Kansas reporter's Southwest Chief train ride

Kansas newspaper, The Wichita Eagle, posted a great travelogue by reporter Mike Hutmacher about his 24-hour train journey from Newton to San Bernadino, California.

Eschewing a harried plane trip, Hutmacher took Amtrak's Southwest Chief train that travels back and forth between L.A. and Chicago.

Hutmacher was prepared to be bored during the day-long journey but he found interesting people to talk with and even enjoyed the dining car experience:

"It was refreshing that I could choose when, what or if I wanted to eat, as opposed to being offered a tray with a stale ham sandwich, a cup of fruit, a bag o' nuts and can of soda."

He also notes that traveling by the rails should become more popular since gas prices continue to go up and more people are looking into alternative forms of travel.

Read the full story: Patience makes Amtrak trip from Newton a rewarding train journey

Slow travel for our 100th post

Ecotravel News is celebrating our 100th post with a story about "slow travel," the ultimate in eco-travel.

Slow travel is essentially traveling without the airplanes that everyone knows are bad for the environment and slowing down and enjoying the journey to the new country.

One man that slow traveled around the world is Ed Gillespie who spoke to NPR recently about his journey:

"'What is the purpose of travel?' [Gillespie] asks. 'Is it about a checklist of sights that we want to go and see? ... Or is it actually about the notion of just getting away? And can we experience that notion of getting away with methods that don't have the same kind of environmental impact that unfortunately flying does?'"

Listen to his interview: First slow food, now a movement for slow travel

Ultimate ecotrip N to S poles emissions-free

Plenty Magazine highlighted an earth-friendly travel story about two young Britons who are in the midst of journeying from North to South Poles using emissions-free vehicles in order to raise awareness about global warming. Although the two lads will trek, ski, bike and sail the entire distance, they are not entirely alone and do have support vehicles:

"Despite their best intentions, the explorers still need a little technological help while working toward their goal. Every night the pair camps and eats locally-grown food cooked on a portable camping stove using natural gas. Their support team’s trailer, which follows the determined duo, has been fitted with a solar panel.

Inevitably there will be “a moderate carbon footprint due to the logistics of such a large expedition” explains [explorer James] Hooper. But this is being calculated and offset as they go."

A much better and ecofriendlier way to make a long-scale sponsored trip than our previous post about the car-safety awareness trip overland Asia.

Go to the expedition website: 180 degrees Pole to Pole
Read the full Plenty article: Going to Extremes

Road trip across Asia, backed by U.N. under guise of promoting road safety

The Driving Home Road Safety 2007 project was the brainchild of two middle-aged Britons who wanted an excuse to travel the new interconnecting Asia Highway roads all the way from Tokyo to London. It was touted as:

"an epic journey along the newly completed Asia-Pacific Highway bringing world attention to road safety awareness and raising money to help save children from deaths and injury on the roads."

The United Nations jumped on board, eager for a way to promote their Make Roads Safe and Road Safety is no Accident campaigns whose purpose are "to help reduce the shocking toll of road-related injuries and fatalities, particularly in developing nations."

The car driven across the countries was a sponsored Aston Martin with advertising labels all over its exterior. The most profound of these stickers were from the U.N. projects in bold white type: "Make Roads Safe" and "Road Safety is no Accident." Since most of the countries they drove through were non-English speaking and - to say politely - developing , most of the people who saw the car probably had no idea what it was all about.

So promoting road safety is one thing, but doing it in a car is environmentally irresponsible. Especially since the number of vehicles in a huge polluting nation such as China are growing rapidly.

The explosion of car use in China is a major environmental concern. According to The Ecologist, just over 15 years ago there were about 1 million vehicles in use. This has risen to 12 million in 2005; and China estimates that by 2020 there will be some 140 million cars in use. Still, right now, that turns out to be about eight car users per 1,000 people; in the U.S. there are 950 cars per 1,000.

Unfortunately because of the new interconnecting road system, this explosion of vehicles can now do just what these two men did, drive around and pollute the environment. To really make the world "safe" the big picture of health and environmental protection needs to be addressed. A flashy campaign to let two thrill-seeking men drive through various developing Asian nations is just a ruse to make people feel good about themselves under the pretense of doing the good for others. These guys probably arose more interest in driving and possessing a car than anything about being so-called safe.

Read the complete diary: Driving Home Road Safety 2007

Lhasa train excites tourists, but with no mention of environmental or cultural controversies

LA Times travel writer Susan Spano recently made a trip on the new-ish train connecting Beijing and Lhasa. Unfortunately it was more about her own personal observations rather than any insight into the environmental and cultural problems that the train line created. Mostly it was "white person in China" drivel such as:

"When it was time to eat, we filed into the dining car for an unappetizing meal served on tin plates: potatoes, cabbage, greens, a slice of Spam, half a hard-boiled egg and rice."

She did mention one line about the controversy of the train exploiting the mineral riches of "Tibet," but without doing the homework of what "Tibet" really is. Tibet proper consists of the provinces Kham, Amdo and U-Tsang. What westerners call Tibet is really the Tibetan Autonomous Region, or TAR, predominantly in the U-Tsang area. Kham and Amdo lie in China. When the Chinese government "liberated" the region of Tibet in the 1950s it sliced through the middle of the historical Tibetan area and created the TAR in 1965 for "administrative purposes." The Chinese slaughtered and drove out thousands of Tibetans including the Dalai Lama for their own selfish ruling purposes. Western nations refuse to do anything about the "Tibet situation" because of their own dealings with cheap labor and manufacturing that China represents.

The train to Lhasa has brought cultural and environmental concerns. Firstly, it will bring more of the Han Chinese (the predominant chinese ethnicity) to distill the already distilled Tibetan culture. A major health concern from this is the heightened risk of HIV/AIDS which could blossom under the "frontier-like" conditions created by the railway construction and subsequent tourist industry.

Secondly, the environmental concerns of building and running a train over previously undisturbed natural areas has been addressed by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The embassy released a 2003 report criticizing the Chinese so-called environmental protection during the building process. The protection and health of the natural tundra and native species disturbed during the building of the rail line were of major concern. Another key point was the long-term effects hundreds of travelers will have on the delicate eco-system. Where will the waste and garbage be disposed of? How will the train disturb wildlife's natural migrations? And what will be built to support the tourists at proposed rest stops during the train ride?

Glad to see that for western writers the thrill of the train ride is much more important than what the full cost of the train line really represents.

Read more about the entire region of Tibet: The Government of Tibet in exile
Read the U.S. Embassy report: Environmental protection along the Qinghai-Tibet railway
Read the full LA Times article: Beijing-Lhasa Express the train ride of a lifetime

Stay tuned for more "white person in China" stories from Ms. Spano because the paper touts that luckily she: "will take us behind the scenes in Beijing, from its hutongs to its luxury hotels. She will also explore lesser-known corners of China that are made for the cultural and adventure traveler."