How to cultivate positive travel karma. By Ethan Gilsdorf

The Boston Sunday Globe, June 4, 2006

There’s a wry poem by Donald Hall called “Scenic View” which imagines that a favorite mountain vista gets “paler and more distant” every year as sightseers’ picture-taking “sucks color out." This has tragic consequences: the mountains become “unseeable peaks/fatal to airplanes.”

It’s an exaggeration, of course. But Hall is onto something about the way travelers interact with vacation destinations.

To me, nothing is sadder than seeing hordes of visitors disgorging from a bus, buying souvenir bric-a-brac and focusing only on photo opps. They then satisfy themselves as having "been" somewhere or “done” a place.

While I’ve certainly taken my share of snapshots and opted for resort vacations or package tours, on principle, whenever possible, I avoid becoming a passive tourist. Rather, I try to cultivate curiosity through knowledge and involvement.

In the 18 years since my first big gulp of international travel --- a round-the-world jaunt as a college student through Europe and Asia --- I’ve been lucky enough to have lived in three countries and trekked, trained, driven, and flown through 27 others. From balmy Caribbean Anguilla to Cold War Hungary, from a miserable week in a Mexican tourist trap to a memory-laden month-long home stay in Japan, I’ve been blessed with unique, rewarding, and almost invariably positive experiences.

I’d like to think this positive karma comes from the cultivation of good travel habits and pointers I've picked up on how to travel well. I’d even say a travel philosophy of sorts has been slowly forming in my head over the years.

I realize one’s point of view is governed by the reason for travel. Some people are perfectly happy spending their rare days off sequestered at a beachside resort, lolling in the sun while being waited on by smiling locals who speak decent English. They don’t want to mess up their vacations with the unexpected.

Fair enough. I’ll probably never convince this contingent there’s a difference between a tourist vacation and travel.

For me, instead of taking a luxury, air-conditioned tourist bus and leaving the locals behind in a smear of diesel smoke, I’m all for turning travel into an adventure, a mission, a quest. Hiking 95 miles across Scotland. Ignoring the guidebook and dipping into that mystery stew in Guinea. Daring a ferry boat from Hong Kong to Lantau Island in the South China Sea.

These leaps need not be death-defying or extreme. In travel, taking any chance ---- however minor ---often leads away from the predictable, pre-packaged, and often disappointing tourist-centered experience, and more toward real connections with people and culture -- if your mind is prepared.

Here’s an example. Take a look at your map of Destination City X. Study it. Invariably, those smaller streets will correspond to the oldest part of the city. That makes them interesting. But beware of zones where lots of English is spoken, where tourists amble by in a confused daze blankly reading menus as hucksters promise fine-dining and a “table just for you.” Search out quieter, less neon lit streets. They often take you to where the locals eat. The corollary to this rule: If there’s a genuine line-up in front of a bakery, restaurant, or nightspot, it’s probably for a good reason.

Of course, my “let’s try this” strategy has not always worked out well. I've had Chinese schoolchildren pelt me with rocks. I nearly killed myself in St. John scaling a cliff in flip-flops. And I almost spent a chilly night in France’s Gorge de Verdon when that trail to a supposed shortcut disappeared as dusk fell.

A miserable bout of dysentery in India and a bone-rattling bus ride in the northern Thai highlands also come to mind. But largely, my improvisational approach has yielded good results -- and good stories.

My strategies for encouraging good travel karma break down into three categories: planning, tactics, and attitude.

Travel planning

*Enjoy the planning stage. Explore ideas by talking to other travelers who have been where you are going and by reading novels and watching movies set in your dream destination. Read up on history and culture. Develop a quest: “In search of the best french fries in Belgium.”

*Buy the right guidebook. Fodor’s isn’t appropriate for the backpacker set; nor is "Let’s Go" going to make any sense if your idea of a holiday is cruising the Riviera shopping for jewelry. Bring more than one guidebook and compare notes.

*Develop a flexible itinerary. Have some set plans and bookings, but leave some days and nights free. Don’t get bent out of shape after a missed train or bungled hotel reservation. Be open to change and opportunity will be open to you.

*Think like a local. At home, you’d avoid downtown on Saturday afternoons and the auto route during rush hour. Expect the same population patterns on your vacation. Research public holidays. Hit the beach mid-week.

Travel tactics

*Discover hidden gems. Cities are clever at directing you to monuments, museums, and shopping zones. Ignore tourist office advice, take those narrow streets that lead to unknown places. Be wary of package tours, canned culture, anything put on just for tourists.

*Be smart. Be cautious and find out about unsafe neighborhoods. But be confident, too. Don’t let fear of trying something new (or a “bad experience”) paralyze your vacation.

*Be willing to walk. Feeling trapped by mobs of other Americans? It's guaranteed: Within a 10 minute stroll, you can find yourself a silent leafy square or pristine patch of beach.

*Pace yourself. Mix cities with crumbling, out-of-the-way villages. Stay put for a few days and engage yourself with the sense of place. Those two-week whirlwinds of Europe leave you needing a vacation from your vacation.

Travel attitude

*Ask questions. Interact with the locals, but don’t make fun of them, and don’t expect them to speak English. Cultural differences, and misunderstandings, are great ice-breakers. Be open to embarrassing yourself.

*Reserve judgment. Don’t expect your vacation experience to duplicate your gas, food, and lodging back home. In France, forget pancakes and eggs for breakfast. Cafés are full of smoke, so deal with it.

*Fit in. Leave that beer-slogan T-shirt behind and keep your shouting to emergency use only. Even in the countries where everyone seems to speak English, it is polite to learn and use a few local words like hello and thank you.

*Enrich your experience. Interacting with a destination doesn’t have to be about purchasing souvenirs. Be curious. Enhance your travel through knowledge, reflection, and honoring history, rather than consumerism. Avoid American fast food.

*Participate in your trip. Engage in your temporary nation. Don’t send back the sea cucumber stir-fry at Shanghai restaurant: eat it. If that Icelandic couple you meet proposes a night of drinking tequila shots and nightclubbing, go for it. You’ll be rewarded in countless ways.

To continue to find “authentic” experiences abroad, I advise travelers to keep their ears to the ground. I remind myself of this all the time: get off the pool-side chaise, and into the crooked streets of that mysterious city. You could be the discoverer of the next new thing, before everyone else (including

travel writers like me) knows about it.

Five-star stays and nine-course meals at Le Meurice in Paris or a rustic camping site in the Greek Cyclades in gale-force winds -- it doesn’t matter. The riches of a travel experience aren’t measured by trinkets purchased or the length of a credit card statement, but by the list of names and addresses of the people you’ve befriended, and the number of anecdotes you can recall once you’re safely back home.

Happy trails.

Contact Ethan Gilsdorf, a freelance writer and poet in Boston, through his website, www.ethangilsdorf.com.