The Titanic Awards

Name Carl Hoffman
Who? Author of the new book The Lunatic Express. He is also a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, Wired and Popular Mechanics.  In two decades of reporting he has flown with missionaries in New Guinea and bush pilots in the Sudan and Congo, driven the Baja 1,000 and once sailed an open dinghy 250 miles over eleven days.  His three teenage children, he claims, find him boring.  You can find him online at thelunaticexpress.com.
Age 50
Countries Visited 65

Titanic Nominations
1. Worst Bus Greyhound LA to DC, the last leg of Lunatic.  Clean, on time, but like traveling through a nation of lost souls and ‘Greyhound Steak Houses (McDonald’s) – the standard luggage was plastic garbage bags.  Need I say more?
2. Worst City for Driving Dhaka, Bangladesh.  Traffic is so thick and choking you could walk across the cars faster than driving.  But then you’d have to climb over horse carts and bicycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws…
3. Worst Toilet In steerage on the Bukit Siguntang across Indonesia; two holes for every thousand people, roaches the size of half dollars scuttling past, an inch of liquid on the floor, darkness.
4. Worst Souvenir The sheepskin coat in China that was, um, not well cured.  The coroner who arrived at my door two weeks after returning home wasn’t amused.
5. Worst Ride on the Back of an Animal The reindeer on Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East with the Oroki people.  He refused to move a muscle, so we ate him.  The raw femur marrow was pink and slippery, just like snot.

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Famous Travelers Carl Hoffman, lunatic express, National Geographic, popular mechanics, wired, worst