For
Jeff Greenwald’s 40th birthday, he treated himself to a 29,172-mile
around-the-world overland voyage, and wrote a book called The Size of the World detailing his experiences. This year, for his 50th birthday, he
traveled to a country he has never visited before: Israel. I was lucky
to catch him in the five days between his return from Israel and his
departure for a mushing trip in Alaska’s White Mountains.
In 1979 Jeff took a vacation to Thailand that coincided with the
Cambodian Civil War. Not content to loll on the beach sipping
daiquiris, he ended up volunteering in Khao-I-Dang, the largest of the
Cambodian refugee camps. His experiences as a water engineer there led
to an op-ed piece in the Santa Barbara News & Review, and his travel writing career was born.
“I’ve never been a ‘gee whiz’ travel writer,” he told me. “That first
op-ed I wrote was equal parts travel writing and political outrage, and
to this day, all my travel writing has some kind of political or
environmentalist bent to it.”
In 1996, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi called for a
travel boycott of Burma. Jeff wrote another op-ed piece, this time for
The Washington Post, encouraging people to adopt the boycott because
“every dime spent on visa fees and foreign exchange fattens the coffers
of a murderous, exploitative regime.”
In that same 1996 op-ed piece, Jeff wrote: “Travel and tourism has
become one of the world’s largest industries, able to make or break
some national economies. What would happen, one wonders, if we
travelers recognized—and used—this power? What might be possible if
the vast community of globetrotters joined together, agreeing not to
give our money to governments that torture and abuse their citizens?”
Several years later, working with a team of dedicated volunteers, Jeff began the project that is now Ethical Traveler.
The first step was to create a Web site, and overwhelming international
response made it clear to Jeff that he needed to seek non-profit
status. “Earth Island Institute, which is a tremendously ethical
organization and does great work all over the world, was a natural
place for me to turn,” Jeff said. “I have great admiration for almost
everything Dave Brower has ever done, and it’s an honor to be working
with this group that he helped start,” he added.
Ethical Traveler is now an international community with members from
over 30 countries. Its Web site gets 40,000 hits a month; but Jeff
predicts this number will increase once the live newsfeed is
functioning. Actions Ethical Traveler has advocated range from tourism
boycotts to letter-writing campaigns. Jeff admits that recent campaigns
by Ethical Traveler avoid boycotts and promote a gentler approach, like
lobbying for endangered sites to be protected by UNESCO. “We’ll see if
it’s effective,” Jeff says, “but in any case, it’s certainly more
realistic.”
A fascination with beat culture and alternative lifestyles inspired
Jeff to abandon his East Coast roots and set out for San Francisco in
1975. After receiving a degree from UC Santa Cruz, he traveled to
Nepal, a country he has been obsessed with ever since. “Over the next
25 years, I considered Katmandu my second home, and most of my writing
is based in that part of the world,” Jeff told me.
In 1983 Jeff won a Journalism Fellowship from the Rotary Foundation,
which allowed him to live in Katmandu, study Nepali, and travel to
neighboring countries. GEO and Islands are two of the magazines that published his work from that time, and he continues to publish in Islands. He made another visit to Asia in 1987, which resulted in his most popular book, Shopping for Buddhas. The Buddha from that four-month shopping extravaganza graces the altar in his living room.
Films such as Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey gave Jeff the itch to travel as a youngster. He says his childhood
hero, Arthur C. Clarke, with whom he has been friends for 35 years, has
“informed and inspired much of my life and work.”
When Jeff isn’t traveling—he now takes four to six major trips a
year—he lives in the sunny Oakland flat he has called home for 15
years. While in Oakland, he juggles freelance writing and photography
assignments, the responsibilities of running a non-profit, and live
performances of his one-man show Strange Travel Suggestions, which will run at San Francisco’s Marsh Theatre in April and May.
We don’t have a paywall because, as a nonprofit publication, our mission is to inform, educate and inspire action to protect our living world. Which is why we rely on readers like you for support. If you believe in the work we do, please consider making a tax-deductible year-end donation to our Green Journalism Fund.
DonateGet four issues of the magazine at the discounted rate of $20.