Twenty-five years ago this month, when I was about to embark on an eight-month van journey around North America (my first-ever vagabonding sojourn), my sister gifted me this copy of Let’s Go USA 1993. At the time I had only the dimmest conception of what indie travel-guidebooks were.
That first journey taught me that travel isn’t nearly as difficult, dangerous, or expensive as one might think. Five years later, having traveled to all corners of the USA and gone on to live and work in Korea for a few years, I prepared for what eventually became a 2.5-year Asia vagabonding sojourn by getting a copy of Lonely Planet’s South-East Asia on a Shoestring. When that trip had finished I paused for eight months in Thailand, wrote a little book called Vagabonding, then headed back out on the road.
Both of these guidebooks had their limitations (particularly insofar as they aimed to cover huge regions in a few hundred pages), but they were a good introduction to how a well-written guidebook can deepen one’s sense of options and understanding on a journey through a new place.
The 1990s and early 2000s may well have been a golden age for the influence of paper guidebooks aimed at the independent traveler. These days young indie travelers are just as likely to utilize a wide range of info sources — many of them online or smartphone-based — as a single book. As I travel Asia this winter I will no doubt use multiple sources (including that old standby, asking questions of local folks when I get there) to guide the journey.
That said, I still harbor a fondness for paper travel guides. I couldn’t find a self-contained paper guidebook to Sumatra — my first 2019 destination — so I’ve resorted to the old-school travel hack of physically slicing the relevant chapter out of a larger guidebook.
Specifically, I commissioned my craft-savvy nephew Luke to cut the Sumatra chapter from an old Lonely Planet Indonesia guide and re-bind it in its original cover for the journey. Hence, I’ll be carrying 100 pages instead of 800, and can gift it to another traveler when I leave Sumatra.
Stoked to be headed back on the road, guidebook in hand, 20 years to the month after my first long-term Asia vagabonding journey!
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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