• Eco-Touring in Honduras
  What can we learn from the mysterious collapse of the Mayan civilization?
  Elisabeth Eaves
  posted June 6, 2008
• Baseball, Dominican-Style
  Smoking cigars with a major league MVP.
  Bryan Curtis
  posted May 9, 2008
• The Mecca of the Mouse
  Worshipping at the church of Disney.
  Seth Stevenson
  posted March 28, 2008
• The Mecca of the Mouse
  Dispatches from the front lines of travel.
  Seth Stevenson
  posted March 27, 2008
• Vacationing in Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Paradise
  Venezuela's hottest fashion accessory? A T-shirt featuring Che, Fidel, and Hugo.
  Andres Martinez
  posted Feb. 8, 2008
• Search for more well-traveled articles
• Subscribe to the well-traveled RSS feed
• View our complete well-traveled archive

"Does the boat go to Europe, France?"

—Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

When in 1871 James Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York Herald, sent Henry Morton Stanley to Africa to find the missing David Livingstone, who was suffering from that incurable disease wanderlust, a new type of serial travel journalism was born: the journey as journal. Stanley sent dispatches from the field that were received with great enthusiasm by readers, who got a rare glimpse into an unfolding adventure in a land far away and unfamiliar.

"Well-Traveled" brings the seed of Bennett's conceit to the 21^st century, dispatching some of the world's finest writers to distill the spirits of places little known and pouring the concoction onto our digital pages. Today, thanks to satellite technologies and the Internet, we can stretch the bar of the imagination, break the tyranny of distance, and publish our correspondents' spontaneous musings, insights, images, and audio within hours. There is an honesty and rawness to this format not found in the well-tuned pages of travel magazines, and our hope is that we will inspire and illuminate travel in a uniquely satisfying way.

So, join us as we lace the boots, box the compass, and set sail for Europe, France, and ports betwixt and beyond, on the routes less-traveled by our well-traveled band.

And be sure to check out our trips to Kashmir, Zambia, and the Outlaw Trail.

—Richard Bangs, Producer

What is Well-Traveled?

Scandinavia: Design and architecture.

Costa Rica: Exploring Eco-tourism with Natalie Angier.

"Mission to Galápagos": Ruffling feathers in paradise.

"The Blues Highway": Exploring the routes of the blues.

"The Outlaw Trail": tracking the robberies and roosts of Butch and Sundance from Wyoming to Mexico.

"Into the Heart of Africa": the source of the Congo, a journey through Zambia.

"The Road to Kashmir": a trundle through India's Ladakh region on the Tibetan plateau.

Other trips

For our first "Well-Traveled" journey, we trundle through the Ladakh region of Kashmir on the Tibetan plateau. The 12-day trip takes us from Leh, a city of butter lamps and prayer wheels, to the hill station of Manali, to the plains city of Chandigarh. We negotiate an ancient caravan route billed today as the world's highest motorable road—18,380 feet at the pass—and traverse the sharp blade of territory adjacent to borders disputed by India and Pakistan. Bunkered between the world's great ranges, the Himalaya and the Karakoram, it is a land of monasteries and mosques, of lamas and mountain gods, of palaces and tea houses, and of giant glaciers and vast deserts. Often called "Little Tibet" or "Land of the Pure," this quarter of the high world has always been a hidden paradise for the well-traveled, but today even the cognoscenti are away. Join our team as it surveys this Shangri-La and shares the sights, sensations, observations, and interpretations of a frontier intersection of cultures, religions, and politics on the front lines of adventure travel.

The trip

Seth Stevenson, often found shopping for Slate, recently filed a "Diary" from Bangkok.

Jonathan Chester, our field producer, is an expedition photographer and author who has traveled extensively to report on extreme travel. His latest book is The Young Adventurers Guide to Everest, From Avalanche to Zopkio.

Stan Armington, our guide, is one of the pioneers of Himalayan trekking and the author of several definitive guides to the region. He is a director of the American Himalayan Foundation, a member of American Alpine Club, and a fellow of the Explorers Club and Royal Geographical Society.

The team

Longitude: 77.2 E
Latitude: 28.4 N
Altitude: 700 feet

From Manali we head south and soon see our first traffic light. A broken traffic light, yes, but still … a turning point of sorts.

By Sunday afternoon we are in Chandigarh—le Corbusier's planned city on the Indian plain. Imagine Celebration, Fla., but run by the Indian government instead of by Disney. (Result: fewer matching shutters; more dung.) From here, a few hours' train travel brings us to Delhi and journey's end.

So—should you go to Kashmir? Or at least to Ladakh, the part of Kashmir where they're not shooting at each other?

The army uses the Nubra region to resupply the Siachen Glacier battle front
From your breakfast table back home, these conflicts can seem much worse than they are. For instance, I went to Zimbabwe last year. If you listened to Western media reports, you might have assumed that upon arrival I was 1) doused with gasoline; 2) lit on fire; and 3) brutally gang-raped as I burned alive. Yet somehow these events did not transpire, and in fact I had a lovely time.

Similarly, after all the travel warnings and press coverage, one might be a tad scared of India. Few want a guided tour of a nuclear war. Even to me, two weeks on Nantucket sounds nicer than melted eyes.

But for our entire time here—Delhi, Ladakh, and back—we were never scared of violence. Jeep accidents, yes. War and terrorists, no.

That's not to say it couldn't happen. There are constant military brush-ups (one just as we were leaving). You never know if this is the day that war breaks out.

But when you are here and you talk to people, it seems silly to be scared. This stuff has been churning for decades. It hasn't ruined Ladakh. There are plenty of tourists there still, from France and Germany, Israel and Holland. And they're not just fearless backpackers, either—there are middle-aged tour groups about.

In fact, I'd be more concerned with the travel itself. It is far from easy. Just going to India at all you risk "Delhi belly." They seem to give it out at the airport, like leis in Hawaii. And the altitude is harsh, as I found out.

His holiness chanting a prayer
Even if you aren't prone to carsickness (if you are, stay away from these roads), you might try a walking trek. We ended up spending the bulk of our time with each other in a jeep riding from one stunning viewpoint to another. Our trek was designed as a scenic journey, not a cultural one, and I might have preferred more cross-cultural exchange. But we had too few days, and too far to go, and little time to just hang out and make new friends.

If I did it again, I'd take more time here and see less. I could have spent a whole week in the Nubra Valley.

Of course, when you airdrop into a foreign place for 13 days, attempts at cultural analysis are asinine at best. So I'll make no attempt. But I will say this: There was a distinct feeling in Leh. A wonderful feeling. And I think Tibetan Buddhism has something to do with it. Partly, it's the very things we heard the Dalai Lama speak about—selflessness, openness, compassion. People all smile in Leh, and there is warmth you rarely feel elsewhere—even up there in the cold Himalayan air. I will remember it quite fondly.

Would I go back? Back to the mountains, the deserts, the flood plains, the yaks? Good question. I think I'd like to. For the time being, though, my troubles with altitude prescribe a sea-level existence.

Warning signs are every few miles
I do know that if I never returned, I'd never find anything like this again in my life. It is the Himalayas, after all. You don't see them every day. I'll look back at my pictures and remember. But to stand atop an 18,000 foot pass—the roof of the world—while Gurkha soldiers are handing you warm cups of tea, and Germans on motorbikes laugh light-headedly, and the air is so thin it's just space, and Buddhist prayer flags snap in an ungodly wind … Or to kneel among 20,000 as his holiness offers blessings, not far at all from Tibet, where he may never go again … Or to follow a smiling monk as he opens a door, and you kick off your shoes, and you walk with bare feet on a smooth wooden floor into darkness …

PRINTDISCUSSE-MAIL

• Arts & Life
  If Only Aliens Would Abduct the New X-Files Movie
• Arts & Life
  A Great Horror Film About Paper Bags
• Arts & Life
  Brideshead Revisited Is Literature's Finest Schlock
• Sports
  How Michael Chang Ruined Tennis for Asian-
  Americans

• Today's Real Deals
• » More from BudgetTravel

• Today's Headlines
• Can't Go Wrong With A Cheeseburger, Area Man Reports
  Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:00:21 -0400
• Courageous E-mail To Boss In Drafts Folder Since December
  Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:00:05 -0400
• Novak Hits Pedestrian With Corvette
  Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:00:45 -0400
• » More from the Onion

• Today's Headlines
• Poll: Hispanic Voters Back Obama by Wide Margins
  Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:04:26 GMT
• Opinion: Germans See Themselves in Obama
  Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:53:52 GMT
• How the Mosley Orgy Ruling Could Affect U.K. Media
  Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:34:59 GMT
• » More from Newsweek

• Today's Headlines
• Over the Rainbow: Angie and Jo
  Tue, 22 July 2008 16:21:23 GMT
• The New Tavis Smiley, Beware!
  Tue, 22 July 2008 16:27:58 GMT
• Go for the Bronze
  Fri, 25 July 2008 4:18:27 GMT
• » More from The Root