 30 miles per hour or better.
Intrepid Travel is not your garden variety adventure travel tour operator. Not when they can arrange for you to spend 15 days traveling through Uzbekistan for $1,360. Plan a month-long trip for you in the jungle and on the beaches of Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo for $2,240. Or entice you with a 61-day "South America Encompassed" trip for $4,905, an amount that won't get you a week in Provence with a high-end tour operator. Of course, they go many other places as well – more than 100 destinations – including the usual suspects, like Bali, Belgium and Bolivia. In short, they offer organized group travel for the socially-conscious budget set, a faction whose numbers seem to be swelling daily. They’re even offering a 15 percent break to those who are newly laid-off. Intrepid Travel’s departures average just 10 travelers and they rate their trips not only by difficulty but by culture shock. While you’re part of a group, you travel as independent travelers do, via local transport. You sleep in local accommodations and guesthouses and dinner might well be at street stalls. The Australian-based company was founded in 1989 by two friends, Darrell Wade and Geoff Manchester. I recently had a chance to ask Wade about the company.
How would you characterize the Intrepid Travel approach?
Well, it's a different approach to most I guess. We very much believe in getting under the skin of a destination - and so like to immerse ourselves in the local way of doing things. That might mean using lots of local transportation, or perhaps staying in the home of some local friends or perhaps just learning a little about the local good, language or culture. We also believe that the best way to touch the destination is to travel in a small group with an experienced leader. Our groups average just 10 travelers, which means that we can have a much more flexible, grass roots travel experience that we could with a larger group. We can blend in to a destination rather than dominate it.
Michael Wood, the English historian, writer and documentarian, gives fresh meaning to the term "enthusiasm." Watching him on camera in such notable television series as Art of the Western World, In Search of Shakespeare and In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great is a bit like watching that professor we all wish had in college -- someone with smarts who's not only readily approachable but eager to share his knowledge and passion for the subject at hand. Wood's latest series, The Story of India, may well be his masterwork. In this six part BBC series, which debuts January 5, 2009 on PBS stations around the country, he addresses the rich history of India, a place that now harbors about one fifth of the world's population. It's a daunting task, but for Wood it seems more like a labor of love. And the country’s rich colors, chaos and culture make for a film that is hypnotically watchable. For those who have traveled to India, or at least dreamed of going, it's compulsive viewing. And at a time when the troubles in Mumbai have put India on the front page, the arrival of this series is timely indeed. I caught up with Michael Wood last week.
Your physical presence within the series obviously makes it more compelling. But it's also, almost incidentally, a way to show how travel is often challenging within India. How long did you actually spend traveling within the country to make the series?
The filming was spread over a period of eighteen months, but obviously before this project I'd worked in India and traveled there over a long period of time. We took our kids there starting when they were about five. My first film there was in 1987 and the first one for PBS was in 89, so we've been thinking about it for a while! As for the shoots, because of family, kids etc. we tried to make each one no longer than three weeks at a time and edited back home as we went along. In terms of the role of the host and film style, I see the role of the host as friendly intermediary – a bit like a travel guide I guess you might say. I've never been that keen on dramatized reconstructions because I never find them that convincing. For me its better to let the audience's imagination work in the landscape and living culture where things actually happened.
Many of our films have involved travel, sometimes epic journeys, such as In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (when we crossed from Greece through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the Hindu Kush mountains on foot, or Conquistadors, when we trekked to the Lost City of the Incas at Espiritu Pampa in Peru, did the pilgrimage on foot to the Qoyllur Riti glacier near Cuzco, and went by small boat down the Amazon.
In our shows we are always trying to use the living cultures to make a connection with the past, to find the living past still touchable in the present. Which I guess is what we all try to do when we travel? Of course, it's easier to do that in India than, say, the UK – in fact it’s easier in India almost than anywhere in the world, as all human pasts are still living there from Stone Age to Silicon Valley. In that sense' it's the ultimate travel destination!!
Mao outdid the Soviets when it came to socialist-realism. His dictate, "art for the people," created a kind of dark ages for artists. From roughly the 1950's to the1970's, artists were told what they could and could not paint. It's all precisely chronicled in "Art and China's Revolution," a must-see show at Asia Society in New York City. Artist Han Xin , at the show's opening said he was 16 in 1971. "There were no schools anywhere in China, they were all closed," he recalled. "Children whose parents were arrested were sent to the countryside (for agrarian re-education). About all you were permitted to paint was Mao's portrait, but I tried to explore. I had heard about Picasso and Matisse but never seen their paintings." As Xin described his experiences during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, he stood before his painting "Sinner," a very non-revolutionary, non--socialist style painting, memorable for its rough brush strokes and dark colors, risky practices during that time. Xin, like some of the artists in this show, were interested in pushing boundaries. It's a small painting, like many counter- revolutionary works in this show, all the more easy to hide from the authorities. Artist Chen Danqing wrote in the show's catalog that Mao's image was the only thing in the world "you knew you could paint at the time. I felt no difference between {me and} Renaissance painters ---they painted Jesus. I painted Mao."
["Chairman Mao Inspects the Guandong Countryside," by Chen Yanning, courtesy of Sigg Collection]
In the competitive world of adventure travel, the small adventure travel companies can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. Which is a shame, because they can provide the ultimate in personalized service -- you're often dealing with owner of the company as you plan your trip. These small companies may also offer departures at a very attractive price, something to be grateful for in these tough economic times. Typically, these operators choose comfort over luxury when it comes to accommodations, and the best ones try to integrate you with the local culture rather than cocooning you in a fancy hotel.
Vancouver-based BikeHike Adventures is one of those companies. They have departures to 27 countries, many in Asia and Latin America. And their prices are in tune with the times. A 12-day "Paddle and Play" in Vietnam that combines mountain biking and sea kayaking is $2,299. And voluntourism takes on fresh meaning with "Ecuador- Adventures with a Purpose," an 11-day trip that combines days of community service with mountain biking, rafting, sea kayaking and hiking and costs $2,199.
Trips like these are why BikeHike Adventures was singled out as "One of the Best Outfitters in the World" by National Geographic Adventure in 2007. I ran into company founder Trish Sare in Brazil last month and decided to follow up with her when I returned to the States.
So Trish, where are you now?
At present, I am in Vancouver, British Columbia. I've recently returned from three weeks in boisterous Brazil, which was fabulous. I was at the Adventure Travel World Summit conference, the cream of the crop of this industry, as well as designing some new BikeHike Adventures.
What makes BikeHike Adventures stand out in the rather crowded field of adventure travel?
We want our clients to interact first hand with the local people, by riding their bicycles alongside the locals, stopping into family houses along the way when we get invited to try a local delicacy, or attending an impromptu wedding because we've just been invited by the locals. I want to offer those types of experiences to our travelers, not the staged "tourist experience," but real life encounters. We are a business, but more importantly, we are an experience and we've developed a community of friends to share those experiences with.
Named one of the "50 Travel Blogs I Can't Live Without" by Chris Elliott on Elliott.org
Praise from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: “With the economy (and the dollar) struggling, finding good value for your travel dollar is taking on added importance. Everett Potter, a longtime travel writer, helps readers do just that in his combined newsletter and blog, "Everett Potter's Travel Report." It's a terrific mix of profiles and interviews, all designed to make the best use of your travel budget.” The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2008.
