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Nicolas Kristof
By Nicolas Kristof
Opinion columnist
It’s the holiday season, so let me tell you that the most productive thing is not to rest in a beach hotel but to travel to another world. We all want to rest sometimes, but nothing beats the thrill of an adventure of discovery and the education that comes with it.
Mark Twain once observed that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. “With this in mind, I have long encouraged young Americans to take time before going to school or the first few years abroad. (High school’s Spencer Cohen ended up taking a gap year in Japan, is an Asian contributor, and is now a colleague at The Times. )
However, there are risks, less violence (the United States has more weapons than other countries) than having your passport and credit cards stolen. So I pontificate about travel and caution, and on a recent e-book tour I found myself wondering about the travel tips I mentioned in my memoirs. Let me share some tips for the holiday season:
1. The most memorable vacation sometimes involves encountering something unknown, so consider escaping the herds that parade through Paris. Indonesia, Ghana, India, Nepal, Viet Nam, Morocco and Bolivia are sometimes safe, much less expensive than Europe. and I will offer unforgettable experiences. I’ll never venture into the depths of Bolivia’s Potosi silver mines, explore a sinister slave castle in Ghana that sent prisoners into slavery in United States, learn how to use a blowgun while staying with families in their longhouse in Indonesia’s Borneo rainforest. The world is waiting for us!
2. Some of the places you consider most culturally remote might be here in the United States. A teenager from a wealthy family in the New York or Boston areas would contribute to another world by taking a job on a ranch in Wyoming. And it’s the kind of product that is not only affordable, but will actually be worth the experience.
3. Be spontaneous. While studying law in 1982, I spent five weeks traveling in the Middle East and met some Palestinian academics on a West Bank bus; I got off at their shelter and spent a memorable day with them in their refugee camp listening to their frustrations and dreams (I wrote about their reunion last fall). And while traveling by bus through the Sahara, I accepted an Algerian’s invitation to stop at his village, which turned out to be a labyrinth of underground burrows to protect families from excessive heat, the most residential architecture I have ever seen. In all cases, I was with some friends, which made me feel safer being in the company of other people I had just met and, obviously, you have to be as judicious as you are spontaneous.
4. Se says adventure travel is for men only, yet some of the most experienced foreign correspondents and photographers are women, as are most Peace Corps volunteers. As a man, I don’t face the same dangers as women, I have still noticed that female travelers, mostly coming from Australia and New Zealand, thrive when they travel to the most remote places. Some have recommended buying a reasonable wedding ring; A $20 strip and a fabricated husband can help keep pests away.
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