Category: Travel
Northern Ghana travel notes
You will see termite mounds, baobab trees, and open skies.
The major city is Tamale, the third largest urban settlement in the country. The town is manageable and traffic is not intense. At night it is quiet. The “main street” is just a strip of stuff, and it feels neither like a center of town nor an “edge city” growth. Some of the nearby roads still are not paved. It is a shock to the visitor to realize that the center of town is not going to become any more “center of town-y,” no matter how much you drive around looking for the center of town.
We all liked it.
The “Red Clay” is a series of large art galleries and installations, of spectacular and unexpected quality, just on the edge of Tamale. Some of the installations reminded me of Beuys, for instance the large pile of abandoned WWII stretchers. One also sees there a Polish military plane from the 1930s, an old East German train, and a large pile with tens of thousands of glass green bottles. Some of the galleries have impressive very large paintings by James Barnor, mostly of Ghana workers building out the railroad. Goats wander the premise and scavenge for garbage. If you are an art lover, this place is definitely worth a trip.
The Larabanga mosque does not look as old as internet sources claim. I consider it somewhat overrated?
The surrounding area is 80-90 percent Muslim.
A driver explained to me that Islam in Tamale was very different from Islam in Saudi Arabia, because a) in Ghana women can drive motorbikes, and indeed have to for work, and b) in northern Ghana husbands cannot take any more than four wives.
Many more people here speak English than I was expecting. Some claim that they all speak decent English. I doubt that, but the percentage is way over half.
It all feels quite safe, and furthermore the drivers are not crazy.
Zaina Lodge has a kind of “infinity pool,” at a very modest scale, with views of the forest and sometimes of elephants drinking at the nearby water hole. It is one of the two or three best hotel views I have had.
My poll will grow in size, but so far zero out of two hotel workers use ChatGPT. One had not heard of it. High marginal returns!
Time Theft at the Terminal
Travel expert Gary Leff on the billions in wasted time spent at airports:
Maybe the biggest failure in air travel is something we don’t talk about at all. How is it possible that people are being told to show up at the airport 2.5 to 3 hours before their flight, and that isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?
As Gary points out airport delay wipes out many technological advancements:
The lengthened times for showing up at the airport mean that it no longer even makes sense for many people to take shorter flights, but aircraft technology (electric, short and vertical takeoff) is changing and becoming far more viable in the coming years…The FAA is considering standards for vertiports but are we thinking creatively enough or will that conversation be too status quo-focused either because of regulator bias or because it’s entrenched interests most involved?
More and smaller airports are needed. Streamlined security, that doesn’t wait for nationwide universal rollout, is needed. We need runways and taxiways and air traffic capacity to increase throughput without stacking delays. Most of all, we need to avoid complacency that accepts the status quo as given.
By the way, Washington Dulles (IAD) has ~10.5 min security waits, among the best in the nation and the world for a big airport but it is terrible at inbound passport control. (Also, I am not a fan of the people movers.)
Accra bleg
Your suggestions would be most welcome. In addition if you have any ideas for northern Ghana, most of all Tamale and Mole national park area…
Thank you!
My 1988 Southeast Asia trip
This was by far the longest trip I ever have done, at about seven weeks, and I did it by myself. I had just taught one year at UC Irvine, and I thought time was ripe to learn something about the other side of the Pacific. I just set out and decided to do it, even though most assistant professors would have been better advised to stick to their work commitments. Here are a few points and lessons from that trip:
1. I started in late June, and I recall switching planes in Seoul, and on the TV seeing the final moments of game seven of the Lakers vs. the Pistons.
2. The heat and humidity did not bother me. The storms and rain in Taiwan did impress me, however.
3. So much tourism has become much worse. I was able to do a jungle walk from Chieng Mai, and felt that the hill tribes were genuinely surprised to encounter me. I enjoyed teaching the children there the song “Old McDonald had a farm.” I also saw Koh Samui before many other tourists started to go there.
3b. I will never, ever again ride on an elephant, especially when the elephant has the option of dragging its rider into contact with low-lying tree branches in the Thai jungle. One guy from the Israeli army was in our group, and he fell off the elephant, though he was unharmed. Rider beware. The beasts are truly very, very smart, and I could tell they were enjoying this game.
4. Unexpectedly, Taiwan was my favorite part of the trip. The bus ride down the east coast, from Suao to Hualien to this day remains one of the best trip segments I ever have taken. The marble gorges in the center of the country also were A+.
5. Hong Kong bored me more than I was expecting. I spent a good bit of time watching Wimbledon there (Boris Becker), and reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson, still a favorite book of mine.
6. Rather than spending a full week in Hong Kong, on a lark I took a four-day trip into mainland China, as it was then called. I am very glad I did that. This was package tourism, as was standard for a Chinese visit at the time, but I saw China as a very poor country, full of bicycles and stank. Guangzhou of course. What impressed me the most was the level of energy shown by the children when I visited a grade school.
7. I did the whole trip with a single backpack, which I now find unimaginable. That perhaps reflects some deterioration of my capabilities. Most of all, I need to carry around more books these days, plus a laptop and iPad and various chargers.
8. The food peaks in Thailand were incredible, but the median Thai dish in Thailand was worse than my median Thai meal in Orange County, CA at the time. A lot of the meats were stringy and somewhat unpleasant. My best meal was a crab curry in Bangkok. I never got sick from the food, though I think I was queasy for half in a day in Chieng Mai.
9. The people were extremely friendly and helpful to me everywhere.
10. Favorite part of Malaysia was Penang. Southern Thailand was pretty boring.
10. I ended the trip in Singapore. I quite enjoyed that, most of all the South Indian food places, and how they ladled out the chutneys, which were new to me. At the time, my motto on Singapore was “it is so boring it was interesting.” Now of course there are many more things to do and see there, and it is just outright interesting. I have since been back seven more times, reflecting my fondness for the place. I am very glad I saw it at a time closer to “the early days.”
Overall, the length of the trip felt a bit excessive to me. But where would I have wished to cut? That said, since then I have not done another trip for longer than a month.
One big benefit of traveling is the diversity of places you can see. But another big benefit — not to be neglected — is the diversity of eras you can sample. I am so, so glad I saw what those places were like in the late 1980s, China most of all and also the hill tribes. No history books can compensate for that.
So that is a very good reason to travel NOW. And to travel to places that are going to change a lot.
The AI culture that is Faroe
Fed up with too much planning and decision-making on holiday? The Faroe Islands tourist board says its latest initiative taps into a trend for travellers seeking “the joy of surrender” on trips “where control is intentionally let go in favour of serendipity and spontaneity”. Their needs are answered in the nation’s fleet of “self-navigating rental cars”, launched this month, which — while they are not self-driving — will direct visitors on itineraries around the archipelago devised by locals.
Each route features between four and six destinations over the course of three to six hours, with only one section of the itinerary revealed at a time to maintain an element of surprise. Along the way, the navigation system will also share local stories tied to each place.
Here is more from Tom Robbins at the FT.
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Once a casualty of Rust Belt decline, downtown today is in remarkably good shape. I walked around for several hours, and virtually every building and storefront is spiffy. I did not see anything boarded up. Only one beggar/homeless person approached me.
The rapids and bridges and greenery view from the top of the Amway hotel is excellent.
The Grand Rapids Art Museum has a very good show of David Hockney prints on.
On the down side, I did find that too many downtown places are closed for lunch, or they close at two p.m. Overall, though, it is an interesting and much underrated place to visit. Here is o3 onthe Grand Rapids recovery.
Do not turn down a trip. I also had very good discussions at the Acton Institute and with the Cluny Institute people, for whom I was speaking, on talent. At some point the talk will be online.
Canada facts of the day
Given Canada’s vast size and low population density, I was surprised to discover that the country feels more urban than the US, with far more skyscrapers per capita. In 2024, Vancouver had 128 high rises under construction, #3 in North America. (Toronto was #1 and NYC was #2.) Even smaller Canadian cities have more tall buildings under construction than similar size US cities.
Here is more from Scott Sumner, a general essay on his trip to Canada. And analytically:
In terms of living standards, I’d guess that the bottom half of the Canadian population does as well as the bottom half of the US population (and perhaps even better if you include social indicators like drugs and crime and life expectancy.) The impression I got is that the top half of the US population is considerably richer than the top half of the Canadian population. Even so, I’d estimate that the US is perhaps 10% or at most 20% richer than Canada, not the 35.6% richer suggested by the IMF data.
Why is Canada poorer? I’m not sure. The US does have the advantage of economies of scale. But in Western Europe, smaller countries don’t seem poorer than bigger countries. Perhaps Canada is poorer because its economy is structurally similar to the European economic model. On the other hand, some of America’s richest regions (such as California and New York) have a fairly high level of taxes and regulation. So I’m puzzled.
Even the Maritimes (based on limited travel) do not seem that poor to me. Maybe it is that the American “upper upper middle class” is much richer in great numbers?
Two other points. First, higher levels of immigration into Canada can lower the per capita average, even if you think those immigrants will end up doing well.
Second, very often (too often?) we judge income flows by looking at the housing stock. And indeed the Canadian housing stock is fine (in quality, I agree they have too much NIMBY). But if we are going to judge flows by stocks, let us also look at the stock of Canadian corporations and global brands. And that is decidedly weaker. If we consider all stocks, and not just the housing stock, perhaps our picture of Canada slides closer to equilibrium once again.
The Paradox of India
Tyler often talks about cracking cultural codes. India is the hardest—and therefore the most fascinating—cultural code I’ve encountered. The superb post The Paradox of India by Samir Varma helps to unlock some of these codes. Varma is good at describing:
In 2004, something extraordinary happened that perfectly captured India’s unique nature: A Roman Catholic woman (Sonia Gandhi) voluntarily gave up the Prime Ministership to a Sikh (Manmohan Singh) in a ceremony presided over by a Muslim President (A.P.J. Abdul Kalam) in a Hindu-majority country.
And nobody commented on it.
Think about that. In how many countries could this happen without it being THE story? In India, the headlines focused on economic policy and coalition politics. The religious identities of the key players were barely mentioned because, well, what would be the point? This is how India works.
This wasn’t tolerance—it was something deeper. It was the lived experience of a civilization where your accountant might be Jain, your doctor Parsi, your mechanic Muslim, your teacher Christian, and your vegetable vendor Hindu. Where festival holidays meant everyone got days off for Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Guru Nanak Jayanti, and Good Friday. Where secularism isn’t the absence of religion but the presence of all religions.
But goes beyond that:
You might be thinking: “This is fascinating, but I’m not Indian. I can’t draw on 5,000 years of civilizational memory. How does any of this help me navigate my increasingly polarized world?”
Here’s what I’ve learned from watching India work its magic: The mental moves that make pluralism possible aren’t mystical—they’re learnable. Think of them as cognitive tools:
The And/And Instead of Either/Or: When faced with contradictions, resist the Western urge to resolve them. Can something be both sacred and commercial? Both ancient and modern? Both yours and mine? Indians instinctively answer yes.
Contextual Truth Over Universal Law: What’s right for a Jain isn’t right for a Bengali, and that’s okay. Truth can be plural without being relative. Multiple valid perspectives can coexist without canceling each other out.
Strategic Ambiguity as Wisdom: Not everything needs to be defined, categorized, and resolved. Sometimes the wisest response is a head waggle that means yes, no, and maybe all at once.
Code-Switching as a Life Skill: Indians don’t just switch languages—they switch entire worldviews depending on context. At work, modern. At home, traditional. With friends, fusion. This isn’t hypocrisy; it’s sophisticated social navigation.
The lesson isn’t “be more tolerant.” It’s “develop comfort with unresolved multiplicity.” In a world demanding you pick sides, the Indian model suggests a radical alternative: Don’t.
In our age of rising nationalism and cultural purism, when countries are building walls and communities are retreating into echo chambers, India stands as a glorious, maddening, inspiring mess—proof that diversity isn’t just manageable but might be the secret to civilizational immortality.
After all, it’s hard to kill something that contains multitudes. When one part struggles, another thrives. When one tradition calcifies, another innovates. When one community turns inward, another builds bridges.
It’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s exactly what the world needs to remember right now.
Read the whole thing. Part 1 of 3.
The new Javier Cercas book
The new Cercas book is El loco de Dios en el fin del mundo. That title translates roughly as “The crazy man of God at the end of the world,” noting there are ambiguities in who that man is (Cercas? The Pope?), and whether the end of the world refers to a trip to Mongolia or the apocalypse or perhaps death.
Cercas, arguably Spain’s greatest living writer, decides to shed his purely secular perspective and accompany Pope Francis on his Mongolia visit, a country with about 1500 Catholics. Like many of Cercas’s novels, it is a mix of non-fiction and fiction, and it is also self-consciously a detective story – which truths will Cercas unlock during this journey? Most of all, he wants to know if his mother will meet her husband (Cercas’s father) when she dies.
We live in a time when an atheistic European author puts down his preoccupation with Spanish history and spends almost five hundred pages engaging with the Pope and also the possibility of God. A vibe shift if there ever was one.
Cercas reports that he came away from the trip more anti-clerical than before, but on the matter of God and the miracle of the Resurrection, I read his text as ever so ambiguous.
Do not despair, the works of Cercas usually end up translated into English in a reasonably prompt manner.
Tyler Cowen travel tips
That is my latest column in The Free Press. Here is one excerpt from the middle:
I am a fan of going places where things are happening, whether good news or bad, at least if the locales are sufficiently safe. When communism fell, I rented a car and drove around Eastern Europe for one of my most interesting and memorable trips. More recently, I visited El Salvador and Argentina (repeat visits in both cases) to see what was going on with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele’s radical imprisonment policies and the free-market reforms of Argentina’s Javier Milei. I do not pretend to completely grasp the problems of either country, but my understanding is richer than before. I also found that the locals are keen to narrate their points of view, which makes the trip more interesting.
And from the very end:
Finally, I have a radical travel suggestion. Perhaps it is not for families or for the frail, but seasoned travelers should consider it. Imagine you have been to many places, and you are wondering where to go next. Select a country (putting aside danger) where you are quite sure you do not want to go, simply because it does not interest you much. Go there.
The point is that your instincts can be quite wrong about places you have not seen. What’s more, if you go with low expectations, there is a high likelihood you will be pleasantly surprised. Under my proposed method, you will not be disappointed.
When I started traveling, I thought I would love Southeast Asia most, but over time my true affections turned toward Latin America. A few years back I ended up in Baku, Azerbaijan, not because I really wanted to go, but because going through Baku was the easiest way to get to my final destination. The same was true for my trip to Pristina, Kosovo (“where can I fly direct from Zurich airport, where I have not already been?”). Both were fantastic experiences, more interesting, and also easier than I had been expecting.
So often in travel, our greatest enemies are inertia and status quo bias. Recognize that change is real, and that you need some yourself. Isn’t that why you are traveling in the first place?
Do it!
What should I ask Seamus Murphy?
Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him. An associate of his emails me this excellent description of his work:
Spent over two decades photographing in Afghanistan (12 trips between 1994–2007). Has been back since the fall of the U.S. side.
- Collaborated with P.J. Harvey on her album Let England Shake— they travelled together through Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the U.S. while she wrote songs and he filmed/photographed. This lead to P.J.’s album, and Seamus’s documentary ‘A Dog Called Money’
- Made a film on recently deceased Irish poet Pat Ingoldsby. Pat was a well known Dublin character, a former TV presenter who sold his poetry on the streets of Dublin outside Trinity college for decades.
- Published several books, including:
- A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan
- I Am the Beggar of the World (with Afghan women’s Landay poetry)
- The Hollow of the Hand (with P.J. Harvey)
- The Republic (on Ireland pre-2016 centenary)
- Won 7 work press photo awards, and has photos held in the Getty Museum and Imperial War Museum
- More recently Seamus has published Strange Love which is a photography book on visual parallels between the U.S. and Russia.
- Seamus also semi lives in India now and has photo collections on modernising/not-modernising India (https://www.seamusmurphy.com/Epic-City/2)
TC again: So what should I ask him?
p.s. Here is Murphy’s home page.
My Paris delta
I have not been here since 2019, so here are the trends I am noticing:
1. Vastly more shops are open on Sundays than before.
2. Central Paris continues to evolve into a nearly bilingual city. It is not quite Amsterdam or Stockholm, but getting there. And the Parisians do not seem to mind speaking English.
3. There are more and more non-European restaurants of many kinds. From a walking-by perusal of menus and clienteles, they seem quite good and serious on the whole.
4. It is increasingly difficult to find a gas station in the city (before returning a rental car).
5. An amazingly high percentage of young women have publicly visible tattoos. I do not understand the logic here. I do (partially) understand tattoos as an act of rebellion, differentiation, or counter-signaling. I do not understand tattoos as an act of conformity.
6. Smoking has almost disappeared here. I saw plenty of young people vaping in Reims, but not the same in Paris.
7. Paris now has Rainier cherries in June, a sign of encroaching civiliation.
8. High-quality bookshops, with beautifully displayed titles and covers, still can be found frequently.
9. I had never seen the area near the Bibliotheque National before, it is excellent. I saw this Indian guy in concert there, after o3 recommended that I go.
10. Paris is doing just fine.
Rasheed Griffith on the economics and aesthetics of Asunción
Yet, on my first visit to Asunción last week none of that was on my mind. What was striking was the total absence of any aesthetic coherence of the city.
There are some economic reasons for this:
Going back to the middle class consumption point. If only around 300,000 Paraguayans make up the domestic personal income tax base then it’s perhaps not a local middle class that is buying and renting the new modern high rise apartments in Asunción.
Indeed, 70% of the new housing supply are acquired by foreign investors as a capital preservation strategy. They are not bought by locals. These are often investors from Argentina, who according to some data account for 70% of all foreign investors. They buy the apartments and then rent them out? But to who?
Usually foreigners who go to Paraguay for work purposes or new residents who take advantage of Paraguay’s quick and easy residency scheme and citizenship program. And the fun part is that these rental contracts are usually in dollars! Not the local currency (the Guaraní, PYG). Of course, Argentines buy property in Paraguay and prefer to receive dollars in rent.
The entire post is excellent There is also this:
There is a lot more that I could say about Paraguay. Like how the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) resulted in the death of 70% of adult men in Paraguay; giving the country the highest male-mortality proportion ever reliably documented for a nation-state in modern warfare.
I have yet to visit Paraguay, but someday hope to. But should this post induce me to accelerate or delay my timetable?
Chantilly destination achieved, the Limbourg brothers are amazing
Commissioned by the Duc de Berry, the enormously wealthy brother of King Charles V of France, this exquisite Book of Hours was begun by the Limbourg brothers, a trio of Netherlandish miniature painters, in around 1411. The Duc and the Limbourgs died in 1416. The manuscript was completed by other wealthy patrons and talented artists 70 years later and contains 131 full-page illuminations. Now, in a vanishingly rare opportunity, the general public has been invited to step into this world.
Until October, visitors to a special exhibition at the Condé Museum in the Château de Chantilly, 55km north of Paris, will be able to view as independent works the 12 monthly calendar pages of the Très Riches Heures, on which much of the fame of this 15th-century prayer book rests. Its importance and influence are contextualised by an exceptional display of some 100 medieval manuscripts, sculptures and paintings loaned from museums and libraries around the world.
…as the renowned scholar Christopher de Hamel, author of the 2016 book, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, explains, the Très Riches Heures are so much more than a luxury object. “The staggering originality of the design and composition is overwhelming,” he says. “The full-page calendar miniatures were the first ever made. It marks the very first moment when the Renaissance touched northern Europe.
Here is the full story. This is very likely the best and most important artistic exhibit in the world right now. It is only the third time (ever) the pages of the book have been on display for the public. In the exhibit more broadly, it is remarkable how many of the best works were created in the first decade of the fifteenth century.
All three of the brothers died before the age of thirty, possibly because of the plague.
Chantilly is about an hour north of Paris, and it is a pleasant but fairly extreme town. Think of it as a French version of Middleburg, VA? Or perhaps parts of Sonoma? It is their version of horse country, with non-spicy food to boot. The accompanying castle, by the way, also is interesting and has some wonderful art works, including by Poussin, Watteau, and Greuze. The decor and trappings give you a sense of what eighteenth century French Enlightenment nobles might have considered to be beautiful.
A major goal of this trip has been to get a better handle on the Western European medieval world, and visiting this exhibit has been a big and very successful part of that.
Reims and Amiens
Both cities have significant war histories, but they are very different to visit, even though they are only two hours apart by car.
Reims was largely destroyed in World War I, and so the central core was rebuilt in the 1920s, with a partial Art Deco look. The downtown is attractive and prosperous, the people look sharp and happy, and it is a university town. You arrive and feel the place is a wonderful success. If you had to live in a mid-sized French city, you might choose this one.
The main cathedral is one of the best in France, and arguably in the world. The lesser-known basilica also is top tier. There are scattered Roman ruins. French kings were coronated in Reims from early on, all the way up through 1825.
Amiens is on the Somme, and the 1916 Battle of the Somme, followed by a later 1918 offensive, was a turning point in WWI history. The town is a melange of architectural styles, with many half-timbered homes but also scattered works from different centuries. The town also has France’s “first skyscraper,” renowned in its time but now a rather short and out of place embarrassment. The main Amiens cathedral, however, is perhaps the best in all of France.
The town itself feels like visiting a banlieu, with large numbers of African and Muslim immigrants. It is lively, and it feels as if a revitalization is underway, though I do understand opinions on these matters differ. Real estate prices are at about 3x their 1990s levels. That to me is strong evidence that things are going well.
Restaurant Momos Tibetian has excellent Chinese and Tibetan food. The Picardy museum has some very good works by Boucher, Balthus, Picabia, El Greco, and Chavannes.
Both cities are radically undervisisted. They do attract some tourists, but for the most part you feel you have them to yourself.