25 chapters, 100,000 words, 120 illustrations
ARTOFTRAVEL.COM
 Table of Contents
On $25 a Day or Less
HOW TO SEE THE WORLD
Art of Travel - European and World Backpacking


Chapter 23

Selected Sites

Of the Interim  General Interest  Guidebook  Gear  Email  Travel

 
Weights, Measures, and Conversions: With Other Useful Travel Information
The pre-Internet Chapter 23.



Sites of the Interim

nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mgs-images.html

Earth now has so many spacecraft orbiting Mars care must be taken that they don't collide. (Photos of Mars Odyssey (NASA) and Mars Express (ESA) by Mars Global Surveyor (NASA).

marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov

Golf cart-sized rovers make Mars theoretically hitchhikable.
 


General Interest

odci.gov
CIA World Factbook. I'm grateful for the information, but couldn't it be deeper?
 
cdc.gov
Centers for Disease Control. If you've been as unwell as I have (twice), before developing world travel you'll be visiting this site with your tongue hanging out!
 
state.gov
U.S. Department of State. Do check and respect travel advisories before developing world travel. Other official sites include fco.gov.uk, dfait-maeci.gc.ca, dfat.gov.au, and france.diplomatie.fr.
 
loc.gov
LOC Area Handbooks. The Library of Congress, one of the great institutions in the history of the world, is but a fraction of the Internet.
 
newslink.org
A listing of thousands of online newspapers by the American Journalism Review, including Le Monde, La Prensa (Nicaragua), Economic Review (Kenya), China Daily, and the Irish, Middle East, and Tehran Times.
 
unesco.org/whc/heritage.htm
The United Nations World Heritage List of 552 cultural and natural special places in 112 countries.
 
amnesty.org
With only 99 million more supporters Amnesty International could become an irresistible force for universal human rights.
 
mit.edu
As the Massachusetts Institute of Technology places 2000 courses and related materials free online, soon the whole world will be sharing scholarship.
gregoryrsmith.com
Supergenius lad loves to learn and has superempathy. Campaigns worldwide for children and nonviolence. Read the Washington Post portrait and his thoughts. A very hopeful development. (Maybe it's only normal empathy.)
lib.utexas.edu/maps
Four thousand political, geographical, and historical online maps from the University of Texas.
 
nasa.gov
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the bravest machines ever invented, who without blink of an eye dare the outermost edges of Earthly possibility, the Ibn Battuta's of the modern age, the heroic robots Hubble, Galileo, Sojourner, Cassini, and Thud.



Guidebook

lonelyplanet.com
Australia-based Lonely Planet guidebooks.
blueguides.com
Intellectually-based Blue Guides.
letsgo.com
Harvard-based Let's Go guidebooks.
fodors.com
New York-based Fodor's guidebooks.
moon.com
California-based Moon Publications.
roughguides.com
UK-based Rough Guides.
frommers.com
From Arthur Frommer, who wrote Europe on $5 a Day in 1957.
ricksteves.com
TV host and author of Europe Through the Back Door.
artoftravel.com/11guides.htm
Guidebooks, Information Sources, and Emergency Thinking. It gets better near the end.



Travel Gear

Note #1
Visit your local independent outdoor retailer--they might be cool.
 
Note #2
Can you get by with a paper sack until the revolutionary SUPRNILSTR II ships?
rei.com
REI is a co-op chain of forty outdoor superstores featuring efficient USA market prices. The retail stores have sales approximately the first weeks of May and October.
 
campmor.com
Campmor is a major USA outdoor cataloguer featuring efficient USA market prices. From the catalog I bought a reasonable internal-frame pack as a half-price closeout, then modified it into my current SUPRNILSTR. (Lesson: It's good to have a feel for what you're buying.)
 
yahoo.com/ ~ /luggage_and_accessories/
yahoo.com/ ~ /gear_and_equipment/
If searching for the perfect everything, keep in mind that if your pack is ever lost, within a few days you'll be back on the road with most, if not all, of your previous capability.



Free Web Email

hotmail.com  yahoo.com  netscape.com  excite.com  lycos.com  mailcity.com  netaddress.com  rocketmail.com



Travel

iyhf.org
The International Youth Hostel Federation.
 
hostels.com
Lists thousands of hostels. (Personally, I assume they're there and wing it.)
 
elderhostel.org
Moderate-cost worldwide learning programs for 55 and over travelers from Elderhostel, a non-profit formed in 1975.
 
freetranslation.com
Free and easy web page and text paste-in machine translation of English to and from several European languages.
 
holidayfestival.com
Supplies dates of holidays and festivals for nations, states, religions, and cultures, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Chinese Lunar.
 
burn.ucsd.edu/~ssady
Chiapas--The People, the Land, the Struggle from Associated Press photographer Scott Sady.
 
backpackeurope.com
Kaaryn Hendrickson's Backpack Europe on a Budget, information from her adventures and excellent collection of links.
 
autostop.lt
Vilnius Hitchhiking Club. Fun site with photographs, records, and links to other clubs. When hitching in Russia in winter at night they wear reflectors.
 
travelog.net
John F.X. Bern's adventures, photography, and commentary as he gives up a good job for a year on the road with computer and digital camera. Current reportage is from Asia.
 
servas.org
Servas, formed in 1948 and which means "we serve" in Esperanto, is a one hundred country organization of hosts and travelers dedicated to world peace and understanding through individual contact.
 
travel-library.com
Round-the-World Travel Guide. A good example of distributed intelligence.
 
oratory.com/travel
Public-speaker/frequent-flyer/psychic-entertainer Doug Dyment's The Compleat Carry-On Traveler.
 
suite101.com/topics/page.cfm/92
Bernd Wechner's extensive collection of hitchhiking commentary, reviews, and links.
 
geocities.com/TheTropics/2442/database.html
From Portugal, Manuel Montenegro's Database of TravelHelpers, a list of 400 individuals from all over the world who have volunteered to advise on their home areas.
 
IRC
Internet Relay Chat. Find out how to log on (the test), then chat with real people in foreign lands! (Hint: visit mirc.co.uk for access shareware.)
 
travlang.com
It's either something in Tagalog or a language site.
 
samexplo.org
South American Explorers' Club. So good I almost joined.


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