Travel Writer Roger Wade Returns to the Internet with a Site Devoted to the Real Cost of Travel

It's interesting to track the careers of travel writers who challenge normal boundaries, always trying to discover new and different approaches to journeys and vacations. I used to follow the efforts of Roger Wade, former Content Director at BootsnAll Travel (who once wrote an article dissecting my own former efforts to live on $5 a day), but was then puzzled when he seemed to disappear -- almost consciously left the travel writing field -- for at least the past eighteen-or-so months.

The reason why he vanished from view became clear this week with receipt of an e-mail in which he tells of his latest project. I thought you might be interested in it:

I left my position at BootsnAll Travel at the end of 2009, and since then I've been traveling around Asia and working on a new online resource... It's www.priceoftravel.com and among other things I've researched and tracked prices for tourist expenses like hotels, hostels, attractions, transportation, food and drinks, in over 110 cities around the world, all converted into U.S. dollars at today's exchange rate.

Among other things, as I've since discovered, Roger Wade has recently published a price index for backpackers' travel, listing the places where the most frugal travelers on earth can live for less than even they envision. He has followed up most recently with a price index for the "three-star" tourist -- i.e., the cost-conscious (but non-backpacking) traveler -- listing, among other places, the cities of best value budget travel. His European index, starting with Krakow, Poland; Budapest; and Istanbul; and going on later to Bruges, Lisbon and Berlin; is well documented; but then becomes highly controversial with the inclusion of Prague and London, but he makes a mighty effort to show how even budget-minded travelers can live affordably in the latter two places.