Weekly travel reads: Lessons from 10 months travelling in Iran

[The Travel Wire #83] Kerala’s houseboating scene, Outside the resort walls in Jamaica, Greenland’s last ferry, and more travel reads.

Travel reads

• Lessons from 10 months travelling in Iran (archive) [Financial Review]
“I’m often asked what Iranians are really like and what it’s like to travel there. From being arrested to redefining hospitality, this is what I know.”

• In photos: How is Kerala’s houseboating scene navigating its heavily touristed backwaters? [Adventure]
“For Adventure.com photo editor Nicola Bailey, cruising the Keralan backwaters on a houseboat has been a bucket list experience. Did it live up to the hype in reality?”

• Outside the resort walls in Jamaica [Kayla Doris is Away]
“What most visitors don’t see, and why it matters.”

• Slow boat to Ilulissat: long nights on Greenland’s last ferry [AFP]
“It’s Friday night and the port in Nuuk is a hive of activity. Passengers loaded down with heavy bags hurry aboard a rusty red and white ship — Greenland’s last ferry.”

• Live like a Hong Kong local? You wouldn’t last a week. [Michael Takes Too Many Pictures]
“We barely made it a month and we weren’t even trying.”

• What I learned about Iceland from people who actually live there
“It involves weather, the Northern Lights, and most importantly, cats.”

• Learning the Bedouin Way in Wadi Rum [Ming Khor]
“I lived in a tent for a month to master the secrets of the desert.”

• The road signs that teach travellers about France (archive) [BBC Travel]
“For more than 50 years, France’s brown motorway signs have done far more than point the way: they’ve sold the country’s history, culture and identity in seconds.”

• Craving texture: and why I think it’s worth travelling for [Juliet Kinsman]
“Introducing ‘neurohaptics’ — and why a hotel I stayed in recently left me cold.”

• The unsettled ambiance of Cameroon [Odyssey And Meaning]

• The Antilla shipwreck tells the story of when World War II came to Aruba [Smithsonian Magazine]