blog de turismo: The great journeys issue

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Lonely Planet Comet
The great journeys issue

A weekender down the coast or a few days living it up in New York might put the zing back in your schlepp, but what about those big, hardy, cut-loose trips that fine your fettle and test your mettle? This issue is all about the epic experiences that change your landscape forever.

Iconic trips - the Trans-Siberian, the Amazon - you get the drift

Get your peak on - trips that test the best

The road to romance - follow your heartsteps

Pilgrimages - heeding the call within

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Iconic trips

Let's take a look at the heavy-hitters of the travel world - the big fat famous ones that everyone dreams about.

If the idea of travelling the 6400km-long Amazon thrills you, here's how to tailor a do-it-yourself trip down the famous river. Or if you want to jump aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Thorn Tree has all kinds of tips, as well as up-to-date schedule and booking info from travellers.

Road trips are the ultimate iconic journeys, and here are ten of the best. Of course Route 66 is the daddy of them all - if you cruise it and find it's left tyre tracks on your heart, why not adopt a hundred miles of it? You can, you know.

Venerable though it is, Route 66 is a mere whipper-snapper compared to the Silk Road:

'Make the long journey from the west and follow in the footsteps of the old Silk Road, passing yawning caravanserai where hundred-strong camel trains used to bed down. Once arrived, there’s an agreeably wild frontier feel as Kurdish herdsmen drift through, and by night the talk in the coffee-shops turns to rumours of PKK fighters in the hills.'
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The gap year is fast becoming a classic - it's that post-study, pre-work adventure that sees thousands of travellers loading up their backpacks and crossing off entire calendars overseas. If you're in for the long haul, there are lots of ideas and advice on the Thorn Tree, as well as in Lonely Planet's Gap Year Book.

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Staff tip:

'After eating a dodgy shellfish before walking the 40km Inca trail, I discovered that chewing cocoa leaves helped both a funny tummy and hitting heights of 4215m at Warmiwañusca (Dead Woman's Pass - fittingly). Well worth it to see mysterious Machu Picchu on the final day. And even more worth it to sit on a toilet.'
- Lou

Get your peak on

Some of us are the silken-cushion-and-shady-tree kind of travellers...and some of us are the sand-in-the-teeth, wind-in-the-hair, K2-for-breakfast types. If you're more into adrenaline than coq au vin, try a downhill cycle from Everest to Kathmandu, push (bike) it real good from Paris to Cairo, or make a pilgrimage to one of the world's top mountains.

Want your thrills a little faster? Thrash a second-hand car through the desert on the Plymouth to Dakar Rally, stock up on good tips for driving through the Australian outback or hop aboard a classic Royal Enfield motorbike for a road trip through Southern India.

Feel every blister of an Inca Trail trek

Watch it!

Get a glimpse of the Trans-Siberian

Not your average Indian road trip

Sahara

Bolivia's Death Road

The Ghan, Australia

The road to romance

If you want to make the big commitment but feel your guest list would be incomplete without Elvis or a Klingon, Vegas may be the destination for you. Here are all the dos and don'ts of the I dos. If the idea of getting married in the searing Nevada heat doesn't thrill you, you can always get hitched in Antarctica - the penguins come so well-dressed.

Tyler MacNiven thought the best way to impress a girl was to run the length of Japan, her home country. Once the girl was suitably smitten, he set his running shoes towards Iran.

Anyone who's seen Brief Encounter will know the quaint romance of an English train station. The black-and-white charm may have faded but train travel in Europe still has that certain je ne sais quoi.

Staff story:

'I’m not sure you could call walking for six weeks across Spain carrying 15kgs each ‘romantic’. But when your partner asks you to marry him after weeks of hard slog, mud, howling winds, shouting, crying, and the occasional scream, I guess you know your relationship has stood the test of some things.'
- Ruth

Pilgrimages

What's your travel Mecca? Building your journey around a theme can give it heft and shape. Have a 'look on my works, ye mighty, and despair' moment as you tour the sites of the world's once-great empires, or follow the blazed trails of famous explorers. Are rock stars your idea of a god worth the worship? Homage it up on a rock pilgrimage. More the bookish type? Get it off the page and onto the road as you recreate famous journeys from literature.

Staff tip:

If you're walking the Camino del Santiago [the famous pilgrim trail that ends in Spain] take a rock from your homeland. Between Astorga and Ponferrada in northwestern Spain you'll come across the Cruz de Ferro (the Iron Cross). If you leave the rock at the foot of the cross it signifies a letting go of something negative - letting go of fears, getting over broken relationships.
- Rachel