The Best American Travel Writing 2000

by Jason Wilson, Bill Bryson

Release Date: 26 October, 2000

Edition: Paperback

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Breathless subway reading

I bought this book to get a better idea of what is considered the best in travel writing...and looking back I don't think I was considering it a serious genre, but was rather expecting the sort of self-indulgent, tourist-oriented, glamorized type of article you might find in the average Conde Nast publication. But, with the exception of a few articles (conveniently located at the very end of the book), this collection was terrific. I may not get the titles completely right, but my favorites ranged between cheerful & sweet (Lard is Good for You), detailed and entertaining (night in Central Park), delightfully alcoholic (9am drinking in France), investigative and fascinating (politics in tibet), anthropologically rewarding (the area 50 km outside of Moscow), to downright harrowing (The Last Safari). I'm not going to rave about every piece, because some were too wide-ranging and unfocused for me, and several contributors seemed to have acquired an interest in 'protecting the environment,' but little information about what that actually means.

Overall, if you love collected writings (some don't) and travel (which, oddly enough, some don't), you will enjoy this book. I'm already looking forward to next year's.

Armchair adventures for the timid

The title of this book is THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2000. OK, ok, so I'm obviously a tad behind on my reading. (I only just recently got around to the fine print on my birth certificate which lists the warranty exclusions.)

"To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar that it can be taken for granted."

Perhaps the spirit of the statement is hard to realize nowadays when even Ulan Bator boasts (?) a McDonalds. However, its author, travel writer Bill Bryson, has, as this anthology's editor, pulled together twenty-six tales that will transport the armchair traveler far beyond the well-trod tourist paths. And I say this as one whose wimpy idea of adventure is to dine on a scorching curry in one of London's Balti houses after an afternoon exploring the book stacks at Foyle's.

The only journey in this volume that's personally appealing is the one to Bhutan described by Jessica Maxwell in "Inside the Hidden Kingdom". (That was until I searched the Web for Bhutan tours and was faced with the eye-popping cost of such a trek. Winning the California Lotto will be a pre-requisite, I'm afraid.) Otherwise, scouring France and Spain for the perfect first alcoholic drink of the day, or attending the World Ice Golfing Championship 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland, isn't a trip I'll queue for. Neither is spending the night in the depths of New York's Central Park, searching for the remnants of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia's remote highlands, traveling by donkey into Morocco's Atlas Mountains, picking-up hitchhikers in Cuba, or journeying down the Congo River on an over-crowded, squalid, passenger barge. I admire those who do such things, and it makes for great storytelling, but I'm way too soft.

In all the modern travel essays I've read, even if they're about trips to hell and back, nobody is ever permanently hurt. That fact is what makes so horrific "The Last Safari" by Mark Ross, a former safari guide, who tells of the time he and several clients were kidnapped in Uganda by border-crossing, machete-wielding rebels from the Congo. This tragic and shocking narrative is alone worth the price of the book.

All of the contributions to THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2000 are off-beat by a little or a lot. That common element is what makes the whole worth reading.