Go2Go2Go2
^{Travel Exhortations by Ric Carter}

BAD TRAVEL GUIDES:
  Where Not to Go, What Not to Do — the complete series

Following is a sketch or outline for a proposed series of travel guides to the possibly worst possible (or at least very terrible) places you could visit, journeys you could undertake, travel adventures you could experience, etc. The subjects listed below are among the more or less obvious at this time (late 2005).

It is of course impossible to ever complete such a series of guidebooks. Destinations and routes and people may improve, or what is more likely, may deteriorate. New absolute worst (or at least utterly repulsive) places and routes and scumbags people may appear on the scene. 'Twould be a task of Sisyphus to maintain a current list.

NEW YORK CITY

This paradigm of urban decay has dropped from many WORST PLACES lists in recent years, replaced in the US by Detroit, Miami, Pittsburgh and Houston. Yet the sheer scale of its noisiness and noisomeness keeps it always in the top ranks. A visitor to New York City may reliably expect the following:

• Being ripped off by aggressive and nearly incomprehensible cabbies, street merchants, selk-styled financial advisors and travel guides, panhandlers, and petty bandits posing as civic officials;
• Being literally attacked and robbed by desperate junkies, street gangs, windshield wipers, and similar carjackers. Many of these assailants may have dark skins, but this is as likely due to urban pollution as to genetics.
• Being physically assaulted by heedless drivers, noxious fumes, objects and/or bodies falling from tall buildings, and the very collapse of decayed buildings and bridges and towers and other infrastructure.
• Random labor stoppages ('strikes') by providers of public and private services may at any time leave you immersed in uncollected garbage, unmoving taxis or buses, uncrossable bridges or tunnels, unloaded docks, etc.
• The mountain of garbage on Staten Island, although no longer being supplemented, may at any time succumb to the internal pressures of gases of decomposition and turn volcanic, to erupt or explode or burn ceaselessly.
• [List a borough-by-borough, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, slum-by-slum rundown of hazards.]

THE SILK ROAD

This once-fabled route from the shores of the Caspian Sea to the outer reaches of brilliant Cathay now traverses a string of former Soviet republics familiarly known as "The Stans" ruled by some of the most vile and corrupt individuals and bureaucracies ('gangs') on the face of the planet. What used to be exotic, intriguing, exciting, become rapidly less enticing when some local warlord wants your head on a pole, to show what happens to outside agitators. But come to think of it, this is what that route has ALWAYS been like — accessible to insiders only, death for outsiders.

• TAJIKSTAN: The ancestral home of the apple; more varieties here of apple trees than the rest of the world combined. This is then the likely locale of the Garden of Eden, if you believe that the Tree of Life bore apples that Adam and Eve munched. Now, just across the border from Afghanistan, it's a US military base (which many locals resent). Seek your Eden somewhere else.
• KAZAKHSTAN: The ancestral home of the Cossacks; much misused by the Soviets, who dumped all sorts of wastes here. The once-lively Aral Sea is now a toxic cesspool, thanks to water diversions. Otherwise the landscape ranges from steppes to dustbowls to areas where space-missile debris lies scattered around. But its not as desperate as its neighboring Stans.
• TURKMENSTAN: Ancestral home of the Turks, now ruled by the craziest, most egocentric despot since Stalin, who has proclaimed himself Father of the Homeland, and who cruelly slaughters anyone who dares to blink. If not for the oil (and more US military presence) this place would make North Korea look like Eden.
• OTHERSTANS: I'll get to them when I have time and stomach for the writeup.

MEXICO CITY

The largest urban agglomeration in the Americas shares many of the characteristics of NEW YORK CITY (above) combined with even worse air pollution (spewing from millions of Volkwagen Bug taxis driven by homicidal maniacs and/or ruthless kidnappers), undrinkable water (and the wine ain't very good either), incredible overcrowding (caused by a massive influx of impoverished peasantry from the neglected countryside), rampant corruption (the pickpockets are more honest than the cops and government officials), and unspeakable aural assaults (every shop and store has a TV or sound system with the VOLUME TURNED UP AS FAR AS IT WILL GO).

Mexico City can be reached by air (if your plane doesn't crash and if the airport isn't too badly damaged by earthquakes and if you aren't robbed and/or killed as you enter or leave the terminal), or by ground (after your vehicle has passed successfully through innumerable military checkpoints — see THE MILITARY CHECKPOINT — you weren't suspicious, were you?), or on foot (if you weren't run over by a car, truck, bus, army tank, ox-cart or motorcycle). But you really don't want to go.

ANY THIRD-WORLD DICTATORSHIP

Unless you are a member of the Peace Corps, a humanitarian NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) such as an international charity, or an invasion or occupation military force, you REALLY want to avoid states recently and/or currently run by ruthless despots. Besides the Stans (mentioned above) and former and potential members of the Axis of Evil (North Korea, and especially Iraq and Iran and their neighboring countries), you'll probably want to stay away from:

• * most other oil-exporting nations
• * kleptocracies and theocracies
• * anyplace run by generals
• * Burma aka Myanmar
• * Sub-Saharan Africa
• * Texas and Florida

Regions experiencing rebellions-insurgencies or anarchy, such as Somalia, FARC-controlled Columbia, southern Sudan, Papua New Guinea, etc, are also best avoided. New Guinea rates an extra star because of the many disappearances attributed to cannibalism. You should certainly stay away from locales where the possibility exists that your 'hosts' might eat you.

YOUR OLD NEIGHBORHOOD

Thomas Wolfe or Mann or whomever had it right: You can never go home again, especially not in a fast-changing America. The lanes and paths you used to roam as a child have now been torn down and rebuilt and covered with mini-malls and cheezy apartments and convenience stores and parking lots. The rural acres that once drenched you with a love of nature are now trophy-home estates or gated communities or industrial parks. Your old block now teems with members of one or more ethnic-religious-social groups you had never even heard of when you were a child. Remember that narrow road where you and your friends clowned on bikes and skates? It's become a six-lane expressway lined with franchise shops and trailer parks.

Everyplace you look, everyplace you knew, has changed, and not for the better. Stay away. STAY AWAY! You'll only break your heart if you go back. Look to the future; your past is gone forever.

SINISTER PARANORMAL DESTINATIONS

Certain adventure destinations are best avoided. Stay away from the old Nazi Antarctic Flying-Saucer Base, where the Third Reich's super-scientists built their lunar spaceport. It's still heavily guarded and lethal to approach. For similar reasons, don't try to penetrate the US Space Command's UFO test facility at Area 51, Nevada, nor the HAARP transmitter sites in Alaska,

You can more safely approach old Russian military-space facilities, provided you pay appropriate bribes. Mexico's Zone of Silence is also fairly safe, provided you have the proper guide. See NO, NOT HERE for guidelines for other adventure travel to avoid; but generally, any place you've read about in the paranormal press that is surrounded by fences, guardposts, and signs warning that you will be killed if you pass, are best left unexplored.

ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC IN WINTERTIME

Unless you have massive organizational and logistical support, or are compelled to be there, or are a ruddy masochist, hanging around the polar regions during nocturnal totality (the months of no or little sunshine) is probably not a good way to spend a vacation.

Forget about the friggin' polar bears and giant walruses and iceworms and alien phenomena and wendigos and all that — just think about your toes and fingers falling off; and humidity so low that the slightest static discharge (caused by your movements) near a fuel container can blow you up; and, at best, being stuck for an extended period in a small cramped cold (yet often overheated) smelly space with a crowd of overstuffed, opinionated, smelly people you can't get away from except by throwing yourself into the icy wastes and dying. Some folks find this kind of life interesting, even exciting. Let them have it, then.

MOJAVE, BORON, AND BARSTOW, CALIFORNIA

These three towns are strung west-to-east along California's state route 58, from overrated Tehachapi Pass out towards the sink of the Mojave River. Between Boron and Barstow, route 58 crosses US Highway 395 at Kramer Junction. Just north of there is a state prison. There is a good reason to build a prison here: this is by far the most miserable precinct of California, maybe of the American Southwest. The only worse prospect than a visit here is to go south to the Salton Sea and throw yourself into its toxic steaming waters.

The town of Mojave actually isn't a total loss — visitors can stare at the vast mothballed air fleets, mile upon mile of surplus airliners left to bake in the scorching hot sun. Nearby dry lake beds are used as makeshift spaceports and thus attract crowds for launching-landing events, said suckers often renting overpriced rooms in nearby miserable accommodations. And Barstow aka Barstool sits at a juncture of interstate highways, with many facilities specializing in separating travelers (especially those going to and from Las Vegas) from whatever money they have left in their pockets.

But Boron, California, on a hot summer's day, is an unrelieved hellhole, especially when you're waiting for a lethargic and I'd-rather-be-any­where-else mechanic dawdles whilst purportedly effecting repairs upon your injured vehicle. Your options: sit in the heat as diesel fumes waft in from the highway; or walk around, looking at such 'sights' as dead vegetation, crumbling houses, smouldering litter, the usual detritus of human occupation of a waste place; or sit in a nearby 'lounge' sipping overpriced drinks as stinking locals regale you with their pathetic histories; or call a tow truck and pay to be hauled 50 miles to Barstool, er Barstow, where at least the repair shop's air conditioning might work. Boron goes far beyond Boring; it rates its own unique star.

(to be continued)