Travelers' Intercom

I was very pleased to see the article by Yvonne Horn, “A 23-Day Exploration of Ethiopia,” in the August ’07 issue. The picture on page 10 is mislabeled, however. The photo of the priest with the vellum bible was taken at the Monastery of Nakuta La’ab in Lalibela, not at the large, modern, concrete Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum.

I believe this detail is quite important, as the two churches and their sacred artifacts are very different indeed, and it would be nice to draw more visitors to the rural church near Lalibela. The priest at this church is very obliging and kind and...

A lifelong dream of mine was to see the town where my father was born: the Volga-German colony of Reinhard in Russia.

In November ’06, I attended a meeting of the Sarasota, Florida, ITN travel club, Offbeat Travelers, and one of the members, Pat, said she and her daughter were booked on an April-May ’07 cruise from Rostov-on-Don north on the Volga River to Moscow. I asked Pat if she and Susie would be willing to go with me in a car from Saratov to try to find my father’s birthplace and she replied, “Yes!”

At home, I called Grand Circle Travel (Boston, MA; 800/959-0405, www....

The reader’s letter titled “Chancing Street Food in India” (Aug. ’07, pg. 71) provokes a response. She wrote that despite her “semi-suicidal” practice of eating from street vendors in India, she and her traveling companion never got sick, and she would have missed out on a lot of the best of India had she been more cautious on food consumption.

I don’t think her letter should be left unanswered without warnings about the risks that go with throwing caution to the winds in eating in Third World countries.

As an example, a few years ago my wife and I took a small group tour of...