The Road Junky Festival of Creativity will be held in a magical place not far from the Austrian border and there are 100 places available to come and learn things as diverse as juggling, eating wild plants, illustration, playing the didgeridoo, massage, creative writing, singing, dance expression and anything else creative you can think of – for while we’ll be bringing in a core group of teachers and musicians, each person who comes to the festival can propose a workshop – in fact, you get a cheaper ticket if you do!

We provide the food, tea and coffee as we will eat in a circle at lunch and dinner, make up to 4 or 5 creative workshops a day, and jam around the fire at night, sing mantras, make storytelling, play games and fall in love in the moonlight.

If it sounds a bit like a rainbow gathering, you’re right – we want to take the best elements of living and sharing together but it will be a little better organised! There will be many more workshops and there won’t be any naked crazy people serving the food who last had a shower when it last rained…

Here’s how your typical day might look at the festival:

7am – Wake up in the morning, splash some water on your face and stroll through the forest to the meditation, yoga or chi kung workshop.

Grab a quick coffee by the fire and then:

9am – Go to a workshop on juggling and connect the hemispheres of your brain by throwing some balls in the air.

11am – Go to a workshop on creative writing and learn how to invent characters and scenarios.

1pm – First food circle! Grab your plate and go to sit in the circle with new friends and be served some vegetarian food.

2pm – Attend a discussion on hitchhiking tactics and stories.

4pm – Go to a workshop on voice percussion and learn how to beatbox.

6.30pm – Second food circle – did you find time to clean your plate after lunch?

8pm – Quick! It’s time to go and check out the sunset and chat to that cute hippie with dreadlocks you met earlier in the day in the juggling workshop!

9pm – The sound of drums calls you back to the fire and it’s time to dance and sing and celebrate and try to get to bed before dawn because someone’s making a walk through the forest the next morning to show which wild plants you can eat…

Reserve your tickets at: http://www.roadjunkyfestival.com

The post The Road Junky Festival of Creativity 8-17 July, 2022 in the Czech Republic appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

We’ll be listing yoga retreats, contact improvisation gatherings, tantra festivals, juggling conventions and basically anything that looks small and groovy and alternative.

Check out https://festivalsandretreats.co.uk to see which festivals we have so far. We’re always open to suggestions…

The post Small festivals and retreats in England, Scotland, Wales & Ireland appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

Science For Hippies is a book and a blog by Tom Thumb, founder of Road Junky, which will be a guide to science and critical thinking for spiritual people.

If this sounds like a worthy project to you then you can show your support by pre-ordering a copy of the book!

And you can read the first articles over at http://www.scienceforhippies.com

Why does the world need this book?

If this recent lockdown experience has taught us anything it’s that the world is going crazy. Many have lost trust in experts and just don’t know what to believe any more.

People hurl links at each other on social media like ninja stars and there are so many ‘alternative facts’ that the truth gets lost along the way.

There are many debunking and fact checking websites out there but only hard-core skeptics visit them. The language of science is often inaccessible and dismissive to the uninitiated.

So I want to write Science For Hippies to provide a simple, friendly guide to what science and critical thinking are all about. The book will explore the scientific method, cognitive biases, the uses and limits of intuition and address common concerns about funding and credibility.

The book won’t offer detailed breakdowns of why individual conspiracy theories aren’t true. No one likes to be told why they’re wrong (and especially not in detail!).  Instead we’ll look at how can we know anything at all? Not what to think but how.

And that can help make the world a better place to live in.

Why raise money for this book?

I’ll be honest: I thought I’d sooner sell a kidney than do a crowdfunding campaign. I find it excruciatingly awkward to ask anyone for money.

I’m an experienced writer, however, and think that I can write a book that’s worth reading. So here you can order your copy of the book in advance and I have something to live on in the meanwhile.

The truth is, however, I’ll write the book whether I reach the target or not – it will just take a lot longer!

And if there’s momentum behind this campaign then I can also make videos and podcasts to accompany the chapters. There will also be a blog where you can see the ongoing work and I’d like this to be the seed for a movement to reconcile science with spirituality.

To be honest, if you’re already the kind of person who reads science of a regular basis this book won’t teach you much. But don’t you know 1 or 2 (or 50!) people who could really do with learning the basics?

Why should I write Science For Hippies?

I used to believe a lot of…interesting things.

But then I read and read and read and discovered that amazing superpower that science bestows: the ability to change my mind. I learned to recognise the flaws in own thinking and learned how science makes the world a more magical place, not less.

I’ve written 5 books and so I know how to create structure and narrative, how to edit and craft a bunch of thoughts and stories into something worth reading. And I’ve already written a lot about alternative culture.

You can download here for free my book about the Rainbow Gatherings – rainbow gatherings are kind of a month-long autonomous gathering of free spirits in isolated places across the world.

Or you can to http://www.tomthumb.org to see other examples of my storytelling.

And I’d love your feedback. Perhaps together we can help  restore some reason to a world that needs it more now than ever before.

http://www.scienceforhippies.com

The post Science For Hippies – a new book and blog by Tom Thumb appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

Still not a bad back-up..

A few years back it made the most sense to hit the road with a wad of traveller’s cheques but the truth is they’ve kinda faded out of fashion now. It’s doubtful you’d even find somewhere to change them. So what’s the best way for the traveler in the 2020’s to carry money on the road? Here are the three best options:

1. If you’re going to be travelling in one country for a while see if you can open a local bank account. It’s often not that hard to do, even if it’s only a post office account. You only need an address where they can post you your bank card, which a couchsurfing host might give you, and then you can transfer money to your new account for low fees with a service like Transferwise. This might seem a bit fiddly but it’s the cheapest option overall.

2. Now that you can find bank machines everywhere that actually connect to global networks, using credit cards is an option (or debit cards) and you can just take out as much money as you need at one time so if you get robbed you won’t lose that much. The only stinger are the bank fees but hey, it beats losing all your savings at once.

3. Find a way to make money as you go along. Instead of carrying money carry something you can sell like packets of incense, bindis or an instrument that can bring in some cash when you play in the street. You should still bring some reserve cash of course and a good money belt is still a decent solution.

Of course you can always just do the hobo thing are hit the road without any money and volunteer, work odd jobs or just trust in the universe to take care of you as you go along. It brings to mind friends of mine who were camped outside a village in Greece and they went i to the market to do some busking and when they came back they found thieves had been through all their belongings – they didn’t find anything worth stealing, however, and so left behind a little pile of cash as a charitable gesture.

The post How to keep your money safe on the road in the 2020’s appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

You can listen to the latest episode here but to listen to all the stories you should subscribe to Road Junky at Apple Podcasts or just search for “road junky travel stories” wherever you get your podcasts.

And perhaps you have a travel story that you’d like to share on the show?

And you can always come and share your stories with us around the camp fire at our Sahara retreats in Morocco or at our Festival of Creativity in the Czech Republic!

The post New! The Road Junky Travel Stories Podcast appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

Our retreats have a focus on exploring awareness of stillness and movement using tools like yoga, dance, song and meditation. We also run sharing circles, games at night and generally work to create an incredible group energy and opportunity to really find yourself and open the heart.

If you’ve ever tried to meditate but found it hard to keep your attention in the here and now in the rush of your daily routine, in the Sahara there can be such stillness and quiet that you can hear your own blood as it flows around your body. With no cell phones or internet you can tune into your original rhythm and experience the joy of being alive.

Sound too hippie? Don’t worry, the retreat is also a place to dance, sing and tell travel stories around the fire with interesting people from around the world. Either way you’ll be blown away by the majestic dunes, the brightness of the stars in the desert and the magic of the Sahara.

Check outhttp://www.roadjunkyretreat.com to find out more!

The next meditative yoga and dance therapy  retreat is 17-23 November, the next yoga and voice retreat is 12-18 January, 2020 and the next contact improv and meditation retreat is 2-8 February, 2020

our home in the dunes

The post The Road Junky Sahara Meditation, Yoga & Dance Retreats in Morocco: 12-18 January & 2-8 February, 2020 appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

Great!

We’re looking for travellers to share their tales of being out there on the road to inspire others and open some windows to the rest of the world.

Please have a read of the below first:

Tech stuff

Firstly you need to be able to record your story. Try to get hold of a microphone somewhere and practice a while with it. It’s really easy to ruin a recording by making too many ‘pop’ sounds when you’re mouth is too close to the mic.

You can record your story using a program like Audacity to record it. Save it as a .wav file for best quality.

Ideally, your story should be about 10-15 minutes long but we’re flexible. Listen to it before you send it to us and see if it could be improved.

What kind of story is interesting?

You are as interesting as the story itself. Maybe something amazing happened to you but we also want to know how you felt about it, what it meant to you. We want to stand in your shoes and imagine it was us in that crazy situation.

Your story can be something funny, something tragic, something unbelievable, something insightful – something that hasn’t happened to us. We want to learn from it, be entertained by it, have it change how we see the world in some way.

And this is Road Junky. How I Lost My Camera on Holiday is unlikely to be as interesting to us as Getting Attacked by Wild Dogs in Anatolia...

How to tell your story

To tell a good story you need to know what it is you want to tell. Make your story interesting from the beginning – why do we want to hear the next ten minutes of it?

Think about how your story ends. Understatement is powerful. Don’t give us the moral of the story – we’re not in church.

Try to vary the pace of the story. Make it intimate. Share how you felt.

Imagine you’re telling it to your best friend over a coffee. Feel the emotions as though you were telling the story for the first time.

DON’T type out your story and then read it out. That sounds really stiff and boring like a schoolkid reading in front of the class.

But also don’t just start recording and blah blah without knowing what you want to say.

The best way we know to tell this kind of story is to use notes. So instead of:

The New Year’s parties were always the most chaotic. Thousands of Indian tourists turned up for 48 hours of unmitigated anarchy. They walked down the beach fully dressed, socks and shoes and all, itching to take photos of girls in bikinis. This was my girlfriend in Goa, they told their friends back home. At night, they got hopelessly drunk and every year a couple of them drowned as they tried to swim for the very first time.

You can just have:

New Year – Indian tourists – ‘girlfriend in goa’ – drunk drowning.

This way you remember the structure of your story but you’ll find fresh words for it each time.

And, please, practice telling it to someone before you record!

How to send it to us

Ultimately we need the .wav recording. But these are heavy files so please first upload a version of it to Soundcloud or Youtube or a similar service so we can give it a listen first. When you’ve done that send an email with the link to tom@roadjunky.com with the word ‘podcast’ in the email subject.

The post Got a good travel story? Share it with us on the Road Junky Podcast! appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

Just a bunch of nice guys

So what will happen to you if you travel to Morocco right now?

Nothing at all.

Can we promise that? No more than we can guarantee that you won’t be run over by a bus today, or have a tile fall off a roof and hit you on the head.

What we can promise is that of all the threats to your safety, terrorist strikes are among the least likely.

It’s like flying. Many people are scared of going up in the air even though it’s many, many more times safer than getting into a car and yet when was the last time you saw someone nervous about getting into the passenger seat of a taxi? It seems that we’re wired to worry about sensational, dramatic risks to our lives while ignoring the everyday, banal things that are astronomically more likely to kill us.

Over 8 million tourists from Europe go to Morocco each year and the worst that happens to them is they pay too much for a carpet in the market in Marrakech. The tourism industry creates work and provides income for hundreds of thousands of Moroccans and the last thing they want is for tourists to worry about coming to Morocco.

OK, full disclosure: we organise retreats in Morocco ( http://www.roadjunkyretreat.com) and would rather people weren’t too scared to come. But we also wouldn’t take people out to the Sahara Desert unless we thought it was safe. Really, it would just be too much of a drag to explain to the families afterwards why their son/daughter/cousinet

Travel advisories issued by state departments – those handy little recipes for paranoia – urge travelers to take great care when visiting just about any Muslim country these days. But they didn’t warn anyone about taking a trip to Paris. There are 4.7 million Muslims living in France who don’t want to see anyone dead. The Paris terrorist strikes weren’t carried out by Muslims. They were carried out by assholes.

What i would like to see on the travel advisories would be ‘It is not recommended to attend weddings in Afghanistan in case a US drone kills you all’ – as has happened more than once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deh_Bala_wedding_party_airstrike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wech_Baghtu_wedding_party_airstrike

Do Muslims hate America and it’s European allies?

The ones who are bombed, shot, tortured, invaded and oppressed by US-supporters dictators might, yes. But they don’t hate Americans or other Europeans. They understand better than we that governments are rarely representative of the people who live there and will treat you as an individual. If you respect their culture (wearing miniskirts and downing bottles of Vodka in the main square of Marrakech not being the best idea) then you’ll mostly meet with kindness and hospitality.

We’ve travelled through the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesia and have been sheltered, fed, befriended and taken care of everywhere. Sometimes we wish we could drag the presenters of Fox News through a neighbourhood of Yogyakarta or Izmir or Fez to see how distant the people are from the portrait of murderous fanatics presented in mass media.

No, we wouldn’t take a trip to Syria or Yemen or Iraq right now – war zones anywhere aren’t safe places to be. But Morocco continues to be a safe, pleasant and fascinating place to travel.

The post Is it safe to travel to Morocco? Duh, obviously… appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

You just need:

– Facebook friends

– ten minutes or so

It works like this: you invite your friends to our events and we give you 10% commission if they book a place.
You just go to the event page on Facebook:

for the Sahara meditation and dance retreat

and

for the Sahara yoga and contact improvisation dance retreat

and hit the “Invite” button and “choose friends” – then invite as many friends as you want.

How do you know if one of your friends is coming?

Just check the list of people who say they’re coming on the event page and Facebook will tell you if you invited them. Then just ask them if they actually made a booking or just clicked for the fun of it. When they confirm that they’ve made a book just write to me and I’ll send you your commission.

10% commission on the Sahara retreats gets you 39.5 euros and we can send it you by Paypal. If you don’t have Paypal just sign up – it takes a few minutes only and the cash is with you in moments.

Good luck!

Tom Thumb
https://www.facebook.com/tom.thumb.9822924

The post Make Money with Road Junky Events! appeared first on Road Junky Guides.

a life-saver that fits in your pocket

In Case There Is No Doctor is advertised as ‘The Medical and Survival Guide for Travels On and Off the Beaten Track’ and this little, life-saving book is just that: 192 perforated pages (so you can just take the info you want if you’re really travelling light) on how to recognize and treat common illnesses and injuries, and how to stay alive in a tight spot.

The author, Avshalom Mor, is a paramedic from Israel who has obviously traveled a good deal and he gives advice from the traveler’s point of view, always taking into account the limited resources you might have at hand when there’s a medical emergency or face a dangerous situation; when facing a dangerous dog at night, for instance, Mor suggests shining a torch into its eyes. He even gives tips on what to do in life-and-death fight with a dog (you rip out its testicles).

In Case There is No Doctor has plenty of survival advice but first and foremost it’s about first aid. Most of us feel pretty stupid for not knowing more, or we would if we watched someone die for want of knowing how to save someone who’s choking or having a heart attack. And yet if you’ve ever tried to commit to memory all the guidelines to save someone’s life you’ll know how easy it is to forget it all the moment you put the book down. Most of us learn best by doing rather than just reading about it and few of us get much practice in applying a splint to a broken bone, sewing up a wound or treating scorpion bites. So when the moment comes all that we’ve learned just flies right out of our heads. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a little manual that fits in the pocket that you could consult?

Sometimes the advice contained seems a little too advanced and though the author is quick to recommend that we get professional help when possible, would most travelers really be able to rehydrate someone rectally if the need was serious enough? That’s a page I’ll be tearing out of my copy just in case any co-travelers get any bright ideas if they find me unconscious…

Mor also recommends various herbs and plants for their medicinal properties but strays outside of the general scientific consensus when he holds urine to be antiseptic, for instance (it’s long been thought to be sterile though even that is now in doubt).

But overall this is a book that you can learn from every time you pick it up and makes a great traveler’s companion taking up very little space in your backpack and who knows, it must just save your – or someone else’s – life one day.

The post In Case There is No Doctor by Avshalom Mor appeared first on Road Junky Guides.