The Wanderlust Geek Podcast #3 : December 25, 2005
Next stop: Estonia (Pt. I) ! This is the first part of a two hour recording that I made of my night with a bunch of drunken and song-filled Estonians, in way southern Estonia, near the Latvian border.
Download The Wanderlust Geek #3 (31:15 – 14.4 MB) 
There will be a new edition of The Wanderlust Geek up by this Friday — mostly likely on my trip to Estonia in March 2005! Stay tuned subscribed!
On various occasions, I get pangs of wanderlust that pulsate through my veins. I read about I am in a constant struggle with my general love of the Bay Area and all of the wonderful people and sights that it holds and with my desire to see the world. I have a map of the world in my bedroom and one above my desk at work and am constantly reminded of all of the places in the world that I haven’t been. Sure, I’m almost 24, and I’ve been to more places than most of my peers, but it’s the old Socratic dilemma. The more I see, the more I realize I haven’t seen. I just spent the better part of an hour reading Marie’s World Tour, a site about a 30-something year-old woman who is from New York City. She spent the calendar year of 2001 encircling the globe without using an airplane, and pulled it off pretty well, and even braved Sudan, going from Ethiopia to Egypt. Of course, this doesn’t help that I’m reading The Ends of the Earth, an incredible story about Robert Kaplan’s (of The Atlantic fame) travels in Africa, the Middle East and Asia in 1995. The more that I read about these places, I keep looking at my maps and thinking of places that I want to go.
The trip that I will do sometime in the next couple of years is Istanbul to Bombay, with a possible few month stay in Iran en route, but not long enough (read: three months) so that I get drafted into the Iranian military.
Other ideas/possible routes:
- Istanbul to Tallinn via Odessa (across the Black Sea by ship), Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
- Tehran to Urumqui (Western China), via Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyzgyzstan, and Kazakshstan. (Extra-adventurous edition: continue on all the way across China to Vladivostok, Russia, via northern China.)
- Dakar to Cape Town, staying as close to the coast as possible, via Conakry, Freetown, Monrovia, Abidjan, Accra, Port Harcourt, Douala, Libreville, Luanda, and Walvis Bay.
- Dakar to Djibouti, via Bamako, Ouagadougou, Niamey, Zinder, N’Djamena, Khartoum, and Addis Ababa.
- Caracas to Rio de Janiero, via Georgetown, Paramaribo, Belem, Recife, and Salvador.
- Bangkok to Ulanbaatar, via Chiang Mai, Chengdu, and Baotou.
The New York Times is currently running a great series on the modernization of India, looking particularly at highways and automobiles so far. This section pretty much encapsulates the same dilemma that is going through the rest of the developing world:
India’s state-run rail network may have been built by the British, but it came to represent a certain egalitarianism. Powerful and voiceless, rich and poor – all navigated the same chaotic, crowded stations and rode the same jam-packed trains, if not in the same class.
Cars, in contrast, reflect the atomization prosperity brings.
This is a far bigger change for Indian society than it was for America, which in many ways was founded around the notion of the individual. Indian society has always been more about duty, or dharma, than drive, more about responsibility to others than the realization of individual desire.
That ethos is changing. “Twenty years back one car was an achievement,” said Maj. Gen. B. C. Khanduri, who as minister of roads from 2000 to 2004 helped shepherd the new highway into being. “Now every child needs their own car.”
To him and others who grew up in a different society, that change bespeaks a larger, and troubling, shift. “The value system is finishing now,” he said. “We are gradually increasing everyone for himself.”
The Wanderlust Geek Podcast #2 : December 2, 2005
Today we are off to Turkey! About a month ago, my friend Rebekah Kouy-Ghadosh and I headed off to Turkey. We spent about a week in Istanbul and Neveshir/Cappadocia (central Turkey) about six weeks ago. We recorded our conversation in the first part of the show sitting on the lower level of the Galata Bridge looking toward the Egyptian Market (Small Map of Istanbul), and this mosque in this photo is the first thing you see when looking in that direction. There was a lot of boat traffic coming down the channel underneath the bridge.
Our Anonymous friend from the Ministry of Commerce says that Turkey at times, can be Sovietesque. Check out the website of the Turkish National Railways.
Comments welcome!
Download The Wanderlust Geek #2 (22:30 – 10.3 MB)
The Wanderlust Geek Podcast #1 : November 24, 2005
Welcome to the revival of The Wanderlust Geek!
In this episode my friends Nate “Bhu” Muhler and Lane Rettig chat about what it’s like to spend Thanksgiving outside the United States. You also can email Bhu and Lane.
Download The Wanderlust Geek #1 (31:20 – 21.6 MB)
Welcome to The Wanderlust Geek Podcast!
This is a revival of a podcast that I had started about a year ago. I’m going to try to keep this more regular. We’ll be launching our first podcast tomorrow. Enjoy!