Randall on the Road

A friend just recounted some adventures of losing his reliable guidebooks while walking the Caminos of Spain. That brought to mind my early experiences of travel — long before the Internet, and before guidebooks, as we know them, attempted to expose every corner of the planet.

When I first started travelling in Asia, circa 1987, there were very few decent guidebooks, and certainly NONE for China.  I used to travel largely by word-of-mouth. It was different, challenging, and fun. In some ways more interesting than our modern instant-info-for-everything era.

For my first trip into China, my mother and I were some of the very first independent travellers. Tourism there was young, and most people went with organized tours. We got our visas from a shady-looking Hong Kong travel agent, paid him about $10 for 3 pages of mimeographed traveller’s tips, and off we went. I now realize I missed, perhaps, the biggest opportunity of my life. I could have written the first guidebook to China. Oops!

These days among travellers (and I just returned from Brazil, where I talked to LOTS), there is much debate about what guidebook company is best, and the fact that guidebooks put towns and hostels and sites into instant “stardom;” the minute they’re exposed via guidebooks, they run a serious risk of quickly being stripped of charm and character. Luckily, many have held on. Ilha Grande, which I’ll write about shortly, was one of those places.

What experiences have you had with, or without, guidebooks?