30th October 2020
Exactly 30 years ago to the day, three weeks after I started planning it, I embarked on a life-changing ten-month adventure – a westward “lap” of Planet Earth. The journey was done alone, overland (when geographically feasible) and for the most part completely unassisted.
Unlike modern travel, my route information came not via a touch screen, but from a book, a paper map, from fellow travelers (when I could find any), and from local people (when I could communicate with them).
At the time, I kept a few people in the UK informed about my progress, through letters and postcards. Cell phones and the internet did not yet exist, and telephoning was usually an expensive, frustrating and time consuming task which I avoided doing more than half a dozen times. Friends and family had no idea where I was – only where I had been a few weeks previously.
My attention was thus focused on the “visible”: the people around me, my rather diminutive backpack, and the characteristic sights, sounds and smells of whatever corner of the globe I was currently in. The rest of the planet, and especially things relating to home, friends and family, largely ceased to exist… My one luxury item of technology was a tiny short-wave radio which enabled me to keep up with world events on the BBC World Service.
This blog is an attempt to to relive the adventure by re-telling it, a few days at a time, as though I was currently doing it, with, of course, plenty of photos, selected from the 1500 slides, most of which I never showed anyone…