Travel | New Bohemians

Haiti: Pain and Lessons to be Learned

January 19th, 2010

Don’t take a predetermined tour. The tour leaders are sure you don’t want to meet the real people, but a sanitized version of folk presentations. Travel independently, and don’t always stay in the travel destinations, the tourist towns; stay in smaller towns or villages, spread your money around. Look that street vendor in the eye while you negotiate some mystery meat on a stick. Return her smile. Not only will you have more fun, more memories, but that street vendor will remember that some Americans actually cared enough to want to see her village, and how she lives.

Christmas Card from Bangkok

December 23rd, 2009

Happy Christmas from Bangkok. We’ll celebrate by crossing the International Date Line on Christmas Day.
Bob and Claire Rogers prepare to return home from their adventurous tandem bicycle tour from Tibet to Bangkok.

Claire and Bob Rogers

Loving Litang; a look back, a look forward

September 24th, 2009

We will now turn south, remaining on ridges of the Plateau for a few hundred kilometers, with at least one pass higher than any we have yet crossed, nearing 16,000 feet. Not far from here, the great rivers of SE Asia are given birth; the Yangtze and the Mekong are the two we will meet. We will cross the Yangtze as it turns north, and follow the Mekong south into Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Here, these already powerful streams, are separated by just a few high ridges before becoming the two greatest rivers in this part of the world. Along their courses, live one of the largest concentrations of, and the most diverse collections of, peoples on Earth. We will encounter many cultures and the landscapes that helped form them, and we will share what we learn with you.

Elation, Pain, Surprise: Part 2

September 23rd, 2009

Claire: It sounds romantic: going to sleep to the sounds of chanting and waking to the sounds of milking. But these women’s lives are a gritty exsistence that our culture hasn’t known for generations. Hauling wood, water and food up the ladder to the living space, making butter and curds, grinding grain, hand washing clothes, keeping the fire going, cooking… Mundane, routine, weather-dependent, smoke-filled and layered with years of grime. At first, we were both a little uncomfortable with their aboriginal way of life (we even took some Pepto-Bismol as a prophylaxis against any reaction to the yak butter). It’s kind of like going feral in Australia, at first, you try to avoid the bull dust, then you live with it until finally, it becomes your outer layer.