INSPIRATIONAL TRAVEL BOOKS
As a student almost twenty years ago I made a pilgrimage to a barren hillside in northern Kenya. It was summer, and the heat was insufferable. A herd of zebra had collapsed in the shade of a thorn tree at the base of the hill. Nearby, a Samburu warrior was standing on one foot, the other propped up against a rock. He was picking his teeth with the end of a stick. I asked him in Swahili if he knew where I could find the mzungu, the white man. Without a pause, he pointed to a tin-roofed adobe shack encircled by low cacti, halfway up the hill. I struggled up the slope, clambered over the thorns, and rapped at the tin door. I waited. Nothing. Not a sound. Then, suddenly, the door was yanked open, and a tall old Englishman in tweeds swept into its frame. It was how I first met Sir Wilfred Thesiger, the world’s most famous living explorer, a man who had inspired me to seek out adventure.
Standing there, I felt like Stanley finding Livingstone, at a loss for words. My head was spinning because of the heat. It was well over a hundred degrees. ‘Do you have any water?’ I asked pathetically. Thesiger peered down at me. Then he smiled. ‘I have just made some nice hot tea,’ he said.
During the days I spent at Thesiger’s shack, he explained in a soft, aristocratic voice, that we can all be explorers – that it’s a matter of enduring hardship, of observing and, most importantly, of seeking out people and learning from their company. Sir Wilfred (who died in 2003, aged 93) spent a life in the unrelenting desert landscapes of Arabia, in the Marshes of southern Iraq, among the mountains of Afghanistan, and with the nomadic Samburu of Kenya. He was often described as a kind of eccentric nomad himself. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Thesiger’s lesson for me, a young wannabe explorer in search of a mentor, was to search for people rather than places. Find great people, he would say, and you will find great places.
The book that lured me to seek out Sir Wilfred at his shack in Samburuland was his masterpiece, Arabian Sands. For me, the narrative stands apart from any other travel work written since the War, and it heads the roll of books that have influenced me to pursue a life of adventure and travel writing.
Arabian Sands, Sir Wilfred Thesiger:
Frequently described as ‘the last Victorian traveler’ because of his willingness to endure excruciating hardship, Thesiger was born in 1910, at the British Legation in Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia. He was presented with a personal invitation by the Emperor Haile Sellassie to attend his state coronation in 1930. After the event, the young Thesiger made an expedition into the land of the ferocious Dannakil tribe, who were celebrated for their curious custom of wearing the testicles of their slaughtered foe around their necks. The journey paved the way for a life of travel in remote regions. It was with Arabian sands that Thesiger made his mark, by living with the Bedouin of Rub al Qali, the so-called ‘Empty Quarter’ of the Arabian Desert, during the 1940s. For me, the important point about the book was that the author lived in the desert for years, without any intention of ever writing about it. (These days writers often only embark on a journey once they have a literary commission securely in place). The years of gruelling hardship recounted in Arabian Sands describe a stark and harmonious simplicity, a time before the immense wealth of oil dollars had filtered down even to the remotest desert encampment. True to his advice to me, Thesiger wrote that the journeys across the high desert dunes of the Empty Quarter would have been a meaningless penance if he had been alone.
Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl:
The greatest journey can begin with a simple hypothesis, as it did for Norwegian biologist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in 1947. He set out to prove that the South Sea Islands could have been reached and then settled in ancient times by a race of people from the Americas. Building a balsawood raft – using materials only available to ancient peoples, and christening it Kon-Tiki after a mythical Polynesian hero –Heyerdahl embarked from the coast of Peru with five colleagues, on what must have been one of the great raft journeys in human history. The journey pitted the team against raging storms, whales and sharks, against a backdrop of possible failure and even death. After three months, an adventure and having covered more than 4,300 nautical miles, Kon-Tiki’s crew crossed the Pacific and sighted land – the Polynesian coral atoll of Puka Puka. Heyerdahl, who was feted both in French Polynesia and in Europe, went on to push the boundary of exploration again and again, proving that real adventure is not dependent on fancy equipment, but on putting a simple theory to the test.
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin:
Bruce Chatwin was a born traveler and possibly the finest raconteur of his generation. He lived a tragically short life (dying in 1989, aged just 49), but in that time he published a number of exquisitely-crafted books. Supreme among them is The Songlines, a tale about the Australian Outback, and the Aboriginal notion that the earth is overlaid with invisible pathways which tell the story of the world. The book is not so much an epic of brazened adventure, as much as a subtle observation on humanity. Reading it, I always find myself thinking back to Thesiger’s suggestion that one should seek out people, rather than a place. Not much at all happens in The Songlines, but there is a sense that by reading it, you are being taught to observe, to see, in a new way. Chatwin was certainly an entertainer, but he used entertainment, anecdotes, characters and stories, as a means to convey a deeper sense of who we are, and from where we have come.
In the years since his death, some biographers and critics have suggested that much of Chatwin’s meetings and themes were the product of sheer invention – most notably The Songlines. For me, those who spend their time picking holes in Chatwin’s work are missing his genius, his ability to make a statement about humanity, through travel.
Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer:
Seven Years in Tibet is certainly one of the most unusual tales of adventure to have emerged from the post-war era. Its author, the Australian skier and mountaineer, Heinrich Harrer, landed up in Tibet through circumstance after crossing the Himalayas, and was trapped there for a full seven years. The book tells the tale of Harrer’s exploration of the isolated mountain kingdom, where there was a genuine interest for Western knowledge and ideas. Harrer was so highly regarded as an informant of the world which lay beyond the fortress of the Himalayas, he found himself welcomed into the Court of the young Dalai Lama. Over time, Harrer was permitted to become a tutor to the young monarch, and was afforded a degree of intimacy that was almost uncomfortable for the religious hierarchy. With the Communist Chinese invasion, Harrer found himself accompanying the Dalai Lama to India, where a temporary Tibetan spiritual home was established. Harrer, who died earlier this year, remained a close friend of the Dalai Lama.
Danger My Ally, F. A. Mitchell-Hedges:
Long before the internet made it so easy to find any book imaginable, I spent five years trawling second hand bookshops for a copy of the autobiography Danger My Ally, after hearing about it from a seasoned explorer one campfire night. Eventually, while combing the shelves of a bookstore in Oxford, I found two hardback copies for sale side by side. The book is one of the most powerful travel reads of the twentieth century, written by the larger than life adventurer F. A. Mitchell-Hedges. If there was ever a character to inspire a young traveler, it was Mitchell-Hedges. His journeys during the first half of the century pitted him against real life pirates of the Caribbean, warring Amazonian tribes, and mercenaries in Central America. The great charm of this book is the way it presents the incredible with deadpan ease and frankness. Early in his career, Mitchell-Hedges claimed he was captured by the Mexican rebel Pancho Villa, shortly after which he unknowingly sheltered the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. He went on to find the lost Mayan civilization of Lubaantum in Honduras, to discover several unknown sea creatures, and to acquire a fabulous rock crystal skull – known as the ‘Skull of Doom’.
Touch the Top of the World, Erik Weihenmayer:
We live in a world where the greatest fear is the inability to see our world, where people sometimes believe that the visually impaired are lesser people because of their lack of sight. Once in a generation there comes a person by whose example prejudice and sweeping generalization are shattered. Erik Weihenmayer is one such person. After losing his sight in his early teens, bolstered by his family’s resolute support, Erik decided he would never be held back by conventional expectation. He learned to use his other senses, to harness the courage that sleeps within us all, and to keep going despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Touch the Top of the World recounts how Erik and his family came to terms with the gradual loss of his site, the sad death of his mother, and his extraordinary lust for an adrenalin-charged life. Erik Weihenmayer skis and skydives blind, but it is as a world-class mountaineer that he has become a world famous icon, who completed a seven-year quest to scale ‘the Seven Summits’ – the highest peak on each of continent. And, yes, that included climbing Mount Everest totally blind.
(Written for the Washington Post) 2006
(C) Tahir Shah
Ends
Standing there, I felt like Stanley finding Livingstone, at a loss for words. My head was spinning because of the heat. It was well over a hundred degrees. ‘Do you have any water?’ I asked pathetically. Thesiger peered down at me. Then he smiled. ‘I have just made some nice hot tea,’ he said.
During the days I spent at Thesiger’s shack, he explained in a soft, aristocratic voice, that we can all be explorers – that it’s a matter of enduring hardship, of observing and, most importantly, of seeking out people and learning from their company. Sir Wilfred (who died in 2003, aged 93) spent a life in the unrelenting desert landscapes of Arabia, in the Marshes of southern Iraq, among the mountains of Afghanistan, and with the nomadic Samburu of Kenya. He was often described as a kind of eccentric nomad himself. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Thesiger’s lesson for me, a young wannabe explorer in search of a mentor, was to search for people rather than places. Find great people, he would say, and you will find great places.
The book that lured me to seek out Sir Wilfred at his shack in Samburuland was his masterpiece, Arabian Sands. For me, the narrative stands apart from any other travel work written since the War, and it heads the roll of books that have influenced me to pursue a life of adventure and travel writing.
Arabian Sands, Sir Wilfred Thesiger:
Frequently described as ‘the last Victorian traveler’ because of his willingness to endure excruciating hardship, Thesiger was born in 1910, at the British Legation in Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia. He was presented with a personal invitation by the Emperor Haile Sellassie to attend his state coronation in 1930. After the event, the young Thesiger made an expedition into the land of the ferocious Dannakil tribe, who were celebrated for their curious custom of wearing the testicles of their slaughtered foe around their necks. The journey paved the way for a life of travel in remote regions. It was with Arabian sands that Thesiger made his mark, by living with the Bedouin of Rub al Qali, the so-called ‘Empty Quarter’ of the Arabian Desert, during the 1940s. For me, the important point about the book was that the author lived in the desert for years, without any intention of ever writing about it. (These days writers often only embark on a journey once they have a literary commission securely in place). The years of gruelling hardship recounted in Arabian Sands describe a stark and harmonious simplicity, a time before the immense wealth of oil dollars had filtered down even to the remotest desert encampment. True to his advice to me, Thesiger wrote that the journeys across the high desert dunes of the Empty Quarter would have been a meaningless penance if he had been alone.
Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl:
The greatest journey can begin with a simple hypothesis, as it did for Norwegian biologist and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in 1947. He set out to prove that the South Sea Islands could have been reached and then settled in ancient times by a race of people from the Americas. Building a balsawood raft – using materials only available to ancient peoples, and christening it Kon-Tiki after a mythical Polynesian hero –Heyerdahl embarked from the coast of Peru with five colleagues, on what must have been one of the great raft journeys in human history. The journey pitted the team against raging storms, whales and sharks, against a backdrop of possible failure and even death. After three months, an adventure and having covered more than 4,300 nautical miles, Kon-Tiki’s crew crossed the Pacific and sighted land – the Polynesian coral atoll of Puka Puka. Heyerdahl, who was feted both in French Polynesia and in Europe, went on to push the boundary of exploration again and again, proving that real adventure is not dependent on fancy equipment, but on putting a simple theory to the test.
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin:
Bruce Chatwin was a born traveler and possibly the finest raconteur of his generation. He lived a tragically short life (dying in 1989, aged just 49), but in that time he published a number of exquisitely-crafted books. Supreme among them is The Songlines, a tale about the Australian Outback, and the Aboriginal notion that the earth is overlaid with invisible pathways which tell the story of the world. The book is not so much an epic of brazened adventure, as much as a subtle observation on humanity. Reading it, I always find myself thinking back to Thesiger’s suggestion that one should seek out people, rather than a place. Not much at all happens in The Songlines, but there is a sense that by reading it, you are being taught to observe, to see, in a new way. Chatwin was certainly an entertainer, but he used entertainment, anecdotes, characters and stories, as a means to convey a deeper sense of who we are, and from where we have come.
In the years since his death, some biographers and critics have suggested that much of Chatwin’s meetings and themes were the product of sheer invention – most notably The Songlines. For me, those who spend their time picking holes in Chatwin’s work are missing his genius, his ability to make a statement about humanity, through travel.
Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer:
Seven Years in Tibet is certainly one of the most unusual tales of adventure to have emerged from the post-war era. Its author, the Australian skier and mountaineer, Heinrich Harrer, landed up in Tibet through circumstance after crossing the Himalayas, and was trapped there for a full seven years. The book tells the tale of Harrer’s exploration of the isolated mountain kingdom, where there was a genuine interest for Western knowledge and ideas. Harrer was so highly regarded as an informant of the world which lay beyond the fortress of the Himalayas, he found himself welcomed into the Court of the young Dalai Lama. Over time, Harrer was permitted to become a tutor to the young monarch, and was afforded a degree of intimacy that was almost uncomfortable for the religious hierarchy. With the Communist Chinese invasion, Harrer found himself accompanying the Dalai Lama to India, where a temporary Tibetan spiritual home was established. Harrer, who died earlier this year, remained a close friend of the Dalai Lama.
Danger My Ally, F. A. Mitchell-Hedges:
Long before the internet made it so easy to find any book imaginable, I spent five years trawling second hand bookshops for a copy of the autobiography Danger My Ally, after hearing about it from a seasoned explorer one campfire night. Eventually, while combing the shelves of a bookstore in Oxford, I found two hardback copies for sale side by side. The book is one of the most powerful travel reads of the twentieth century, written by the larger than life adventurer F. A. Mitchell-Hedges. If there was ever a character to inspire a young traveler, it was Mitchell-Hedges. His journeys during the first half of the century pitted him against real life pirates of the Caribbean, warring Amazonian tribes, and mercenaries in Central America. The great charm of this book is the way it presents the incredible with deadpan ease and frankness. Early in his career, Mitchell-Hedges claimed he was captured by the Mexican rebel Pancho Villa, shortly after which he unknowingly sheltered the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. He went on to find the lost Mayan civilization of Lubaantum in Honduras, to discover several unknown sea creatures, and to acquire a fabulous rock crystal skull – known as the ‘Skull of Doom’.
Touch the Top of the World, Erik Weihenmayer:
We live in a world where the greatest fear is the inability to see our world, where people sometimes believe that the visually impaired are lesser people because of their lack of sight. Once in a generation there comes a person by whose example prejudice and sweeping generalization are shattered. Erik Weihenmayer is one such person. After losing his sight in his early teens, bolstered by his family’s resolute support, Erik decided he would never be held back by conventional expectation. He learned to use his other senses, to harness the courage that sleeps within us all, and to keep going despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Touch the Top of the World recounts how Erik and his family came to terms with the gradual loss of his site, the sad death of his mother, and his extraordinary lust for an adrenalin-charged life. Erik Weihenmayer skis and skydives blind, but it is as a world-class mountaineer that he has become a world famous icon, who completed a seven-year quest to scale ‘the Seven Summits’ – the highest peak on each of continent. And, yes, that included climbing Mount Everest totally blind.
(Written for the Washington Post) 2006
(C) Tahir Shah
Ends
posted by Mangorains at 10:02 AM
0 comments
