GUERILLATRAVELER . . .BECAUSE IT'S THERE . . .
It's a different voice with a different message. There is a great deal of new material on guerillatraveler (more than 1 million google references) now. Follow the blog--one of the best on the Net and read entertaining as well as thought-provoking stories. High Quality writing and fresh viewpoints are guerillatraveler. Guerillatraveler goes everywhere. Why do we do it? "Because it's there" is the GT motto. Nowadays we are all "guerillatravelers," the concept which WRR originated in Green's Hotel in Peshawar in November 2001 in a most uncertain world. Would that the world were more certain now, but it hardly seems to be. A guerillatraveler travels for the sheer pleasure of it with a spirit of adventure and a sense of exciting and desire to explore the unknown. The way we live now is more precarious than ever. The future is uncertain in all of its aspects. Today we are facing unprecendented problems. Frightening events seems to be encroaching on every front. Without doubt we are headed into a new age. The crises we face in climate change, disease, resource depletion along with rapidly increasing population, terrorism, civil wars, financial disasater and ever-increasing FEAR of what the future holds. Do we know too much or too little? The coming years hold challenges beyond imagination. The choices that are made now will decide our destiny for the coming centuries. There is an unparalleled sense of urgency. Yet we have no choice but to move forward. Let our individual actions each be a part of the solution. Institutions may have taken on a life of their own, yet we still hold the key individually and through positive combination to face down and conquer our fears. The future is not out there somewhere beyond. The future is now. And we are all in that sense guerillatravelers on the cusp of the unknown. We are all in this together.
WISH YOU WERE HERE published in English and Polish in the same cover with a free CD bonus track to listen to while you read. You've never read anything like this collection of GUERILLA TRAVELER adventures on the road from Afghanistan to England, from the Amazon to Petra, from eastern Europe to England and many other places. A collection of 14 stories previously published multiple times in various international papers and magazines in ten different countries.
Some travel writers live the life of luxury laying back in five-star hotels with a Magarita at their side while they pontificate about the world. But that isn't how interesting stories are found. Getting good stories needs writers who are willing to put themselves into the firing line, quite literally in some cases. WRR is one of those writers. The self-styled "Guerilla Traveler" lives his life "on the road" and this book is a selection of postcards sent from that destination. Places as diverse as the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, a tropical island off the coast of Brazil, and an English cricket match. Other writers want to get the story. Richardson wants to be the story. Not that there is anything wrong with that, his views on the world are usually rather entertaining and he does know when to let the story take center stage. Some people will doubtless be put off by the slightly Smart Alec approach. The simple fact is that the author most probably is smarter than most of his readers . . . This is a book which you should really get your hands on. For all of its stylistic failings, it is well worth reading, even if it does take a good thirty pages to hit its stride. As you go further it gets better with the best (of the writing, the author and the stories) saved for last.
Wik (Warsaw and Culture) magazine
"William Roderick Richardson tells it like it is. He does not write from the couch, and he does not get his ideas from the local book club or late-night television shows. He lives hard, writes hard--and is sometimes outrageous and often brilliant. But in a world full of travel writers who should probably just go back to selling insurance, it is refreshing to read someone whose last story may actually be his last story. I believe that is how it is supposed to be, and this is where Richardson undoubtedly excels."
Preston Smith, editor Interfax News Agency Central Europe, in Poland Monthly magazine
"Most reporters set out just to get a story. The thing that makes Richardson different is that he doesn't just get any story. He gets THE story."
Jorg Droll, Managing Editor Maxim magazine, Munich
"Acutely observed"
Newsweek Poland
"A thoroughbred reporter." Dziennik, daily newspaper, Poland
You can order WISH YOU WERE HERE by sending an email above.
A different voice . . . a different message.
____________________________________________________
Fans of Guerilla Traveler speak out at Cannes Film Festival
SPIRIT OF THETIMES
14 Jun 2009
More >
William Howard Richardson Obituary: An Uncommon Common Man
“If you’re not five minutes early, you’re late.” That was Bill Richardson all over. He stuck to things. He was persistent. He tried to do the right thing, yet was honorable enough to admit when he was wrong. He prided himself on his memory. He remembered faces and names and numbers. He looked out for others, whether friend or stranger. He provided. He liked to make things: fences, gardens, money. He was always good at his job. He listened to others before he made his mind up, then did what his conscience demanded. His flaws were fewer than his strengths. He liked to laugh, but was not afraid to cry.
10 Jun 2009
More >
It's time to go . . . The long black car is waiting . . . And fifty miles away the earth is waiting for the ashes . . .
02 Jun 2009
More >
Warsaw: Things happen. It's been that kind of year--full of connections and disconnections. I see dark and exciting days ahead . . . There are no leaders worthy of the name . . . It's a shame . . . Keach's playing Lear at the Kennedy . . . My father's dying in that clean room near the coast . . . I'm flying between the past and present . . . Knowing that each step forward is the future . . . There used to be a time when time meant nothing . . . That's youth . . . But now I hear the ticking like the beat of my heart . . . Lear rages against Fate and falseness of family . . . The human race disgraces its own image as Da Vinci said . . . But there are moments . . . The nurse called just before 1 AM . . . I knew what it was . . . I'd seen my Dad like a fish out of water gasping for breath . . . An angel in the form of a woman I know had told me what to expect . . . Those last breaths signal the end . . . Our eyes can hardly believe what they take in . . . I think of my father . . . I think of Lear . . . I think of what has been and more often of what will be . . . The sun is up now . . . But soon it will descend into the marshes where it lives at night . . . I recognize those slender strands of grass . . . The muck beneath is fit only for stork's feet . . . A man sinks in . . .
11 Mar 2009
More >
Archive »
Asheville, North Carolina: The topic is the present Crisis and all that goes with it, that most depressing subject, the one we are all caught up in and sick of already. The world economy will shrink this year for the first time since 1945. Some guy killed a bunch of people in Alabama yesterday. Ditto some guy in Germany. Revenge. A cave-dwelling family might or might not have to move out of their cave.Four states are over 10% unemployment: California, Michigan, South Carolina and I foget the other. The Stock Market is up. Now its down. . . Rightwing talk radio is going off on the President, stem cell research and Congress while telling everyone to buy gold because our currency sucks. The happiest state is Utah and the unhappiest is West Virginia (Take me away country roads). . .Enough. . . I'm broke but Im happy. Penury can be liberating!So I drove down here from Hampton Roads westward on I64 past Charlottesville and Jefferson's home at Monticello, past Wintergreen where my cousin lived and maybe lives still (He was running the restaurant at the golf club but then disappeared into Montana of some such place a year ago), on to Staunton where I turned left and headed south along the beautiful spine of the Blue Ridge mountains, the ones separating Virginia from West Virginia, and further south on I81 down the long western length of Virginia through Roanoke and Blacksburg, all the time the sun burning down promising early spring as you traverse those fine rolling mountains with the endless farms and small towns, blue grass fiddling on the radio, even a song by the grandson of the Carter family (Keep on the Sunny Side) who is of course a relative by marriage of the true Man in Black, Johnny Cash, until I finally hit Tennessee at Bristol, cruised on to Johnson City and turned left on I26 which picks its way through high passes through the highest part of the mountains east of the Mississippi, arriving in Asheville as the sun was setting behind the hills.