The Travel Salon is an intimate gathering of writers and travelers. After two sold-out evenings in San Francisco, it comes to London.

£8 ticket includes first drink free and small bites.

“The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.”

-Russell Baker

Everybody wants to travel like a local, but how do you start? Join five inveterate travel writers and bloggers in a discussion on getting off the well-worn tourist tracks. Learn to discover where locals really eat, what neighborhoods to stay in, and how to track down a destination's secrets even if you don't speak the language. You may never completely blend in on a Beijing street if you were born in Sheffield, but you’ll know how to unearth adventure and open yourself to surprise. Moderated by Gogobot's Editorial Director and guidebook author Alex Leviton.

Panelists:

Paul Clammer trained and worked as a molecular biologist before an unexpected encounter in an Iranian teahouse led him into being sucked into the travel industry. He has worked as a tour guide for adventure travel companies in Morocco and Turkey. Since 2003 he was written or contributed to over 25 guidebooks, for Lonely Planet and Bradt, including writing groundbreaking guides to Sudan and Afghanistan (where he had tea with the Taliban a month before the 9/11 attacks). He lost his heart in the Fes medina, but has recently been carrying out a love affair with Haiti, and has just returned from nine months living there to write a new guidebook for Bradt, which hits the shelves in November 2012. Follow him online at www.twitter.com/paulclammer and www.facebook.com/HaitiTravelGuide."

Travel writer Matt Carroll has a passion for the great outdoors and a voracious appetite for adventure. A keen cyclist since his school days, Matt spent three years talking to locals, researching the routes and itineraries for his book, Escape Routes. And, when he's not off exploring Britain by bike, he lives in London and contributes to a number of national newspapers and magazines, as well as presenting travel films. www.escape-routes.co.uk

Mike Sowden is an Archaeology student turned misadventure-attracting freelance writer. He has been sunburned unconscious in Greece, been robbed in Germany, has slept rough in Orkney, has cowered through rainstorms on English moorland, and has generally attracted suffering and woe right across Europe. His misadventures have been featured in Wild Junket Magazine & the San Francisco Chronicle, pointed & laughed at by Lonely Planet & Matador Network, and are recorded in humiliating detail in his own blog, Fevered Mutterings (www.mikesowden.org/feveredmutterings).

Debbie Wosskow is a serial entrepreneur and business strategist. In October 2011, when she was struggling to find accommodation for her family holiday that wouldn’t use up 80 per cent of their travel budget, Debbie conceived of the idea for Love Home Swap, a socially connected home exchange site, providing travellers interested in a local experience with an inexpensive, yet stylish way to spend their holiday. Debbie is also the founder of Collaborative Consumption Europe. (www.lovehomeswap.com)

Moderator Alex Leviton is Gogobot’s Editorial Director. She’s worked as a freelance travel writer since 1998 and a Lonely Planet author since 2002. She’s contributed to 24 titles for Lonely Planet. Alex has visited 54 countries on six continents. She’s discovered local life in Perugia, Italy while working on Lonely Planet’s Tuscany & Umbria, in Turkey as a belly-dancing waitress on a boat , mentored at-risk youth on a gardening project on a Northern Californian Indian reservation, and lived in Guatemala and Spain, learning Spanish and dancing salsa.

Write the Best Hotel Review and Win! TO ENTER: Write one hotel review on Gogobot of at least 150 words and email it to editor@gogobot.com for a chance to win a £100 gift certificate! Reviews will be judged by Gogobot's editorial staff and the winner must be present at the Travel Salon to claim the prize.