101 Countries: Discovering the World Through Fast Travel
By P.J. Parmar ’98 MS, Virtualbookworm.com Publishing, College Station, Texas, 2003, $14.95, softcover. (Also an e-book.)

When it comes to covering a surface almost as extensive as the Earth’s, even superficial knowledge can be illuminating and useful. 101 Countries recounts the author’s whirlwind travel—conducted on the cheap, moving on the grassroots level and rubbing elbows with the salt of the earth—and it provides plenty of vicarious thrills and many a dose of insight into diverse cultures, personalities and politics.

P.J. Parmar, an environmental engineer with a hot-to-trot mentality, travels with childhood friend Erik Strom first to Northern Europe, then, for four months, they forge east and south by all manner of transportation just about anywhere you can go other than South America and the Australian/South Pacific zone.

One indelible lesson Parmar provides over and over, is that even when traveling in polluted, crowded and hot regions where “criminals are shadier than any tourist could hope to be,” the most common nuisance to be encountered is not the crook but the “third world construct known as a tout.”

“A tout,” he explains, “is a local person who knows you are a tourist, and who seeks to sell you something, change your case, give you a tour, or otherwise acquire your money. Sometimes their scams get quite creative, luring even the smartest of travelers, and sometimes their quest for money ends in violence. The mantra of touts around the world is ‘my friend,’ often the only English phase they know.”

The various imaginative, bold and effective means Parmar uses to endure or foil touts could alone pay for this book many times over for readers with wanderlust and a limited budget. For sales information, contact http://www.virtualbookworm.com or your local bookseller.