Come Back Alive

Oh, I'm on a roll today. Something about wanting to write freeform instead of getting down to the business of dubbing, editing and writing stories for editors to pick apart.

Okay, this one post. Then, back to the self-conscious market-driven stuff.

At least my research has been somewhat market-related. I am doing a story on tourism in conflict zones, an offshoot of my incredible time in Kashmir. The story focusses around a wonderful family who owns a tourist houseboat in Srinigar. They have made their living from the tourist trade for three generations. Since 1989, their business has declined because of political instability and many guys with many guns.

In the course of my research, I found a really good website -- it's called Come Back Alive . It is scary, amusing and a wealth of information.

By the way, on the map of the world, Canada is colour-coded as "a vacation with Grandma". It is also described as "one of the least dangerous places in the world". Britain is mostly harmless except for Northern Ireland and the U.S. is listed as one of the world's hotter places in terms of danger (of course the site is written by an American, and we know America has to be the best at everything, even if the category is dangerous places".

Cautionary note of a different kind: Just because it says a place is dangerous, doesn't mean you're going to get killed. I was in three conflict zones and one post-conflict zone and I didn't have any problems at all. And the sad thing to keep in mind is that people in these areas need our help more than ever. Forty percent of the world's economy is tourist-based, and a lot of the places which depend on tourists are politically unstable. Staying away makes it even harder for the people who live there to make a living.

So don't be a chicken-shit about your travel plans either. Be courageous (but not stupid .. that's up to you to decide what that means in terms of your own life.)