Fluffy travel

Travel writing on the Internet is a slog and I am fed up. I am pretty good at digging through teh Interwebz, and this is mostly what I have found:

Puff pieces. These cater to the armchair traveler-- for that sap in the office who spends his lunch break surfing the net looking for a great way to spend his 2 weeks of vacation-- a.k.a., the fluffy traveler. He wants to know where the cushiest hotels are, he wants to know how to "see a city" in 36 hours, he wants to drool over pictures of a babe getting a massage in the Maldives, he can't wait to make it big (or retire) and spend the rest of his care-free days doing all this great stuff he never has the time or motivation to do right now. Armchair travelers must fuel 90% of the travel writing industry, because 90% of the travel-writing out there is mind-numbingly fluffy.

Personal blogs. Why is it that so many boring people think that the minutiae of their package-tour vacation is of interest to the entire Internet?

General travel interest websites... where only 10% of the articles are actually interesting.

Etc.

Very, very, very rarely, I find actually decent travel writing. I have some criteria for what I want:

1. Technically sound writing.
2. Storytelling structure.
3. A true account of a unique adventure.
4. Personal reflection with emotional depth.
5. Lush, descriptive narration.
6. Captivating contextual engine.


The best piece of travel writing I have ever read is Michael Fay's Megatransect series in National Geographic.