This blog is primarily for media aspirants as well as young journalists. My aim is to provide links to articles that will enhance their understanding of the media and help them to improve their writing skills, broaden their horizons, and expand their worldview. My hope is that The Reading Room will also help them to become good media professionals.
Manipur: Floating islands, navigating a "phumdi", a tribute to the fallen, mythical dragons, a live concert... click here.
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Assam: Rhinos, rustic chic, the world's biggest river island, traditional dances, tribal culture, a dinner cruise on the mighty Brahmaputra... click here.
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Meghalaya: Living Root Bridge, Asia's cleanest village, the wettest place on earth, Mawsmai Cave... click here.
Travel writing seems easy: Go there, do that, write about it (and don't forget to sprinkle the superlatives among the facts and figures).
But there is good travel writing. And there is lazy travel writing.
Now Peter Greenberg, travel editor of American broadcaster CBS News, has helpfully provided 10 top tips on how to spot — and avoid — lazy travel writing. Here they are in bullet-point form:
1. Most Travel Writers Are Not Journalists
2. Most of Them Aren't Good Writers
3. They Are More Focused on the Fact They Got to Travel Than Why They Are Traveling
4. They Are More Focused on the Destination Than the Experience
5. Most of the Pieces Written Are Based on Price, Not Value — or Cost, Not Worth
6. So Much of Travel Writing Reads Like Bad Brochures
7. Most Travel Writing is Obsessed with Product, Not Process
8. Tell Me Something I Don't Know
9. Introduce Me to Someone I Don't Know, But Should
For what it's worth, here's the link to one of my travel pieces, which was published in the Khaleej Times after my return from a visit to Malaysia: "Blast from the past: Travels in Malaysia". I shudder to think what Peter Greenberg would have made of it.
And, again, for what it is worth, the two most absorbing travel books I own and have read are Travels with Herodotus, by the great Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who began his life as a foreign correspondent in India, and Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific, the only travel book I have read twice.
When many of us come back from a wonderful holiday, almost the first thing we do is upload a few hundred pictures to Facebook and other similar sites. I am not sure what the point is of this exercise — how many are going to click on each thumbnail? And how many will go through the entire album — unless you hold a gun to their head?
Here is an approach that I think works better: After my wife and I spent two days at an unusual resort in the foothills of the Nilgiris earlier this month, I selected from dozens of pictures the ones that I thought would tell the audience a story. And I used the "Movie" feature in Picasa to create a video slideshow, with background music, which I then uploaded to YouTube.
The pictures, I think, speak for themselves but the video may not be informative enough for someone who would like to know a little more about the place. So I wrote a few paragraphs that give a hint of the many ways you can enjoy a weekend here.
Here is what I wrote and posted on YouTube:
R&R at Jungle Hut, Masinagudi
Two days of rustic luxe — April 8-10, 2011
My wife wanted to stay in a tent and that's what we did at Jungle Hut on April 8. It was maddeningly hot in the afternoon — this was summer after all — but as evening approached the temperature dipped and it was truly magical to slip into our tent and fall off to sleep to the accompaniment of the trilling of nightjars and other nocturnal birds.
We were woken by the Masinagudi Cicada Philharmonic Orchestra early the next morning and a good thing too — we had scheduled a two-hour trek up the mountains with the Jungle Hut guide.
The trek was fun — and we worked up a good appetite too so the sumptuous breakfast laid out for us afterwards went down smooth and easy.
After breakfast we shifted to a regular cottage room — my wife may like to rough it out but I want my conveniences. The room was just right: spacious, airy, clean.
I went for a swim later in the pool, took a brief nap, then we headed to the restaurant area for lunch. The meals are one of the highlights of the stay at Jungle Hut — we just couldn't help tucking in like there was no tomorrow.
We played Scrabble, we read — my wife even borrowed a book from the Jungle Hut collection to take to Ooty where we spent the rest of our 10-day vacation. We also watched the IPL matches live on the big screen, we went for long walks, and we took plenty of pictures.
Team Jungle Hut went out of their way to ensure we enjoyed every minute of our brief stay. Thank you, Vikram and Anushri Mathias, Malvika Bhandary, Aniket Gupta, and Falgun.
And here's the YouTube video:
PS: If you drive down from Bangalore via Mysore, you can do the 250-km trip to Masinagudi in five-and-a-half hours with a short break. Ooty is about 40 km — and 36 hairpin bends — from Masinagudi.
PPS: Masinagudi is at the same altitude as Bangalore, about 3,000 feet above sea level — it can be really warm during the day in April-May. But Ooty is 7,620 feet above sea level— so in summer even at 2 in the afternoon it's cool enough to enjoy a walk in the sun.
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I did the same thing with our Ooty pictures. And because, compared with Masinagudi, Ooty is well-known, I restricted the write-up to a few tips:
When in Ooty you must...
...stay at Sterling Fern Hill
...pay a visit to Coonoor (18 km away) and check out Lamb's Rock and Dolphin's Nose
...have lunch at King's Cliff
...experience the warm hospitality of Commits alumna Poonam Parekh (Class of 2008) and her family at their lovely home
...treat yourself to some wood-fire delicacies at the Sidewalk Cafe on Commercial Road
...buy homemade fudge and chocolates at Jai's King Star; and Last Forest honey, Gray's Hill relishes, and Mackays Seedless Bramble Preserve from Modern Stores (if you want eucalyptus oil, Swastik is the best)
...and go boating on Ooty Lake, walk around the Botanical Garden, take some long drives. You MUST have your own car — in a gorgeous hill-station like Ooty, it will make your stay more memorable.
And here's the Ooty video:
Isn't this preferable to wading through hundreds of caption-less holiday snaps?
I have more than 20 years' experience (1981 to 2003) as a journalist in India and Dubai, specializing in selecting and editing news reports and features. From 2003 to 2019, I taught journalism and writing skills to master’s students at Commits, a media college in Bangalore.
I joined Cactus Communications ("Serving Science Worldwide") as a copyediting freelancer on October 1, 2019. From the very beginning, I have enjoyed the challenge of working on a new assignment each day. I like to think of every article as a daily crossword puzzle that I need to solve by examining the clues closely. And, finally, when I submit the article that I have tended, I like to think, with love and care, I feel deeply satisfied.
