funtotravel.info: How times change. - 2002 vs 2012.

Although I took my first trip away from the parents in the heady summer of 1998, from London to the mysterious wilds of Italy and Greece, the fact that the whole thing was organised by said parents (who although they wouldn’t be coming insisted on planning most of the finer details) means that we can’t count it.

No, this intrepid explorer took his first trip as a fully fledged backpacker with his younger brother in April of 2002, in the midst of a post-university ‘what the hell am I going to do next?’ gap-year. We journeyed around Western Europe on hastily purchased Interrail tickets taking in the sights, smells, sounds, wine and women (ok, lots of the former and not so much of the latter…) of the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Greece. My brother and I met up last weekend for the Christening of funtotravel.info junior, and found ourselves reminiscing on the trip – good times and bad.

What struck us was quite how different the whole experience was then to how it would be now in terms of booking, planning, meeting people, what to do in minutes of boredom and recording your experiences on the way round. It’s hard to imagine a time when the internet was still in its infancy, but it does provide us with an interesting basis for comparison, given that the funtotravel.info family have just booked a trip back to Thailand for a spot of island-hopping in March/April.

	2002	2012
Planning the trip	Using Lonely Planet/Let’s Go guidebooks bought or borrowed from the local library	Using funtotravel.info (obviously!), reading other travellers’ blogs, reading the Lonely Planet website and the Thorntree forum etc. We still bought the relevant guidebook though!
Booking the trip	Through our local STA Travel shop/other cheap travel agency. Interrail tickets were bought in person.	Online: Book flights/hotels using price comparison sights like Kayak/STA Travel/Expedia. All booked online using a secure connection.
Booking accommodation in advance	Either calling the hostels/hotel listed in the guidebook and attempting to bluff our way in that language or going to the local tourist office in the town in question and asking them to find us a room.	Online: Through a website like hostelbookers, hostelworld, sawasdee.com etc
What technology would you take with you	Discman/mini disc player, 35mm camera, and….ummm….that’s it.	Ipod, possibly tablet/laptop, smartphone, digital camera, kindle etc
What did you do on long train or bus journeys?	Read a book, listen to a CD, talk to people	Read a book on the Kindle, write a blog on the laptop, play games on the iPad, look at the pictures I have already taken on the camera etc, watch a movie.
How do you meet people on the road?	Walk up to them, talk to them, leave messages on hostel noticeboards at a push	Hook up on facebook, though twitter or on funtotravel.info!
How do you keep a record of what you’ve been up to ?	Write a diary, on paper, using a pen	Write a blog on my laptop
How did you communicate with home?	Send postcards, call home from a payphone, if you’re feeling daring and trust the dial-up connection in the dodgy looking internet café, then write a group email.	Call on skype using laptop/tablet or an internet café, message people on facebook, write some emails, write a blog. All online.

All of the above provides a stark and very amusing indication of just how much independent travel has changed. The use of the word ‘independent’ is a very pertinent one – the changes in the world of technology mean that  travellers are ‘alone’ less than ever before even if they are, strictly speaking, travelling on their own. The world is covered in wifi spots and high-speed internet cafes, meaning that in a bafflingly large percentage of places that you would ever want to travel, you can be online talking, face-timing, sharing photos, downloading music and movies etc.

Back in the pre-internet days, if you were stuck down in the common room of your hostel in the back-end of nowhere, people tended to be more talkative. The need to communicate in person with your fellow travellers was naturally far greater when you couldn’t fall back on the fact that you could whip out your smartphone to boast about where you are, play Angry Birds on your iPad, listen to one of 20,000 songs on your ipad or even watch a movie on your phone. Travel seemed more sociable back then and created a real sense of camaraderie amongst travellers – if you were on the road you knew it, and the only real way to pick up tips on whether the train was running between Kunming and Hanoi, or whether you needed a visa to get into Cambodia was to ask around the people staying in your guest house. Call us old romantics, but travel the ‘old way’ seemed more open and more in tune with the spirit of discovery. The world has definitely shrunk…

Having said that, we are huge hypocrites. We have booked our trip to Thailand online, fully intend to keep up this blog when we are away, have emailed queries to potential hotel about baby cribs etc and will no doubt be boasting on facebook and twitter about how great our holiday is on the way round. I guess convenience can be a wonderful thing, even if it does make you an unsociable old bastard!

Let us know what you think about the relationship between technology and travel.

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A very Indian experience in Varanasi

Varanasi is the most fascinating, spiritual, confusing and frustrating destination we have ever visited. Nestled on the banks of the sacred River Ganges in the north of India, a few hours’ travel east of New Delhi, Varanasi (previously Benares) claims to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world.

Our introduction to the city was symptomatic of both its majesty and its infuriating chaos. Arriving on a short-haul flight from Delhi due to all of the trains being booked out, the first part of our journey seemed blissfully simple. We picked up a set-price taxi from Varanasi’s tiny airport into town, lounged in the back of the old but surprisingly well maintained Ambassador car, and were unceremoniously dumped at the point where the ‘new’ and ‘old’ cities meet – no motorised vehicles are allowed anywhere near the old town, in order to protect the ‘ghats’ , the various sets of riverside steps, some of which are dedicated to the cremation of dead Hindu believers (known as the ‘Burning Ghats’). Trying our best to make head or tail of the unsurprisingly useless map provided by our Lonely Planet guide, we attempted to navigate our way through the early evening throng to the tiny lane where our guest house was set.  Arriving in the middle of a Hindu festival, though colourful, loud and hypnotic did not help us in our mission to seek out our digs as we were crushed by throngs of dancing, prancing devotees.

Despite having already had a couple of weeks to acclimatise to the melee of sights, smells and sounds that is India, the culture-shock hit us badly as, laden-down with heavy rucksacks, we were buffeted left and right and accosted at every step with offers of a guide, boat trips, ‘strong ganja’, cheap rooms and cheap women (despite walking within two feet of my wife!). With any number of shopkeepers  having made it clear that they had absolutely no idea where to find our guest house, we made the cardinal error of hopping into a couple of cycle rickshaws (they couldn’t fit both of us, and our bags into the same one). On giving the address of our guest house, we found our drivers heading off in separate directions into the throng of festival goers, before meeting up again to begin an impassioned and furious argument as to who was heading up in the right direction.

We made the wise decision to scarper at this point and fortunately found ourselves under the wings of a couple of German guys who knew where our hotel was. They led us down a series of narrow pathways and lanes, dodging any number of sadhus (holy men) and holy cows until we arrived the entrance to our hotel, the lads resisting our offers of a thank-you beer and disappearing off into the surrounding lanes like a couple of teutonic travel angels. One more unpleasant surprise awaited me, as having taken Amanda’s rucksack on my front as well as my own behemoth bag on my back, I realised that I had no way of seeing where I was putting my feet and had managed to connect with a large and seemingly very fresh cow pat twenty metres from the entrance to the guest-house. Thank you Mr Cow!

Checking in with no problem and mounting the four sweaty flights of stairs to our well-appointed budget room, we made straight for the roof terrace restaurant for some much-needed Kingfisher beers and veggie curries. Taking in the sights and sounds the river, the puja ceremonies, the boisterous gangs of monkeys and the smoking funeral pyres at dusk was jaw-droppingly different and distinctly otherworldly. Of all of our travels, we have never visited such an amazingly atmospheric place, with such character and such verve. A genuine must-visit, though pack patience in vast amounts and a very open-mind.

Great things to do in Varanasi:

• Take a Ganges boat trip. Best done in the evening or early morning. The boatmen will take you along the various ghats. Not many speak a great deal of English, so unless your Hindi is up to scratch take a good guide book for commentary on what you’re seeing. Watching people swim, wash, brush their teeth and do their laundry in some of the most toxic river water in the world is extraordinary!
• Watch a Ganga aarti ceremony at Dasaswamedh ghat at dusk – beautiful lights, hypnotic music and an incredibly spiritual atmosphere, even if you’re as cynical and world-weary as they come.
• See what goes on at the burning ghats but make sure you do so from a respectful distance – the Hindu faithful are cremating their dead and you should ensure that this remains a private, family ceremony for them. Respect the dead.
• Chill out – Varanasi has some great restaurants, cafes and bakeries, most of which either have river views or rooftop restaurants – this is as good a place as any to watch the world go by.

We stayed at Ganga Fuji Home (800 Rupees/night for an air con private double) and would recommend it. We would also recommend the following places to eat/drink:

• Brown Bread Bakery - it supports a local school, runs a women’s empowerment group, uses organic produce, and refills your water bottles for you (Rs5) – the food is also brilliant.
• Dolphin restaurant - great riverside views and excellent veggie food.

Travel Photo Collection 1

We're back...

Hello funtotravellers. Our apologies for what has seemed to us like a never-ending absence. The reason for this is that we have been on some unofficial paternity leave from the site until our daughter, the mini-funtotraveller (or "MT" as she'll now be known) turned one. We're pleased to report that this has not stopped us from travelling, and the MT has already racked up seven countries in her short time on this earth!

We'll be back in the next day or so with some new articles on the places we've been in the last  year and some helpful travel tips and advice.

Safe travelling

funtotravel.info