The Travel Wire: best travel reads #31
The fall of Lonely Planet, my city: Tokyo, how not to see everything, and more travel reads
Welcome to The Travel Wire, where I curate the best travel reads of the week.
Travel reads
• The fall of Lonely Planet [Business Insider]
"It was once the Bible of travel. Then influencers became the messiahs."
• My City: Tokyo [Roadbook]
"A local writer shares an ode to sprawling Tokyo – where ancient customs are met by constant reinvention, and its unwavering pursuit of perfection and strict social norms make it one of the world’s most efficient and enthralling cities."
• Couchfish: How not to see everything [Travelfish]
"For many first-time visitors, planning where to go and what to see and do once there, can be a bewildering, almost intimidating affair. With the temptation to add just one more thing but a key or pen stroke away, lists fill with disparate sound bites from friends and family, guidebooks, the internet, social media, other travellers, and so on, and before you know it you realise you’ll need another trip after this one—just to recover from what you have planned."
• Why book club tours are one of the best ways to better understand a place [Adventure.com]
• A 58-tunnel slow train through India's Eastern Ghats (archive) [BBC Travel]
• The blossom cycle [Disorient Express]
"Searching for rebirth in crumbling Kolkata."
• 50 years later, Vietnam’s battlefields draw retrospective veterans and other tourists [AP News]
• Tennyson, Virginia Woolf and Jimi Hendrix – all on a car-free trip to the Isle of Wight [The Guardian]
"The island is easy to reach by ferry and explore by bus, following in the footsteps of everyone from a Victorian poet to a 60s rock star"
• Why hikers should ditch the Swiss Alps for this mountain range in Romania [National Geographic]
"The Transylvanian Alps provide visitors with abundant wildlife, UNESCO World Heritage sites, and quaint villages—without the crowds."
• They came to Australia two years ago – now, they’re constantly traversing it by train (archive) [The Age]
"Filipino brothers Charles, 22, and Carl Ong Sio, 21, came to Australia in 2022. They live, work and travel together as hospitality attendants on the Ghan, Indian Pacific, Overland and Great Southern trains."
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James Clark (Nomadic Notes)