Customer Reviews

Scratching the Surface

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Jeff Greenwald is the kind of traveler most people rightly want to be--insouciant, funny, compassionate and cyncal at the same time. He's seems to have been just about everywhere (I'm sure he'd scoff at that), and seen it all, but most of all one gets from his writing a special sense of hope. He clearly loves the world and all its inhabitants--and in the manner in which the whole wild and poignant panoply of life pains and delights him, he brings the reader to their own natural place of wonder. Even better (I've read three of his other books), I always find myself Greenwalded into an eddy of determination not only to make my own next trip real, but when I'm on it, to be a better observer and a better participant in the magic all about me.

As an aspiring travel writer myself who just returned from 14 months around the world, I skimmed this book to get a sense of Greenwald's style, where he's been, and how he views the world. I found the writing to be really good when he wasn't so busy sharing all the great things he's done and how much he likes himself. There's an air of self-aggrandizement that gets in the way of the stories. If he could just take a more humble approach, I'd be more intrigued and inspired. To be perfectly honest, a part of me is jealous of Greenwald for having visited many of these places in the '90s before they became so overtouristed. Overall I think he does a great job of offering pertinent historical facts and great backgrounds that make the experience so much more real and interesting. He just needs to get off his high horse.

(Planeta Journal) Collection of 31 tales span the globe in this anthology of travel writing at its finest. Insightful, inquisitive and inspiring, Greenwald reminds readers of the transformative potential of exploring areas off the beaten path. Readers accompany the author around the world, and it's hard to sit still after reading this book.

I had not known about Jeff Greenwald prior to getting hold of this book by accident. This book is a selection of his short travel-writing essays over two decades. Most of the essays are about his journeys in Asia - from Thailand, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Iran etc and a few from Mexico and his home San Francisco. They were visits done in the 1980s and 1990s, prior to 9/11.

The essays which appealed to me were some of the following:
The essay 'Union of the Sun and the Moon' where Greenwald goes to the historic Iranian cities of Esfahan and Shiraz to observe the rare total solar eclipse in 1999. He finds Iran as one of the most hospitable countries on earth and the people welcoming Americans on the Eclipse expedition warmly. He predicts in 1999 there that in five years' time, Iran will be part of the mainstream in the world community. One doesn't know if it would have happened had 9/11 not occurred.
In Bhutan, he finds one asian nation where conservation and cultural integrity remaining more important than profit. Still, Bhutan allows high-end organized, controlled tourism for people with money.
His meeting with 'Buzz' Aldrin on the 30th anniversary of the Moon landing was a mesmerizing experience for him and he says he was 'drawn into his orbit'. I wish he didn't use such a cliched expression!
About the laid-back Laotians, he quotes the French phrase '..the Vietnamese plant rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Laotians listen to it grow'.
Among the stories from Nepal, I liked the one about young Jitu, a self-taught young naturalist and animal-tracker. Jitu takes him on an exciting outing into the Chitwan National Park to watch a tiger at its kill at very close range.
The essay on the traditional Hindu cremation of the dead in Bali being turned into a tourist event was shocking and bizarre to read. The one real adventure story in the collection was a boat trip he takes from Dubai to Karachi with no radio, no flares, no signals and fuel only for 100 hours. The journey takes more than 100 hours and they were running out of fresh water as well. It was hilarious to read that the Pakistani boatman was asking half-naked seamen on fishing stiff for directions to Karachi out in the open sea!
Greenwald spends some time in a refugee camp in Thailand for Khmers fleeing Pol Pot. In trying circumstances, he finds the Khmers still with hope, tremendous dignity, vast equanimity and an acceptance of the present moment which he feels is completely unparalleled in western behavior.
On Kathmandu, he writes perceptively, '..you go through your life here, dodging cows, smiling at the monks with their new quartz watches, stopping at the stores to buy the latest Elvis Costello cassette, and you forget how thinly the veneer of western influence is pasted over what basically is a very superstitious and pagan society...'
He describes the ancient Hindu-Buddhist-Jain Ellora caves in western India poetically as '..it was an ancient harbinger of Michaelangelo's contention that the sculptures are already in the quarries - awaiting release from the stone'.

The narratives are not in the same class as that of Paul Theroux or Naipaul. They are not that absorbing to read in one or two sittings. Still, anyone interested in travel would find the exotic nature of his experiences quite fascinating.

if you have read his other books, you will have read about half of these stories already.