Category: Information

For slow travelers, it’s very likely that you and your backpack are going to be involved in a long term, intimate relationship so you might as well invest time in customizing your backpack and making it uniquely yours.Write your detailsUsing a permanent marker, inscribe your name, email, phone number and address.

Jailed for civil disobedience in Arizona, Mary Sojourner reflects on being alone in a cell.THE JAIL CELL DOOR CLANGS SHUT. I am in a tiny concrete room with a concrete bench and a concrete wall that shields the stainless steel toilet from a viewer’s eyes. The only viewers that will peer in through the thick window for the next long hours will be the detention officers of the Coconino County Jail.

With greater potential to bare your soul comes the greater danger of getting pecked to death by the peanut gallery.BLOGS GRANT UNPARALLELED potential for spontaneity and interaction to writers everywhere – a virtual printing press, under your fingertips.But with this new podium comes one of the less desirable traits of mass media: scrutiny from a faceless mob.

Feature photo by Kai Hendry. Photo above by betta design.Get your head around these visa and immunization details to keep your travels flowing smoothly.WHILE I WAS ON safari in game reserves all over Kenya, I was informed by my tour operator that my visa for India (which she had kindly offered to procure for me in Nairobi ) was ready, and I was all set to catch my cheap flight from the UAE to southern India.

MAYBE CLIMATE CHANGE can really only be understood by seeing it first hand.In their travels around the world, Matador’s editors have witnessed the effects of climate change with their own eyes. Today, in recognition of Blog Action Day, Matador editors Lola Akinmade and Hal Amen posted dispatches about climate change issues in Nigeria and Bolivia.

Feature photo by joiseyshowaa. Photo above by Tim HussinA look at Finca Bellavista, a development overlooking Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, where the guiding principle is sustainability.IT’S ALL RENDERED a green blur as I fly down a zipline 150 feet above the ground. Just ahead hangs a two-story house in the trees where I’ll spend the next two days.

I WALK NORTH in the Mojave. I listen to my friend on the cell phone. She tells me of her recent work with a healing process called EMDR. I’m about to cross the two-lane highway. Something lies on the edge of the asphalt. I look. It is a dead bird — gray and black and white. I pick it up. There is no mark on it, no blood or broken bone.

And you thought your stand mixer was fancy.Researchers from the Cornell Creative Machines Lab are developing a 3-D food printer called the [email protected], a name that rolls off the tongue far easier than the Jetsons’ Food-a-Rac-a-Cycle. The printer uses food “inks”to make precise, digitally designed food. Mechanical engineers are collaborating with the French Culinary Institute to develop the technology.

A rare look into everyday life during Iraq’s transitional period.BOMB-DODGING is still a big part of travel here. So is the tangible fear that blankets the country. Foreigners, moving on the highways that join southern Arab Iraq with the northern autonomous Kurdish region chance roadside bombs and, more likely, incarceration and a beating by Iraqi authorities on the lookout for al-Queda, for the threat, for anything suspicious.

Turkey both defines and is defined by two continents. This alone intrigued me enough to make the drive from “Europe” to “Asia” to explore. Welcome to Istanbul.1Turkish script1. Outside Topkapi Palace.2Stuffed grape leaves, Turkey2. Grape leaves stuffed with rice, resting in a bed of salt.3Turkish men3.

Ever tried to capture the moment, only to have it slip through your fingers because they’re full of gadgets? Ever returned home from a trip with a full memory-card, but an empty heart?IF SO, YOU MIGHT BE suffering from Gadget Block – a terrible modern affliction of the geographically minded. You’re so obsessed with recording your experiences that the recording itself is your focus.

Hal amen feels the “roll roll roll hissssssssssss” of camp gear packing.open closet door. survey.breathe. move everyday items out of way to get to camping items. slow, deliberate. closet is small and there are many everyday items in way.grab sleeping bags, pads, tent. grab cloth-and-rod sleeves that fit around pads to fold them into chairs.

Matador contributor Allen Burt shares scenes from a three-week journey through Southern Patagonia.1Cerro Fitz RoyThe peak of Cerro Fitz Roy looms in the distance -- the goal of my hike through the Southern Patagonian Ice Field near the border of Argentina and Chile.2Perito Moreno glacier, ArgentinaThe Perito Moreno Glacier as viewed from the observation decks in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares near the town of El Calafate, Argentina.

C. Noah Pelletier meditates on his short lived music career, and how it started out in the kitchen.I SQUATTED DOWN, not to dance, but to see how the barbeque chicken was coming along. On the stovetop, five white eggs sat in a pan of boiling water. Bacon and egg muffins were cooling in the fridge. I poured some milk into the potatoes and worked the masher around.

Is it funnier because it’s true?BINYAVANGA WAINAINA once wrote a little piece for Granta magazine, titled How not to write about Africa. It would turn out to be one of the most popular pieces the magazine ever published. It’s as sarcastic as it is perfectly executed, and if you haven’t watched it before, take a peek below.

The world’s worst traveling dancer is at it again.DANCING MATT IS AS MUCH OF A MEME as it’s possible for a travel video to get. There was the video, the gum-company sponsored video, the South African Soccer World Cup video, and even the parody video.It should surprise nobody then, that the man intends to dance once more in a bunch of as-yet-undisclosed places around the world.

Wikileaks suing Mastercard.Wikileaks and Datacell (a service provider assisting WikiLeaks) just announced their intention to sue the European operations of Visa and Mastercard for an ‘unlawful, US influenced financial blockade’, withholding over $15 million in donations.In the meantime, a spoof advertisement has been released based on Mastercard’s “Priceless” tag line, mocking the fact that despite blocking donations, their actions aren’t stopping the world from changing.

Baxter Jackson uses advice from his AA sponsor to pick himself up off the ground and hop back on the board.SIX MONTHS WITHOUT a drink hit today. For the 180th time in a row, I woke up sober in the top bunk of a halfway house on 23rd and H St. in Midtown, Sacramento. My cellie, an ex-con named Sidewinder, was in the bunk below, coughing up his morning phlegm.

Are your travels more than an unconnected series of destinations? Or, in the end, a route in and of themselves to who you have become?THAT TRAVEL MAKES YOU RESTLESS is hardly an epiphany to many who have found themselves back home after a long journey, only to discover that home doesn’t quite fit as snugly as it did before they left.

Cathy Dean talks with performance artists about their craft.I WAS LOST, DRIVING around Santiago attempting to find the freeway. While stopped at a red light, I looked up from the map to see a twenty-something guy standing in the crosswalk chucking knives into the air and catching them.Forgetting about the map, I grabbed my camera and took a photo.