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When
it comes to travellers, the world can roughly be divided into
two. One is the variety that prefers the convenience and predictability
of guided tours; you sign up for a package and the travel agent
takes care of everything else: your sightseeing itinerary, stay,
airport transfers, food, etc. The second variety would have none
of this. Not for them the sterile world of holiday packages. They
would rather travel on their own and rough it out, staying in
inexpensive hotels and eating street food. They are the backpackers.
Now, courtesy the authors, we learn that there's a loony fringe
to the world of travellers, inhabited by what are called the experimental
travellers.
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THE LONELY PLANET GUIDE TO EXPERIMENTAL TRAVEL
By Rachael Antony & Joel Henry
Lonely Planet Publications
PP: 276
Price: Rs 792
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What is experimental travel? According to
Henry (who's variously been a writer, photographer and inventor
of parlour games) and Antony (a Melbourne-based freelance writer),
"experimental travel evades definition, but it can loosely
be described as a playful way of travelling, where the journey's
methodology is clear but the destination may be unknown".
The idea of experimental travel, its creator Joel Henry tells
us, was born over lunch that the Frenchman was having with two
friends and accomplices. The month was June of 1990 and Henry
was on board a barge-cum-restaurant inspiringly named Why Not?
"talking about the approaching summer holidays". Out
of sheer perversion, it would seem, the friends decide to stand
the idea of organised tour on its head. All of them-and anyone
else interested-would travel to Zurich, not as a group, but separately.
Thus, the first in what would be an endless series of experiments
was born.
The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel,
then, is not so much a guide as a laboratory of experiments-literally.
There are 40 of them, one crazier than the other. In one, called
Backpacking at Home, you don't even leave your city. Instead,
you get up one morning, pack your backpack, and simply ask a friend
to drop you at the airport. Thereon, you do what backpackers usually
do: travel cheap, shack up in a dorm, eat cup-o-noodles and head
back to the airport, where the same or another friend would bring
you back home from your "trip". In another, named Experimental
Honeymoon (not to be attempted if your new bride lacks a sense
of humour), a couple from Slovakia decides to spend their honeymoon
hitchhiking around Europe for a month. Of course, that involves
getting stranded in a godforsaken place.
Each of the 40 experiments
comes with its own set of "hypothesis", "apparatus",
and "method" to help you get started. But, frankly,
there's no limit to the experiments one can come up with. Consider
(see excerpt above) Henry's Blind Man's Buff Travel. Now, why
would anybody want to visit a city blindfolded? Apparently, that's
a question you don't ask if you are an experimental traveller.
This is an extreme form of
experimental travel and not recommended for amateurs. Travelling
without the benefit of sight will undoubtedly prove difficult,
and dealing with other people's attitudes towards you will
also be part of the experience. It's important to note that
this experiment in no way intends to mock those who are
blind or sight impaired. Rather, this experiment analyses
what we actually 'see' as a traveller-do we really see things
as they are, or are we in some way blindfolded?
BLIND MAN'S BUFF TRAVEL: LABORATORY RESULTS
Courtesy of Experimental Tourist Joel Henry, Luxembourg
Hypothesis: Explore and experience a new place without
seeing it.
Apparatus: A friend to guide you and a blindfolding mechanism
of some kind.
Method: Spend 24 hours blindfolded in a new location.
To fully prevent myself from seeing, I fastened one of
those oval bandages favoured by ophthalmologists over my
eyes, and put on a pair of sunglasses. My wife and collaborator
Maia was to be my guide for this experiment, and it would
be with her eyes that I would explore a strange city. This
was to be a kind of sensory travel which would test the
limits of the visible-something akin to the approach taken
by the blind photographer Evgen Bavcar.
The train taking us to Luxembourg sounded empty, it was
so quiet... in fact the compartment was packed, but the
passengers weren't in the mood for conversation. To the
blind man, the mute crowd is undetectable. Halfway into
our journey, French customs officers entered the compartment
to inspect our luggage. For an instant I wondered how they'd
respond if they discovered I wasn't actually blind; but
Maia (Henry's wife) gave them our passports and everything
went off without a hitch.
Once at our destination, we began by visiting the Casino,
Luxembourg's museum of modern art. The woman at the register
kindly offered me entry at a concession price... Judging
from the tone of Maia's voice, I gathered that the temporary
exhibition featuring Peter Friedl-a conceptual artist-wasn't
exactly pushing her buttons, but paradoxically the descriptions
she improvised were fascinating.
We went on to wander the streets aimlessly, walking slowly,
with hesitant steps. The noise of the traffic all around
us was frankly frightening, and I had lost all sense of
direction and space. I suffer from vertigo but felt no dizziness
as we crossed Adolphe Bridge, which spans the Petrusse River;
by contrast, while traversing the perfectly flat Place d'Armes
I had the impression I was climbing a steep hill. As we
made our way around the city, Maia provided detailed descriptions
of the buildings and areas we were passing: a monumental
sculpture, a teahouse festooned with an Art Deco mosaic,
the houses of Place Guillaume II... and the sex shops and
seedy bars of the neighbourhood surrounding the railway
station.
Despite Maia's patient guidance, all the little gestures
of daily life presented a challenge-manoeuvring one's way
through a restaurant, sitting down, even drinking from a
glass. To simplify matters, we ordered a pizza for dinner.
The waiter immediately offered to ask the chef to cut it
into small pieces. During those 24 hours of darkness I was
treated to no end of consideration. Contrary to what I'd
expected, however, blindness hadn't sharpened my other senses,
such as taste. Quite the opposite, in fact: not being able
to see what I was eating robbed me of all pleasure. That
evening in the hotel, having lost all sense of direction
and mistakenly believing I was opening the bathroom door,
I found myself groping around in the hotel corridor, as
naked as a new-born baby.
Blind travel is an extreme kind of tourism, requiring
constant alertness. I can't begin to describe how relieved
I was the following day when I removed the bandages in the
train on our way home. I left Luxembourg having seen nothing
of the city, but curiously I've been left with some very
precise images. Perhaps one day I'll return to verify just
how exactly they correspond to reality.
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