Legendary travel writer Jan Morris is making a very rare visit to the U.S. next week to appear in an onstage conversation with me in New York City on Wednesday, May 8. The Wales-based author of more than 30 books, ranging from the masterful essay collections "Journeys," "Destinations," and "Among the Cities" to such classics as "Pax Britannica," "The World of Venice," and "The Matter of Wales," Morris is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She is also the last surviving member of the expedition team that made the first successful ascent of Mount Everest 60 years ago this month. As fate would have it, Morris's dispatch announcing the team's success appeared in the London Times on the same day as Queen Elizabeth's coronation, a life-changing tale she recounts in her book "Coronation Everest."

Morris will be discussing that historic expedition in our conversation. For me the meeting is also an opportunity to honor and celebrate the entire life and work of one of the most engaging and influential travel prose stylists of our time. From her magisterial "Pax Britannica" trilogy to her groundbreaking on-the-road dispatches for Rolling Stone magazine to her poignant recent book "Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere," Morris has profoundly inspired and affected me and virtually every other travel writer I know. As I once wrote for Salon, "Rereading her works, I remember how much I love her attention to offbeat details, her eye for emblematic characters, her gentle humor and pointed wit, her encyclopedic knowledge of history and art and the ongoing dance of research and apprehension, description and analysis that whirls through her writing. And, too, I love the way she approaches the world with a genuine sympathy, with an openness of mind and heart that allows her to penetrate past prejudices and preconceptions, to see the soul and spirit of a place."

I have just returned from two and a half wonderful weeks in Japan, leading an intrepid, engaged and enriching group of eight travelers through Kyoto and Shikoku. The trip turned out to be full of magic and delight, but as I began the journey, before I knew how it would turn out, I had turned for inspiration and encouragement to the memory of an earlier journey – my very first time as a tour leader, when I had led two American travelers on an autumn tour of Tokyo, Kyoto and rural Honshu. Here is a tale from that initial tour:

On our first full day in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto, we began with visits to three back-alley shops where traditional tofu delicacies, delicate fans and tatami mats are made. Then, when the husband of the couple I was accompanying mentioned that his mother used to love lacquerware and had a considerable collection in California, our local guide perked up. ''Oh, then I know just where we must go,'' she said, hailing a cab. ''Zohiko!''

From the moment we walked into its hushed confines, Zohiko seemed more a museum than a retail store. Three men and a woman in crisp dark suits greeted us with bows. The ground floor consisted of two spacious rooms elegantly arranged with wooden shelves and mounted display cases showcasing an extraordinary assemblage of lacquerware. There were exquisite soup bowls and small plates, flower containers, round boxes, square boxes, sake sets, green tea cup saucers, large serving trays and small personal trays, multi-layered boxes and decorative plates, all in sleek black, red and gold, adorned with intricate flowers, rolling waves, fluttering butterflies and bending grasses.

I lingered for a long time studying a set of five black soup bowls, each with a different gorgeous rendering of pine, bamboo, apricot, chrysanthemum and orchid. A strikingly simple pure red tray with two soaring gold cranes in one corner held my eye. And if I'd had enough money, I would have bought a spectacular rectangular black container with layer upon layer of gold depicting a glittering seascape with a single, pine-crowned island in the distance and thin-winged birds flocking on the horizon.

I'm in the process of updating Lonely Planet's Guide to Travel Writing. The second edition was published in 2009 and, as you well know, a few things have changed in the world of travel writing and publishing since then!

As I'm trying to shape my focus and hone in on the most essential evolutions and updates, I've realized that I should seek the advice of a vast team of informed and impassioned experts: all of you who care about travel writing and travel content!

So, if you've read my book – and if you have, thank you very much! – I would be very grateful to hear any suggestions you might have for the most essential material to include and areas to cover in the new edition. And if you haven't (well, you don't know what you're missing!), I'd still value hearing from you too.

It's clear to me that in addition to covering changes in the world of print publishing, I need to focus more broadly and in depth on the explosive evolution of online publishing – the limitless proliferation of websites and blogs as well as the advent of tablet magazines – and of social media as a platform for both editorial communication and entrepreneurial promotion.

As part of this, I need to address at least briefly the marketization of travel writing and the evolution of the traditional journalist-industry relationship, with sweeping new variations in sponsorships, partnerships and press trips. In this regard I also want to try to present a balanced perspective on new (and old, and everlasting) ethical issues and considerations – and of course, consistent with the framework of the entire book, to put all this in the context of creating quality travel writing and content.

I need to address changes in book publishing as well, and the rise (in number and in credibility) of self-publishing options.

And I need to cover changes in technology and tools, and how travel writers – content producers – are using and adapting technological innovations to create compelling content.

If you are engaged in the world of travel writing/content, do you agree or disagree with the above assessments? What subjects would you add? What areas should I be sure to focus on? What examples should I be sure to include?

Thank you for considering these questions. I very much welcome any input you may have.

[Photo Credit: S. Lee]

I've just come home from a whirlwind week in D.C. and L.A. Both trips were wonderful. In D.C. I had energizing meetings at National Geographic Traveler and hosted an exhilarating onstage conversation with the amazing Alexandra Fuller, author of (among other books) Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, an extraordinarily evocative and moving memoir of growing up in Rhodesia. In L.A. I gave a talk about Gadling at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show and shared memorable moments with Arthur Frommer, Rick Steves, Andrew McCarthy, and the Times' terrific travel editor, Catharine Hamm, among many other notables of the travel world. I got back to the Bay Area just in time to emcee the February event in the wonderful new Weekday Wanderlust travel reading series in San Francisco, and then to teach a wanderful travel writing workshop at Book Passage in Corte Madera.

I'm not complaining. I'm grateful beyond words for these opportunities -- but now that they're over, I realize that I'm also exhausted beyond words. (And yes, I know I probably shouldn't have stayed up until closing time at the rooftop bar of the Standard Hotel in L.A. – but that was research!) And when I survey the Kilimanjaro of emails that need my slogging-up-the-scree responses and the queue of articles lined up like planes at O'Hare awaiting the fuel of my words for take-off – well, if the state of my metaphors is any metaphor for the state of my mind, I'm in big trouble.

At a moment like this, I know just what I need to do: take some deep breaths and transport myself back to an adventure I took three decades ago in northern Pakistan -- specifically, to one afternoon on a stretch of the wild, gritty, avalanche-threatened, pothole-punctured Karakoram Highway between Hunza and Gulmit, not far from the Chinese border.

My tour group had been bumping by van along the Karakoram for a few hours when we came to a road-closing avalanche about 15 minutes from Gulmit. Our guide set out to walk to Gulmit to get another van to pick us up, and told us to wait in the van.

We waited, and waited.

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One of my prime New Year's resolutions for this year is to put together an anthology of selected pieces from my own writing career. With 30 years of narrative stories and reflective essays to sift through, I figure there must be enough material for at least a very slim volume.

As part of this process – or perhaps just as a very clever way of procrastinating the hard work of getting started on this process – I've been reading through old journals and letters recently. This can be a dangerously detouring pastime, of course, but sometimes it turns up one of those little seeds that blossom into a whole world I had forgotten.

So it is with a letter I have just come across, written in the winter of 1976 to my parents from a Greek border town called Pythion, where I was waiting for a train to Istanbul. Sometimes it is just such global synapses – way stations – that unencumber and inspire us.

Here is part of what I wrote:

As the end of each year approaches, I try to take stock of the preceding 12 months, to absorb and assess the adventures, inner and outer. Reviewing this year, I've been filled with gratitude and wonder to realize that this has been one of the most enriching, exhilarating years I've had in a long time, especially the past six months, when I managed to squeeze six special trips into an overcrowded schedule. I hope you'll indulge me in sharing some of my most magical travel moments, and meanings, from 2012.

Festive in France

The Cote d'Azur has been one of my favorite places in the world since I first landed there in the mid-1970s. This year I was lucky to be able to savor the region for two weeks in June, visiting four places I'd never been before – Marseille, Montpelier, Sainte-Maxime, and Cagnes sur Mer – and revisiting two I'd fallen deeply in love with decades ago: Nice and St Paul de Vence.

I've already written about Nice and St Paul for Gadling. Among other riches of the trip, I had the best bouillabaisse of my life at the harbor-front Miramar restaurant in Marseille and was enchanted by the ambiance of student-spangled Montpelier, where a perfect cobbled square with a perfect café under a perfect canopying tree seemed to magically appear around every corner (and where the streets flowed with wine and song on the marvelous night of the Fete de la Musique). One of the most memorable highlights was spending one precious night at the Hotel Negresco two weeks before that legendary institution celebrated its 100th birthday. What an extraordinary hotel! Part priceless art collection, part history museum, part culinary temple, the Negresco – still owned by the feisty and fabulous 89-year-old Madame Augier – is emblematic of the intelligence, elegance, and artfulness that define the Cote d'Azur for me.

Last month, I spent a week on the Indonesian island of Bali as a guest of the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. This was my first visit to that blessed place since I'd fallen in love with it 34 years ago.

Like me, the island had lost some of its innocence in the intervening years. Unlike my earlier trip, when the Balinese I met had simply welcomed me with wide eyes and hearts, this time most immediately asked me if I'd been there before. When I answered, "Yes, 34 years ago," their eyes opened wide for a different reason and they smiled and shook their heads. "Oh, Bali has changed much since then!" they'd laugh, though many of them couldn't say exactly how because they hadn't even been born 34 years before.

Of course, to my eyes too, Bali had changed. The streets were much busier, clogged with trucks and motor scooters, than I remembered, and the towns were more built up; the road from Denpasar to Ubud was lined with many more buildings and fewer rice paddies than I recalled.

But in a deeper sense, the spirit of the place seemed hardly changed at all. During a few free days of wandering, I passed a number of festival processions flowing through the streets. Every day I was enchanted as I had been three decades before by the sweet, simple canangsari offerings – hand-sized compositions of colorful flowers on green coconut leaves, some graced with a cracker – that were meticulously placed outside my door and on bustling sidewalks, off-the-beaten-path foot trails, temple thresholds and business entrances alike. And while I realize I know nothing about the difficulties of being Balinese – the need to scrupulously follow rigorous traditions, for example, or the unpredictabilities of relying on a tourism economy – the people I met exuded a gentleness, tranquility, contentment and sense of sanctity in the everyday that was as exemplary, expanding and restorative for me as it was 34 years before.

But it wasn't until my last day in Ubud that Bali's soul-binding offerings really came to life for me.

Gallery: Bali, Indonesia

OCTOBER 5, 10:30 a.m. -- I'm sitting by my private villa's footprint-shaped infinity pool at the Royal Pita Maha resort in northern Ubud, Bali. I've been on Bali for five days now as an invited guest at the gloriously cornucopic and chaotic Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, a five-day literary love-fest that brings together 130 writers from more than 20 countries with hundreds of literature enthusiasts to celebrate words and humanity. We're in day three of the festival and I'm totally loving it. I've already had stimulating conversations with dozens of wonderful worldly people and I feel that my personal planet is broadening and broadening with each encounter.

And that's in addition to the sublime joy of being in Ubud itself, which – once you get away from the main drag, which is clogged with motor scooters, taxis, touts, trucks and tourists – bestows still a little piece, and peace, of heaven.

I taught an all-day travel writing workshop (with students from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, England and the U.S. – we were a world-girdling odyssey without going anywhere!) two days ago and pontificated on a panel about travel writing yesterday. Tomorrow I have a full day of back-to-back panels on travel writing, the intersection of food and culture, and the future of publishing – but today, my schedule is enticingly, exhilaratingly, panel-free.

I have been thinking that I should spend the day exploring the less-touristed northern and western corners of Bali, or paying homage to some of the island's renowned temples, or re-visiting the villages I wrote about on my first journey here 34 years before....

But sometimes as a travel writer you have to do things that just don't come naturally, that take you way out of your comfort zone. And today, I've just impetuously decided, is one of those days. Sitting on my terrace under the batik blue sky, contemplating a day that stretches as infinite as the pool before me, I've resolved to try to do something that I haven't done in a very, very long time: nothing.

That's right, I'm immersing myself in indolence.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of hosting an event at National Geographic Auditorium in Washington, DC, with the lovely, learned and gracious cuisine expert May Bsisu. Our event focused on the tastes and traditions of cuisine throughout the Arab world, based on Bsisu's exquisite book, The Arab Table. As part of my preparation, I spoke with Bsisu about her book and about the role of food in her life and in Arab culture. Like her life and work, our conversation proved a fascinating introduction to a rich and complex culinary tradition about which I knew almost nothing. I heartily recommend her book, and as a small sample of its riches, present here some excerpts from our talk.

DG: You started your book with the word "Tafadalo." What does that mean?

MB: Tafadalo is one of my favorite words.

It is used in many different ways: When you open your home door to receive a guest, you say, "Tafadalo." When you offer a guest a cup of coffee or juice, you say, "Tafadalo." Tafadalo means welcome and indicates a long tradition of Arab hospitality. For many it particularly means delicious food is on the table and it is time to eat!

In Arabic, Tafadalo also means "do me the honor." It is an offering and an invitation. In Arab and Arab-American homes, welcoming others, especially guests, is an essential courtesy and an expression of hospitality.

Why did you write The Arab Table?

It's 4 p.m. on a Sunday in mid-August. I'm standing in a Northern California bookstore surrounded by about 100 people ranging in age from 20 to 70, drinking champagne, downing brownies, and hugging and crying and laughing all at the same time. It's the fourth and final day of the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference, and while the conference has officially ended, no one wants to leave. The room crackles with emotional electricity, expands with newfound dreams.

As the chairman and co-founder of this conference-cum-summer camp, I look on this scene with a mixture of wonder, exhilaration, exhaustion and gratitude. Somehow, four days at a benevolent bookstore in a San Francisco suburb have infused me, have infused us, with the belief that everything we do, as travelers and travel creators, matters, that we go into the world with a joyful duty to live as fully and deeply as we can and the accompanying joyful potential to truly transform the planet.

Here's how I lost my voice and found my vision at Book Passage this year.

It all began for me on Wednesday, Aug. 14, when I gathered at the Marin County bookstore with 11 intrepid adventurers for an all-day pre-conference workshop: a day in the life of a travel writer exploring San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. We took the ferry from Larkspur to the Ferry Building – a glorious way to begin any day – and then wandered through San Francisco's old Italian neighborhood, now Italy-meets-China-meets-Vietnam, past cathedrals and cafes, parks and pastry shops.

As we walked, I talked about what a travel story tries to do and how as a travel writer I try to get a place, paying attention to defining details – see that shop sign written in Italian, Chinese and Vietnamese; inhale the Old World essence of Molinari's deli – and asking myself what are the glimpses, sensual details and encounters that matter the most to me, that begin to compose my portrait of North Beach. Then we separated so that everyone could try to find their own scenes, the first pieces in their portraits.