I am a TOTAL GENIUS. While googling helplessly for information on how to get from Marrakech to Dakhla to Nouakchott to Bamako to Tombouctou yesterday, I stumbled on dozens of the travel wikis that now seem to abound. Yawn. Things like Wikitravel are great in many ways, full of useful information and interesting trivia, but the thing is, if I’m planning a trip, it’s likely I already know what I want to see when I get there, and while recommendations for hotels and restaurants are useful, they’re also fairly easy to come by.
When I am searching the web for travel information, though, as a fairly well-informed traveller, it’s information about the nuts and bolts of travel information that I’m after. It’s all very well to find out that Location X has a fascinating 14th century mosque, but I can figure that out on my own; what I need to know is how to get from X to Y, how long it takes, how much it costs, and whether the road is impassible in the wet season. That’s the sort of information that makes LP’s Thorn Tree invaluable - the personal experiences from people who have recently done the trip that you want to do - but that sort of information is hard to archive in a forum, and hard to find.
So: wouldn’t it be awesome if there were some sort of travel wiki that concentrated on getting from A to B, where you could just type in, say, Dakhla to Nouakchott into neat little boxes, and get information on how to get their by bus, or bush taxi, or whatever, as well as testimonials from people who have made the trip? It’s possible that such a thing already exists, and if it doesn’t, I certainly don’t have the technical skills (not to mention time or energy) to bring it into being, but if anyone wants to take the idea and run with it, and give me all the credit and potential money, do feel free.
