You launched Transitions Abroad more than a quarter a century ago. What was the original purpose or vision of the magazine?

In March 1977 I announced that Transitions would be 'a new kind of travel publication. Its purpose is to provide the non-touring traveler with up-to-date information that is practical and usable on educational travel and study abroad.' The title, I explained, was meant to suggest the changes that occur as a result of immersion in a foreign language and culture.

Travel that changes us, travel that is mind-expanding, travel that involves learning has been the focus over the last 26 years as the magazine has covered all the opportunities to enrich one's life through travel.

Could you paint a picture of the travel publishing scene in the '70s?

For the travel industry (which includes publishers), travel, then and now, is either business or recreation. Either way, it's expensive. That's the way it's sold. Mass travel is cheapest -- booking blocks of seats and blocks of hotel rooms. That's the way it's sold. Of course lots of us know different. I certainly did, having lived in Europe and traveled in Africa and Asia for years. Camping is cheapest -- we did it from Morocco to India in the early '60s and the length of the former USSR in the '70s. And we did it with kids. The cost -- excluding the used VW bus and gas -- was about $1 a day. Hotels in Europe cost us maybe $3 a day. The same for meals. Again, we always use our own transportation -- buying a car when we get there and selling it back when we left.

Anyway, that's not how most people travel. Only Rick Steves was doing a decent job of telling people how to travel comfortably and cheaply in the '70s. And of course Arthur Frommer, but he was still very middle of the road.

There were a few backpacker books -- Marcus Endicott's Vagabond Globetrotting was a classic. Lonely Planet was starting up. But the revelation that you could travel cheaply on your own was just starting to sink in.

Of course, TA was never just about cheap. You've heard all my rhetoric about how travel enriches, so I won't repeat it. In the '80s Arthur Frommer took up theme but I've had few other imitators. To most travel is still consumption, not education -- you don't go to the Mall of the World to learn but to buy.

There are lots of ways that TA broke the mould, but I suppose my insistence on responsible travel was most important. My simple reasoning was that if we visit other countries for our benefit in order to learn from them, it doesn't make a lot of sense to mess up their culture and environment.

Anyway, there were publications on where to travel -- including magazines like Great Expeditions which became Escape that paid some attention to green travel to "exotic" destinations with pretty pictures -- but not many like the People's Guide to Mexico that were more concerned with how to travel and why travel in the first place.