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Guidebooks and other reading
This is precisely where you might expect to find a few sentences of Rough Guides propaganda. Happily, you won’t. Not much, anyway. Naturally, the editors and writers at Rough Guides are proud of the guidebooks they produce, but they also understand it comes down to individual taste, trust and how you like your information gathered and presented. For that, you’ll have to head to a bookshop and compare. Better yet, you might even “test drive” a few different guides out on the road and see which suits you best.
Specialists in the independent market are Rough Guides, Lonely Planet, Footprint, Let’s Go, Bradt, Time Out city guides and (for French speakers) the Guide Routard. For more mainstream travel, there’s also Frommer’s, Fodor’s, the design-intense city guides by Dorling Kindersley and Rick Steves’ self-guided tours.
At a bookstore, pick up a few guides on the same country and compare a few paragraphs on the same topic. Start with a city or town you’re particularly interested in. Is the layout and writing easy to follow? Are the maps clear? Also take a look at the author bios. You’ll want someone (or several people) who has spent considerable time in the country they’re writing about. It’s always helpful if they speak the language and have been able to get information by conversing with the locals.
How best to use your guidebook
For most, it’s a revelation to find there are books that tell you everything you need to know to get around: where to stay, where to eat and what to do while you’re there. However, this does more than just remove some of the adventure. It sends everyone to the same places. Not just the same towns, but the same cafés, hostels, bars and scenic spots. Ask nearly any guidebook writer and they’ll tell you the book is best used as a reference, not a bible or substitute tour guide. The little maps are great for helping you navigate your way from the bus station to a hostel at 3am or to find a vegetarian restaurant in Copenhagen, but your best guide is still your own nose. Find your own unlisted restaurants and lodgings, and it’s likely you’ll have a much more memorable experience.
Here’s another common misuse. The temptation is to sit on the bus or train approaching the city scrutinizing the hostel descriptions. Then you read them over and over until you get them into your head, and before you know it you’ve got the experience largely mapped out before you’ve even arrived. Save yourself the effort. It’s not worth it. There’s not that much difference between four recommended hostels. And if you don’t like a hostel you can either change the next day after you’ve had a chance to look around, or just crash there at night and spend your waking hours elsewhere in town. You’ll eventually find a system that works for you, but mine is something like this: if I’m tired out or staying a bit longer, I’ll pick a place further from the centre. If I’m just staying a day or two and feeling fresh, I’ll go for the best rated of the flea traps in the centre. If there are a few decent choices in these categories, I’ll typically go for the ones that are the easiest to get to. But, whatever the case, I won’t spend more than five or ten minutes deciding.
How many guidebooks to bring
Here’s some good news. Just because you’re planning to hit twenty countries on your trip doesn’t mean you need to pack twenty guidebooks – or download that many on your phone, Kindle or tablet. Just take the one for the country or region you’re heading to first and buy, download or trade for the rest as you go. Relevant guidebooks (those for that country or city, plus surrounding ones) can be found in hostels, hotels, bookstores and airports – virtually everywhere (sometimes cheaper, sometimes more expensive). Someone in the hostel is sure to have a more detailed book you can borrow for an hour or two. Ideally, you’ll be able to locate someone who’s heading in the direction you just came from and make a straight swap. If you’re trading with a hostel or secondhand bookstore, you may have to throw in some money or a novel to complete the deal.
GUIDEBOOK MISUSE
Should I treat my guidebook as a bible? Why not? Most guidebooks are like the Old Testament – full of fanciful inaccuracies and describing a mystical time in the past when everything was cheaper and more plentiful. The only difference is that not much “begetting” goes on in guidebooks. Unless you’ve got the second edition of Bill Dalton’s Indonesia Handbook, that is.
You will notice in your travels a lot of the locals will exhort you not to treat your guidebook as a bible. They will cajole you into ignoring the price listed or the missing bathrooms. They encourage you to use the book only as a rough indication and argue that things change and prices go up. They are usually the owners of a hotel mentioned in a guidebook who, knowing that business is booming, figure they can charge pretty much what they want.
I always avoid the first hostel listing in the guidebook. Those places are too busy and filled with travellers who are too lazy to read.
Digital guides vs print
Print guides: Nicer to hold, not reliant on battery and easier to read in sunlight.
Phone/tablet guides: Cheaper, take up less space, can be used in poor lighting, enable you to find what you’re looking for quickly, zoomable maps and you don’t look like a tourist when you use your phone in public.
What to read along the way
One of the very best ways to add richness to your trip and bring the locales to life is to read up on them. This entails getting beyond the brief guidebook descriptions and finding stories that explore cultural nuances and history easily missed while searching for your hostel or a better exchange rate. The series Travelers’ Tales published in San Francisco offers diverse and well-crafted anthologies on the most popular destinations that do just this. And if you can find room (or manage to lift) any of the country-themed James Michener tomes you’re in for a treat, with folklore and fiction woven into the places named in the title.
But it would be a pity to miss out on some of the classics and modern hits, especially in the regions where they are set. Reading books like Midnight’s Children or White Tiger in India, Seven Pillars of Wisdom in Syria and Jordan, On the Road in America and Ulysses in Ireland is one of the great joys of travel. These are among the most popular titles along the appropriate routes and can be bought or traded for quite easily. So, when you’re starting out, one paperback will do. Pop fiction authors like Clancy and Grisham tend to serve as the strongest currency, but start with something you like and let your continuous swaps serve as a reading adventure that runs parallel to your trip.
Don’t forget about the local periodicals. Magazines can offer some contemporary insights (eg India’s Stardust magazine on Bollywood, Britain’s Heat magazine for gossip). Newspapers in local towns will give you a sampling of the issues of the day, so you’re better prepared for a more in-depth discussion with a local or to find out what’s going on. Local flea markets, theatre productions or concerts are not likely to be found in your guidebook. If you don’t feel like paying for print, most guidebooks have free online sites with a wealth of information as long as you can find a free internet connection.
Your city, country or regional guidebooks will provide a more complete reading list with descriptions; see also the “Where to go” section of this guide.
PUTTING THE GUIDEBOOK DOWN
One day me, my wife and her sister decided to drive near the Swiss border to explore the countryside and find a small-town, mom-and-poppa restaurant for lunch. But for some reason, we couldn’t find a place to eat. Hard to believe, but it was true. We were ravenous, but our timing was off – it was late afternoon, and we’d managed to miss the opening hours of what few rural restaurants we could find. The troops were getting restless.
Out of desperation, I pulled onto the deeply rutted driveway of a farm and drove a quarter of a mile to the main house where I asked in broken German if there was anywhere nearby to eat. Maybe the farmer and his wife who answered the door could see the hunger, for they invited us in and cooked up an unforgettable meal of ham (that I bet was squealing out back the day before), sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. Some sharp mustard completed the feast. I still remember the meal, as well as our host and hostess, fondly.
It was the kind of event that could never have been planned.
rudymaxa.com)Tips for using your tablet abroad
As long as you remember to keep it charged (and from getting broken or stolen), taking a tablet can be a great way to access any book you like. The Kindle’s battery (two months on a single charge), daylight reading screen, lower cost and smaller/lighter body make it better suited to travel reading than an iPad. But here’s an important setting to consider: there are no longer international charges for Kindle downloads over wi-fi, but they still hit you with weekly charges for using 3G. This can change at any time and by country (and there may be fees for magazines, but not books), so check their website for the latest updates.
If you are an iPad user, consider investing in a good case – something both
solid (like the defender case from otterbox.com) and that doesn’t draw too much attention (like the
bookbook case twelvesouth.com) –
and a portable battery charger like the power monkey ( powertraveller.com).