The Best American Travel Writing by Susan Orlean (Editor), Jason Wilson (Editor), Jason Wilson (Editor)

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

The second-worst travel experience I ever had was on a misbegotten trip to a
marvelous place that I had gone to for all the wrong reasons. The trip was a
few years ago; the place was Bhutan; the reason was love, or what I had
mistakenly identified as love, which is probably, technically speaking, the
greatest and also the stupidest reason ever to go anywhere. It was not my
first time in Bhutan. I had gone there about six months earlier for a story
about couples who were attending Bhutanese fertility festivals in hopes of
heading home with the ultimate family souvenir. The timing happened to be
quite awkward for me — I was writing about happy families fulfilling their
dream of having children, but the trip itself, coincidentally, marked the
beginning of the end of my marriage. My then-husband had planned to come
to Bhutan with me, and we figured a trip somewhere interesting and beautiful
might extend the lease on our relationship; instead, I headed off with the
fertility group, and he stayed back in New York to start clearing out his half of
the apartment. I was pretty blue, but after a few days in Bhutan — where, by
the way, most houses are decorated with large, celebratory paintings of
penises — I fell madly in love with the tour guide and I started to enjoy the
trip a whole lot more. When I returned to New York I was ecstatic. I was
convinced that Tshering was my soul mate, notwithstanding the fact that he
lived on the other side of the Earth, was somewhat age-inappropriate, and
shared with me no cultural, social, intellectual, or religious common ground.
Still,I adored him, and I think he adored me, and over the next few months
we burned up hundreds of dollars on long-distance phone calls (this was in
the pre-Vonage age), planning our future together (doesn't everybody live part-
time in Manhattan and part-time in the Himalayas?), trying to figure out how
to wangle a visa for him, and reminiscing about every detail of our long (two-
week) shared personal history.

Finally, the phone calls didn't feel satisfying enough and
Tshering's visa wasn't forthcoming, so I mustered the frequent-flyer miles and
the nerve to go back to Bhutan to visit him. My trip itself was a trial: the flight
from Bangkok to Bhutan was diverted to Calcutta because of fog or smoke or
something, so we were led off the plane, stripped of our passports, and
locked in a Grade D Calcutta airport hotel. We weren't allowed to leave the
premises because we didn't have visas to enter India, and no one would say
when we might hope to get to Bhutan. The owners of the hotel — twin men
with what looked like twin wives — doled out skimpy portions of rice for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and seemed not happy to have us as guests.
We had no idea when or how we were going to leave — in fact, we were
warned that we were probably going to have to finish the trip over land, a
three-day haul via Indian Air Force transport vans, crossing through Assam,
which was convulsing with civil war. I was one of only two Americans in the
stranded group; the other was a guy who owned a fishing lure company in
Minnesota, being flown to Bhutan by the king, who wanted some special flies
tied for a spring trout outing.

Finally — probably the hotel was running out of rice and the
owners had resolved to get rid of us — our flight was cleared for departure
and we made it to Bhutan, and I had what I realize now was the inevitably
strained reunion with Tshering. Anyone who has ever fallen in love while
traveling — I think it's safe to say it is not a small group — has probably
gone through this same jarring experience: the person you so effortlessly and
ebulliently connected with while you were traveling requires a little more effort
and inspires a little more awkwardness when you see him or her again, and
ordinary life intrudes. Tshering and I were fumbling and shy with each other,
and I had moments of wondering what on earth I was doing, but what else
could we do? We headed off through the ragged gorgeousness of Bhutan,
and after a few days the same giddiness we'd felt the first time around
started to return. What is it about traveling that inspires that feeling? Is it that
when you're with someone and you're not at home, you're in a sort of bubble
together, floating through the world, peering out at it together, bound to
nothing — jobs, chores, social obligations, dry cleaning that needs to be
dropped off — but each other? Is it that when you travel you can invent
yourself anew, and the new person you become is freer and more engaged
and more engaging than the persona you left at home? And even if you're not
in love, is this still what makes travel so seductive — the creation of a new
buoyant version of yourself, unpunctured by the familiarity of people who
know you and know that you have another self? Whatever it is that makes it
feel this way, travel is utterly romantic and the experience of it is the
experience of life idealized, and it makes you feel romantic, and romance-
able, and this transformation seems more what makes it magical than any
particular lovely landscape or fascinating culture you might encounter. Even
bad experiences when you travel seem almost mythical — they are bad
experiences, but also stories that you will tell around a table sometime later,
exotic and fascinating in their badness.

Five days into my trip, Tshering and I arrived in Thimphu, the
capital of Bhutan — a town on a mountainside with a scattering of little shops
and a paved road or two. It was a Saturday night, as I recall. I thought we
might rest a while and then go out for yak tea and some sightseeing. We
arrived at the guesthouse, and as I tossed my suitcase on the bed, I noticed
that Tshering was lingering in the doorway with an odd look on his face. I
asked him why he wasn't coming in, and he finally muttered that he needed
to tell me something. He had a girlfriend. And not only did he have a
girlfriend, he had a girlfriend whose family owned the guesthouse we were in,
and therefore he couldn't be seen with me since . . . well, for all the obvious
reasons. He was depositing me in the room and would join me in a day or so.
And then he left.

There are always moments during travel when you feel lonely,
even when you're traveling with the closest of friends, but those moments are
usually subsumed quickly by the moments of delight and fascination and
excitement and marvel. This was not one of those moments. I have never,
ever felt so profoundly alone. I was in a country where I knew absolutely no
one at all except for the jerk who had just ditched me, where I was as far
away from home as it was possible to be and still be on Planet Earth; I was
in a small country — fewer than a million people — where everyone really
and truly knows everyone, where there are practically no strangers and
certainly no culture of comfortable stranger-hood, no cafés or pubs where you
might unobtrusively spend a day or two people-watching and nursing a cup of
coffee. There isn't even any coffee. There weren't any other tourists —
Bhutan has always limited its visitors to a thousand or so a year and makes
sure they are scattered about, and what's more, I was there during the off-
season. I have always winced at the sight of tour buses, but for the first time
in my life I really would have welcomed one, and would have been very happy
if I could have insinuated myself into a big, loud band of, say, Texans on a
tour of Bhutanese souvenir shops . . . anything. Usually when I'm on the road
and feeling low, if I can't go to a café, I hole up in my room for a few hours
and watch CNN and declare the experience relaxing. This was not an option
either: television was, at that time, illegal in Bhutan. Also, there was no
Internet. Also, there were very, very few telephones. I didn't have a cell phone
that worked in Bhutan, and anyway, it was the middle of the night anywhere I
might have called. There was no movie theater, no gym, no shopping to
speak of, no diversion to distract me from the profound sense that I was
entirely by myself in the whole wide world. In my many years of traveling, I
have developed many excellent ways to pass time when I'm bored or a little
lonesome. Some are admirable (going to museums and historical sites,
talking to local people, exploring neighborhoods) and some are, perhaps,
something else (once, when stranded for many days on a story in
Mississippi, I spent what seemed like most of my time practicing running on
a treadmill with my eyes closed and dyeing my hair different colors). I didn't
feel like doing anything useful or edifying and there wasn't much in Thimphu
that I could picture as a satisfying time-waster. I thought I might possibly go
crazy.

With whatever little energy I still had, I forced myself to leave the
guesthouse and walk up and down the little streets. It was early evening.
Kids were chasing stray dogs and kicking pebbles; groups of teenage girls,
their heads bent together, rushed by whispering and giggling; a small, stout
woman with a round-headed baby strapped to her back leaned on a wall and
watched me somberly. There was no one, no one, no one to talk to. The few
shops nearby were already shuttered except for a small bookstore. A
bookstore! Perfect! I hurried across the street, picturing myself browsing for a
few hours until I would be tired enough to go back to the dread guesthouse
and sleep. The store was dusty and drafty, with high ceilings and rough
wooden floors. The shelves were mostly empty except for English-as-a-
second-language manuals, Bhutanese grammar-school textbooks in
Dzongkha and Nepali, secondhand Penguin editions of Shakespeare, Indian
movie magazines, Buddhist histories. I kept trying to make myself take great
interest in pictorials of Bollywood actresses. After a few minutes, I realized
that I couldn't even pretend. I gave up, put the magazines back in the rack,
nodded my thanks to the storekeeper, and walked out to the street again. It
was even emptier, and I was even more aware of my isolation. But somehow,
at this point, I gave in to the pure experience of being alone, and while
making my way back to the guesthouse I had the distinct sensation of
dematerializing. It really was as if I had vanished, become disembodied, and
was watching time unspool in front of me, untouched. It was, after I finally
yielded to it, kind of fascinating to feel so light and invisible, unnoticed,
unremarked upon, unknown.

To make a long story short, I did rematerialize a day later when
Tshering sheepishly retrieved me from the guesthouse. By then I had walked
every inch of Thimphu, repacked my suitcase, figured Tshering for the cad he
was, and determined that my future was probably not going to be as one-half
of a Bhutan-Manhattan commuter marriage, but that I would at least make
the best of my last few days on the trip, since Bhutan is, truly, the most
beautiful place on Earth. I'd also figured out something about the nature of
travel. For the first time, it seemed clear to me that travel is not about finding
something: it's about getting lost — that is, it is about losing yourself in a
place and a moment. The little things that tether you to what's familiar are
gone, and you become a conduit through which the sensation of the place is
felt. It's nice to see the significant centers of civilization, the important
buildings, the monumental landscapes, but what seems most extraordinary
is feeling yourself lifted out of your ordinary life into something new.
Sometimes, as was the case for me on that trip, there's a little more lift than
you're prepared for, and you get that short-of-breath, wide-of-pupil heart skip-
thumping that accompanies the powerful feeling that you should have never
left home. (I have to confess here that, inveterate traveler that I am, I also feel
that before I start a trip, too. As I'm packing I feel myself resisting, resisting,
resisting, thinking to myself that I really would prefer staying home, that
home is very nice, that I have everything I want at home, that I can just take it
easy in my very own living quarters and eat my very own familiar food and
have no difficulty using the telephone/getting cash/finding my way
around/understanding things, and that this travel business is just a
headache.) And yet, I still go, and once I'm on my way I feel like I'm sitting in
a Phenomenon-a-tron, where everything is incredibly interesting — the shape
of street signs, the clothes people wear, the way things smell. I once took a
trip to China with a group of very conservative folks from Utah. They seemed
to hate everything about being in China, but most of all they seemed to hate
the food, and fortunately (for them) one of the group had brought along several
cases of granola bars, which they ate for most of their meals. I was delighted
by this, since I got to eat as much of everything as I wanted (not to mention
drinking all the beer) while they gnawed on Nature Valley Oats 'N Honey. I
wondered — and still wonder — why they had bothered to come at all.

Believe it or not, Tshering and I are still friends. He e-mailed me
recently and encouraged me to come visit Bhutan again, which I would love
to do. He's married now, and has a daughter, and I'm married and have a
son. Our kids are about the same age. I think we'd all enjoy going out
together some Saturday night in Thimphu.


But enough about me. The reason I have your attention and the chance to
spin my own yarns here is because I have been invited to take the ultimate
armchair journey over the last several months, which entailed reading a
hundred or so wonderful pieces about other people's travels and choosing the
twenty that would make up this book. I read most of them during a long, cold,
wet, late, lingering winter, so those of you who wrote about temperate
climates, thank you. Each year a different person takes this armchair
journey, and I'm sure all of us have different reasons for our choices. My rules
were very uncomplicated: one, the stories had to take place somewhere in
the physical world, and two, I had to like them a lot. As far as the first rule, I
wouldn't even say I adhered strictly to it, since at least one of these pieces
takes place in the imaginary world. I am just not a category person, so I had
very loose standards for what constituted a travel piece. Description of an
interesting place was a plus, but not a necessity; movement from A to B was
typical but not required; immersion in an unfamiliar culture was impressive
but not sufficient. I have a soft spot for pieces that illuminate places that
would never make it into Luxury SpaFinder magazine, and for writers who
really can make you feel like they saw something with fresh eyes and were
truly surprised and interested in what they saw. The best travel writing, in my
mind, is just a written document of a conversation with a captivating person
who is just a little braver, a little smarter, a little more observant, a little
funnier, and a little wiser than I, who has gone places I've either never gone
and never will go, or places I've been to many times and never noticed quite
the way he or she does, or can talk about the process of going and coming in
a way I never imagined before. I'm happy to report that I think all twenty of
these pieces have that in common. Otherwise, they are literally and
figuratively all over the map.

Travel writing, long ago, didn't have to be much more than a
dispatch from the outer reaches; travel writers were the people willing to go to
scary places, and what made their work exceptional was the fact that they
went there at all. These days, there's nowhere in the world that you can't visit
on Google Maps, so the travel writer as explorer is an outdated notion. And
yet I still think travel writing matters. Its value now is something much
deeper — it's the writer's journey, and the emotional and intellectual weight
of the writer's observations, that means something. In a way, these are the
exact opposite of the travel you might do on Google Maps — these stories
are the world not as it can be plotted by satellite but as it is observed and
mediated in a very subjective and personal way. I'm glad for the chance to
see the exact layout of Brisbane, Australia, as seen from outer space (the
image that has just popped up on my computer's streaming map gadget), but
I'm happier to read about Ian Frazier's hilariously bad kielbasa and Reesa
Grushka's exquisite and sad stay in Jerusalem and Nando Parrado's
unimaginable endurance, even though the satellite map is more
comprehensive and more "perfect" and even allows me to zoom in and count
the hairs on the chin of the guy sitting on the park bench in the middle of
Brisbane. Such details are probably useful sometimes (if you're, say,
thinking of opening a barbershop in Brisbane), but they don't have the same
power to feed your soul.

Between the time I started writing this introduction and today,
when I'm finishing it, a terrible thing happened — David Halberstam, whose
beautiful piece "The Boys of Saigon" is included here, was killed in a car
accident. He was a great writer, a brilliant reporter, an intrepid traveler. He
was one of those writers who fed the soul. When I first read his piece — a
memoir from his time in Vietnam — I was struck by how long and
exceptional his career had been, and was marveling that he was at work on
another book. I was excited to include a piece by a true master of the form in
this collection. I didn't know Halberstam personally, but he was a real
inspiration to me, and I was heartsick to hear this news. It's a huge loss.


I hope you enjoy the ride through this book. It was a great treat to put it
together, and a particularly vicarious pleasure, since I travel a lot less these
days now that I have a small person to take care of. Which brings me to one
last comment: you now know the second-worst travel experience I ever had.
The very worst one would have to be any trip I didn't take for one reason or
another — sloth, lack of time, lack of imagination, inadequate luggage,
whatever. That's why travel writing is so marvelous: now, through these
pieces, I've been able to take these trips instead.

— Susan Orlean

Copyright © 2007 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Introduction copyright ©
2007 by Susan Orlean. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.