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Travel Writing |
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CyberText specialises in freelance travel writing and photography for purchase by newspapers and magazines. Newspaper and magazine editors are invited to email Debra Brydon if they wish to be sent full-length print-outs of the travel article excerpt below, together with their accompanying photographs, with a view to possible purchase and publication. India 'Education by Backpack' 'It was the life of Delhi's elite, however, that made the deepest impression. Our first stop had been to stay with some wealthy Hindu 'refugees' from the civil strife in Srinagar, people we'd met fifteen years before ... Being rich in the trendy outskirts of town meant living inside a compound surrounded by a ten-foot high concrete wall, topped with barbed wire and thickly embedded with lethal shards of broken glass (amazingly, this structure had been introduced to us as a 'farm house'). Sure, the pink and grey marble Venetian style decor throughout was stunningly beautiful ... But the talk was of fear ...We were warned to lock ourselves inside the guesthouse at 10p.m and not to come out before 6.a.m. Five desperately starving Rottweilers, let out of their cage only at night, roamed the grounds barking ferociously, ready to tear unwise intruders apart. Frighteningly, the dogs smelled us and we were grateful for the thick iron bars on the windows, nervously hoping they didn't have any structural weaknesses. Sleep wasn't easy. 'What should we do in case of a fire?', we asked our hosts. 'Shoot the dogs', of course. Thailand 'A Kid's Guide to Thailand' 'The potential for children to get dangerously lost in a crowded Bangkok night market is very real. If possible, assign specific children to the care of a specific adult. It's much easier to keep a roving eye on one familiar target than to share your gaze between several and risk losing sight of a short person in a tall fast moving crowd. Distinctive clothing, and especially colourful hats, are a real advantage'. Japan 'Death of a Businessman' 'National pride emerged. How unfortunate that the dark side of Japan had been so openly revealed to a foreigner, a gaijin. Ironically, I found myself trying to defuse the embarrassment of the passenger beside me, who apologised that I had witnessed such an awful event ... Next time I visited Tokyo, she enthused, I should stay at her place, although small, and enjoy traditional home-cooked meals. She elaborated on what they might be. Somehow, though, I wasn't hungry. The regular reports on the search below, dutifully broadcast to train passengers at regular intervals, didn't help'. Australia 'Sorry, Just Staring' 'Frequent freeway users are part of a transport tribe, and we do know each other in a strange sort of way. Most of us leave home at around the same time every day, and come to multiple stand-stills before we exit at Hoddle Street or continue on to the city. We've all wondered what magic happened to the lady with the 'Magic Happens' bumper sticker to make her want to share her conviction with others. We are still striving to understand why 'Love is a Rottweiler' but clues emerge when we see the driver of the car carrying that particular message.' |
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