Airplane Mode

I’m gearing up for a big trip to Spain and France, so reading Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel was the perfect book to read before I set off on a new adventure. The writing is beautiful, defiant, funny, and extraordinarily thoughtful. Shahnaz Habib examines the intersection of privilege, colonialism, and the act of travel in unexpected ways that you just don’t typically find in travel writing. She forces you to see travel through a new critical lens while also highlighting those singular, magical moments and interactions that make a trip or a place so special.

There are lots of passages underlined throughout my copy, but this is one of my favorite parts:

“As much as I love the sense of possibility that a Lonely Planet or a Rough Guide fills me with, I am also aware that I have to read these texts keeping in mind that I am not the readership they are intended for. The language in these guidebooks describes the world as it looks from the affluent monocultures that white tourists emerge from, a world in which colonial means quaint.”

And then a little later:

“Pretty much every guidebook I have read for any Third World country will describe it as a tapestry of cultures or a colorful mix of ancient and modern. If more than half the world is a mix of ancient and modern, perhaps then we should accept that this particular hybridity is the norm, while the vapid industrial modernity of a Western suburb is the exception.”

I also recommend checking out Shahnaz’s excellent interview on Code Switch. There’s a lot to digest and I’m pretty sure parts of this book will stay with me on all my future trips.