The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel

Those aching for a relief from packaged tours or Club Med vacations would do well to pick up this out-of-the-ordinary guide. It's a manual for "experimental travel," a "playful" and "pleasingly vague" style of vacation, "where the journey's methodology is clear but the destination may be unknown." For example, Aesthetic Travel (which gets the lowest score for degree of difficulty) has readers creating an artistic record of their trip in a systematic but uncommon way, whether by photographing the fire station in every new town they visit or writing a poem in every main square. Trip Poker is riskier: four people roll the dice, and the winner gets to choose the destination; the loser pays for the weekend. It's a gimmick, but at least it's an entertaining one: for each experiment (and there are more than 40) comes a report written by a contributor or one of the authors, as well as b&w photos and illustrations with a quirky, Victorian bent. Antony and Henry are well-traveled journalists with plenty of experience, and they certainly get points for originality. If nothing else, their unusual book reminds us of the joy of discovery. (June)