TRAVELLING ACROSS THE GLOBE, TO GUIDE OTHERS ON... From GOMANTAK TIMES * DOUGLAS STREATFIELD-JAMES (30) studied English at Oxford University, joined the British Army for six years. Then, after "not knowing what to do" he started travel-writing. In February 1998, the Lonely Planet group comes out with their guide-book to Goa. Streatfield-James authored it for a group which today has over 240 titles -- including travel guides, walking guides, travel kits and phrasebooks, travel atlases and travel literature. (Lonely Planet calls itself the "largest independent travel publisher in the world" and specialises in guides to Asia.) Wearing a boyish smile, the soft-spoken author talks to FREDERICK NORONHA about his experiences with travel guides... and Goa. QUESTION: Can we start by hearing from you as to how easy, or how difficult, it actually is to write a travel guide. Specially for a region which one is himself new to? It's a little bit daunting to get started. First of all you have to find your way around basically. But once you've got a grasp on where things are, and how everything fits together, then it's more interesting, and more exciting, and easier. Q: But what are the chances of making errors. After all, when one reaches a new place, everything looks strange and confusing. It also takes time to understand. Are there any tricks to writing good guidebooks? I don't know what other people do for guide-books. On arriving in a place, if it's a small place or a city, I spend the first part of my time walking all around the city. So that I get a really good idea of how everything fits together. Then I can go back and be more specific. About various bits and pieces. Because I have an idea about how the whole fits. It's the same with a larger place. First one needs to get an overall view, and then go back and get (the finer pieces of information). Q: Does it take a lot of time then? It's very labour intensive, because you have to actually visit each place yourself. Or at least find somebody who knows it extremely well and who can tell you about it. So, yes. That takes a lot of time.... Q: In how many areas have you worked so far? I started writing two years ago. I did a guide-book about Central Asia and the Silk Route across Asia, from Moscow to Beijing. A guide book about China. Then, the one on Goa (due for release by Lonely Planet in February) and a guide book about the Pyrenees (the mountain range in south-west Europe separating Spain from France, which has steep slopes on the French side, many resorts and the noted place of pilgrimage called Lourdes). Q: All for the Lonely Planet? No. I've been writing two of them for a friend, and the Goa book was for Lonely Planet. Q: Lonely Planet seems to stand out among travellers. Why? I used Lonely Planet when I first started travelling, and I found it really good. It aimed for the people who wanted to travel independently. It wanted to give them a very good overall view of what they could see, and where they could see it. Without going into too much detail, and without convering unnecessary areas. So, it caters for a particular market and it does it very well. Q: It's not very commercial. It does not seem to push a lot of commercial information on you. It seems to be more reader- dependent rather than advertiser-oriented. Isn't it? In fact, Lonely Planet writers are not allowed to take any form of whatever you call it...hospitality. Or any form of gifts, in return for (writing) anything. Most or all the Lonely Planet writers travel anonymously. So the idea is, you go to each new hotel or place as another traveller. If they treat you well, then you write that they've treated you well. If they've treated you badly, then you write that. Q: Does the publication have a policy against accepting advertisements? Yes, there are no advertisements. So the whole idea is that the travellers should be able to trust it entirely. That there's no other motivation for what's written in the guide-book, other than impartial writers who are giving their honest opinion about whether the places are good, bad or indifferent. There's a huge feed-back mechanism as well in Lonely Planet. (An Internet-based) web-site, and readers' letters. If you write in a letter with good information, you get a free guide-book. So there's a lot of information coming back from readers. Q: It seems that the feedback is taken seriously. In the past there was controversy about Lonely Planet's comments on Goa's 'tolerance' to nudism. But that was subsequently changed... Yes, it's taken very seriously. In preparing for the Goa guide- book, among the reading material I got from Lonely Planet was a sheaf of all the letters received over the last few years. It was upto me to go through and check the details, when I got here, to see whether they were accurate. Q: You mean you've visited all the places that you've mentioned in the Goa guidebook? Yes. Q: How many would that be? (Laughs.) I have no idea. But it took me at least two weeks just to do the listings of hotels and restaurants. Two weeks solidly every day, on a bicycle or motorbike. Just going round each hotel, looking at a room, talking to the owners. Checking everything about it. Q: What were the most interesting things about Goa that caught your eye? Perhaps it was just talking to Goans about what they felt about what was going on in Goa. And the whole question of tourism, the free port. It's really interesting. It was particularly interesting to talk to one person, walk a few metres down the street, and get completely the opposite opinion from somebody else. Both of which were quite well argued, and well thought out. But... Q: Do you feel that Goa has something which makes it different from other tourist destinations? Or is it just the mix which is a bit different? I first came here 12 years ago, and I enjoyed that visit so much, and I definitely felt there was something different. Whether it's now moving towards being like other places... I suppose it is. Q: In terms of Western tourists, and Britons, what is the magnet for them to come here. Just low costs, or something else too? I don't think, it's quite as simple.... Literally over the last three or four days, I've been motoring up and down Goa. From north to south, along all the different beaches and towns. It seems to me -- I may be wrong -- split into different groups of travellers. You've got the package tourists who come here because it's an excellent deal. You've got the sort-of New Age travellers, who come here because of that Goa Legend. And, somewhere in between you've got independent travellers who come here for a variety of other reasons. Q: From here, where? What are you other plans? From here, I'm travelling onto Southern Indian, to go and do some writing about that. Q: Is travel-writing a really challenging field? It has really good days, and really bad days. When it's great, it's brilliant. When it's bad, it's appalling. Q: Would you suggest the field to anyone else? If so, any tips? It's not a ticket to a free meal? No, it's definitely not a free-meal. And the competition in the market is huge. I suppose you have to develop a number of different lines of writing. And not be satisfied with selling to one person. (Laughs) Frederick Noronha Journalist |