Bhutan, the officially happy country, photograph by Steve Evans

Destination: Anywhere

Book: The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner

A Guest Post byEllen Barone

I’ve been insufferable since I started this book. Just ask my husband. I can’t shut up about it. I highlight passages like a type-A student prepping for a big exam. I quote from it at the coffeehouse. I twitter my favorite factoids. I’m as smitten as Jared Bibler, the loveable 20-something expat from Boston the author meets in Iceland.

Equal parts travel, humor and self-help,The Geography of Bliss is as funny as it is enlightening. Weaving together analytic statistics with keen observation, Eric Weiner, a longtime foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, presents an intelligent and entertaining look at the cultural habits that contribute to, or detract from, the happiness of its citizens.

As you may imagine, defining happiness is tricky business, but Weiner lets the people he meets across four continents tell what it means to be happy in their particular corner of the globe. Even in Moldova, a decidedly unhappy place, Weiner’s dry wit has us laughing with the Moldovans, not at them.

It’s not an uncommon dream, to spend a year traveling the globe or to write a best-selling book. Weiner not only accomplished both with an admittedly harebrained experiment, but he also manages to turn our initial envy into rock solid admiration. Damn him!

I loved rambling with Weiner to places like India, where happiness and suffering live side-by-side; Bhutan, where the king has made Gross National Happiness a national priority; Switzerland, where residents believe envy is the great enemy of happiness; and Iceland, which despite its cold climate, geographic isolation and propensity for failure, is among the world’s happiest places.

The Geography of Bliss, however, is much more than a travelogue. Lurking behind a global romp, Weiner provides the reader with wise and witty commentary of that alluring, sneaky concept known as happiness.

Better yet, Weiner sprinkles the book with the type of geeky travel trivia I feel compelled to share unsolicited with total strangers.

• Did you know, for instance, that the Swiss didn’t give women the right to vote until 1971 – in one canton, or state, until 1991?
• Or, that the word “utopia” has two meanings? It means both “good place” and “nowhere.”

As I read this book a sense of delight sneaked up on me, a feeling so much like that which I experience when I’m on the road that, at home, I almost don’t recognize the sensation. But then, I got it. Traveling inspires in me a heightened awareness, acceptance and newfound appreciation for differences. And that’s the magic of this book. Without logging thousands of miles, enduring the noon darkness of Iceland and the blazing heat of Qatar, the fastidiousness of Switzerland or the chaos of India, I’m left feeling like I’ve been on a wonderful, epic journey.

Ellen Barone

Travel expert Ellen Barone did what many of us only dream of doing: at the age of 35, she traded a successful academic career for the wild blue yonder and set out to explore the world and herself. In the decade since that intrepid decision, she has turned passion into profession, journeying to more than 60 countries in search of evocative images and life-enriching adventures. For more travel ideas, tips, and deals, sign up for FREE updates at her website www.ellenbarone.com

Wow! Thanks, Ellen for an inspiring post. I love your definition of what travel does for us. And, damn it, now I’m going to have to add another book to my TBR pile!

So, reader, what is the happiest country you have been to?? Let’s make a list! I would have to say, for me, it is the island of St. Lucia, where the national motto seems to be “Every ting’s gonna be awwww-right!”

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Mumbai Stop Light

Welcome to A Traveler’s Library. If this is your first visit, I hope that you will stick around. Be sure to read the two response posts to this one, which I link at the end of the article. And if you are curious about that book mentioned in the first paragraph, it is about the Dominican Republic.

I recently finished a wonderful book that killed any desire I might have had to go to the place featured, and then I saw the Academy Award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, which definitely did not make me want to visit Mumbai.  I began to think about the anti-travel movie. And the don’t-go-there book.

Is there such a thing? Although I have not read the book that Slumdog was based on, I have read comments that say it portrays Mumbai as even grittier than the movie. Does this make me want to travel there?

Controversy still rages (on Twitter for instance) about the depiction of Mumbai in the Academy-award winning picture.  Most Indians whose comments I have read are not happy. One said on Twitter, “Would you like it if America were portrayed by a movie that showed only the slums of New York?” Uh, well, there have been quite a few movies that do not show America in the best light. But perhaps because movies set in India are rarer in the United States, the impact of Slumdog has been greater. American movies, set in America, are widely viewed around the world, the good, the bad and…all that.

But back to the question of whether Slumdog Millionaire might make people actually want to go to Mumbai. I began to hear another discussion which caught me by surprise.  Slum tours, it seems, are newly chic. Some call this kind of tourism ‘Poorism.’

Do the profit-making companies that lead these tours actually give back to the communities as they claim? What motivates people to go on such tours? Is it voyeurism? Isn’t all travel ultimately voyeurism? Do the slum tourists come away changed in any way? Will they be more sensitive and generous in the future? Will the inhabitants of the slums learn how to make a legitimate buck off the tourists, or will the bad guys among them simply hone their pickpocket skills?

Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss, discussed the tours in a 2008 New York Times article. You can learn more about one of the tour companies that he discusses, Reality Tours, at their web site.

For now, I only know that for me, I am not interested in visiting a place to look at the lives of the poorest, and I am wary of traveling where I fear that I will be isolated in expensive resorts or hotels from the regular street life because it is unsafe, unhealthy or simply unsavory.  Call me unadventurous, but that’s my thought.

I am sure of one thing…the people who run tours in the slums of Mumbai are going to do a lot more business because of Slumdog Millionaire. As to the two main questions here–whether I am totally missing the point of Mumbai, and whether slum tourism has a place– I have an open mind. So educate me. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Oh, I mentioned a book up there in the first paragraph. I’ll get around to that soon.

See the posts that followed this one when Monica Bhide replied with her take on Mumbai in two parts. And if you enjoy what you see at A Traveler’s Library, please subscribe by RSS or e-mail–you’ll see opportunities in the right hand column.

Photograph by Mike Powell, Flickr, Creative Commons license

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©2010 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.