I find quite often that people who bag guidebooks don't actually understand how a guidebook can be used without being relied upon. I am not an experienced traveller, I actually chose to live in foreign countries and make my way around them rather than travel from country to country, but this means I generally have a good idea of the language. When travelling through Western China, I needed a guidebook though, because even though I could speak Chinese I wasn't getting answers or help from locals. If I asked a local what I should visit, I was told to visit the new supermarket or the big statue of Mao, without the guidebook or some research on travel pages (written by travel writers) I may not have found the beautiful ruins, mosques, markets etc etc. It was exactly the same with Eastern Turkey, I spoke Turkish, had lived in Turkey for a year, but still needed my guidebook to give me the information that the locals would not divulge.

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