Don't Go There! The Art of the Travel Contrarian

Finally, travel planning season is upon us. I enjoy this time of year. The calendar has turned; the page is blank. Yes, the world is your oyster (if you have the money to bribe someone to crack it open so you can let it slither sensuously down your throat, that is).

I have one word of advice. Well, ok it's a sentence; seldom does one word work wonders (unless foodfight is one word). Anyway, my sentence is this: Don't let yourself be cowed by friends or glossy travel guides into going to places that don't really interest you.

You see, I'm a travel contrarian. When folks tell me not to go to a place--or people leave comments on a blog post warning me that each and every citizen living in a particular city is uniformly arrogant and viciously mean to strangers--I immediately want to go there. I am often rewarded on these little excursions with a visit to a place where the traveler isn't doted upon, where life thrives in the shadows, even in hardscrabble times. I see little places where I can be invisible, where I can photograph clouds and little villages where thin wisps of smoke rise from off-kilter chimneys, where the smell of frying meat seeps out from under doors into narrow alleyways...

Travel editors love the idea of "top places to go for sun" or "the 10 vacation spots of 2009 that aren't under Army control." Maybe you haven't visited those tired old 2008 special places yet. Maybe you should. Heck, maybe you should even go to Aulla, Italy. Don't worry about it.

I was thinking about all this when I saw Terence Carter's blog post: Weather and the wet season. His striking photograph give me the itch to go to exactly where the photo was taken, on exactly the kind of day it was taken on. He writes this on travel photography on the "bad" days:

Even when the sun is out now it’s a very hard light, not really conducive to producing the kinds of photos that will entice people to visit.

As a travel contrarian, this photo is gold to me, as are some of the other photos in the blog taken at about the same time of year, namely now.

Am I the only one who thinks endless sunny days get boring after a while? Has anyone besides me arrived at a restaurant drenched, only to find a staff dedicated to making me feel warm and comfortable and, eventually, well fed--an experience I'll cherish way more than plunking myself down at a table in the sun and poking at some salad greens because the heat has sapped the desire to eat right out of me?

Now get to that travel planning. But remember to first sit down in a quiet place and ask yourself "Where in the world do I think I would like to go." Then research away.