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IS THIS
THE ENDOF THEGUIDEBOOK AS WE KNOW IT?
Wherever you go, someone with the same guidebook will have got there first – but now GPS devices, blogs and a wave of sticky yellow arrows are taking on traditional guides. Sarah Elliott looks into new ways of exploring the world
D
rawing up a list of the highlights of Mauritania, you might include the ancient caravan town of Oualata, a trip on the ore trains – immortalised in Michael Palin’s Sahara – and a close encounter with desert crocodiles near Moudjéria. Few would choose the point at which the latitude line 19°N crosses the longitude line 16°W – a corrugated saltpan surrounded by bleak nothingness. But Jim Whyte did – in fact, the highlight of his trip to West Africa with Explore was a last-minute diversion to this degree confluence point (the spot where two lines on the map intersect).
And why did he do it? Because nobody else had staked a claim to having been to that place – and he wanted to know what was there. Good news for the rest of us: Mauritania’s borders contain 91 confluence points; visits to only four of these have been reported. So 87 mysterious locations lie unclaimed – and no guidebook will show you how to get to them. All you need is a Global Positioning System (GPS) and a few days off work. The Degree Confluence Project is one of several innovative challenges to the conventional must-sees and top tens described by travel guidebooks. In 2003, Metroblogging began updating
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web-savvy travellers with the latest urban developments from city to city, offering news and opinion that would be out of date by the time it reached the printers. The Yellow Arrow Project’s trail of brightly coloured stickers was launched in 2004 – a global map with hundreds of arrows, each pointing to unorthodox attractions discovered in the nooks and crannies of our everyday lives. If that doesn’t appeal, you could take a journey of sounds, smells and textures by tackling a city blindfolded – one of the many suggestions in The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel. So as more of us travel in our increasingly accessible world, bottlenecking at the popular sights and longing for a way to get off the beaten track, could this wave of creative approaches be the start of something new? And does it mean that our once well-thumbed guidebooks will be consigned to gather dust on our bookcases back home?
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FACTS FOR THE VISITOR Guidebook publishing is a multimillion pound industry. Thousands of titles cover almost every inch of the planet, which means that people who rarely strayed from the security of a package holiday 30 years ago have evolved into independent travellers, busy planning trips across the globe from Torremolinos to Timbuktu. “Many people find the prospect of the unknown pretty daunting,”observes Hilary Bradt, founder of Bradt travel guidebooks,“so the era of the guidebook has really opened up the world for us to explore. Our guidebooks encourage people to travel to unusual destinations for which very little information is available beyond that written by our authors.”
GETTING AROUND The new alternatives don’t offer such a comprehensive picture of destinations – in fact, you’d struggle to even get a country dialling code from most. Instead, they suggest a different approach to travel. The Yellow Arrow Project, for example, is created by travellers attaching stickers to anything
that they believe captures something special about the destination. Each attraction is explained in a text message that you can collect via your mobile phone, written by the person who first stickered the site. Yellow Arrow Project spokeswoman Jesse Shapins believes that this approach offers access to experiences that guidebooks can never offer. “Crowds are diluted by focusing on non-mainstream attractions, which are
You don’t need an arrow or a game to get off the beaten track – open your eyes and start walking
often overlooked or too small to warrant a guidebook mention. One arrow in New York, for example, points to the shadow cast by a tree, which is particularly striking at a certain time of day.” Gordon Spence of the Degree Confluence Project believes that this methodical approach of visiting fixed locations means that you avoid the crowds – but does he agree that randomly sampling the surface of the earth is a bit hit and miss? “The excitement for me is just seeing what’s out there at a random point. You learn something completely different about the country that hasn’t yet been recorded.”
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THE END OF THE GUIDEBOOK?
But are some destinations really so congested that you need to go to GPS extremes to avoid banging into throngs of other book-clutching travellers? “Guidebooks provide so many options that the congestion effect is diluted,”argues John Duhigg, brand manager for both DK Eyewitness Travel Guides and Rough Guides.“The books are also regularly updated to keep things fresh – recommended accommodation shifts, restaurants fall in and out of favour – so the trail is always changing.” Hilary Bradt adds: “There will always be ‘must sees’because that is why we travel! We produced our first guidebook in 1974, covering Peru and Bolivia. Over the years we have suggested countless alternatives to Machu Picchu but travellers will always want to see that first.”
SUGGESTED ITINERARIES These alternatives to guidebooks are all very well – but don’t they mean you’ll miss out on the best bits? Joel Henry, co-author of The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel, argues that his approach has a different goal. “Experimental travel is not inspired by the need to find alternatives to overcrowded travel routes – it’s a game, motivated by fun! To play the game, you must first accept that you might miss out on the perceived highlights of the destination, but each of the places that you do discover while playing an experimental travel game are still parts of that city, and will offer you an insight into that destination. My approach frees you from having to tick boxes.” “Guidebooks are here to stay,” counters Hilary Bradt.“The trick is to use them intelligently. You don’t need a yellow arrow or a travel game to get off the beaten track – just open your eyes and start walking! Chances are, you’ll be a lot more confident with the idea of going ‘freestyle’if you’ve done your homework before you go and understand the situation on the ground.”
WHATARE THE ALTERNATIVES? Moleskine DIY guides From October 2006, the quintessential notebook company will be offering DIYguides to 12 European cities. Purpose-built pages allow you to record your favourite spots, while you can plot your routes on 32 pages of maps and store magazine cuttings and memorabilia in clever pockets to create a discoverit-yourself guidebook. www.moleskine.com
Degree Confluence Project Take up the challenge: become the first traveller to log a visit to the exact spot where integer degrees of latitude and longitude meet (or, in other words, where the lines on a map cross) with the assistance of a GPS – and see places you’d otherwise never have dreamt of visiting. www.confluence.org
Yellow Arrow Project This global art project invites contributors to stick a coded yellow arrow on an obscure attraction – be it a manhole cover or a museum – and text a description to the central database. Check the online map, locate an arrow and text the arrow’s code number to retrieve an explanation. www.yellowarrow.net
Metroblogging Contributors send in morsels of urban info to a network of city-specific blogs – a rapidly expanding bank of streetwise city guides featuring everything from events and opinions to news and recommendations. www.metroblogging.com
Experimental travel Play human chess across a city, recreate your favourite song, or wear a horse’s head for a day. Choose an experiment and follow where it takes you – whatever the destination, the results will be unexpected. Check out The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel (2005). www.lonelyplanet.com/experimentaltravel
Mis-Guides Similar in theme to experimental travel, this series of walks and activities looks like a guidebook but is based on the practice of mytho-geography – where fact, fiction and the fantastic all mingle to open up any destination to those with a vivid imagination. www.mis-guide.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The common element of these alternative travel concepts is that it’s down to you to find a new perspective on an existing destination. The Yellow Arrow Project does exactly that, Jesse Shapins explains. “Its big attraction is that it allows everybody to contribute to an everevolving map, mediated by a combination of user democracy (rating systems) and editorial oversight. What’s more, the immediacy of new media means that the content is always fresh and organic.” John Duhigg agrees: “Projects such as Yellow Arrow and Metroblogging are really exciting – a reflection of the fact that the traveller has much more power over what shapes our travel habits than they did, say, 30 years ago. “As guidebook writers, we’d be crazy to ignore this. Instead we’re looking for ways to incorporate feedback into our programme, so that people get the information that they want, in the
way that they want it. At the end of the day, travellers rely on Rough Guides’ expertise as a benchmark on which to base their decisions – but increasingly now cross-check this against online feedback from other travellers.” So maybe the guidebook’s not on its deathbed – just benefiting from a little augmentation surgery. As Hilary Bradt comments, the central point of all these different approaches remains the same: an urge to search out the new. “It’s exactly that – a curiosity for the unknown and a willingness to do things differently – that inspired me to write guidebooks in the first place. After all, the best travellers are the ones who travel with their eyes open.”
O Still prefer the old-fashioned version? Read our guide to becoming a guidebook writer on p116. O Next issue, follow our girl without a guidebook: Lizzie Matthews heads out into the unknown. Wanderlust August/September 2006 51