It was my last day in India, and I’d just had lunch with an Indian friend. As I was walking back towards my hostel, I noticed a foreigner standing in the middle of the sidewalk—a rock in a river of pedestrian traffic. He wore raggedy khaki shorts, a green t-shirt with the collar cut out, and brown sandals. His dark curly hair was messy and the shirt was askew—one side of the collar all the way against his neck, the other falling off his shoulder. He was glistening with sweat and he looked obviously distressed.

For whatever reason, his eyes were pinned on me.

I should stop and tell you here that I have a bit of an unwritten traveler’s code I live by:
1) Whenever I’m in a group, if I see a traveler who isn’t, I invite them to join me/us.
2) If I ever see a traveler in distress, I approach them to see if they’re OK or if I can help.
3) If someone approaches me, I always try to be as friendly and helpful as possible.

But seeing this guy on the street made me hesitate. He looked like he was crazy or on drugs, or both. And I had a plane to catch that night… what if he dragged me into some sort of bizarre situation I couldn’t extricate myself from and I missed my flight?

As I approached him, I thought to myself that I had two simple choices in this situation: I can avoid him or I can be Buddha-like and karma-minded and stick to my traveler’s code.

Not that he gave me much of a choice. As I passed, he grabbed my arm and launched into his story, babbling away at me in Hebrew. I stopped him, telling him I don’t speak Hebrew and the story came in a gush of English instead: he needed to find a cheaper place to stay than the one he was in because he was almost out of money and he was sick and his girlfriend had left the day before and they’d been traveling together in India for a year and he didn’t know what to do without her and…

You get the idea.

So I took the poor guy, Amit was his name, and lead him to the Salvation Army Hostel. When we arrived there, Amit stood, wordless at the check-in counter. The clerk looked at us expectantly. I looked at Amit expectantly. Nothing.

“Do you have any beds left in the dorm?” I asked the clerk.
The clerk wobbled his head in response, a gesture that can mean a hundred different things.
“For him,” I added, pointing to Amit.
The clerk wobbled his head again and asked for Amit’s passport.

We both waited while Amit watched the air around him.

Finally, I said, “Amit, your passport, please.”
“Oh!” he snapped to attention and fished through his money belt, producing a beaten looking passport and some tattered rupees.
“Where’s your stuff?” I asked him as the clerk took down Amit’s information.
“Gone.”
“Just gone?”
“Gone,” he repeated.

I thought maybe he was gone, too.

Once Amit checked into his room, I never saw him again. But I like to think that I helped him in some way, however small. It was my duty as a fellow traveler.

What about you? Got some stories about a time you helped a traveler or a traveler helped you? I’d love to hear them…

And if you ran into Amit, let me know how he’s doing!

I was hiking in a wadi in Petra and there came a moment that I realized I was completely and utterly alone.

OK, it was my fault. I’d violated one of those fundamental rules of hiking—the buddy system (and this applies even more so to women). But I’d entered the wadi not too far behind a couple of Spanish backpackers and I’d figured as long as I could hear them, they could probably hear me shouting “ayudame, ayudame, por favor!” if need be.

But I could no longer hear them—the only sounds were the crunch of my footsteps on the pebble-lined river bed and my short panicked breaths.

It occurred to me that maybe I couldn’t hear them because I’d somehow gotten lost. How could I have gotten lost? It’s a dried riverbed in a gorge—there are no turn offs. Or was there a turn off? Did I miss some crucial fork in the road?

I stopped walking and held my breath for a moment, hoping to hear a snippet of their conversation. Nada.

I made a mental inventory of my meager supplies. It had been an impromptu hike and so all I had was a hat, a 1.5 liter bottle of water (half empty), some toilet paper, a notebook, a pen, and a pair of sunglasses.

What will I eat? What will I drink? Will I freeze when the sun goes down?

Maybe I can use the paper in the notebook to write SOS notes—Help! Lost in the wadi!—and fold them into paper airplanes… maybe the wind will pick up one of them and fly it into the path of some tourist.

I hope it’s an English-reading tourist.

Just as I was going to tuck myself behind some low-lying scrub—I figured it best to stay out of the sun as I didn’t have very much water—I heard footsteps coming from behind me.

I turned to face my attacker… and found an American couple from the Midwest instead. “Hey,” they greeted me. “Want to tag along with us?” And just like that, I was saved from certain death.

Later that night, safe and sound in my hotel room in Wadi Musa, the village nearest to Petra, I got to thinking about what I would have really done if I’d been lost in the wilderness by myself. I tend to travel both light and spontaneously…

So maybe carrying these nifty, compact travel gadgets with me might be a good way to avert disaster (and a panic attack):

The SteriPen, a hand held water purifer that is, you guessed it… pen sized. If I could just find a water sourse, I’d be set. No, wait, I’d need something to put the water in. I couldn’t just stick the SteriPEN into the river and sterilize the whole river. And what if I was without a water bottle?

It would be good to have the Carabiner Mug. I could attach it to the outside of my backpack—it wouldn’t even have to take up any precious room that could go to other survival equipment.

OK. Water? Check. But what about food? If I could find a water source, I could probably do some fishing. But how? And with what? And what—I’m supposed to go hiking shlepping a huge fishing rod along with me?

Luckily, there is the Pen Fishing Rod—not only is it compact, it’s cheap.

But once I catch the fish, how will I eat it? Should I fillet it and make some impromptu sushi? Hmmm, it might be smarter to cook it—I mean, how awful would that be to be lost and sick with food-poisoning from improperly made sushi?

So, I’d better bring the Grilliput with me. The Grilliput is a portable grill that, when broken down, can fit inside a small 0.875″ x 11.25″ tube. Brilliant.

And when the sun goes down, I can snuggle up with myself, cup of clean water in hand, inside the Lippi Selk Bag—a wearable sleeping bag. It’s not very compact, so I wouldn’t want to carry it in my backpack, but I could just wear it all the time—as a travel uniform of sorts. OK, so I’d look like a geek or a B-list rapper (especially in the yellow one, like in the picture above) but fashion doesn’t matter—this is survival we’re talking about!

But if I was really smart—which I never claimed to be—I would buy the Voltaic solar-powered backpack. I could throw a GPS in that bad boy, charge it up, and never find myself in the almost-harrowing situation I was in for a few minutes in the wadi in Petra.

Winter blues can drag down even the most upbeat of people. Why? It’s not the cold—the winter blues are actually related to shorter days and the long winter nights. While light therapy is a common and effective treatment to combat the winter blues, Tripbase has some winter vacation ideas for those of you have also been bitten by the travel bug.

Head south… way south:

While the northern hemisphere is experiencing both the shorter days and colder weather of winter, the southern hemisphere is experiencing the opposite—it’s summer and sunshine in half the world right now! There are many great travel destinations south of the equator. Here are a few hot spots that we wouldn’t mind waiting out the winter in:

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Great nightlife, great food… and gorgeous Portenos strutting their stuff down

picturesque streets.

Cape Town, South Africa

Amazing beaches, outstanding bars and clubs and a happening culinary scene.

Sydney, Australia

Fantastic restaurants, fabulous nightlife, and sunny shores.

Or a little less south:

A Caribbean vacation is a great way to beat the winter blues. Check out Puerto Rico, where you’ll find absolutely beautiful beaches, a vibrant culinary scene, and exciting nightlife. Or if you’re a nature junkie, get your fix while you get some sun—head to St. John in the Virgin Islands.

Make like the snowbirds and head to Florida:

Florida is a popular winter destination for tourists all over the United States, Canada, and the world. It’s hard to think of a better place than Miami to wait for the winter to pass.

I recently took a two week trip to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

No trip to Jordan is complete, of course, without a stop at Petra. One of the most interesting and beautiful sites in a region that is absolutely overflowing with historical sites, Petra is also one of the most picturesque. Shutterbug that I am, I got up extra early to head to Petra before the crowds did. I was in luck– the place was nearly empty and the lighting was beautiful.

And I had an “on” day with the camera– it seemed like I could do no wrong, each shot was coming out perfect. I was surprised with myself, but thankful as well, and I said a silent prayer of gratitude to the Camera Gods.

When I arrived in Beirut and started click-click-clicking away again, my memory card hit its capacity. I went into a copy place that, amongst other services, burns photos to CD. I surrendered my full memory card to them, went to breakfast with a friend, and returned an hour or so later.

“We couldn’t put all your pictures on one CD,” the guy behind the counter said, “so we burned it to DVD instead.” He handed me the full DVD and the empty memory card. No problem, right?

Apparently, there was. When I got home, I found a DVD full of blank files– the sizes were there, the names were there, but the pictures were empty. I passed the DVD to several friends– you know, tech types– and they all scratched their heads and said they’d never seen anything like it. One of them asked me if I’d taken more pictures on that same memory card. Indeed, I had. “Ooo, that’s too bad,” he said. “If you hadn’t, there is a way to recover deleted photos.”

Sigh.

As I have been mourning the loss of my pictures– and the memories they captured– I have vowed to never let this happen again. Learn from my lesson and:

1) Carry extra memory cards with you. They’re small, they’re portable. They’re relatively inexpensive. Yes, burning to CD is cheaper, but it’s better to spend a little extra on backup memory cards then to take a chance that what happened to me will happen to you.

2) Find an internet cafe and burn them to CD yourself– cutting out the middleman reduces the margin of error.

3) If you have someone burn them for you, ask to check the CD (or DVD) before you leave. Chances are, they still have your photos on their computer… and if you check the CD and find there is something wrong, you can ask them to burn it again.

4) The best bet? Don’t delete your photos from your memory cards until you get home and see them safe and sound on your computer. Fill memory card after memory card while you’re traveling AND burn to CD as a backup (double-checking the CD after you do so). This way, if anything happens to the memory card, you’re set– and if anything happens to the CD, you’re still set.

However, if both the memory card and CD fails… well, you must have offended the Camera Gods. In which case, you must appease them (and I don’t have any tips for that).

This might seem like a lot of unnecessary precautions, but it’s worth it. It’s not always possible to recover deleted photos. It’s better to be extra careful… better safe than sorry.

Let down your guard once in awhile. On a recent trip to Lebanon, a Tripbase member found herself lost in Tripoli, an area that had recently been rocked by internal strife. Frightened, she searched for a hotel. She stopped in front of a storefront, and puzzled over a map in her guide book. The proprietor came out and offered his help. “Usually, I don’t talk to men who approach me,” this pro of third world travel told Tripbase, “but I’m glad I did. He knew exactly where the hotel I was looking for was.” What your mom told you about not talking to strangers is not always applicable. Yes, there are a lot of bad guys out there—but there are a lot of good people, too.

Landmarks! Use them! You might find that some taxi drivers don’t know street names. It could be that they don’t understand your pronunciation. Or maybe they know the street by some older moniker that is still familiar to locals, but that no longer appears on tourist maps. No matter, if you give a taxi driver a prominent landmark they should be able to get you there. (Learning the local name and correct pronunciation of the landmark will prove to be helpful, as well. In Damascus, for example, what is labeled as Martyr’s Square on tourist maps is known as Al-Merjeh to locals).

Plan on getting lost. Have your hotel or hostel write down the name and street of your lodgings—in the local language, of course—on a business card. One Tripbase traveler found this indispensable in Shanghai. On several occasions, when he couldn’t find his way back to his hotel, he hailed a taxi and handed the card to the driver who had no problem ferrying him safely to his destination.