F4 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022
odd l ittle s hop, w here I p icked up a
bilingual edition of “Heart of
Darkness” with pages of Chinese
characters facing those in English.
And after I had idiotically re-
sisted it for years, because how
could anything so popular with
8-year-olds be that good, Harry
Potter entered my world via astreet cart in Ahmedabad, India.
Other titles that have come my
way include Gandhi’s autobiogra-
phy, “Frankenstein,” “East of
Eden” and “The Beach.”
Sometimes, of course, you may
hit a brief dry spell or pick up a
dud, which, rather than sowing
doubt about this endeavor, sug-gests an altruistic rationale for
carrying physical books: to keep a
heathy supply of them circulating
in the travel bibliosphere, refresh-
ing guesthouse book exchanges,
restocking youth hostel libraries
and supporting trade among trav-
elers.
As you thumb through thatworn paperback that found its
way into your hands, you may
wonder: “How many other people
have read this book? How far has it
traveled? And where w ill it go a fter
I’ve passed it on?” The book be-
comes an object with a life of its
own, connecting you in a small
way to the mysteries of life on theroad. Those kinds of questions,
and that kind of connection to the
noumena of travel, would never
arise from a downloaded file on a
digital device.Benanav is a writer based in New
Mexico. His website is
michaelbenanav.com.until I made it back to the main
village.
Immersing myself in this fan-
tastical landscape and sharing tea
and food with the Bedouin I met
there were among the most mean-
ingful and formative of my early
traveling experiences, fueling a de-
sire and laying the mental infra-
structure f or future expeditions on
foot — and by camel — in remote
places. And I only found my way
there because I had run out of
reading material.
Since the coronavirus pandem-
ic first hit pause on international
travel, there has been time to re-
flect o n how to travel better once it
feels safe enough to get out there
again. Growing numbers of travel-
ers, for example, are taking steps
to mitigate their environmental
effects. Others are leaning toward
culturally immersive trips, getting
to know a place and its people
while putting dollars directly into
local economies. And new hygiene
requirements have become com-
monplace priorities.
Adding to that list, I’d suggest
leaving e-readers at home and
smartphone libraries empty on all
but s hort trips, a nd taking p hysical
books instead.
At a glance, this advice may
seem counterintuitive. After all,
the great selling point of e-readers
is their ability to store tons of
books on one small device, a con-
venience when packing light. But
physical books have some practi-
cal advantages of their own. They
can’t break, never need to be
charged, aren’t likely to be stolen
and, if one is lost, you’re out no
more than a few bucks. Plus, in a
pinch, you can use t he p ages you’ve
already read to start a campfire.
The best reason to favor paper
over pixels, however, especially on
a long trip, is its relative inconve-
nience, the fact that you will run
out o f reading material and h ave to
look for a new book wherever you
are in the world. This builds an
element of unpredictability into a
trip, s ignaling an openness both t o
the search for and discovery of
whatever book happens to next
cross your path.
The serendipity involved repre-
sents a key element of the art of
traveling: not needing to control
or preprogram your experience,
letting things unfold organically
and taking the chance to be de-
lighted by the unexpected. The
most memorable moments of any
trip, t he ones that g ive us stories to
tell beyond reciting lists of sights
seen and meals eaten, are usually
unplanned. Because l onger adven-
tures involve journeying through
our own interior landscapes in ad-
dition to the physical places we
visit, and because the books we
read influence the terrain of our
imaginations, I w ant to leave r oom
for s urprises on the l iterary voyage
that parallels the one I’m making
on the ground.
Although Wadi Rum moments
— when a randomly found book
alters the course of a trip and,
perhaps, one’s life — happen from
time to time, they are rare, and
they aren’t really the point, any-
way. I t’s the embrace o f the s ponta-
neous and where that can lead that
truly a dds v alue t o one’s travels. As
it happens, I’m frequently grati-
fied by the books I stumble upon,
which I usually wouldn’t have
thought to pack on an e-reader,
had I brought one.
After finishing “Seven Pillars”
while in Egypt’s Siwa Oasis, I ap-
proached a British traveler in a
restaurant and asked whether he
had any books he was done read-
ing. I traded L awrence f or Thomas
Pynchon (“V.” ) and struck up a
friendship with someone I would
go on to travel with for a few days.
In Morocco, I burrowed through a
dusty used book stall in a town on
the edge of the Sahara, which
mainly sold titles in Arabic and
French, and somehow emerged
with “Geek L ove” (in English).
I once ran into t wo young Amer-
icans whose ties and name tags
looked out of place on the s treets of
Ulaanbaatar; after a fascinating
conversation about their mission
to Mongolia, I walked away with a
highlighted copy of “The Book of
Mormon,” plus directions to an
BOOKS FROM F1
Pages over pixels: Why physical books are worth the weight
PHOTOS BY MICHAEL BENANAV FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTCLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The Great Sand Sea, near Siwa Oasis
in Egypt, where the author once traded books with a fellow
traveler; a handful of books that the author returned with from
various travels; the author in a ger, a traditional round tent, in
Western Mongolia, where he trekked solo for three weeks in
2002; sandstone walls at Wadi Rum, a valley in Jordan the
author was inspired to visit thanks to a chanced-upon book.S0114 6X 3
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ts &
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