GoNOMAD.com Presents the Ten Best Travel Stories of 2009

South Deerfield, Mass. (PRWEB) January 4, 2010 -- The Editorial Board of GoNOMAD.com, the alternative travel website, has announced its selections for the ten best travel stories of 2009.

“At GoNOMAD, we receive hundreds and hundreds of top-notch stories from all over the world,” said Associate Editor Stephen Hartshorne, “and the quality of all these stories has made it difficult to choose just ten. But after extensive discussions, we have chosen the stories that best reflect what GoNOMAD is all about --travel writing that’s transformative, informative and thoughtful."

GoNOMAD.com, a travel website with more than 250,000 unique visitors per month, publishes more than 200 travel stories every year. We offer quirky and different views of places some travelers haven't been yet.

Hartshorne said the stories were evaluated based on writing and photography as well as subject matter. GoNOMAD staff writers and members of the editorial board were excluded from consideration because, he said, “Although they’ve written lots of great stories, they’re too near and dear for us to make an objective decision.”

Taking top honors this year is a story by New Orleans-based writer and teacher Janis Turk: “Macau, China: Contradictions and Tiny Miracles.”

“Janis Turk exemplifies GoNOMAD’s determination to get to the heart of a destination,” Hartshorne said.

“I awoke early to wander with my camera,” Turk writes. “The best way to get acquainted with a city is to catch it early in the day before it has had time to wake up properly, before the human highway begins — to look into the faces of shopkeepers opening their stores, nod a hello to old ladies who wash the streets with brooms outside their houses, see the children in their uniforms walking to school.”

Janis Turk has been featured on GoNOMAD numerous times over the years, beginning with her remarkable story New Orleans Rising: Finding New Hope After Katrina in 2006.

In second place is a story by Canadian-based freelance journalist Matthew Kadey entitled “Bicycling Cuba: Bluebird Skies and Welcoming Homestays.”

Speaking of a homestay in the village of La Mula, Kadey writes, “Locking into a firm handshake, our host Jorge, a quick to laugh barrel-chested man with a perpetual smile and beard where the pepper is trying to hold off the salt, warmly looks me in the eye and declares: 'Tonight we are all family.' It turns out that we have stumbled upon his family’s abode on the right night. For this sultry evening is New Year’s Eve and in Cuba that means pig roast.”

Kadey has written cycling stories for GoNOMAD about Guatemala, Laos, Portugal, Utah and Ethiopia.

Third place goes to happily homeless nomad David Rich for his story, Turkmenistan: Tinhorn Tyranny. Rich, a former law professor, has braved blizzards, monsoons, desert heat and State Department travel advisories to visit the world's most out-of-the-way places from the Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan to the wilds of Borneo to the Harley-Davidson Rally Week in Sturgis, South Dakota.

“I suggest money not be wasted going to Turkmenistan,” Rich writes, “though the country is an admitted hoot. But for those who must visit every last weird country on earth, such as myself, Lufthansa and Turkmenistan Air fly to Ashgabat from Europe and the Middle East, expensively... Turkmenistan also has a reputation for ptomaine and unsanitary food preparation. But enjoy!”

The other selections in GoNOMAD’s top ten f (http://www.gonomad.com/news/december2009/best-of-2009.html)or 2009 were:

The Phlegraean Fields: A Family Excursion to the Gates of Hell by Barbara Zaragoza

Sardinia’s Mamuthones: An Ancient Carnival (http://www.gonomad.com/features/0904/sardinia-mamuthones.html) by Angela Corrias

A Yurt Holiday on the Isle of Wight

gonomad.com/lodgings/0908/yurt-holiday-on-the-isle-of-wight.html

Luang Prabang, Laos: A Slice of Heaven by Paige Stringer

gonomad.com/destinations/0905/luang-prabang-laos.html

Dead Goat Polo: National Sport of Kyrgyzstan by Sophie Ibbotson

gonomad.com/features/0911/kyrgyzstan-goat-polo.html

Summer Solstice in the Orkney Islands by Steve Bochenek

gonomad.com/destinations/0907/scotland-orkney-islands.html

Moscow: Warming Up After the Cold War by Bill Pfeffer

gonomad.com/destinations/0911/russia-moscow.html

A Yurt Holiday on the Isle of Wight: Cheap and Cheerful by Meredith Bower

gonomad.com/lodgings/0908/yurt-holiday-on-the-isle-of-wight.html

The editorial board also cited three stories by University of Massachusetts students working as interns at GoNOMAD:

Finland's Hidden Treasure: Pori, Where the Finns Go by Isadora Dunne

Lowell, Massachusetts: History and Culture in the City of Kerouac by Kaitlyn Silva

Provincetown, Massachusetts: Biking, Art and Open-Minded Culture by Lisa Linsley

For further information contact:

Max Hartshorne

413/665-5070

GoNOMAD.com publishes from its offices in South Deerfield Massachusetts, also home of the GoNOMAD Café.

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