experimental travel

Speaking of books, I've just bought an absolutely lovely travel book. It's called "The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel" and it invites you to forget about package holidays and classic travel routes and predictable journeys and the clutches of tourist traps, in order to follow a potentially more challenging and interesting approach - "a novel approach to travel that starts with a quirky concept and can lead anywhere from Bora Bora to a bus stop". In other words, the book invites to a playful way of travelling, establishing a clear methodology (you're given hypothesis, apparatus, method), but never a clear destination.

The great exercises include and analyse tasks such as "explore the city through the eyes of a chess piece", "discover a city while looking for love", "let Ariadne lead you through the labyrinth of a new city", "explore a city via the lyrics of a famous song that pays tribute to it, using the words as both itinerary and travel guide", "use the number 12 to compose a travel itinerary" and many, many other obstructions, all showing just how wonderful experimental travel can be. All you need is a camera, and the willingness to stay open to interestingness.