Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

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I think you are right. The idea that you get a proper cabin seems wrong to me, the best train literature is travelling 'hobo style', not deluxe luxury. Clearly selling cabins is more profit, however, if sat with the riff-raff with just a chair to sleep in you can have a more interesting and unexpected experience.

I was 'fortunate' enough to sit next to a girl that had ideas on me from Grand Junction Colorado all the way to Chicago. I would not have had that random encounter had I travelled deluxe cabin class. Writing about the hundreds of miles of corn fields going by has not a lot going for it whereas an expected girl meets boy experience has broader appeal. Also on the same coach were a couple I had met months before in Yosemite. Having them in proximity cramped my style as far as my new-found lady friend was concerned, this was a constraint that adds to storytelling. A cabin based romantic experience would not be so good and neither would a few moments of passion with an existing partner in a cabin really have the 'Mills & Boon' factor.

Food was a problem on said journey for me, in part due to the train being six hours late at Grand Junction, by which point I had eaten almost all of the luxury ready eats I had bought for the journey. Even the six hour wait was noteworthy - you cannot leave the station as the train could arrive at any moment. So, for me, it was the random happenings and the constraints of money, timetable and what you can do in public that made the journey an adventure.

The thing is that you cannot have an authentic travel experience and write about it at the same time. You have to live life rather than be there to document it.

I really hate the "authentic travel" term. It reminds me of backpackers trying to one up each other on how horrible of conditions they've stayed in. Or why the travel destination they chose is more real than the one someone else chose. Staying in uncomfortable conditions doesn't make the travel more authentic or real it is just a different experience.

As for being able to experience it and write about it, you just did. My wife does travel writing and you don't have to go around with your face in your notepad ignoring the experience. Just take notes now and then about specifics you might forget(usually costs and package names) and have your pictures.

Some of my older relatives spend a lot of time going on holiday. They get to go on coach tours, see lots of airports, take cruises, swim with dolphins and all that stuff. Clearly they enjoy being waited on at various hotels around the world or they would not do it. However, it is not like they ever have 'the time of their life' and an experience that they just have to tell everyone about. They are content doing what they do, it fills the time.

For me though I need more. I need to not know if I will come out alive, I need genuine hospitality that need not be paid for, I need to meet people along the way that are not directly connected to the tourism industry. I need to be treated as a guest and a human being, not just a nice-enough tourist. I also don't need to be poking cameras in people's faces or writing about them. In summary, I need adventure, as in the stuff you cannot have an itinerary for.

In some ways your back-packers comparing notes on who stayed in the scummiest places are a bit like my relatives, just at a different point in life and on a different trail. At times on my travels I have crossed paths with them and their backpacker dives, however, I am typically able to avoid all that. I can call someone up that I met on the road and stay with them, unannounced. They might live in some unusual house, have some interesting job and be more than willing to give me an insider view of town rather than what I would discover as a tourist. That is what 'authentic travel' is about.

I should say that I have a secret weapon - a bicycle. With a bicycle you don't stay in the small out of the way places just to be more 'cool'. It is a necessity, you cannot just blast 500 miles along the big highway, at best you can do 50 miles in one burst before needing to stop for at least water, and on little roads 'off the tourist trail'. On the bicycle there is no windscreen between you and the world, you are actually in it and part of it.

Regarding writing, a retrospective account is always wrong, even if filled with tedious 'specifics'. There is no way of conveying genuine anticipation once the moment has gone, in your writing this knowing-the-answer-already aspect is not something you can disguise honestly, merely feign as the feeling has passed.

Careful trying to be the traveliest traveler. No matter how bad ass you are, there's always a bigger badass somewhere.

I remember a conversation at a little dive hostel in Durban, where the table was recounting their Bad Flight stories, one upping each other as one does at dive hostels around the world. After a particularly grim story about The Gambia, this heretofore quiet older guy mumbles "yeah, I'm never going to fly Air Ethiopia again."

Conversation proceeded, but after a few more stories, I asked the guy why, exactly he wasn't planning to fly that airline again.

Turned out he'd personally been on not one but two Air Ethiopia plane crashes. Crashed two thirds of their fleet single handedly evidently.

The second time, they'd landed in the jungle in the Congo, were detained by a local warlord, attempted escape, and were gunned down by the local militia. Back in government hands, the survivors were put on a plane, which sat on the runway for an hour surrounded by jeeps and shouting men before they were unloaded and marched off to a shed, expecting to be killed. Several tense hours later, the "general" came back and said they could go now, and apologized for the delay, as they needed the plane "to bomb the rebels."

Then he showed us the bullet wound in his back.

Since then, I tend to temper my speech when discussing how authentic my personal travel experiences are in relation to others.

But I did steal his story.

The funny part is that you are talking about the backpackers on my travels like you aren't doing the exact same thing as them. The point of them talking about the scummiest stays isn't the squalor it's trying to convince people that their experience is more real/better or that they are a more real traveller.

You like the things you do. That is great. It doesn't make your travels more authentic than your older relatives though it is just a different experience. And you can get all of those things you desire and still spend your nights in a Hilton.

With regards to the writing I have to honestly disagree. Maybe you can't do it but doesn't mean no one can. You are ignoring the possibility that you just have a worse memory or writing skills than a lot of people out there. You assume your travels are more real and apparently you also assume your writing skills and memory are the peak as well.

"Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the Canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe."

-Ed Abbey, Desert Solitare

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