Let's Get Lost: Adventures in the Great Wide Open

In this overenthusiastic and sometimes overwritten collection of travel adventures, Nelson (Finding True Love in a Man-Eat-Man World: The Intelligent Guide to Gay Dating, Sex, Romance, and Eternal Love) proves his main rule of the road: that he ""can safely go anywhere in the world, and make real contact with people who are completely alien to me in their culture, in their language and in their civilization."" Nelson survives a Chinese ""friendship tour,"" which touches down in Tiananmen Square and Shanghai, takes the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca in the Amazon with a shaman and explores the spiritual side of Egypt's Aswan Dam. Along the way, he contemplates the theory of the ""momentous stumble"" in India when he finds Khajuraho, a gorgeous Brahmin temple about which no one seems to know. Nelson prides himself on how well he can adapt to nature: he learns to live with hyenas, flamingos, tsetse flies and other sub-Saharan African beasts. At his best, Nelson's keen eye for detail captures those moments that offer escape from the dreaded ""global homogenization"" that he sees almost everywhere else. (Aug.)