 |
  | |
Pacific Northwest Magazine By William Dietrich
Off The Beaten PathsTo experience, feel and understand, these world travelers will take the risks
IMAGINE VISITING a country where there are more than two guns for every three people, which suffers 45 murders and manslaughters a day, which has 70 active militias and 16,000 gangs in 800 cities, which has been at war with someone for most of its existence, and where the elected president has a 1-in-4 chance, historically, of being killed, wounded or shot at. But you don't have to imagine, you already live here, in the United States. And the figures above, taken from the FBI and Robert Young Pelton's book, "The World's Most Dangerous Places," are a way of putting travel risk in perspective. Foreign destinations are often no more fraught with risk than home, sweet home. Apprehension is understandable. Every time you shed your shoes in the post 9/11 airport-security line, you have to ask yourself, "Am I crazy to be getting on an airplane? What if today's the day some nut decides to make a point of his life by sacrificing mine?" Yet statistically, you're in more danger driving to work. More likely to be victimized by crime here in the USA than in most countries overseas. More likely to be hit by lightning than to be killed in a plane crash. And much more at risk for illness, accident or natural disaster abroad than running into a henchman of Osama Bin Laden. Canada did a study and found the most likely cause of death while traveling was (ho-hum) a heart attack. Consider the automobile. Globally, about 1.2 million people are killed and 40 million injured each year in cars, the World Health Organization estimates. Over time, the car has probably killed as many people as the estimated 50 to 100 million deaths of World War II. PHOTO GALLERYU.S. auto fatalities hover around 42,000 a year, an annual carnage approaching the 10-year toll of American dead in the Vietnam War. In industrialized countries, up to 1 in 10 hospital beds are occupied by auto-accident victims. Yet who gives up their car keys? Climb on a motorcycle and you increase your death chance over the car by 16 times, per mile traveled. Yet chopper sales are soaring. We in the news business know there's a disconnect between the deaths that are newsworthy — meaning violent, political, local, sensational, odd or immediate — and deaths that are likely. Since 9/11, roughly as many recreational boaters and bicyclists have been killed — 3,000 of each — as died from terrorism that day. But there are no anniversaries and documentaries, no Hollywood re-enactments, no outpourings of money. We are not fighting a war on boating, or bicycling. The entertainment industry knows how to make its Middle East movie scenes suspenseful: jangly music, veiled faces, narrow alleys, dark rooms, smoke and dust. Yet I've yet to find that mood of menace in the five Islamic countries I've visited: Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey. People there often seem friendlier and more generous than Americans at home. Street crime is lower. The tourism industry tries harder. But their traffic? Now that's terrifying. HUMANS ARE hardwired for novelty, says lifestyle "Work to Live" consultant Joe Robinson of Santa Monica. For some that means summiting Everest, for others, diving into a new TV season. For us as Americans, it means half of all adults have, in the past five years, tried some form of "adventure travel" (a loose term that covers everything from a day hike and kayaking to scuba diving and scaling frozen waterfalls), according to a Michigan State University survey for the adventure-travel industry. "People don't understand how important travel is to our health and sanity," Robinson says. "The brain wants novelty and challenge. Some think a longer gene is what makes us want to see what's over the next ridge. We've created this culture of fear, but what you learn when you get out there is that people aren't waiting to slice you up. What you come back with is not fear but trust." Ted Perkins, 58, of Olympia, flew off to Peru just one week after the August arrests in the alleged British plot to blow up airliners, reasoning that "the risk is less after a scare because of heightened security." He hiked 29 miles on the Inca Trail, reaching an altitude of 14,000 feet. The obvious anthropological question is, Why? "I like to stay in shape, and this is one way to do it," he says. But more importantly, "I enjoyed the people. You get to see the real person behind the layers of costume we hide behind." Sammamish resident Larry Knudsen, 48, had a similar experience in the Peruvian mountains. He encountered an Indian woman and found himself wondering what it would be like to have so little. But before he could speak, she looked at his heavy backpack and asked "what is it like to have the burden of so much?" Knudsen, a financial planner, leaves his family once a year for adventure trips that have "culturally embedded" him with Amazonian Indians and desert Bedouins. "Everywhere I go people are just like us," he says. He was in Kenya four days after the terrorist embassy bombings there and was hugged by a woman on the street who exclaimed, "It's not us!" In Egypt during the recent Israeli war with Lebanon, he found himself in a coffee-shop conversation with eight Muslims and two Christians about regional politics, with no anger or danger. When he lost a fanny pack with $800, credit cards and passports, an Egyptian walked all over a museum to find him and give it back, untouched. "I'd like to understand why people would not want to travel," Knudsen says. Wife Mary prefers to sit out the adventure trips with their three children, going to Europe with Larry instead. Does she worry when he's monkey hunting with the natives in the Amazon jungle? "I don't allow myself. This is something that makes him tick. So much in life is out of our control anyway." Dana Green went with Knudsen to the Sinai Desert in summer and found the 120-degree heat far more challenging than the people. "I learned a lot about the United States in Egypt from a perspective I can't get here," he says. "Immersion in foreign cultures is extremely important." Janice and Peter Harris, who are semi-retired Seattle psychotherapists, have kayaked amid humpback whales in Glacier Bay, trekked in Nepal, rafted the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and toured Mexico and Costa Rica. "I feel a sense of urgency about traveling before things get worse," Janice says, both because of climate change and religious fundamentalism. "We look at what Bush has targeted to destroy next and go there — the Arctic or Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah. I travel because I get sick of American materialism and our attitudes; it's a relief to be away from all the advertising. It's really nice to be in gentle cultures like Nepal and Mexico." She doesn't meet aliens abroad, but rather a kind of mirror. "I feel reassured after a trip," she says. "Ninety-nine percent of the people we meet are good people, just as dismayed as we are about the state of things." Mona Halter of San Francisco, a seasoned traveler to 75 countries or distinct places, left on a 365-day, round-the-world tour in 2002 during the build-up to the Iraq War. "I was treated so well everywhere I went," she recalls. It was the brief era of sympathy to the United States after 9/11, and even Muslims were constantly smiling and waving. "Pakistani women stopped me to ask if Americans hated them. The smiles on their faces were just ecstatic when I said we didn't." Now she's planning to go to Morocco. "My biggest fear now (with the limit to small amounts of carry-on fluids is having my luggage lost and not getting my toiletries." WE LIVE IN an age of travel. In 1955, 46 million people went from one country to another; by 2010 the annual international total is expected to hit 1 billion. Our species has never mingled so freely, and this exchange of experience is what terrifies the terrorists. Travel is liberalizing, and is accelerating global change and homogenization. Risk always exists, of course. According to Pelton's book, about one in 15 Americans dies accidentally or unnaturally, the vast majority near their homes. But if you really want to live recklessly, try smoking. Abroad, 3 percent of all travelers are victims of crimes such as theft, car break-ins or money-exchange scams. Oddly, the risk is usually higher in New York or Rome than in Cairo or Karachi, where Islam and group pressure discourage petty crime. The biggest risk is bacteria and bugs. In a Journal of Travel Medicine survey of 784 Americans going to 123 countries, many of them difficult to travel in, about 5 percent suffered some kind of accident or injury, 10 percent were sunburned, and two-thirds got some kind of illness, most frequently diarrhea. About 6,000 Americans are arrested abroad each year, 70 percent of them for drug offenses. But millions every year consciously trade a stomach upset for the experience of another culture. And most have no other mishap at all. Those Americans who go abroad are still a minority: Only 21 percent of Americans have passports. But there is a growing industry to keep travelers safe and take them to ever-more-exotic or adventurous locations. The State Department publishes travel advisories warning of dangers in specific countries at www.travel.state.gov/travel. The University of Washington's Travel Medicine clinic, at http://depts.washington.edu/travmed, offers a wealth of advice on diseases, vaccinations, planning and insurance. For Europe-bound travelers, Edmonds-based Rick Steves at www.ricksteves.com offers not just tours and advice but, for independent travelers, private trip consultation for $50 per half hour. Many of the travelers we spoke to recommended tours or guides for destinations off the beaten track. The best save money, time and planning hassles, explain what you're seeing and provide help in an emergency. Knudsen and Green used Ruth Shilling, of All One World Egypt Tours, to arrange their Bedouin trip into the desert. Shilling, a musician with a New Age-ish interest in spirituality, often impresses her clients (I was one) with her attention to detail and appreciation for Egyptian culture. To handle risk, she says she depends on "guidance" — call it intuition, instinct, a sixth sense — that she believes comes to people all the time. "How many times do we realize after making some mistake that we had sort of a sinking feeling as we decided to do it?" she asks. "Remember the animals that ran up the mountain to avoid the tsunami? Those indicators are inside us, too." She listens to them. If you don't have confidence in your inner warning system, there are firms like iJET, an Annapolis-based security firm that provides business travelers with intelligence updates on travel risks in 184 countries and more than 200 cities. Depending on the level of service companies sign up for — fees start at $3,500 and approach nearly $1 million — iJET will e-mail warnings of new threats, suggest ways to evacuate or find alternate flights, and give advice on health and culture. "It's like having your own CIA at your fingertips," says Johann Selle, director of operations. With kidnapping and terrorism a chronic problem, more and more Fortune 1000 companies are relying on this kind of 24-hour-response service to ensure employee safety. "There's no reason to stop traveling if you use good common sense," Selle says. "We advise clients sometimes to defer travel, but only rarely not to travel," adds John Thorn, the company's North America manager. Filling a related niche is Worldwide Assistance, a company that provides medical aid, evacuation, help with passport replacement and similar services, its presence often embedded behind travel insurance or tour companies. A medical evacuation from a remote locale can cost $20,000, sales vice president Kirk Voisin says, while insurance programs ranging from $1 to a few hundred dollars per person can mitigate such expense in the rare occasions it is needed. If you can't afford your own CIA, you might make do with tour professionals such as REI Adventures, the Kent-based outfitter that specializes in physical outings such as hiking or kayaking. Manager Cynthia Dunbar says the company hosts about 4,000 customers a year, with Washington ranking behind the Bay Area as REI's biggest travel market. REI picks and chooses its destinations after weighing risk. For example, it chose to forgo Libya at the moment but plans new trips into Nicaragua and Croatia, which not that long ago were war-torn trouble spots. Dunbar, who returned from France one day before the fifth anniversary of 9/11 this September, was struck by how full the airplanes were, and how warm and friendly the French were. "I was amazed at the amount of travel happening," she says. "Every flight was jammed. To get on an airplane these days can be challenging, but I didn't see anyone stressed out or nervous." REI's customers tend to be a resilient lot who "love being outside, love doing muscle-powered activities, and love being away from the tourist crowd and off the beaten track." Janice Harris, 58, was on an REI trip to Nepal and had to return for a family emergency. The company got her home the next day, something she doesn't think she could have pulled off on her own. Terrorism has not deterred travelers, it has made them more determined to connect with other people, says former Seattleite Chris Doyle, spokesman for the Adventure Travel Trade Association, which has hosted its last two conventions in Seattle. The $750 billion spent on adventure travel, he says, is because travelers are seeking a level of authenticity they can't get in a resort enclave. "They want to have a memory they won't forget." Because of this psychology, terrorism — despite blips like the falloff after Sept. 11 — may oddly wind up fueling international travel instead of deterring it. People are fighting the stereotypes by connection with fellow human beings. Reaching out is a way for individuals to battle the ugly American image we have. "Today's reality will not change," Doyle says. "Terrorism is here to stay. People have a choice to be cloistered or to get out and explore the world around them. I think most are concluding that the benefits of travel far outweigh the risks." William Dietrich is a Pacific Northest magazine staff writer. Benjamin Benschneider is a magazine staff photographer.
|
|
PREV
Back to top