The intrepid and widely published travel photographer and writer — and former Perceptive Travel blogger! — Steve Davey is bringing his photographic and travel expertise to a wider audience. Not that you could get a lot wider than his books Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die and Unforgettable Islands to Escape to Before You Die, both excellent travel and photography compilations that took Steve to the higher echelons of the travel writing and photography world.

But now Steve’s doing something different. To coincide with the release of his new book Footprint Travel Photography, Steve Davey is launching a series of travel photography tours, with Morocco and India both being offered this fall.

It would be hard to pass up an opportunity like this. Long-time readers of the Perceptive Travel magazine and this blog will know that few people know India and Morocco like Steve Davey, and even fewer can give those incredible places the photographer’s eye like this long-time travel photographer and writer. If you doubt me, just check out this post on Marrakech or some of Steve’s thoughts on India in “On the veranda of my bungalow in my khaki pyjamas.”

So if you’re at all interested in these places, or in learning travel photography in the field from a renowned expert, these are tours you don’t want to miss. Impressions of Morocco starts 21 September 2009, and runs for 13 days, visiting the evocative cities of Fes, Casablanca and Marrakech, trekking in the High Atlas Mountains around the remote village of Armed, exploring ruins, gorges, kasbahs and holy sites, and spending a night under the stars in the Sahara Desert.

Impressions of India visits the stunning Taj Mahal, and the holy city of Varanasi before spending three days at the Sonepur Mela festival in Bihar. The largest livestock fair in Asia, this festival is noted for the ‘Haathi Bazaar,’ or second-hand elephant market. The tour will also visit the Buddhist pilgrimage site of Bodh Gaya with its strong Tibetan influence and the bustling city of Kolkata. The tour runs for 16 days from 26 October 2009.

Tours in the next two years will also include Southeast Asia and Southwest France. For more information about all these tours, including pricing and more extensive discussion of the technical photography aspects covered and taught, visit the Photo Tours website.

The blog Engineering a Better World might seem a far cry from the wanderlust world, but in a year when even the most enthusiastic travelers are watching their wallets, the site’s Culture on the Cheap article is right up our alley. The compilation of 100 websites offers a pretty comprehensive guide to local arts and entertainment offerings throughout the United States. The listings include state guides, city guides, and guides to niche entertainment/interest sites such as Bird Watcher’s Digest. Hey, if you’re watching your wallet and enjoy the outdoors, a birding festival might be just the thing!

The second twice-yearly National Travel Writing Month is already in full swing, and it seems fitting to mention it and encourage any budding travel writers out there on this day, which happens to be the birthday of one of the most esteemed and well-read travel writers working today: Paul Theroux. (Just because I like neither him nor his books, as I wrote about in the post Famous Travel Writers I Don’t Like, doesn’t mean he’s neither esteemed nor well-read. Humph.)

Blogger Christine Gilbert came up with the idea of National Travel Writing Month. Modeled partly on the long-running annual National Novel Writing Month, the event focuses on prompting wannabe travel writers to craft one well-written story pitch/query every day, and (this is the key) to send it out to a publication the writers think might be interested in the story.

Ten days leaves you a little behind if this is the first you’re hearing about the challenge. But that’s no reason why you shouldn’t dive in anyway. I know there’s a lot of bloggers out there, writing about their travels, and a lot of writers dreaming of the day they’ll be widely published. This is one of those chances to get encouragement, advice, direction, and inspiration from others with the same dreams. The participants include widely published, very experienced writers, people who are complete beginners, and even me. Some people have written a pile of query letters already, some stalled out at two. Some have received assignments through this challenge, and some their first rejections (which always hurt). Speaking for myself, I am now 4 pitches behind, and will probably not keep up the pace, but am having fun writing down my ideas anyway.

If you’d have fun, too, why not join in?

There’s really no way to sum up Patrick Smith’s recent column on his Ask the Pilot space at Salon.com. With its deceptively basic title “How to build the perfect airline terminal? Here are 15 steps in the right direction,” the article had me giggling into my tea the evening I read it. And that’s not just the effect of a week’s sleep deprivation with a puking baby. “Americans haven’t figured out how to build a proper terminal. We fail at aesthetics, we fail at amenities, and we fail at the relatively simple task of moving people efficiently from A to B,” he says bluntly.

Smith is always funny, informative, intelligent, and a little tongue-in-cheek. Kind of like your pilot columnist’s Tom Swick equivalent. Starting out with a pleasant memory of a young Smith sitting on the rooftop of PanAm’s Terminal 3 at JFK, the column notes without sadness that Terminal 3, now owned by Delta, needs a wrecking ball. With which I agree passionately. I’ve gone through that place too many times on my way to Russia, and it’s like taking a sojourn in a third-world country before being shipped off to the Gulag.

Smith’s 15 things no airline terminal should be without is right on the money, and he hopes the builders of the new Terminal 3 might take his advice. You need to read the article yourself to get the full impact of Smith’s humor and insights here. I might disagree that a play area for kids — known as a kidport, boy do I wish I had one of those in my house — “should be in a soundproofed bubble approximately six miles from the airport itself, but an open space at the far end of the concourse is a reasonable alternative.” But I like his style.

And a view, #15 on the list, would be right up my alley. “Why are so many airport designers intent on hiding the fact that their airports are actually airports?” asks Smith. “Instead of shopping or staring at one of those CNN chatterboxes, plenty of people would enjoy nothing more than sitting in front of a window and watching the planes go by. … Windows. At an airport. What a concept.”

Smith also has a definite bias against the CNN chatterboxes. “My first moves as airport czar,” he says, “will be to overhaul the Transportation Security Administration and rip out every last one of those hellspawn CNN Airport Network monitors.” I think I’ll be voting for him. If he promises to keep the damn cell phones off the damn planes, too. I have no desire to become homicidal in my later years as a crazed traveling writer-mother.

Sophia Dembling’s column this week in World Hum’s Speaker’s Corner, Confessions of an Introverted Traveler, has so far gathered a nice bouquet of comments, as pieces about introversion by introverts often do. Being a quiet crowd, by definition non-extroverted, introverts rejoice online when one of their own stands up and proclaims herself introverted and proud.

I should say “we” because I am an admitted introvert, too.

Dembling’s funny and honest essay addresses the problems, pitfalls, and advantages of introversion while traveling, like the chatty people you meet at B&Bs (they always seem to be the same couple, no matter where you are in the world). And it got me thinking about a problem I constantly face in travel writing — the need to engage in conversation with complete strangers. After all, dialogue is an essential component of good travel writing. Some of the most memorable passages of the best books involve dialogue and interaction.

It’s important to understand that introversion is in no way a condition of shyness (for the best description of introverts ever penned, read Jonathan Rauch’s 2003 essay from The Atlantic Monthly). When I am strolling through a frozen village in the Russian countryside, or sitting in a pub in rural Scotland, it is not shyness that keeps me from talking to people. I simply prefer quiet. Most introverts do, most of the time. I love you, now shush, as Jonathan Rauch says.

I realized some years ago that, although dialogue is necessary for travel writing, it is certainly not sufficient. There are advantages to being an introverted traveler. You pay more attention to your surroundings. You notice things other people don’t. You’re willing to pause more often, and contemplate where you are and what it means. I find that a great number of great travel writers are in fact introverts — sometimes travel-lust and introversion go hand-in-hand. You don’t get lonely. You don’t get bored. You take in your surroundings with more senses: what the air smells like, how a stone feels, the exact texture of silence or noise. And a few high-quality exchanges can give you all the dialogue you need. A flash of gold tooth, a comment on the government, a question about children, you’ve got your experience distilled.

So I cheer on all the introvert travelers out there. As Sophia Dembling says at the end of her piece, “It’s good to know that I might be a loner, but I’m not alone.” Cheers, Sophia.