Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel (Travel Literature) (v. 1) [Hardcover]

Rachael Antony (Author), Joel Henry (Author), Andrew Dean Nystrom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005 | Series: Travel Literature

Forget package holidays and classic travel routes. Wave adieu to predictable journeys and escape the clutches of tourist traps. The time has come for different travel rules and The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel is your passport to a new world.

Do you yearn for the glories of yesteryear? Pack an octogenarian guidebook and replace the subway with a penny farthing for an Anachronistic Adventure. Do you like to gamble? Taste the real thrill of adventure with Trip Poker or Monopoly Travel. Are you desperate for a holiday but strapped for cash? To undertake Budget Tourism low funds are not an obstacle but a prerequisite.

With over 40 experiments to try, an enthralling history of Experimental Travel, interviews with our expert authors - including the founder of Latourex, an organization dedicated to Experimental Travel - and reports by intrepid experimenters, you'll be perfectly equipped for the open road. It's just up to you to fly the flag, pick up the mantle and fire up your experimental engine. Good luck!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Those aching for a relief from packaged tours or Club Med vacations would do well to pick up this out-of-the-ordinary guide. It's a manual for "experimental travel," a "playful" and "pleasingly vague" style of vacation, "where the journey's methodology is clear but the destination may be unknown." For example, Aesthetic Travel (which gets the lowest score for degree of difficulty) has readers creating an artistic record of their trip in a systematic but uncommon way, whether by photographing the fire station in every new town they visit or writing a poem in every main square. Trip Poker is riskier: four people roll the dice, and the winner gets to choose the destination; the loser pays for the weekend. It's a gimmick, but at least it's an entertaining one: for each experiment (and there are more than 40) comes a report written by a contributor or one of the authors, as well as b&w photos and illustrations with a quirky, Victorian bent. Antony and Henry are well-traveled journalists with plenty of experience, and they certainly get points for originality. If nothing else, their unusual book reminds us of the joy of discovery. (June)
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Review

...for the adventurous traveler who wants to live like a native.' --Real Simple Magazine, June 2005

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Lonely Planet (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1741044502
• ISBN-13: 978-1741044508
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Travel With a Serendipitous Twist, July 10, 2006

By 

Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel (Travel Literature) (v. 1) (Hardcover)

With travel packages so commonplace as to be its own worst enemy when it comes to the throngs of tourists who concentrate on high-profile destinations, it's a treat to read about the quirky, somewhat off-kilter ideas that author Joel Henry (along with Lonely Planet staff writers Rachael Antony and Andrew Dean Nystrom) provides in this nifty little tome. A middle-aged television writer from Strasbourg, France and now the Director of Latourex, the Laboratory of Experimental Tourism, Henry elaborates on an alternative way of travel that he has been developing for over fifteen years, experimental travel. The idea is to choose destinations not for their logistical convenience, historic importance, climate appeal or overall popularity. Rather, a trip is built around a sense of chance, perhaps humor and hopefully serendipity in order to discover the unexpected and find a personal meaning in such travel.

Henry breaks down his ideas into categories that can come across as creative, flip and sometimes both. For example, in a situation similar to the set-up of Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal", the author discusses "aerotourism", which means spending a day wholly within an airport, using the various facilities meant for on-the-go travelers. This sounds almost reasonable if the airport is as elaborately designed as the ones in Amsterdam's Schiphol and Singapore's Changi, but I assume it could be most challenging in more remote locales. There appears to be greater possibilities with "nyctalotourism" (only visiting tourist attractions between dusk and dawn); "contretourism" (visiting a famous site but then only taking photographs once you turn your back to the site); or the most romantic idea, the aptly named "erotourism" (a couple travels separately to a destination and then each tries to find the other without any contact).

Other ideas don't have such high-concept-sounding names, such as touring your own hometown by staying in the local youth hostel or bringing a personal memento (the Orbitz gnome comes to mind) with you and photographing everything you see with the memento constantly in the picture. He has about forty ideas for you to consider, but I have to admit many of the ideas seem way too random for me to consider. At the same time, this is a nice book for the fertile imagination of the armchair traveler. I think Henry has the right idea in going against the predictable to find one's soul in traveling. It's a concept that Alain De Botton describes with panache in his book, "The Art of Travel", and Henry, for all his quirky notions, seems to be a kindred spirit.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good ideas, but extremely pretentious, September 3, 2005

By 

reenum (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel (Travel Literature) (v. 1) (Hardcover)

Almost everyone begins to tire of the city they live in after a few years. "There's just nothing to do here" and "God, this place is boring" start to become regular utterances to friends and family. What to do?

Well, Lonely Planet has put out this book. It consists of a collection of travel 'experiments', which are actually just games, to make your travels at home and away a bit more enjoyable. I'm not going to lie. Some of these games seem boring and stupid, but there are enough good ideas here to warrant reading the book.

The only quibble I have is the excessive pretension on the part of the authors. Instead of just presenting these games as they are, theyt insist on cloaking their actions in metaphysical double-speak and an excessive amount of self-importance. I really could have done without that.

On the whole though, this is a decent book, and I'm glad to see Lonely Planet is branching out.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Non-traditional Travel Ideas, August 7, 2005

By 

Virginia Allain "(retired librarian)" (Poinciana, FL) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel (Travel Literature) (v. 1) (Hardcover)

There are so many places I want to explore that I never thought of arranging my travel around quirky games. Maybe this book is for those who travel constantly and want a fresh way to explore a destination.

The book gives ideas like exploring a city by song lyrics or chess moves. Then it reports on actual travelers who have tried it. Maybe this book would suit my friend who wears Groucho glasses/nose to meet visitors at the airport.

I give the book four stars since Lonely Planet breaks ground with its travel books. Deducted one star, because I think the audience is pretty limited for travel this specialized.