The Travel Wire: best travel reads #13
The long road back to Mandalay, "Freak Street", the Bourdain zombie page, the world’s largest mammal migration, and more travel reads.
Welcome to The Travel Wire (by Nomadic Notes), where I curate the best travel reads of the week.
Travel reads
• The long road back to Mandalay
“Half a century after his first visit, Paul Theroux looks back on a lifetime of adventures in Burma, now Myanmar, which featured in two of his classic travelogues — and inspired his latest novel.”
“Kathmandu's legendary "Freak Street", an erstwhile hippy haven with a heady, sometimes horrific, history is making something of a comeback as a laid-back strip.”
• The No Reservations Facebook page will not die
“Investigating the evolution of a zombie social-media account.”
I have often wondered about this Facebook page. I have previously featured an image of Anthony Bourdain on a train, and it probably came from this account. If you like one Bourdain travel quote on Facebook, the algorithm will continue to serve you Bourdain travel quotes.
• Dublin and Its environs: a walker’s city and the weight of history
“The capital of Ireland, like most old cities, is a palimpsest of history. Walking its streets and the city's outskirts provides one a remarkable opportunity to unpack its many layers of the past.”
• Be careful what you wish for
“During my last adventure, I spent around ten days on Koh Rong Sanloem, basing myself in the fishing village of M’Pai Bai. It was my second time on the island; I’d last been in 2017, when I’d stayed on the bougier (and entirely touristy) Saracens Bay.”
• The world’s largest mammal migration is taking place in Zambia right now
“Each year, millions of straw-colored fruit bats descend on Kasanka National Park for a few months, and scientists are working to understand their mysterious journey.”
• The Trans Dinarica: A new 5,500km bike trail connecting one of Europe's most remote regions
• Ukraine sees influx of Western war tourists
• Epic hiking trail across ‘the roof of Australia’ finally complete (archive)
• US travelers lose millions of suitcases every year. Their contents wind up at a store in Alabama
• New Thessaloniki metro is archaeological window on the past
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James Clark (Nomadic Notes)
I like your initiative. It will be a hub and a network of travel writers. Substack, with all its advantages has a number of technical problems, and one of them is badly implemented search. The only way to really find interesting travel pieces is through networking. I did submit one of my articles to your facebook group, glad to stay in touch.
Interesting about Ukraine war tourists. They should charge more. ..