By: Don George on October 16, 2012
Dear friend of Recce,
Thank you very much for your ongoing interest in our online literary travel offerings. I'm very excited to announce that beginning today those offerings will be brought to you on a much more timely basis as a new blog on the redesigned GeoEx website.
The Recce blog - www.geoex.com/blog - is launching with a half dozen of our best features from past issues. Going forward, you'll see that while our format has changed, our commitment to bringing you the highest quality content remains the same. Recce will continue to present a robust mix of original essays and tales from acclaimed and up-and-coming writers, exhilarating excerpts from the best new travel books, provocative interviews with travel pioneers, and illuminating portfolios from distinguished photographers. In addition, we'll be expanding our content to include dispatches, photos and videos from GeoEx staffers' and travelers'...
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By: Tim Cahill on November 20, 2012
Tim Cahill is one of America's most renowned adventurers and travel writers. He is the author of nine books, including such revered titles as "Jaguars Ripped My Flesh," "Pecked to Death by Ducks," "Road Fever," "A Wolverine is Eating My Leg," "Pass the Butterworms," and "Hold the Enlightenment." A founding editor of Outside magazine, he has written hundreds of articles for Outside, National Geographic Advenure, Esquire, The New York Times Book Review, and other national publications, and has co-written three Imax screenplays, two of which were nominated for Academy Awards. He lives in Montana.
The single question a travel writer most often hears is: What is your favorite destination? I think most of us who deal with the question as a matter of course have formulated some easy answer. I generally say something like, ''Well, it's like...
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By: Don George on September 24, 2012
Last summer I spent an expanding and enlightening week wandering in Peru's Sacred Valley. The highlights were almost too numerous to mention—the resonant ruins of Machu Picchu, of course, plus other soul-stirring sites such as Ollantaytambo, Moray, Pisaq, Tipon and Pikillacta; the amazingly varied and delicious cuisine; the uniformly hospitable people; the intricate textiles, transporting music and other cultural and artistic riches; ancient and cosmopolitan Cusco.
But one completely unexpected highlight was a chance to experience firsthand - literally - the fine art of making roof tiles.
On the next to last day of my journey, after exploring as far as Racchi, halfway to Lake Titicaca, we were returning along the road to Cusco. On the way we approached a site I had expressed interest in earlier in the day—a roadside area where a team of workers was making roof tiles; that morning we had seen the tiles arranged in semi-circular columns by the side of the...
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By: Jeff Greenwald on October 11, 2012
The Arun Valley, slicing through Eastern Nepal, is the world's deepest river gorge. Back in the 1980s, not many travelers bothered with that remote and undeveloped place. Trekking in Nepal was all about Everest, Annapurna, and the Langtang Himal: places where the mountains had celebrity status, and a hungry hiker could find a good buckwheat pancake.
In the spring of 1984, I was living in Kathmandu on a Rotary fellowship. Having learned a bit of Nepali, and eager to test my mettle, I flew from Kathmandu to Tumlingtar, where our twin-engine plane shimmied to a stop on the grassy runway. From there I set off north, on foot, intent on tracing the Arun along the length of its gorge — all the way to the Tibetan border.
This was in April, and it had been a wet winter. Conditions could change in an instant; my backpack was heavy with gear. After a few hours alone on the muddy, slippery trail, I realized I needed help.
Stopping in a wayside town, I was...
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By: Don George with Pico Iyer on October 08, 2012
On January 26, GeoEx had the honor of launching Pico Iyer's North American tour for his new book, The Man Within My Head, with an onstage conversation at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Hosted by Recce editor Don George, the evening turned into an exhilarating exploration of places and lessons cherished by both of these peripatetic writers, who have been friends for two decades. We are pleased to present here an edited transcript of their extraordinary conversation.
Don George: It's a great pleasure, Pico, to see you, and, as always, it's a great honor for me to share the stage with you.
Pico Iyer: Thank you.
We were remarking earlier that we haven't seen each other in two years, but it feels like only yesterday. I wanted to begin this evening—speaking of the passage of time—by showing you a picture and asking you what you see in that picture. I wish I could show all of you in the audience this...
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