The Cruelest Journey

The Cruelest Journey
by Kira Salak

No place is safe. Safety, itself, is an illusion.  And I wonder if it is my deep acceptance of this that makes it easier for me to do these trips. No place is safe. And while I don't advocate tempting fate, I guess I just don't worry much about it either.  p 33

 Kira Salak is an adventurer in all senses of the word.  She travels alone into the deepest, darkest places to challenge herself, to face her fears, to explore, to see.  I had previously read Four Corners Salak's tale of her solo journey into the heart of Papua New Guinea so I knew something of what I would find in The Cruelest Journey.  Still nothing prepared me for the true nature of her insane itinerary.  She paddled alone for 600 miles along the Niger river to trace the route of explorer Mungo Park.  Along the way she conquered injury, illness, weather, verbal abuse, constant demands, true physical danger, hippos, and so much more.  She willfully ignored every US State Department advisory on travel in Mali and she survived.  She made it to Timbuktu. 

     She did this alone.  I have already said that, but it bears repeating. This is an unfathomable accomplishment to many people she encounters along the way and it will be unfathomable to many people who pick up the book. Salak meditates on her solo travel as she paddles down the river. With no goals other than reaching her final destination, she simply paddles and thinks. She comes to understandings about herself and about the power of experiencing the world. 

     I travel alone. Not like Salak, but still, if I travel, I go alone. On a recent trip to Europe I happened to be with a group of sorts for the sake of convenience, but spent most of my time wandering on my own.  Each person in the group was traveling as part of a couple and each one of them approached me at one time or another and commented how brave they thought I was.  I can understand where they are coming from.  There is some danger in travel and safety in numbers. There is also the perception of women as more vulnerable. As Salak notes, however, no place is safe.  I can run into trouble here at home much the same way I could abroad.  I will not let fear hold me back as many think should happen. 

The truth: my gender will always make me appear more vulnerable. But to not travel anywhere out of fear, or to remain immobilized in a state of hyper-vigilance when I do, feels akin to psychological bondage. I do not want to give away that kind of power. p 90

I have confidence in my ability to deal with any situation where ever it happens to arise.  There is power in that confidence and there is freedom. It opens up great worlds--literally. That is what travel can do for your mind, body and spirit.

Parisian Getaway

Paris in Love
by Eloisa James

Paris I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down
by Rosecrans Baldwin

     Sure you dream of traveling, but have you ever dreamed of living abroad?  It is one thing adapting for a few short weeks, another to do it permanently.  There is a whole new culture to learn, a language, details about daily life and so much more.  There is also the risk of having your dreams dashed.  The tourist facade sometimes hides a great many problems.  The phrase "I loved visiting, but I wouldn't want to live there." is around for a reason.

      In both of these books, the authors dreamed of living in Paris.  Both were devoted francophiles and had visited before.  Both intended to use the time they spent in the City of Light to work on a book and live the life they dreamed of.  For all of the similarities, there are differences.  James and her family moved to Paris after a major health scare.  She wanted to live the life she dreamed of while she still had a life to live.  Accordingly her book is a joyful tale--a collection of expanded communiques from the year.  She tells funny stories, anecdotes about the Parisian life and general pleasures of France. Little is shared about the true difficulties of living abroad except in a few of the stories relating to her children who initially struggle to fit into their Italian language school. This could be in part because James and her husband have lived abroad before (her husband is Italian).  Overall, it is a cheerful book that makes you want to have the same experience. 

     Baldwin, on the other hand, is not able to live a life of leisure during his time in Paris.  He has a job at a marketing firm and works on his novel late at night or early in the morning.  He is candid about his struggles with the language, with French bureaucracy, with the culture, and with many other small things such as the endless construction around their apartment.  At the same time he loves Paris and shares the joys when he finds them such as lunches in the park, frequent only in Paris moments, and the miracle of increasing fluency in a new language.  It isn't as cheerful as the James book, but it is incredibly refreshing in its honest portrayal of the realities of living in another country. It didn't bring me down in the slightest, but instead made me want to have the very same experience.  

     Reading these two books made me realize how much I would like the adventure and challenge of living abroad.  I did it for 8 weeks as a teenager, but I spent most of my time avoiding the experience.  My adult self looks back upon that with great regret.  I missed so much.  Now I can only manage a 2 week trip here, another there.  What I wouldn't do to be able to stay and truly immerse myself in a new place and culture.  Here is to my making that dream a reality one day.  If I ever do, however, I definitely won't be writing a book about it!

    

Travel Inspires

To Timbuktu
by Casey Scieszka
with art by Steven Weinberg

Timbuktu is more or less best known as slang for the most remote place you can visit, even though it isn't.  Granted, it is a city in the middle of a forbidding desert, but so are other places.  It is also accessible by a variety of forms of transportation.  It just so happens that one of them is camels.  It makes a great hook for travel literature though, no matter the reality, and it was in fact the reason I picked up To Timbuktu while browsing. 

Timbuktu the place isn't the heart of this story, however.  The book is more or less a straight forward narration of an extended period of travel and study abroad immediately following college graduation.  The author and her artist boyfriend (and fellow wanderer) teach english in China, travel through Southeast Asia and then end up in Mali where Scieszka works on a Fulbright grant project while Weinberg focuses on his art. The text is accompanied by Weinberg's illustrations making the book a graphic novel of sorts.  I liked the art and the way it conveyed the emotions of the words, but at the same time I desperately wanted pictures.  Luckily I have discovered the authors have a book blog which does have pictures and I can finally put a face to the place as it were.

It is usually the sense of place that I am interested in when reading travel literature but here it was the reality of travel and living abroad. You have great experiences, you see amazing things, you get terribly sick, you get scammed, you meet new friends, you get lonely, you miss the comforts of home, you get culture shock...all of these things all at the same time plus many, many others.  Traveling is the dream of many but it can be hard.  The cultures and environments the authors visit are very different from Western culture, but they do their very best to adapt.  They take language classes, observe and follow social customs, they interact with local residents as much as possible.  At the same time the two are just learning to live together so they must adapt to each other as well as a new culture.  Scieszka is very honest about some of the difficulties they experienced using them as a contrast between the great highs of travel--usually the only things we read about.  She talks of their fears, of their fights, the frustration and fright of not knowing exactly what the correct social response is, the depressing realities of the 3rd world, and of the need to depend on the kindness of strangers from time to time.  It's a jet propelled narrative at times, leaving out big chunks of time and hitting the highlights, but at the same time it is an engaging memoir of travel and discovery.

Aimed at a teens aged 14 and up,  To Timbuktu glosses over some things and contains little deep reflection or analysis.  It is more about living in the moment and I could appreciate that for a younger audience, even if it frustrated me at times as an adult.  The experiences are thought provoking and could lead to some self reflection on the part of the reader.  One also hopes it might also stimulate some into reading more travel literature or hitting the road themselves.  The world could definitely benefit from more global citizens like Scieszka and Weinberg who have gone on to create a nonprofit, Local Language Literacy to create and distribute books for students in the local languages. 

It's a clear lesson:  Reading inspires. Doing inspires. Travel inspires. 

Everywhere you go...

Finding George Orwell in Burma
by Emma Larkin

Burma.

It is now known as Myanmar, but calling it Burma seems to fit better for this walk through both the history and the present of the country.  It was a place that I knew nothing about, but by the end I found myself both enchanted and haunted by what I had learned.  I found myself wanting to know more.

Sadly, most of what we know about Burma stems from reports of the brutal repression of the people by the military dictatorship.  As a result, as I opened this book, I was already comparing it to Nothing to Envy, the story of life in North Korea I had read not so long ago. But by the very first page I knew things were very, very different. "Everywhere you go you see someone reading." wrote Larkin.  Books and literature are treasured in Burma, and though many are banned by the government, mildewed and ant chewed copies can still be found with some effort.  Many of the greatest names in Western Literature are well known in certain Burmese circles and are discussed at tea houses. 

It is appropriate then that Larkin is taking a literary journey through Burma, following in the footsteps of George Orwell whose mother was born in Burma and who served there as an officer in the British Imperial Police.  She travels through the country looking for signs of Burma's colonial past and speaking with a few who remember it. Along the way she is followed, eavesdropped on, forced to report in to the police and then forced to leave places early.  She must hide her notebooks, refrain from asking questions or visiting people more than once.  She cannot use the names of the people she spoke with in the book nor is she able to use her real name on the cover for fear of never being able to enter the country again.  It is George Orwell's Big Brother come to life and therein lies the story.

 As demonstrated by Larkin, there is an awareness in Burma of the profound lack of freedom. There is a dissident movement and there are small rebellions in the everyday life of the people.  I thought back to Nothing to Envy  and North Korea where the pervasiveness of the government entered every facet of daily life and the populace seemed to be truly unaware of the possibility of choice--or at least in extreme denial about it.  I found myself turning this difference over and over in my head wondering if books and literature were part of the difference. Their presence and status in Burma mean that many escape beyond their borders into the world of possibilities each and every day with the simple turn of a page.

Probably it is much more complicated than that.  Still, we can all hope that those possibilities will become reality for the people of Burma someday soon.

Someday You May Find Yourself...

One for the Road
By Tony Horwitz

     I started this book while on the road because nothing goes better with a bit of travel than travel literature.  The travel I was experiencing, while not exactly luxurious, was nonetheless comfortable with many amenities.  It was a new city for me so I decided to be bold.  Without clutching a guidebook I hit the pavement and wandered the downtown area without a plan.  Okay, it was a US city, I did some research online ahead of time and the streets were numbered so this wasn't actually that bold.  Especially when it is compared to Tony Horwitz's journey hitching around Australia in One for the Road. Yep, that definitely qualifies as bold.
     I have always wanted to visit Australia. It is probably at the top of my travel list. No particular location, just Australia. But Australia isn't just one homogeneous place.  It is like, the US, huge and full of distinct environments and a broad variety of cultures.  Tony Horwitz moved to Australia with his wife and decided to explore his new country in order to get to know "the real Australia" not just the urban environment he was living in. The real Australia he feels is to be discovered through hitch-hiking into the Outback.  He wants unplanned boyish adventures as an antidote to the settled life he finds himself living.  He gets that in spades.
     The journey happens in two separate trips, at the end of the first one he nearly meets with disaster, but the second goes smoothly--or as smoothly as one might expect such a trip to go.  Along the way he meets many farmers, shearers, truckers, miners and con-men.  He also encounters pearl divers, Aboriginals, bartenders, suburban exiles, racists and many others.  He has no troubles finding a ride and is extended a variety of welcomes. It is a strange yet delightful journey through a landscape that few know.
     It is also a journey fueled by alcohol--beer mostly.  Because there is so little water, beer has become the beverage of choice according to some.  It may also have to do with the hard life, the harsh and empty landscape, the struggle to endure the endless heat.  Most of those who give him rides are drunk, drinking, or plan to visit a pub and get drunk. They measure the distances between towns in quantities of beer.  One for the road becomes 5, 10, 20 or endless tinnies. At first Horwitz is alarmed, but soon comes to understand the way of things.  On occasion he even joins in and finds himself as drunk as the driver. I can definitely say this is not the trip to Australia that I want to take.  Depending on the kindness of drunk strangers isn't precisely my vision of a happy and safe journey.  But the unplanned adventuresome aspect, now that does appeal to me.
     I felt very bold on my trip earlier this month, venturing forth without plans, specific destinations or sights.  I went where ever my feet took me.  Still, I only had a few hours and I could only go so far.  As an independent traveler I need to keep safety in mind so certain aspects need to be planned like where to stay and how to get there.  What I do there, though?  I think on my next trip I will be breaking free of my planning habit and leaving that up to fate.  I will go forth and explore strange new places boldly.  It won't be to places where no man has gone before, but hey, they will be new to me and I already cannot wait.
     Anyone want to have one for the road with me?
     

   

How Not to Travel

The Big Year
by Michael Obmascik

This isn't a travel book.  Not exactly.  What it is a story of three men who decided to see as many birds as they can in North America in one year.  To do this, they obviously must travel a great deal, so much of the book is them flying from place to place on a moment's notice to see a single rare bird.  It is obsessive, grueling travel.  It is a hunt rather than a trip.  It makes for an entertaining and interesting book, one which got me thinking.  Is the travel necessary for the birding of the Big Year really any different than the way most people travel today?

All too often people travel to see the sites and the sites are all they see.  They hop on a plane and a bus and go from monument to monument from museum to museum or natural wonder to natural wonder and check things off their 1000 places to see before you die life list.  (Oh, how I dislike those books!)  Few take the time to stop and appreciate a culture different than their own.  They don't venture off the beaten path to explore something outside of a guide book.  They don't slow down and try something new and unsusual.  They obsessively take pictures of things instead of appreciating them while standing directly in front of them.  It seems very unpleasant and exhausting to me.  That is not how I want to travel.

As a single traveler, I have been guilty of taking a tour or two for the sake of safety and saving money.  But I was careful to select tours which allowed time to explore independently.  I stop in a cafe or sit on a park bench and people watch.  I go into local markets and wander.  I walk and take public transport to be among locals.  I try new things and I marvel at them.  And I never, ever, take pictures. I live in the moment and preserve it in my memory rich with smells, sounds, and sensations.  It is for me and no one else.  If someone else wants to see it or experience it, they can go themselves!  I come home from my trips invigorated rather than exhausted and I can't wait to go somewhere else.

Though they aren't described in any detail, the places visited in this book sounded fascinating even if only for the wildlife to be seen.  I would love to take a pelagic boat trip, canoe through the Everglades, bike around an Alaskan island... I won't see them all in my lifetime, but I do hope to visit some of them someday.  Though perhaps I will linger a little longer than the birders.

Machu Picchu: Known to Some

Turn Right at Machu Picchu
by Mark Adams

I seem to have read quite a few travel lit books in which the mission is to follow in the footsteps of a famous explorer.  There was The Lost City of Z by David Grann last year, Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz a number of years ago and a multitude in between.  Mark Adams joined this group with his retracing of Hiram Bingham's explorations in Peru in his book Turn Right at Machu Picchu.

Bingham, of course, well known as the scientific discoverer of Machu Picchu didn't actually discover anything.  The site was known to locals and a few western explorers had probably been there as well.  Bingham brought it's marvels to everyone's attentions, however.  He also did wonders for National Geographic Magazine which devoted an entire issue to the ruins and doubled their previous circulation.  Adams traces both the bloody Spanish conquest of Peru and Bingham's explorations. He might have been one of the models for Indiana Jones but some of Bingham's accomplishments during those explorations are somewhat dubious--including questionable removal of relics from the site and passing off some bought in Cusco as found at the site.  As a matter of fact, many of the relics removed were just returned to Peru from Yale where they had resided for nearly a century.

In between the history are Adam's adventures hiking through the Peruvian jungle with a true treasure leading him over hills, though valleys and down ancient trails. John Leivers, an Australian adventurer, played guide to the inexperienced Adams and shared his passion for the Incas and the landscape they lived in, infecting Adams and consequently the reader.  The first two thirds of the book traces the route of Bingham's 1909 and 1911 expeditions. The last third, a journey on the Inca trail.  I truly wish that I could accomplish a journey like this because it sounded utterly astonishing, but I know better.  The only way I am ever going to experience hiking in the jungle is through the pages of a good book.  This book took me on a funny adventure and a wonderful trip.  I appreciated both Adams' novice point of view (after years of writing about adventure he wanted one of his own) and the more experienced one of his guide.  It got me thinking I would like an adventure too, after all I have spent years reading about them!

The one thing that bothered me about the book were the black and white photos in the book. I immediately went online to see pictures of the ruins visited and the mountains mentioned to get a clearer picture of the grandeur of the high remote Andes.  I have a feeling not even the color photos could ever do it justice.