Writer Chris Taylor on Global Travel and Tom Vater’s The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu

Nepal Writer´s Corner

devilsroad

Chris Taylor, author of Harvest Season, a dystopian backpacker novel set in China that I recently reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, recaps and comments one of our meetings in Bangkok and our discussion on the future  of backpacking, guidebooks and my novel The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, which will be republished as an e-book later this year. Over copious amounts of Arab food, we both agreed that the age of  the guidebook has passed, not just because of digital competition but because the way we travel has changed. Young people taking to the road today are more risk averse, have less time and more information than their peers. The road it seems, will be left to old timers and a few determined individuals not cowed by the dangers, real or perceived, of our times.

Incidentally, travel writer Paul Theroux has just published an interesting piece – The Place In Between –  in the Financial Times on how our planet is not becoming any smaller in the face of technological advances and information overload and on how travel will always remain a challenge. White areas on the map? Think the whole world has been discovered? Think again.

Read Chris Taylor’s blog here.

Read my Wall Street Journal review of Harvest Season here.

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