As print newspapers fight to stay alive, travel sections lose pages and steadily increase service journalism while operating under more scrutiny than ever. In support of our paper/e-ink colleagues, here’s the Sunday print travel news that’s fit to post about.

Apart from its somewhat lame “holiday tables around the world” story, the New York Times’ section really did it for me this week, particularly the feature on the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan. Tajikistan is probably not on most people’s dream itineraries and it wasn’t on mine before reading this piece, an engaging combination of politics, history, and just plain great travel writing.

“When I’d thought about traveling to see this rugged branch of the ancient Silk Road, it had seemed like an adventure to the far-flung periphery of the world,” writes Andy Isaacson after describing a lively East-meets-West bazaar in the mountains populated by Afghan traders, Tajik residents, tourists, and Korean women selling balloons. “Now, as I looked around the market, taking the long view of history, it felt more like the center.”

His description of the Tajik capital is a perfect blend of fact and humor. “A Soviet vision of a model Oriental capital was built around the market village of Dushanbe — pleasant and leafy, if dull, with a wide central avenue, pastel-colored buildings, the standard apartment blocks and some grand monuments meant to be honored from afar. (Make the innocent mistake of approaching one, as I did, and you give an underpaid policeman an excuse to seek a bribe to overlook the offense.)”

Elsewhere in the section a tour of Bali’s street food vendors provides yet another reason to visit Bali: Ibu Oka’s roasted suckling pig.  And Merta Sari’s minced fish satay. Also the Ayam Taliwang (a traditional Balinese chicken dish) at the stand by the same name.

SCORE: 9/10 carry-ons

This seems to have been the week for politically charged travel stories. In addition to the NYT’s visit to Afghanistan’s border, the LA Times travel section focused on voluntourism, starting with a mother and daughter volunteering in an orphanage for HIV-positive children in Kenya. “After eight glorious days on safari, we are spending the next two days helping out in Nyumbani and New Life — both homes for HIV-positive babies, then visiting the Harambee Community Center in the Mukuru slum,” Amanda Jones writes.

It’s a great way for Americans to alleviate some of the guilt associated with spending thousands on safaris in Africa while the local people struggle. Thing is, it’s really, really hard to write about volunteering without sounding a bit precious and sanctimonious and while Jones manages it in some graphs, she falls short in others: “…I am wishing that we had many more bags so the boys would not have to wear pink and every one of the 110 children would get their own toy. Later, Indigo, my wise child, chided me. ‘Wearing pink is the least of their problems, Mama, and we did our best.’”

Perhaps because he’s not telling a personal story, Mike Ives fares a bit better with his piece on Know One Train One (KOTO),a Vietnamese charity that trains former street kids to cook, wait tables and speak English. The charity operates two popular restaurants in Phnom Penh that are run as training centers for program participants. It’s an interesting story, but has almost the opposite problem of Jones’s piece in that it utterly lacks a first-person perspective–it’s straight-up reporting.

Despite its lame title–”Helping the environment while traveling the globe”–Krista Simmons’s piece about Kangaroo Island, off Australia’s southern coast, manages to strike a perfect balance between the two. “Unzipping my bee veil, I popped a piece of fresh honeycomb in my mouth,” she writes. “The nectar, warmed by the South Australian winter sun, was delicate, perhaps because it’s produced by the only purebred population of Ligurian bees on the planet. Or perhaps it’s because I, a worker bee from the city, harvested it.”

SCORE: 6/10 carry-ons

The Washington Post also delved into politics with this week’s travel section, and won the award for least twee Christmas story with its feature on Maaloula, Syria, one of the few places in the world where Aramaic, “the language of Jesus,” is still spoken. The piece was written by Steven Roberts, who gives a shout-out to his more famous wife, Cokie, in the first graph.

The story is interesting, but the repeated references to this bastion of Christianity in Muslim Syria were a bit off-putting, cast as they were in a sort of  “us vs. them” tone. “Here, for this brief moment, Aramaic was not a dead relic but a living thing, a flower bursting through a crack in the stones, greeting a child into a community of Christians that refuses to be swallowed up by the Muslim world at its doorstep,” he writes.

And then, “Many friends who heard that we were vacationing in Syria thought we were daft, but few realized that the country’s extensive Christian heritage — St. Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, after all — is still here to be seen and heard and felt.”

I just about had him pegged for a super-Christian when he hit me with this one: “As a Jew, I never felt unsafe or unwelcome in Syria, but the country’s once vibrant Jewish population has been driven away, and the grand synagogue of Aleppo lies decaying and desecrated behind iron gates.”

All in all, it was an interesting story. Elsewhere in the section is a good-enough story on New Zealand. I couldn’t help but notice, though, that both seemed to be written by older men traveling with their wives, which sort of made the whole section feel like it was meant for pensioners. New Year’s resolution: Don’t be so age-ist.

SCORE: 7/10 carry-ons

Just in time for New England snowbirds to plan their early 2010 trips, the Boston Globe ran its Hawaii travel package this week, featuring two stories on the Big Island and one on Maui. Having spent a lot of time writing about the Big Island myself, I tend to be overly critical of others’ efforts, but I think the Globe’s “Island of Extremes” piece would fall short of most expectations. It’s one of the most generic stories I’ve ever read about the island–pretty much a quilt made out of the scraps of various travel guides.

The Maui feature is even worse. This is the lede: “I confess I was afraid to go to Maui. I imagined the beaches there would be so beautiful I would never be able to enjoy the ones closer to home the same way again. My fears were confirmed. Maui is a tropical paradise.” And it only gets worse as the writer proceeds to just list off what she likes about Maui. Who cares?

Claudia Campos’ story on the Big Island’s Volcano Winery, although not amazing, at least manages to take another pretty common story and make it somewhat interesting with plenty of quotes from the winery’s owner and his customers. (Side note: How and why were three Boston Globe correspondents sent to Hawaii for this package?).

“We have to ship all our equipment and grape concentrates from the mainland, so it’s very expensive,’’ owner Del Bothof tells Campos. “But seeing Mauna Loa in the moonlight at 5:30 a.m. when I come to work is beautiful.’’

SCORE: 2/10 carry-ons

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