The Best American Travel Writing 2014 Read Online Free Page B

line. Now and then tracer fire, terror-struck people, a collapsed economy, rundown hotels, and low spirits.
    Thirty-three years later, I returned to Vietnam on my
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star
journey, which was a revisiting of my
Great Railway Bazaar
. I went back to the royal city of Hue and saw that there can be life, even happiness, after war, and, almost unimaginably, there can be forgiveness. Had I not seen the hellhole of Hue in wartime, I would never have understood its achievement in a time of peace.
    Just a few years ago, Sri Lanka emerged from a civil war, but even as the Tamil north was embattled and fighting a rear-guard action, there were tourists sunning themselves on the southern coast and touring the Buddhist stupas in Kandy. Now the war is over, and Sri Lanka can claim to be peaceful, except for the crowing of its government over the vanquishing of the Tamils. Tourists have returned in even greater numbers for the serenity and the small population, and travel writers have begun to explore Jaffna and the north of the island, which was for so long a war zone.
    The pieces this year ably illustrate the defiance of the traveler who, against the odds, sets off to find something new to write about. I can imagine some chair-bound geek advising against going to London or Venice or Las Vegas; but here is a refutation—strong, well-written accounts of London, Venice, and Las Vegas. Another warning finger might be wagged in the face of someone on his or her way to the remote parts of Brazil or the back alleys of Somalia, but here is an account of a confrontation in the Brazilian rain forest and an amazing experience in Somalia.
    Around the time I was reading, with pleasure, Matthew Power’s piece, marveling at yet another of his exploits, I learned of his premature death at age 39, apparently of heat stroke, in Uganda, on an assignment following a man who was walking the length of the Nile. I am delighted to include his story and regret that it is his last. He started young—he was a mere youth traveling in and writing about Afghanistan and the Philippines. This recent piece is in the nature of guerrilla travel, a portrait of disapproved and frequently arrested “space invaders”—the so-called urbex movement—who have a passion for infiltrating off-limits sites, gaining access to locked sewers and forbidden cathedrals. Matthew Power both observed and participated; his writing is vivid and memorable. He will be greatly missed.
    In such a collection as this, the truly horrible experience can be found next to the mildly annoying incident: the kidnapping in Somalia of Amanda Lindhout (a joint credit with Sara Corbett), with—in sharp contrast and in another mood—Harrison Scott Key’s reflections on riding by Greyhound bus, with his helpful observation, “Bus People are nothing like Airplane People.” And in yet another paradoxical pairing, Alex Shoumatoff writes about one of my favorite subjects, the first contact between highly cultured, self-sufficient indigenous people in the Brazilian rain forest and desperate, rapacious savages—loggers in this case—from the outside world. Elsewhere, Michael Paterniti immerses himself in Guzmán, Spain, and Julia Cooke makes good friends in Havana. Some travelers are compelled by daring, others by dilettantism.
    To see a familiar place in a new way is the mission of Sean Wilsey among the gondoliers of Venice, Peter LaSalle peregrinating Paris, Peter Selgin in New York, Colson Whitehead in Las Vegas, Stephen Rinella in the Alaska wilderness, Gary Shteyngart in a more-salubrious-than-usually-depicted Bombay, Andrew McCarthy negotiating Calcutta, and Bob Shacochis on a fishing trip in remote Argentina. Thomas Swick, in his shrewd essay on the nature of travel, suggests what motivates these travelers.
    The earth is often perceived as a foolproof Google map, not very large, easily accessible, and knowable by any nerd drumming his