Planet Backpacker -- Across Europe on a Mountain Bike & Backpacking on Through Egypt, India & Southeast Asia Review
Planet Backpacker -- Across Europe on a Mountain Bike & Backpacking on Through Egypt, India & Southeast Asia Feature
You'll find echoes of Jack Kerouac's On the Road in this exciting tale of traveling with a bicycle, a backpack and a guitar around the world. An unforgettable blend of laughs and wisdom, the book also offers a How To guide for backpackers.
Author Robert Downes has backpacked through 45 countries, from the supercities of Asia to the heart of the American wilderness. He spent five months traveling around the world in 2007, bicycling across Europe on a 20-year-old mountain bike named Dulcinea and backpacking on through Egypt, India and South Asia.
He says that Planet Backpacker refers to a parallel world of adventure that reveals itself to travelers, especially those who journey close to the edge of other cultures. It's not a Twilight Zone or a parallel dimension, but an actual world that escapes the notice of those who stay put, he says.
Like beat writer Jack Kerouac, who bummed around America in the 1950s, Downes scribbled his daily reflections on a pocketful of scrap paper. But, in an upgrade for the cyber age, he also blogged his adventures at internet cafès along the way.
The book was was written in more than 100 internet cafès located down the side streets and back alleys of the world, he says. Most of these places were dingy, dim holes with the sticky black gum of 10,000 fingers imbedded on the keyboards of their antique computers that looked like they were throwbacks to 1985.
Downes' journey revealed that the developing world is strangely empty of American travelers -- especially those willing to travel 'close to the edge.' Why are Americans among the missing in the Third World? Planet Backpacker offers some answers, along with a rallying cry to take a trip to some of the most exotic and exciting places on earth, with tips on how you too can give it a go.
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