Finally, here’s a fun little video from Lonely Planet TV about Bolivia’s volunteer zebra crossing guards:

Megan,
It is over. Kerry conceded this afternoon. He couldn’t win Ohio even with the provisional ballots yet to be counted. Bush gave his triumphant winning speech.

The stock market went up dramatically today. The really big winners were the oil and drug company stocks. They will benefit greatly from the Bush victory. I guess that Bush subscribes to the trickle down theory that if these industries do well it will somehow benefit everyone.

At least Crane is out and we will have a great new senator from Illinois (Obama).

Love,
Dad

At the time of the 2004 U.S. election I was traveling by bus on dirt roads from Jinghong, China to the Vietnamese border. Besides a horrible Danielle Steel novel, the only thing that helped pass the time was the anticipation of election results once I got back to civilization. Email and TV access in SaPa, Vietnam was scarce and my dad sent me updates on the whole vote counting mess. I knew about Obama from his campaigning before I left for phase I of my trip and I was just as excited to see him elected as I was the see my long-time nemesis Phil Crane defeated.

More recently, I had some long conversations with locals in Africa who were incredibly excited about Obama. A 15 year-old Kenyan boy asked me about the odds of him winning the Democratic nomination and we talked about racism vs sexism in the U.S. The conversation was one of the few highlights of my overland trip in a cage from the Ethiopian border to Nairobi. All of Kenya must be going nuts right now (in a good, non-riot way) with the news that Obama is the presumptive nominee. When entering Kenya from Uganda the border guard noticed my place of birth on my passport (Illinois) and with a big grin asked me to tell Barack she said hello.

My dad would have loved this election and I’m sorry he won’t be able to cast a vote in November. He always supported my interest in politics and never discouraged me from setting out a democratic-themed pumpkin on Halloween in my heavily Republican town. I was only 15 in the picture below, and wasn’t old enough to vote for either candidate on my pumpkin but today I feel the same sense of excitement and hope for the future of U.S. politics that I felt back then.

One would assume that they mean a book about my travels, maybe an anthology of short stories or possibly a memoir but that’s not the case. Although some people suggest a typical travel memoir, most suggest something entirely different. A number of people seem to think I should write a “how-to” travel advice book or even compile a book of photographs or drawings.

For my own curiosity I wonder what you, my readers, would have me write. I’m putting a poll in the sidebar, but feel free to leave any brilliant suggestions in the comments.

Madagascar is one of the places I haven’t finished writing much about on this blog, much to some reader’s dismay. Although this article doesn’t contain a lot of personal anecdotes (they don’t encourage anything over 1,000 words) it’s a solid overview of the features of the four parks I visited. In addition to the text, the accompanying pictures may be new or slightly different shots than you’ve seen on this site. Head on over to Everywhere to check out my story and the others submitted for issue#4: My story, titled “Nature’s Experiment”

This makes me wonder, what magazines is the traveler reading these days? Most magazines I see are aimed at the high end market, stuffed with resort ads. Leave your awesome travel magazine recommendations in the comments.

There are a number of souvenirs from my two around-the-world trips that I love—like my Ethiopian chair, the paintings I bought in Udaipur, India and my Akha headdresses from Myanmar. Since you can see all of those over at my souvenirs page, I thought I’d show a few of my favorite souvenirs I bought on non-rtw trips. I use #1 often and it’s by far my favorite souvenir of all time. If any of you find yourselves in Rome and are able to find a similar object featuring Benedict XVI pick up one for me.

#4 Hand beaded traditional jacket — Budapest, Hungary 1998

#3 Wooden bracelet, Christmas Market — Prague, Czech Republic 1997

#2 Platform shoes — Barcelona, Spain 1998

#1 Popener — Rome, Italy 1998

At the end of my trip I wanted to buy some music that reminded me of my time in Eastern Africa. A lot of the music heard around town is not local (Shakira is quite popular), but the local music I did hear varied and no one song stuck in my head. I ended up buying a compilation called “Bongo Flava” from a music shop in downtown Nairobi. A quick listen at the shop confirmed it was the sort of music I heard around town. I don’t have a lot to say about this song other than Lady Jay Dee’s music was some of my favorite on the CD. It turns out she’s from Tanzania and has had a number of controversial hits in the past few years.

Below is a video for a different song by Lady Jay Dee, “Distance.” She sings in Swahili, Zulu, Lingala, Kinyarwanda, French and English in this song.

Sweeping the Shwedagon from Megan Kearney on Vimeo.

Guidebooks have become a big business and keeping up-to-date information published is difficult in the internet age. Guidebooks to popular regions are always updated more frequently, after all it is a business. Less popular regions, like Central Asia, aren’t updated frequently because the small number of people who visit can’t offset the cost of updating the guide and provide the same kind of profits as a guide to Europe or Southeast Asia. Of course, Lonely Planet is the only guidebook publisher that I know of offering a “Central Asia” guidebook so most travelers are stuck with an out of date book. Still, something is better than nothing and LP’s Central Asia is coveted by travelers in the region—I refused to lend it out on numerous occasions for fear of never seeing it again.

After traveling around Central Asia for two months I met a supposed Lonely Planet author in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. I was happy to help him better the next edition of the book, after being so disappointed with the current one. Despite being a region with a complex and fascinating history and infinite tourist potential it measured in at about fifth the size of the Thailand book, despite covering six countries. When I met the author, on his first assignment for LP, he was arranging a private taxi tour around Southern Kyrgyzstan accompanied by the owner of our guesthouse as a guide. I can understand the difficulties of traveling in the region without speaking Russian but am disappointed with the way he chose to research the book. He also brushed off any attempts for my help or information and asked for the Western men sitting on either side of me for their email in case he thought of any more questions. He had no interest whatsoever in a woman’s perspective regarding travel in the region. How could this man, around my age and also a graphic designer, have any more insight that I do? It was obvious that he hadn’t done any research before arriving (he didn’t know about the Chinese border closing/October holiday) and skipped border crossings and regions that didn’t fit into his hurried schedule. In talking to him it was clear that more important information would be left out of the next edition.

Ultimately, Lonely Planet has forsaken quality for profit to it’s own detriment. It’s writers are barely paid enough to cover their own travel and rewarded for doing less in-depth research by LP’s lump sum payment method. Writers can only make a profit by quickly skimming the surface, replacing personal investigation with unreliable sources. I understand the need for profit in business but at some point the scales tip and you lose customers. Lonely Planet has recently been bought by BBC Worldwide and if anything, changes seem to be leading toward more profit and a more upscale readership. It’s doubtful that the writer’s admissions will have much affect on Lonely Planet’s bottom line, but will surely help promote the writer’s new book.

Traveling around Northern Ethiopia I spent a lot of time on buses, including four days round trip to Lalibela. The long rides were always accompanied by upbeat and high-pitched music. Before I left Addis Ababa I wanted to pick up a CD of music that would remind of me of my long bus rides through the North. The music shop next to my hotel, where I rented DVDs to watch while I was in bed with the flu for three days, had a small collection to pick from. The woman working was confused as to why I wanted to buy traditional music instead of more modern imports (but she also didn’t understand why I would want to watch a movie that didn’t star Denzel Washington, her favorite actor). We weeded out anything too traditional and decided on Mandingo Afework. The music has the rhythm I heard all over Ethiopia but wasn’t played with only traditional instruments.

Gondar is a city in Northern Ethiopia famous for it’s castles and the beautiful Debre Birhan Selassie Church. In the video for “Gondar” below, you’ll see some shots of the city as well as Lalibella, Axum and a few shots of the South. Most interesting are the beautiful dancers in traditional white robes. The dancers show off Ethiopia’s distinctive shoulder dancing, often laughingly attempted by tourists. Fast forward to 5:00 in the video for a good example of an enthusiastic shoulder dance.

Below is a video I took on a bus in Northern Ethiopia. Although bus music was often more traditional, you can hear a local recording of “Staying Alive” playing. The music on each bus was usually chosen by the bus driver or his assistant from a collection of cassettes. Once I witnessed an older man, probably a farmer, insist a driver play his own tape. This incited a lot of discussion among the other passengers—most objected to the traditional “folksy” music he wanted to play.

Ethiopian Bus Music from Megan Kearney on Vimeo.

The owner of the music store forced the employee to pose for this picture against his will. After I was finished everyone looked at the photo and made fun of him, poor guy.

The following video of “Manahirana” is a good example of the fashions worn outside of the capital. You’ll notice the skirts are similar to kangas worn in East Africa, particularly Zanzibar. Woven straw hats are popular in Madagascar and come in countless shapes and colors. I spotted the square woven hats worn by the women in this video on two people in Madagascar and liked them so much I tried to find out where to buy one, showing the sketch I drew to people around the market. I was told the hat is from Fianarantsoa, the largest town South of the capital.

I also stumbled upon the video for song #1 (I Gasikara) on the mix. It’s a great overview of Madagascar, excluding the National Parks and the hard to reach South. Lola starts out in the Northwest tip of Madagascar on an Island called Nosy Be. Most people who go on “holiday” to Madagascar stop in a National Park to see a lemur and then head up to Nosy Be. Even I wouldn’t take the bus (more of a truck, really) up there because of the awful roads. There’s now direct flights from France to Nosy Be, bypassing the capital entirely.

Next Lola pops up in Antananarivo, the capital, to dance down the main street in town in front of the train station. I bought my first copy of Lola’s music just to his left in front of the Air Mad office. This is not an area to be wandering alone at night.

He then continues down the Route National 7 South, stopping in many of the same towns I visited on my trip. He makes his way by road all the way to Tulear in the Southwest and then heads North to the beach town of Ifaty. From Tulear I headed South instead, to Anakao because it was supposed to be more deserted. The roads you see him walking down are the same I drove in for six hours at a time in a packed minibus.