1. Vagabond Quest has just published two of my Paris pictures, in a special article showing various travel writer’s photos. Which ones? You’ll have to go find them at Vagabond Quest.

2. FEAST online magazine, by Rosemary Carstens covers new books, art and artists, food and travel. What else is there??  Rosemary has done a beautiful/gorgeous remake of her site and I recommend you take a look. I’d love the new look even if she were not previewing Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy o f a Navajo Artist (which she IS). And I would like it even if she didn’t’ mention having lunch with me in Tucson (which she did) and rave about southern Arizona (which she does.)

3 Cups of Tea Book Cover

3. Have you seen the hubbub surrounding Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea? I frankly was not overly impressed when I read what I considered a press release disguised as a memoir, so I never reviewed it here. 60 Minutes just did an expose which has generated other columns and articles.  This morning I heard the editor of Outside magazine, who had profiled Mortenson earlier, talk on NPR about an interview he just did with Mortenson to get his side of the story.  Apparently his side of the story was not entirely convincing. If false information made it into the book, it was his co-writer! It wasn’t his fault, it was the publisher! On the other hand, Nicholas Kristoff pleads in the New York Times that the baby (several schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan) should not be thrown out with the dirty bath water (made up incidents in the book and possible misfeasance in the operation of the charity founded by Mortenson.)

4. Back to good news. I have winners to announce.

• Deb Scorse , who de-lurked to enter the drawing, wins The Minaret of Dijam
• Diana Brandemeyer will dream about Paris while reading Paris Walks
• Richard Mussler-Wright chose Lisa Napoli’s Radio Shangri Lai when I gave you a choice of Bhutan books.
• Suzanne Cassel went for Linda Leaming’s Married to Bhutan

Now, I think I’m all caught up–but only momentarily, because we have more book giveaways coming soon.

Tomorrow an interview with Holly Tucker about her new book, Blood Work. And next week, we’ll continue the Troubled Times in Arab Lands series; talk about a new book about the Nicarauguan Revolution and a stunning new novel set in the former Yugoslavia. (While I’m actually in Albuquerque, NM and Yuma AZ talking about my own new book, which you can buy directly from this site by using the Buy Now button on the right.)

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Kate Nelligan in the title role of 1985 movie Eleni.

Destination: Northern Greece

Book: Eleni by Nicholas Gage

A GUEST POST by Michelle Duffy

Eleni is a story of passions. The passionate love a mother has for her children; the passionate fervor of men and women who take up arms to improve their world; the small passions which we call neighborly disagreements but which, given the right circumstances, can have terrible consequences. It is a story of family and of tradition told against the backdrop of the Second World War, the Cold War and the Greek Civil War. It is a story of immigration told by someone who knows what it was like to be left behind and then later, had to learn how to become an American.

Nicholas Gage starts with the execution of his mother. He tells his own story about his emigration to America and how he felt compelled to tell his mother’s story even from a young age. We learn about his first visit to Greece in 1963 when he realized that he was now a stranger in this village where, just 14 years before, ‘every tree and rock’ had been familiar to him.

We feel the depth of his emotion as he begins to understand that he cannot write his mother’s story from memory, that to tell it well he has to take the reader to Greece to the pre-war years and describe the hardscrabble life of the people in the bare, mountainous villages in the Mourgana mountains on the Albanian border – where his mother grew up. He has to accompany the reader through the war years in that village as the factionalism between the Democratic (EDES) and Communist (ELAS) groups was building even as the country was occupied by the Nazis.

Eleni’s story sets the tempo and emotional depth of the book. Gage skillfully alternates short factual chapters framing this tragic story within the contemporary political situation in Greece and the world. His training an investigative reporter for the New York Times comes out strongly as he maintains his powerful narrative while interspersing references to the people and sources he used to develop the factual basis for the story almost imperceptibly. You will feel the hunger of the children as the deprivations of WW II lift only briefly to be replaced by the harsher and more complicated Civil War. You will cry for the village girls wrenched from their conservative homes to be trained as andartinas – guerrillas. You will ache for the hearts and arms of the mothers whose children were taken in pedomasoma.

Like the British soldiers mentioned in this story, on my first visit to Greece – in 1991 – my expectations were heavily influenced by a “romantic mist distilled from the poetry of Byron and Keats”. Rudely awakened by the hustle and bustle of modern-day Athens, I went looking to learn more about this fascinating country and a family member recommended Eleni. Reading this powerful story has helped me understand Greece at a much deeper level than as a casual tourist, in fact, you might say that it started my love affair with this enigmatic country. I’ve been back to Greece twice since that first visit  and I plan to return many more times if I can.

Michelle Duffy

Michelle blogs as WanderMom and is co-author of Wanderlust and Lipstick: Traveling with Kids. She is currently planning a 15-month round-the-world trip with her family. She is a co-founder of the travel bloggers’ fund-raiser, Passports with Purpose and of BestFamilyTravelAdvice.com.

Michelle is a busy lady, and we are fortunate to have her share one of my own favorite countries, and a book I also found inspiring.  I particularly want to put in a plug for Passports with Purpose. Please check it out. I’ll be participating. Last year we built a school in Cambodia. This year the goal is a whole village in India. Good for the founders, including Michelle!!

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Look for an interview I did with Jennifer Steil that will appear on August 9.

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Atlanta Midtown

Destination: Atlanta, Georgia

Book: A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe (1998)

Tom Wolfe is not only a writer, but he plays one on T.V. Dressed in a white linen suit and white homburg hat, he chats amiably–those perfect southern manners on display, of course. And I will happily read anything he has written. So although he actually hails from Richmond Virignia, I’ve picked his book A Man in Full, which is set in Atlanta, Georgia for our road trip travel plans to that state.

Wolfe took his newspaper reporter’s eye for the telling detail and moved on to book-length discourses on icons of American culture–Manhattan lefty socialites and American racism (Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers), Hippies (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) astronauts (The Right Stuff), among the titles that added to the American vocabulary. And his work set a standard for a new school of non-fiction: The New Journalism. Who can hear “the right stuff” without thinking of the astronaut culture? And Radical Chic became the perfect put down for the faux-sincere backer of causes. He moved into fiction with a novel that pinned to the wall the finance industry, Bonfire of the Vanities, written LO-O-O-NG before our present banking crisis. Then he took on his own region– the modern South and its class and race friction hidden under a veneer of politeness and its focus on doing bid-ness– A Man in Full.

Tom Wolfe lays his characters out on the table and slices them open with a sharp wit–laying bare every foible and pretense. And in A Man in Full, he not only paints sharp portraits of a vast array of human characters, but also slices and dices the city of Atlanta, symbol of the modern South.

The book is long and the plot is complex, but nothing Wolfe every writes is ponderous.  His individual sentences and phrases are delights. It takes him a long time to shape a book, and if you pause to ponder as you read the perfect word choices you will understand why.  He is in his eighties now and some doubt that he has enough time to finish a final work because of his meticulous approach–not because of any lack of energy.

If you need proof of his still lively, sharp mind, read this article printed about a year ago in the New York Times about NASA.

If you have never read Tom Wolfe, take a look at one of his books. If you want to know how a born and bred southerner sees the new South, and you’re ready to visit that most un-typical part of Georgia on your own road trip, read his novel set in Atlanta, A Man in Full. It’s a peach. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Tom Wolfe

Charlie Rose interviews Tom Wolfe and you can see a copy on the Tom Wolfe website . Charlie Rose talks a bit too much in this half-hour show, but it gives you a good view of Tom Wolfe, nevertheless.

The portrait of Tom Wolfe, is filched from his publisher’s web site. The gorgeous picture of Atlanta at night above is from Flickr compliments of Creative Commons license. Please click on the picture to see more of that photographer’s work. Good stuff!

Don’t forget to pick up your road trip music over at Music Road. Kerry wrote last week about music for the two states, South Carolina and Georgia.

To begin at the beginning, you can go back to Blue Highways, or to start the trip south, see Virginia. And please, don’t miss any of the Road Trip,or the other travels at A Traveler’s Library. Subscribe! you now have three ways to follow along–

• I will e-mail you each post;
• you can get it in your RSS feed,
• or you can click on the Facebook widget over to the far right (with all the pictures) and follow me on Facebook.

Are you already a Tom Wolfe fan? Tell me what you’ve read, and how you like the “New Journalism” style. I’d love to have a conversation about one of my favorite authors. Alabama is coming up–suggestions??

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Money Money Money

Several prognosticators of travel lately have been saying that Americans and Canadians are getting downright giddy about the stronger dollar vs. the euro and what a difference that will make when they travel to Europe. In April, The New York Times said  save money when you travel to Europe.

That means you’ll save more than $100 on four nights at a hotel that costs 200 euros a night, and a 28 euro train ticket from Rome to Florence will cost $37 instead of $41 — small change in some cases, but the savings add up over a 10-day vacation.( NY Times April 18,2010)

Travel in France

And the scenario has gotten better since April. I have a little gizmo from Windows on my home screen that dynamically shows dollar/Euro rates, and as I write, the euro is worth $1.21. That sure beats the $1.75 we faced when we traveled to Ireland two years ago. (The Canadian dollar has had a surge in strength against the Euro, also.)

However, rather than looking for cheaper destinations, as they might do in economic bad times, American and Canadian travelers are still choosing the tried and true destinations. The Times reports a 20% increase in sales of tickets to Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain.

All of which explains why Fodors.com web site has a useful new front page concentrating on Europe. Not only do they have links to all the useful information on their site–on-line travel guides, forums, and booking engines, but they showcase 60 quickie itineraries recommended by their travel editors. These trips, by rail, boat, or car, cover all the high points region by region. I like the way each trip includes at least one unexpected destination. And of course the site provide endless information about each of the individual places.

You can choose by region, or if you’re more into a particular interest–from drinking beer to sky-diving, choose your type of trip.

But Wait! There’s More!! Fodor’s has joined with A Traveler’s Library to celebrate Bastille Day (July 14) by giving away guidebooks to France. You’ll have to wait until July to find out how to win.

I’m assembling a small library of books on France to give away on Bastille Day (or actually the day BEFORE, since July 14 is a Road Trip day).  So tell me, should one person get the collection of books about France–or should we share the love with one book per person for several winners? You can vote from now until July 1 on which way the contest should go.

Meanwhile, take a look at the To Europe campaign at Fodors.com, which lasts through June.

If you are wondering why I’m spending all this time talking about fodors.com, I do not profit from this discussion. I just happen to like their printed guides, find lots of useful info on their web pages, but am absolutely ADDICTED to their travel forums. If you have never used them, try them out! There’s a world of travel experience just waiting to help you.

The photos are taken by different photographers, both from Flickr, both used through Creative Commons license. Please click on the photos to see more of the photographers’ work.

Now vote.–One book or several?

And thinking about the Fodor’s promotion–do you like “canned” routes. Do you use them exactly or as a starting point, or not at all?

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I’m the third Tucson writer* to take up the challenge of supplementing the New York Times article by sculpting my own 36 (more or less) hours in Tucson, Arizona. My penny-pinching, relaxed version of (more or less)36 hours in Tucson focuses on a small area on the northwest side of Tucson,  and includes a treat for lovers of travel literature and books in general.

First off, what’s this 4 pm, 9 am, 1:30 pm stuff? This is Tucson–practically Latin America. Throw away that wrist watch and let time flow, man. Do the things on this list as the spirit moves you. Whatever.

4:00 p.m. (more or less) 1) Check in at the InnSuites Best Western Foothills Motel on north Oracle Road. See if you can get a 2nd floor room on the west side for the sunset views.

2) Take a walk (don’t worry, it’s a little one) down Lavery Lane beside the hotel to observe the hodgepodge variety of Tucson’s cityscape. Ranch houses stretch out on one side of the road, some with scruffy natural desert and some “improved” by scraping the desert and covering the land with white gravel. On the other side of the street, one-story, prim, townhouses exude a slight southwestern feel.

3) At dinner time, I suggest heading to the grocery store. A.J.’s is a destination grocery store in the posh La Encantada shopping center. Why, Tucsonans can buy stuff and get so gussied up that people won’t even know they’re from Tucson. But at A.J.’s they don’t care what you are wearing.

Half of the store is a deli (including sushi bar). If you can get past the chocolate mousse cake in the bakery, pick up a few salads and take them outdoors to the patio. From your mountainside perch, watch the spectacular sunset while you eat. I can’t guarantee a spectacle every single night, but I can tell you from experience that Tucson sunsets beat out well-publicized Oia on Santorini and Mallory Square in Key West. Munch, gaze and say Ahhhhhh!

4) Scoot back to the Innsuites for the manager’s (free!) happy hour by the fireplace, or catch up on your e-mail on the complimentary computers. Back in your room, lean back on those comfy pillow beds and read a book.

5) Next morning, after stoking up on the Innsuites breakfast, skedaddle a few blocks to Tohono Chul Park and walk through the trails marveling at the desert plants. Since you love travel books, be sure to stop at La Galaria store just crammed with beautiful books about Arizona and the West.

6) For lunch try Tucson’s version of fast food at Baggins, across from the motel and up the road a piece. Locally owned with branches all over town, Baggins serves unique sandwiches in a paper bag with your name on the outside and a free chocolate chip cookie inside.

7) Back up at Campbell and Skyline, you can browse a nifty collection of art galleries in charming southwestern buildings– Galleries West‘s Indian art , a couple of strictly Western art galleries, Sanders Galleries and Settlers West, a local favorite, Diana Madaras, and the eclectic Tansey modern gallery. Don’t miss the Steinway Gallery–not just the pianos, but paintings, too, which make the pianos look quite homey instead of showroomy.

8 ) Drive on up the mountain on Campbell as far as you can go. You’ll see some fine foothills homes and lovely desert. Make a u-turn and say, “Wow!” You’ll feel like one of those Spanish explorers who came here in the 18th century, discovering God’s country.  Get there at the right time (about 5:15 in early January) and you can see another Tucson sunset, a symphony of colors in the sky.

9) As a long-time Tucsonan, I don’t feel the need to cowboy up, but I can see that you are disappointed in the lack of true western stuff on my list, so let’s have dinner at High Falutin‘, which is quite close to the motel. If the bright colors, boots and barbed wire decor reminds you of Baggins, that’s because it has the same owners, but this is no sandwich place. MMMM, the aroma of mesquite smoke and barbeque sauce pulls you in the door.

10) After dinner we are drawn to the adobe buildings of Casas Adobes shopping center for  dessert and people watching. There, in Frost, the real Italian gelato maker arranges each flavor with the artistry of an old master. Dark chocolate and a scoop of blueberry; lemon; strawberry champagne. Swoon. You can sit  outside and watch people on the brick sidewalks picking out a restaurant or a fancy frock.

What? The morning of departure is at hand?

11) Before you hit the road (or the air), you can find a shopping center at Ina and Thornydale that houses branches of TWO establishments that are pure Tucson. No book lover can leave Tucson without a trip to Bookman’s. Here you can browse miles of bookshelves divided by subject, offering used books,including a generous travel literature section. You can pick up a stack of used travel magazines, curl up in a chair and… WAIT! You are going to miss your plane!

Buy what you can stuff into your luggage, and run across the parking lot to the 2nd Tucson Original–eegee’s (No caps).  Get the flavor of the month, but caution–brain freeze may ensue.   Originally meant to be an Italian granita,this ice took a delicious turn along the way. Have an eegee the color of the Tucson sunset. Lemon, tangerine, cranberry, blueberry. Whatever.

So now you have four people’s lists of things to do in Tucson, with very few overlaps.  Truth be told, you can’t go wrong with any of these mini guides. Feel free to comment below.

*See MyItchyTravelFeet’s post and TucsonCowgirl’s post AND A canine twist on 36 Hours in Tucson, and the original New York Times article.

Great Big Giveaway Book Today: Two Winners today– I will give away TWO Copies of Surviving Paradise,

a book that tells it like it is about life on a desert isle. Peter Rudiak-Gould dreamed, as many of us do, about life on a South Pacific island. He got his year in Paradise and tells us about it in this sometimes funny, sometimes serious book. See my review here. Leave a comment below naming the book in today’s Giveaway[don't forget that step] to win this book and be entered in the Grand Prize drawing.To find other things you can do to win, check the dates, etc., read the contest announcement page here.

Remember, a NEW PRIZE Monday, so be sure to come back every week day. And if you subscribe by e-mail, you get THREE chances at the grand prize. Good Luck!

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Reading on the beach in St. Lucia

What is this notion that we need some sort of different reading list in the summer?  Once you are out of school, in America, at least, you don’t have long, uninterrupted periods of time to read. I tend to read on the airplane, and put the books away at my destination. Too busy looking at people and things to be looking at pages.

Nevertheless, people keep cranking out summer reading lists, and I keep compulsively reading those lists–if not all of the books they list.  These lists suggest books that would fit on the traveler’s library shelves.

The blog Perceptive Travel suggests a list that is getting a lot of attention on the Internet. Something different for your travel reads–graphic travel books. (If that is a new term to you–we’re talking a good step up from comic books, but stories pictorially told, nevertheless.)

Who better than a librarian to suggest a list of travel books? Here is one from a Golden, Colorado Librarian , Joyce Deming. The article comes from the online Golden newspaper, The Hub.

National Geographic Traveler majors in travel, and travel writer Don George stirs in the books to read. Don  is not really presenting a summer list, because he does these columns for the Traveler several times a year, and he does come up with some sterling books for travelers.

The New York Times brings us a collection of books about travel with a purpose.

There may be others, but I think these are the best.  Do you disagree with any of the travel book selections made here? Do you think they missed something essential in new travel books? Join the conversation.

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David Farley in Calcata, Italy

Destination: Italy

Author: David Farley

Books: An Irreverent Curiosity by David Farley

The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones

Pagan Holiday by Tony Perrottet

I talked with David Farley a couple of weeks ago about his book, An [amazonify]1592404545::text::::Irreverent Curiosity[/amazonify] which is released today. The book revolves around his time living in a small medieval village in Italy while he searches for the improbably relic, the foreskin of Christ. Here he reveals some interesting details and recommends two books for travelers to Italy, besides his own.

Have you been back to Calcata since you finished the book to see a reaction? His answer was “not exactly”, although he has yet to see the reaction to the book, because it had not been published when he was there, he did see the reaction to an article he wrote.

I wrote an article for the New York Times, and because they syndicate to other papers –millions of people read this article. I was there to see the reaction to that. You go to a place on assignment and you write the story and it takes a while to get it published. It was interesting (for a change) to be in a place and see the results.

With the locals it was mixed. Some people were upset that I didn’t include them.  Some people were upset they weren’t quoted. Some people were upset because their arch enemy was in the article and they were not.

(Did anyone in the village read the manuscript?)

No. In Calcata, gossip spreads so easily and gets morphed into different things, so I didn’t want gossip going around about the book before it was out.

(In the book you talk about a time when you became disillusioned with living in this charming medieval village that  you had seen as so ideal. Is it inevitable that travelers who stay for a while in one place will become disillusioned?)

Probably that is the case especially for such a small town. For me, in the winter it grows so desolate and quiet and dark because the days are short, it started to drive me crazy.  People speak of the negative energy that grows from the rock (under the town).  I started to wonder if the energy was controlling me as well. That’s when I figured I was going crazy.

(Does the library of the Vatican where you did research, look like it did in the movie, Angels and Demons? He had not seen it, so I described how modern and high tech it was in the movie)

No, it did not look like that. They could have portrayed the Vatican library any way they wanted to because access is so limited so only a very small number of scholars have been inside.

There are long high ceilings adorned with Renaissance frescoes—no images—just leaves and designs. They reminded me of Florence. The walls are flanked by huge book shelves and old dusty books. Their computers are from the Reagan area. They are definitely not very technological savvy

Other than finding the relic that is the subject of the book, what was your biggest challenge, in this, your first book?

—Learning Italian. At  end, I was doing interviews in Italian, so I overcame that. Oddly enough my vocabulary was filled with words relating to the Holy Foreskin. If we were talking about anything else I could not remember the words.

What was it like working without reliable Internet access?

When I wrote the book,(after the research period) I was there for 3 months and because of the slow Internet connections, I could not use the Internet very much. I wrote 2/3 of the book in a 3 month period in Calcata. When I went back home, it took me 6 months to write the final 1/3 of the book–trying to write and not be distracted by Facebook and Twitter and all those things we use as distractions.

What books about Italy might you recommend for the Traveler’s Library?

Tobias Jones’ [amazonify]0865477248::text::::The Dark Heart of Italy [/amazonify]. He is a Brit living in Parma. He doesn’t romanticize Italy. The book is pretty well balanced– captures the Italy that we know and love as well as the frustrating aspects—the political scene, the sometimes intolerance that goes on there that you don’t hear too much about.

[amazonify]0375756396::text::::Pagan Holiday[/amazonify] , about early Roman travelers. The author is Tony Perrottet. He travels through Italy and parts of the Mediterranean. It was a little bit of inspiration for me because he shuffles between his travels and the history of travelers 2000 years ago.

Thank you David Farley, and I hope the readers of A Traveler’s Library, will become readers of An Irreverent Curiosity.

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Book: The Quiet American by Graham Greene

(I need to add a P.S. –although it’s at the beginning, not the end, so make that Pre-Script.) In thinking about what I wrote here, and watching the video above, I suddenly realized that the movie of The Quiet American was probably what instilled in me a strong desire to travel to Vietnam. So there you have it. A travel book/movie.

What struck me as uncanny about [amazonify]0143039024::text::::The Quiet American[/amazonify]was how much the book foretold the next decade when the Americans were in Vietnam.  I had seen [amazonify]B00005JLXB::text::::the 2002 movie[/amazonify] with Michael Caine playing the cynical British war correspondent, but even though it came AFTER the war, I still missed the way that American behavior aped the failed attitudes of the French. Not that I accept Greene’s arguments.

The beautiful Vietnamese girl, Phuong, says little and reveals nothing about her true feelings–a perfect symbol for the inscrutable Vietnam that neither the French, the British nor the Americans can understand. Fowler, the Brit, willingly deals with the communists to get rid of his rival, Pyle.

A 1956 review of the book in the New York Times puts some of Greene’s political thinking in perspective. “He had visited the Communist territories and been much impressed by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.” they say.

In reading anything by Greene, you have to get past his obsession with Roman Catholicism.  The protagonist will inevitably be a non-beliver who is closely related to a believer and is plagued with guilt over whatever…in this case infidelity. In this case he is pitted against an impossibly gullible American (the experienced and knowing British empire against the naive America).

And from the point of view of religion, what are we to make of the fact that the guileless, optimistic young American loses out to the cynical, opium-smoking Fowler? Perhaps who wins in life doesn’t count. It is only the afterlife that matters?

Meanwhile, philosophy and politics aside, Greene tells a good story with romance and adventure and crisp dialogue. It belongs in the travelers library for the light it casts on a Vietnam that is mostly, but not entirely in the past.

Here is  a half-hour background feature on the making of the movie, The Quiet American.

Have you read Graham Greene? What is your opinion of his books?

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Mumbai Stop Light

Welcome to A Traveler’s Library. If this is your first visit, I hope that you will stick around. Be sure to read the two response posts to this one, which I link at the end of the article. And if you are curious about that book mentioned in the first paragraph, it is about the Dominican Republic.

I recently finished a wonderful book that killed any desire I might have had to go to the place featured, and then I saw the Academy Award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, which definitely did not make me want to visit Mumbai.  I began to think about the anti-travel movie. And the don’t-go-there book.

Is there such a thing? Although I have not read the book that Slumdog was based on, I have read comments that say it portrays Mumbai as even grittier than the movie. Does this make me want to travel there?

Controversy still rages (on Twitter for instance) about the depiction of Mumbai in the Academy-award winning picture.  Most Indians whose comments I have read are not happy. One said on Twitter, “Would you like it if America were portrayed by a movie that showed only the slums of New York?” Uh, well, there have been quite a few movies that do not show America in the best light. But perhaps because movies set in India are rarer in the United States, the impact of Slumdog has been greater. American movies, set in America, are widely viewed around the world, the good, the bad and…all that.

But back to the question of whether Slumdog Millionaire might make people actually want to go to Mumbai. I began to hear another discussion which caught me by surprise.  Slum tours, it seems, are newly chic. Some call this kind of tourism ‘Poorism.’

Do the profit-making companies that lead these tours actually give back to the communities as they claim? What motivates people to go on such tours? Is it voyeurism? Isn’t all travel ultimately voyeurism? Do the slum tourists come away changed in any way? Will they be more sensitive and generous in the future? Will the inhabitants of the slums learn how to make a legitimate buck off the tourists, or will the bad guys among them simply hone their pickpocket skills?

Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss, discussed the tours in a 2008 New York Times article. You can learn more about one of the tour companies that he discusses, Reality Tours, at their web site.

For now, I only know that for me, I am not interested in visiting a place to look at the lives of the poorest, and I am wary of traveling where I fear that I will be isolated in expensive resorts or hotels from the regular street life because it is unsafe, unhealthy or simply unsavory.  Call me unadventurous, but that’s my thought.

I am sure of one thing…the people who run tours in the slums of Mumbai are going to do a lot more business because of Slumdog Millionaire. As to the two main questions here–whether I am totally missing the point of Mumbai, and whether slum tourism has a place– I have an open mind. So educate me. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Oh, I mentioned a book up there in the first paragraph. I’ll get around to that soon.

See the posts that followed this one when Monica Bhide replied with her take on Mumbai in two parts. And if you enjoy what you see at A Traveler’s Library, please subscribe by RSS or e-mail–you’ll see opportunities in the right hand column. The link attached to the title of the movie will take you to Amazon where you can buy the DVD. It won’t cost you any extra, but it will earn a few cents for A Traveler’s Library. Thanks.

Photograph by Mike Powell, Flickr, Creative Commons license

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