The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel [Hardcover]

Rachael Antony (Author), Joel Henry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Lonely Planet; 1st edition (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1741044502
• ISBN-13: 978-1741044508
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #252,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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 HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format: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

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

By Virginia Allain

Format: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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiration for journeys of all kinds. September 3, 2011

By Steven Unwin

Format:Hardcover

This is a book that might help you see the world in new ways.
If you're not sure what Experimental Travel is, the book begins with a short description and a history. In brief Experimental Travel is described as a playful way of travelling, where the journey's methodology is clear, but the destination is unknown.

This may be an unfamiliar description of travel,however I think that the definition best describes the nature of our lives. We can't know the destinations we will pass through, but we can control the way in which we travel.

Thus the book is at first glance an interesting distraction from mundane travel by habit, and also provides insights that may be valuable at a much deeper level.

The body of the book comprises 40 such playful ways of taking a journey. Each is described by a hypothesis, apparatus required and the method supported by short introductory notes. These are sufficient for you to set off on a journey and have a go. In addition each of the 40 ways has what are described as Laboratory Results. In a nutshell these are reports of the experience of travellers who have followed the instructions.

The suggestions for experiments range from quite simple exercises, to those which would require a fair degree of preparation, Each invites you to see your world through new eyes by in some way switching your perspective. For example suggestion 18 `Expedition to K2' invites you not to climb the Himalayan peak, but to see a new aspect of your home town by visiting and exploring map grid square K2. Suggestion 39 '12 Travel' invites you to travel noting the number 12. Catch bus number 12, get off at the 12th stop, walk across 12 junctions before examining building number 12, for example Or perhaps suggestion 15 `Dog's Leg Travel' If you don't normally walk a dog, take one for a walk and be led by what interests the dog.

You get the idea. It's simple, but as the Laboratory Results and your own experience will soon reveal, it's a very powerful idea. Not convinced? Just try spending the next ten minutes walking around the room you are currently in, looking for every green object. I guarantee you'll find far more than you expected and will learn something new about your room, a room you've probably seen many times, but never really seen.

This is a great book full of ideas that can make journeys a whole lot more interesting, even journeys you have to make every day, and the ideas will have an impact much more broadly on your outlook and the ways in which you see and see differently.