The Essential Tao of Travel

Paul Theroux, author of The Great Railway Bazaar, The Happy Isles of Oceania, The Pillars Of Hercules and many other travel books, has written a new one, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road.

In it, he lists the 10 Taos of travel:

1) Leave home
2) Go alone
3) Travel light
4) Bring a map
5) Go by land
6) Walk across a national frontier
7) Keep a journal
8) Read a novel that has no relation to the place you're in
9) If you must bring a cell phone, avoid using it
10) Make a friend

In regard to 8), Theroux read Jin Ping Mei (Plum in Gold Vase), a five-century-old erotic tale, while travelling on trains in China and quoted it extensively in Riding the Iron Rooster, By Train Through China. So the Tao must be a new rule. ;-)

But I must say it is a good one. It gives the reader a break, however slight, from his or her environment. I read Oceania in China, and Martin Cruz Smith's Havana Bay in Hong Kong. For this trip, I am thinking of bringing William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, a 862-page Penguin paperback I bought in a charity sale for $1. If I ever get through the tome, I shall leave it in the Viking Pakhomov's library.

Here's my 10 Taos:

1) Leave home
2) Avoid group tours, but perhaps not in Russia
3) Travel light but still bring lots of one-dollar US bills for tips to porters and toilet attendants (in countries such as Egypt and Jordan)
4) Bring a camera, preferably a compact one with big zoom
5) Walk instead of taking the metro
6) Never walk to the USA from Tijuana, Mexico, unless you want a lecture of terrorists lurking in Canada
7) Keep a journal, a blog, a photo record...
8) Bring paperbacks that you can discard on the way
9) Bring a device with Wi-Fi, be it laptop, tablet, video game console, digital audio player or smart-phone, for free emails home
10) Make a friend, failing that, make no enemies

Panasonic ZS8