Matthew Lightfoot's Blog
March 15, 2021
Lockdown or On-Location- What's your Ideal Writers Retreat?
What's your perfect environment for writing? Do you prefer to lock yourself away in a silent room, away from any distractions, in order to focus fully and immerse yourself in the story? Or do you prefer some external stimulation? Does noise, colour and movement stimulate your senses and creativity?
It wasn't a question I'd really considered until I completed my second book, Snapshots, in February 2021. I began the writing process in April 2020 and the entire time period I spent writing the book coincided with Covid lockdown. The contrast with the production of my first book, The Two Week Traveller, couldn't have been more pronounced, as that was written on the road, during a round-the-world trip.
Whereas Snapshots was produced almost wholly sat at a desk in my home office, enjoying the same view from my window every day, Two Week Traveller was tapped out on a laptop while sheltering from a storm in a New Zealand campervan; rattling around in a bunk on a Thai night train; bumping along an Andean Mountain road in a rickety chicken bus; or laying on the sand of a secluded Fijian beach.
Travel writing requires the author to take the reader on a virtual journey to the location described. To do that successfully, he must conjure up mental imagery which describes the smells, sounds and sights of far flung sites around the world. To paint pictures of the people and places in the story, to transform mere words into imagined experiences. I found that a whole lot easier when I was immersed in a foreign culture myself, than when I was gazing out upon a cold winter's day in England, almost a year into an international travel ban.
But my travel wings were well and truly clipped, and instead of grabbing spare minutes where I could in order to write while travelling, I was faced with endless, repetitive days of the same scenery, and at times, was even restricted to exercise within a defined radius of my home. I was forced to draw upon my reserves of determination to switch on the laptop each morning, to cast my mind back and revisit adventures of years past. That was painful. Unable to travel freely and unaware of when it would be possible to indulge my passion again was tough, and recalling those now distant memories made it even harder.
I was faced with a decision. Either I postpone writing Snapshots until I could once again hit the road and stimulate my creativity by visiting some distant lands. Or I buckle down, make best use of the resources available to me, and crack on. With no end in sight to the Covid pandemic, as a three month lockdown extended across various levels of restrictions to a full year, I felt I had to adopt the latter strategy.
Snapshots, as its name suggests, draws on travel memories from a series of old holiday snaps. I therefore had the visual assistance I needed to remember places and times, people and buildings. Sitting in my apartment in the North of England, I was unable to recreate the hubbub of the streets of the developing world, the silence of the mountains or the wildlife chatter of the forest canopy. What I did have at my disposal though was my collection of world music, sourced from market stalls around the planet. After switching my laptop on, my first task of the day was to select an appropriate playlist for the chapter I was working on, and my days were filled with the sounds of the West African kora, the Ganun Zither of Zanzibar and the drunken horn sections of a myriad of Son Cubano bands. Days of endless rain, driving snow and early darkness were enlivened by the musical accompaniment to my writing. As Spring turned to Summer and I was finally able to take my laptop outdoors, I made sure my phone was uploaded with the relevant sounds to deliver an appropriate soundtrack to my work.
Matthew Lightfoot
It seemed to take a lot longer this time around, but maybe that’s because time in lockdown has often seemed to stand still, with every day very much the same as the last. Eventually though, the book was finished, just as light begins to appear at the end of a long tunnel, and we anticipate release from lockdown in the UK.
I've learnt a lot over the last year and I hope that my next book can once again be written in uncomfortable, snatched moments in a distant land, with sensory stimulation all around. If not though, I've learnt that it's still possible to get creative wherever you are, if you set the scene and atmosphere for the book you're writing. So if you're writing a travel book, dig out some old photos, play some local tunes, cook some authentic street food. Dim the lights and light the candles for romantic fiction. Maybe adopt period dress for an historic book, and if you're writing horror, wrap up warm, pluck up your courage and take your laptop for a writing shift in the local graveyard at midnight!
What are your shortcuts to creativity? Let me know the secret tips you employ to stay focused and productive when writing….
It wasn't a question I'd really considered until I completed my second book, Snapshots, in February 2021. I began the writing process in April 2020 and the entire time period I spent writing the book coincided with Covid lockdown. The contrast with the production of my first book, The Two Week Traveller, couldn't have been more pronounced, as that was written on the road, during a round-the-world trip.
Whereas Snapshots was produced almost wholly sat at a desk in my home office, enjoying the same view from my window every day, Two Week Traveller was tapped out on a laptop while sheltering from a storm in a New Zealand campervan; rattling around in a bunk on a Thai night train; bumping along an Andean Mountain road in a rickety chicken bus; or laying on the sand of a secluded Fijian beach.
Travel writing requires the author to take the reader on a virtual journey to the location described. To do that successfully, he must conjure up mental imagery which describes the smells, sounds and sights of far flung sites around the world. To paint pictures of the people and places in the story, to transform mere words into imagined experiences. I found that a whole lot easier when I was immersed in a foreign culture myself, than when I was gazing out upon a cold winter's day in England, almost a year into an international travel ban.
But my travel wings were well and truly clipped, and instead of grabbing spare minutes where I could in order to write while travelling, I was faced with endless, repetitive days of the same scenery, and at times, was even restricted to exercise within a defined radius of my home. I was forced to draw upon my reserves of determination to switch on the laptop each morning, to cast my mind back and revisit adventures of years past. That was painful. Unable to travel freely and unaware of when it would be possible to indulge my passion again was tough, and recalling those now distant memories made it even harder.
I was faced with a decision. Either I postpone writing Snapshots until I could once again hit the road and stimulate my creativity by visiting some distant lands. Or I buckle down, make best use of the resources available to me, and crack on. With no end in sight to the Covid pandemic, as a three month lockdown extended across various levels of restrictions to a full year, I felt I had to adopt the latter strategy.
Snapshots, as its name suggests, draws on travel memories from a series of old holiday snaps. I therefore had the visual assistance I needed to remember places and times, people and buildings. Sitting in my apartment in the North of England, I was unable to recreate the hubbub of the streets of the developing world, the silence of the mountains or the wildlife chatter of the forest canopy. What I did have at my disposal though was my collection of world music, sourced from market stalls around the planet. After switching my laptop on, my first task of the day was to select an appropriate playlist for the chapter I was working on, and my days were filled with the sounds of the West African kora, the Ganun Zither of Zanzibar and the drunken horn sections of a myriad of Son Cubano bands. Days of endless rain, driving snow and early darkness were enlivened by the musical accompaniment to my writing. As Spring turned to Summer and I was finally able to take my laptop outdoors, I made sure my phone was uploaded with the relevant sounds to deliver an appropriate soundtrack to my work.
Matthew Lightfoot
It seemed to take a lot longer this time around, but maybe that’s because time in lockdown has often seemed to stand still, with every day very much the same as the last. Eventually though, the book was finished, just as light begins to appear at the end of a long tunnel, and we anticipate release from lockdown in the UK.
I've learnt a lot over the last year and I hope that my next book can once again be written in uncomfortable, snatched moments in a distant land, with sensory stimulation all around. If not though, I've learnt that it's still possible to get creative wherever you are, if you set the scene and atmosphere for the book you're writing. So if you're writing a travel book, dig out some old photos, play some local tunes, cook some authentic street food. Dim the lights and light the candles for romantic fiction. Maybe adopt period dress for an historic book, and if you're writing horror, wrap up warm, pluck up your courage and take your laptop for a writing shift in the local graveyard at midnight!
What are your shortcuts to creativity? Let me know the secret tips you employ to stay focused and productive when writing….
March 1, 2021
Has Blogging Killed the Travel Book?
A late 70's pop hit bemoans the fact that 'Video Killed the Radio star' and I'm currently left wondering whether I should release a follow-up entitled 'Blogging has killed the Travel Book genre'. I self-published my first book, The Two Week Traveller, on Amazon KDP in 2019, and in order to promote it, re-engaged with a community I'd more or less forgotten about - the travel bloggers.
I set up a blog (DriverAbroad.com) in 2011, to provide much needed info for self driving travellers, covering every country of the world. It was quite niche - no one had a similar blog at the time (nor currently as far as I know). I set up Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote the site and made a little money from advertising, but the time taken to maintain info on 240 countries made it non-viable to continue while I was also in full time employment. Around 3 years later I received a couple of offers for the domain as it was receiving a healthy number of hits. I decided not to sell, mainly because I'd put so much effort into it, that it would have almost felt like selling my own child!
After publishing my book, I set up new social media accounts and began to engage once again with the online travel community. To say I was shocked by the change in nine years is an understatement! The volume of travel blogs and bloggers seemed to have multiplied tenfold. Everyone, from pensioners to teenagers, professional explorers to holiday housewives, seemed to have a travel blog, and my twitter timeline became a non-stop stream of info on everything from romantic breaks in Budapest to mountain climbing in Ethiopia; and photos of 'once-in-a-lifetime' experiences from seemingly every country on the globe.
On Twitter I'm only aware of one other writer who is using the social media platform to promote her travel book. The rest are all pushing their blogs/websites. I'm very careful to balance mentions of my book with other travel related content. My belief is that interesting content will prompt people to check out my profile and pinned promo video which may lead them to my Amazon link. What I have noticed though is that most bloggers are reluctant to share other people's content. I guess they feel that may reduce clicks to their own pages.
This has all left me wondering - ten or fifteen years ago, how many of these bloggers would have devoted their energy to writing a book rather than a blog? Some of the writing is skillfully executed and of high quality. Some less so, with regurgitated articles from other sites, poor spelling and bad grammar. It does feel though that travel writing has potentially lost some of its nascent talent to blogging over the last decade, and as more teens see blogs as a means to achieve the digital nomad lifestyle they crave, I can only see that trend increasing.
Where will this leave us in another ten years? Is the future of travel writing one of hundreds of thousands of online blogs comprising of short articles, but with the only published writing being material which was produced in the early years of the new Millenium? Writing a book is hard work, whatever the genre. Travel writing requires a level of knowledge and experience of the subject matter which can't be achieved overnight. It also requires the author to have spent enough time 'in-country' to amass sufficient anecdotes and amusing or informative tales to fill multiple chapters. You can't write authentically unless you've been there and done it, so there are no short-cuts to writing a travel book. Conversely, a blog can be set up quickly and cheaply using one of the plethora of website builders on the market, and a 500 word article accompanied by some holiday snaps can easily be produced and uploaded within an hour.
Little wonder therefore that most aspiring travel writers now see blogging as the way to achieve their goals, whether that’s financial independence, fame and fortune or the much discussed 'digital nomad' lifestyle. I see very few new independent authors making their first foray into the world of self published travel writing, which leaves me wondering whether blogging has killed the travel book? Or will this new generation of bloggers eventually amass sufficient adventures, inspiring journeys, near-misses and life changing moments to be told…'you should really write a book'.
Perhaps somewhere within the hundreds of thousands of travel blogs on the internet, there is a potential Paul Theroux or Bill Bryson for the new millennium learning their trade. Or maybe the genre has changed for ever, with less inclination for readers to immerse themselves in the details of a journey and a country, and instead to devour bite sized snippets, and move on quickly to a new location. What is certain is that, as with travel in general in a post-Covid world, the landscape has almost definitely changed for ever.
I set up a blog (DriverAbroad.com) in 2011, to provide much needed info for self driving travellers, covering every country of the world. It was quite niche - no one had a similar blog at the time (nor currently as far as I know). I set up Facebook and Twitter accounts to promote the site and made a little money from advertising, but the time taken to maintain info on 240 countries made it non-viable to continue while I was also in full time employment. Around 3 years later I received a couple of offers for the domain as it was receiving a healthy number of hits. I decided not to sell, mainly because I'd put so much effort into it, that it would have almost felt like selling my own child!
After publishing my book, I set up new social media accounts and began to engage once again with the online travel community. To say I was shocked by the change in nine years is an understatement! The volume of travel blogs and bloggers seemed to have multiplied tenfold. Everyone, from pensioners to teenagers, professional explorers to holiday housewives, seemed to have a travel blog, and my twitter timeline became a non-stop stream of info on everything from romantic breaks in Budapest to mountain climbing in Ethiopia; and photos of 'once-in-a-lifetime' experiences from seemingly every country on the globe.
On Twitter I'm only aware of one other writer who is using the social media platform to promote her travel book. The rest are all pushing their blogs/websites. I'm very careful to balance mentions of my book with other travel related content. My belief is that interesting content will prompt people to check out my profile and pinned promo video which may lead them to my Amazon link. What I have noticed though is that most bloggers are reluctant to share other people's content. I guess they feel that may reduce clicks to their own pages.
This has all left me wondering - ten or fifteen years ago, how many of these bloggers would have devoted their energy to writing a book rather than a blog? Some of the writing is skillfully executed and of high quality. Some less so, with regurgitated articles from other sites, poor spelling and bad grammar. It does feel though that travel writing has potentially lost some of its nascent talent to blogging over the last decade, and as more teens see blogs as a means to achieve the digital nomad lifestyle they crave, I can only see that trend increasing.
Where will this leave us in another ten years? Is the future of travel writing one of hundreds of thousands of online blogs comprising of short articles, but with the only published writing being material which was produced in the early years of the new Millenium? Writing a book is hard work, whatever the genre. Travel writing requires a level of knowledge and experience of the subject matter which can't be achieved overnight. It also requires the author to have spent enough time 'in-country' to amass sufficient anecdotes and amusing or informative tales to fill multiple chapters. You can't write authentically unless you've been there and done it, so there are no short-cuts to writing a travel book. Conversely, a blog can be set up quickly and cheaply using one of the plethora of website builders on the market, and a 500 word article accompanied by some holiday snaps can easily be produced and uploaded within an hour.
Little wonder therefore that most aspiring travel writers now see blogging as the way to achieve their goals, whether that’s financial independence, fame and fortune or the much discussed 'digital nomad' lifestyle. I see very few new independent authors making their first foray into the world of self published travel writing, which leaves me wondering whether blogging has killed the travel book? Or will this new generation of bloggers eventually amass sufficient adventures, inspiring journeys, near-misses and life changing moments to be told…'you should really write a book'.
Perhaps somewhere within the hundreds of thousands of travel blogs on the internet, there is a potential Paul Theroux or Bill Bryson for the new millennium learning their trade. Or maybe the genre has changed for ever, with less inclination for readers to immerse themselves in the details of a journey and a country, and instead to devour bite sized snippets, and move on quickly to a new location. What is certain is that, as with travel in general in a post-Covid world, the landscape has almost definitely changed for ever.
January 10, 2020
Market Forces - The Hidden 'Must-See' of every City
A cacophony of sounds; the chemical, gaseous, decay-tinged stench of durian fruit; an incessant hum of insects feasting on beast carcasses suspended from rusting hooks; skulking urchins flitting through the throng, scanning bags and pockets for illicit opportunities.
I shuffle my feet, which slide and squelch in sandals caked in a foul smelling, mysterious brown gore, spattered up to knee height. I inadvertently catch the eye of a passing trader, multi-coloured plastic baskets perched atop her head. She scowls and I retract the long lens of my camera and retreat into the shadows. To remain invisible is the secret of taking great photos in a local market.
Wherever I am in the world, my first port of call is the market. Away from the tourist traps and cultural must-sees, the beaches and resorts. The soul of every small town and large city is its market, and for me, it’s the perfect microcosm of local life. The place which best reflects the character of a country at it's most authentic. Where even the most glamorous world tourism megastars stumble into the harsh light of morning, face stripped bare of make-up and hair sleep-tangled.
Camera concealed, my arrival generally attracts predictable attention. Foreign faces are seldom seen here. Gap toothed vendors thrust produce in my direction, teenage stall holders giggle and point, porters smile and nod acknowledgement, and street urchins hover, eager eyes probing my defences for signs of weakness. I return smiles, squeeze vegetables, joke with old ladies, pat the heads of toddlers and meander through the chaos, hands placed firmly in pockets to guard against nimble, nefarious fingers. Eventually, the novelty of the strange visitor diminishes and I'm able to scout out my vantage point.
I return to a stall where an old lady smiled and waved, or where I engaged in banter about English football with a teenaged trader. A safe haven with a view. I raise my eyebrows as I produce my camera from its hiding place.
"It's Okay?" I smile hopefully.
A thumbs up or a shrug and I'm all set. Perched on a wooden crate or concealed behind a shelf stacked with spikey rambutan or fake Tupperware, I settle down with camera poised ready, to enjoy my feast of voyeuristic pleasure.
Markets provide a de-sanitised view of cities the world over, exposing their harsh realities alongside vibrancy, humour and character. My camera shutter clicks away as a barefoot rickshaw peddler jostles with a bank clerk in a suit jacket and longyi robe. A Flour dusted baker queues alongside an ancient snake charmer with a wriggling mongoose in a hessian sack. School children in worn, yet lovingly pressed school uniforms carry shopping bags for stooped crones with tattooed foreheads.
And all around is colour. A fruit stall explosion of star fruit, persimmon, kiwano and Buddha's hand will definitely require no photoshop colour saturation touch-ups. A row of butchers' stalls presents a contrast-settings challenge with shaded interiors fronted by flanks of livid red carcasses and a blur of bluebottles. And the market's customers seem to have stepped straight from a National Geographic magazine cover, sporting traditional dress which you'd suspect was for the benefit of tourists, if any had ever been here.
My long lens allows me to observe from a distance and capture the character of the people. A furrowed brow as a haggled negotiation reaches stalemate. A smile and a wink to cement the deal. A dismissive shrug –'take it or leave it'. Moments captured which will help me recall the moment at some point in the future, without the noise, heat, scurrying vermin and slime seeping between my toes. And the sting of acrid smoke carrying the aroma of mysterious foodstuffs sizzling on distant grills. Hutch-fresh cuy in Peru, blackened chickens in beer cans in Vietnam, marinated snake heads in China and all manner of deep-fried creepy crawlies in Thailand, mean market snacks aren’t for the squeamish. Nor is the live meat section, which is guaranteed to bring out the animal rights campaigner in most Europeans.
However, even the sights of pitiful, caged livestock and wriggling buckets of doomed amphibians lose out in the culture shock stakes, when pitted against the fetish markets of West Africa. Here, trestle tables of death are stacked with produce destined for the cauldrons of local witch doctors. Severed dog and cat heads, baboon snouts, mule ears and hippo toes fester and stink in the hot sun, as mysterious men in white boubou robes flick horsetail fly whisks to deter the clouds of insects, as they search out that elusive magic spell ingredient.
Then it's time to leave. My camera is again concealed and I leave my vantage point with a wave to the stallholder. I'm hot, sticky and filthy. I smell of smoke, sweat and barbecued meat. My mouth is dry and my nostrils are filled with a confusion of smells – vegetables, livestock and public toilets. I head back to a different world. Hotels, travellers, bars and restaurants, shops with glass windows. I review the images I took only an hour ago, and a mile away, zooming in on the viewfinder to enjoy unexpected details captured – a snoozing trader, a dog snagging a stray bone from a butcher's stall, a barrow of mangoes tipping as a stallholder tries vainly to right it. If I took a hundred photos, I'll probably keep ten, with the constant movement and shifting scenes of a market keeping the success rate challengingly low.
I pull out my guidebook and consider where to head next. I'm informed of temples, palaces, bridges, museums and parks which need to be experienced to really get under the skin of this place. I smile and close the book. For me, there's only one real 'must-see', and I've already been there.
I shuffle my feet, which slide and squelch in sandals caked in a foul smelling, mysterious brown gore, spattered up to knee height. I inadvertently catch the eye of a passing trader, multi-coloured plastic baskets perched atop her head. She scowls and I retract the long lens of my camera and retreat into the shadows. To remain invisible is the secret of taking great photos in a local market.
Wherever I am in the world, my first port of call is the market. Away from the tourist traps and cultural must-sees, the beaches and resorts. The soul of every small town and large city is its market, and for me, it’s the perfect microcosm of local life. The place which best reflects the character of a country at it's most authentic. Where even the most glamorous world tourism megastars stumble into the harsh light of morning, face stripped bare of make-up and hair sleep-tangled.
Camera concealed, my arrival generally attracts predictable attention. Foreign faces are seldom seen here. Gap toothed vendors thrust produce in my direction, teenage stall holders giggle and point, porters smile and nod acknowledgement, and street urchins hover, eager eyes probing my defences for signs of weakness. I return smiles, squeeze vegetables, joke with old ladies, pat the heads of toddlers and meander through the chaos, hands placed firmly in pockets to guard against nimble, nefarious fingers. Eventually, the novelty of the strange visitor diminishes and I'm able to scout out my vantage point.
I return to a stall where an old lady smiled and waved, or where I engaged in banter about English football with a teenaged trader. A safe haven with a view. I raise my eyebrows as I produce my camera from its hiding place.
"It's Okay?" I smile hopefully.
A thumbs up or a shrug and I'm all set. Perched on a wooden crate or concealed behind a shelf stacked with spikey rambutan or fake Tupperware, I settle down with camera poised ready, to enjoy my feast of voyeuristic pleasure.
Markets provide a de-sanitised view of cities the world over, exposing their harsh realities alongside vibrancy, humour and character. My camera shutter clicks away as a barefoot rickshaw peddler jostles with a bank clerk in a suit jacket and longyi robe. A Flour dusted baker queues alongside an ancient snake charmer with a wriggling mongoose in a hessian sack. School children in worn, yet lovingly pressed school uniforms carry shopping bags for stooped crones with tattooed foreheads.
And all around is colour. A fruit stall explosion of star fruit, persimmon, kiwano and Buddha's hand will definitely require no photoshop colour saturation touch-ups. A row of butchers' stalls presents a contrast-settings challenge with shaded interiors fronted by flanks of livid red carcasses and a blur of bluebottles. And the market's customers seem to have stepped straight from a National Geographic magazine cover, sporting traditional dress which you'd suspect was for the benefit of tourists, if any had ever been here.
My long lens allows me to observe from a distance and capture the character of the people. A furrowed brow as a haggled negotiation reaches stalemate. A smile and a wink to cement the deal. A dismissive shrug –'take it or leave it'. Moments captured which will help me recall the moment at some point in the future, without the noise, heat, scurrying vermin and slime seeping between my toes. And the sting of acrid smoke carrying the aroma of mysterious foodstuffs sizzling on distant grills. Hutch-fresh cuy in Peru, blackened chickens in beer cans in Vietnam, marinated snake heads in China and all manner of deep-fried creepy crawlies in Thailand, mean market snacks aren’t for the squeamish. Nor is the live meat section, which is guaranteed to bring out the animal rights campaigner in most Europeans.
However, even the sights of pitiful, caged livestock and wriggling buckets of doomed amphibians lose out in the culture shock stakes, when pitted against the fetish markets of West Africa. Here, trestle tables of death are stacked with produce destined for the cauldrons of local witch doctors. Severed dog and cat heads, baboon snouts, mule ears and hippo toes fester and stink in the hot sun, as mysterious men in white boubou robes flick horsetail fly whisks to deter the clouds of insects, as they search out that elusive magic spell ingredient.
Then it's time to leave. My camera is again concealed and I leave my vantage point with a wave to the stallholder. I'm hot, sticky and filthy. I smell of smoke, sweat and barbecued meat. My mouth is dry and my nostrils are filled with a confusion of smells – vegetables, livestock and public toilets. I head back to a different world. Hotels, travellers, bars and restaurants, shops with glass windows. I review the images I took only an hour ago, and a mile away, zooming in on the viewfinder to enjoy unexpected details captured – a snoozing trader, a dog snagging a stray bone from a butcher's stall, a barrow of mangoes tipping as a stallholder tries vainly to right it. If I took a hundred photos, I'll probably keep ten, with the constant movement and shifting scenes of a market keeping the success rate challengingly low.
I pull out my guidebook and consider where to head next. I'm informed of temples, palaces, bridges, museums and parks which need to be experienced to really get under the skin of this place. I smile and close the book. For me, there's only one real 'must-see', and I've already been there.
November 3, 2019
Driving Yorself. Crazy?
“You’re reckless and irresponsible and will put the lives of your travel companions in danger”. So read the response to my question on an internet travel forum. A donkey trek through the Swat valley? A Yachting holiday off the coast of Somalia? No. I was asking for fellow travellers opinions on renting a self drive car in Sri Lanka. I’ve found this to be a typical response when the subject of self driving in a developing country is raised on a western Internet forum, to the point that I no longer ask the question. I can predict the fevered abuse I’ll generate from the ‘You can’t drive yourself’ lobby.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally averse to using public transport when travelling. I’ve had some memorable river trips using passenger ferries in South East Asia, and I love overnight trains. Waking with a jolt as you lurch into the station of some obscure Eastern European town in the early hours, and poking your head out of the window to find yourself transported back to the Cold War era is one of my favourite travel experiences. Watching the dawn break, sat with legs poking from an open train door as you chug through the Indian countryside is a never to be forgotten memory.
Road travel however is a totally different matter. Make that road travel when I’m not driving. I’ve endured a bus cum-mobile sauna between Moldova and Ukraine , feeling I’d lost a stone in weight as I perspired for ten long hours as we bumped and lurched through the night. On another occasion, I crossed the Andes during a transport strike, smuggled onto a school bus full of Chilean teenagers, the only transport allowed over the Los Libertadores border crossing that day. Cunningly disguised in the same red caps as the kids , my partner Kirsty and I endured a nine hour journey on an old US school bus more suited to short hops along the freeways of California. One of the most unpleasant bus journeys I endured was on the winding roads of Northern Thailand. There, a double act of teenage bus drivers indulged in a bizarre challenge to see who could induce travel sickness in the most passengers, throwing their vehicle round the hairpins at breakneck speed¬. Very good they were too, achieving a 100% success rate by the time we stumbled off in Chiang Mai.
Discomfort is one thing but outright danger is another, and I’ve experienced my share of white knuckle rides over the years. All too often, bus and taxi drivers in developing countries have a fatalistic attitude towards road safety,placing their trust in a plastic Madonna, Buddah, Ganesh or, that greatest icon of hope of all, a Statue of Liberty, they overtake on the brow of a hill and play chicken with oncoming trucks. Safely protected by a spectacular horn blast and good karma, they ignore the odds that one day, there will actually be an oncoming vehicle as they tear round that blind bend on the wrong side of the road. Maybe the good Karma is what drives the risk taking? Maybe that Laotian bus driver thinks whatever the next life brings, its bound to be better than driving for 18 hours a day on dirt roads with no shock absorbers?.
So after these experiences, I began planning my trip to Sri Lanka. A route using mainly trains and local buses seemed feasible, but weighing up the options to get from Kandy to the Ancient Cities, with limited time available, and having experienced the ‘safe’ option of hiring a driver in India, I kept coming back to the self drive option.”You can’t do it. You need to hire a driver” I was confidentally told by a colleague who had visited the country. Internet forums, were equally dismissive, citing lethal road conditions and a total lack of self drive vehicles. I persevered and eventually located one local ‘fixer’ who would rent me a car. I must admit to being nervous as we approached his somewhat unofficial ‘office’ in an old cargo container, and viewed the battered Toyota we would be renting, but he drew me a map on the back of a cigarette packet, pointed me in the right direction, and off we went. And there began my self drive odyssey which has covered 6 continents to date, with, touch wood, no serious calamities. No serious calamaties apart from Texas…
Texas is in America and as everyone rents a car there I class that as inadmissible evidence in the ‘self drive debate’, It wasn’t actually a catastrophe either. I misjudged the clearance of my car as I approached a small landslide and caused some minor damage. Okay, so I ripped the whole undercarriage out of the car. And it was in the desert. In the desert, 5 hours drive from the nearest town and next to a sign saying ‘Beware of Mountain Lions’. Everything turned out okay in the end though, thanks to a four car hitchhike marathon and a very understanding Rental company!
That incident was the only time I’ve actually managed to seriously damage a car, though I suppose you could say I’ve had a few close shaves, the encounter with the elephant being one. We had opted for a self drive safari in Namibia’s Etosha National Park. Maybe a VW Polo wasn’t the best choice of vehicle, but it was cheap. Cheap and white. Maybe it was the bright colour which attracted the young bull elephant as we watched him drinking at a water hole? Camera in hand, I observed through the viewfinder as he ambled towards us. Its hard to say when the amble turned into a charge but within seconds, I was verifying VW’s claims on the 0-60 capability of the Polo as we screeched away in a cloud of dust, closely followed by a ton of bellowing pachyderm. I couldn’t fault the VW’s performance. We even used it to traverse the eerie sand roads of the skeleton coast, a nervous journey given that I’d earlier blown a tyre on the rough gravel roads, and we had to undertake the drive through some of the worlds most inhospitable and remote terrain with no spare!
An element of planning is essential when considering a road trip in a developing country and an internet search for a good road map before you leave home usually pays dividends. Just don’t assume that the map will be totally correct! Rivers can be seasonal, bridges can collapse and ferries can sink, rendering your well planned schedule irrelevant. I’ve spent hours sat gazing across a wide Uruguyan river, willing a ferry moored on the far bank to sail in our direction. A sleepy eyed boatman eventually stirred from his prolonged afternoon nap as the light was fading and I was beginning to wonder whether our map’s description of ‘Irregular Ferry’ was referring to a period of weeks or months rather than hours.
Rickety ferries, with the rear wheels of your car touching the water, are one test of nerve, driving into a flooded river are quite something else, and a situation I encountered in Costa Rica. Luckily, on this occasion we had the foresight to rent a 4 wheel drive vehicle, but our roadmap seemed strangely light on certain detail. Such as rivers. Wide fast flowing rivers. Local people had developed a novel cottage industry in directing drivers toward the least hazardous crossing points. At first, I nervously insisted on wading across to test out their route. Trusting a wizened, 80 year old lady in a shawl to know the shallowest point of a riverbed seemed like a leap of faith too far, but they never got it wrong. The most hair raising crossing consisted of two ten year old boys trying to explain the complex crossing procedure for a 40 metre wide torrent. Unable to understand their quickfire Spanish instructions,I got them to climb aboard and they guided me across with a combination of shouts, squeals and flailing arms. They looked less than impressed when they realised they had to get back to the other side...
Roadside shake-downs by corrupt African cops, getting lost and rescued by shepherds in the Bosnian mountains, an accidental detour through a Brazilian Favella- I’ve found the opportunities for adventure and incident are endless with a self drive car. For me though, its the freedom which is the real draw of going it alone. Travel agents will upsell the benefits of using a local driver – “He’ll stop anywhere, take you wherever you want to go”, will be the sales pitch. In reality though, by the tenth time you’ve asked him to stop at that great photo opportunity, you’ll notice his eyes rolling in the rear view mirror. To you, a group of kids trying to shift a stubborn mule by the roadside in Mozambique represents a chance of a great shot of local life, perhaps entitled ‘Getting their ass into gear’? To your driver, it’s the motoring equivalent of a pensioner changing a wheel on the hard shoulder of the M40, and he’ll make sure you soon get the message.
Its these roadside interactions which are the real joy of self driving for me. In many countries, particularly in Africa,the pot holed roads between towns and villages are a colourful procession of everyday life. Away from the tourist centres, villagers are only likely to have seen a white face as a fleeting glimpse in a passing vehicle. To stop and speak to people on the road usually elicits a delighted response, particularly from children. Taking a photo of a grinning gaggle of barefoot kids, then showing them the display screen usually results in initial puzzlement, followed by a realisation that they’re looking at themselves, which dissolves into a shrieking melee of excited hands grabbing the camera for a closer look.
Having taken into account the benefits of renting a car to drive yourself, particularly in a developing country, it’s important to ask if it’s right for you. If you’re nervous on the M25 at rush hour, or avoid the one way system in your hometown, it’s unlikely you’d want to negotiate a 5 lane highway in a city centre where all the signs are written in Cyrillic lettering. It’s also best to have at least some experience of driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. Have a test run in Mallorca before tackling Mogadishu!
Another key point is to forget all the rules of the road as you know them. In many countries the only rule is ... there are no rules. The biggest vehicle has right of way, and you have to accept that. Driving with the mindset that everyone else is a homicidal maniac who will be out to get you is no bad thing. When approaching a blind bend, or brow of a hill, always assume there will be another vehicle speeding towards you on the wrong side of the road. If you see a vehicle approaching on your side of the road, don’t be tempted to play chicken. The best result you can hope for is draw. That means neither of you moved , in which case you both lost! Drive defensively but confidently. Don’t hesitate or change direction at the last minute. If you take a wrong turn it’s not the end of the world, and most accidents are caused by indecision.
Driving yourself is certainly not for everyone, but if you’re a fairly confident driver who’s willing to accept that driving standards and etiquette varies greatly by country, it can open up a whole new world of travel possibilities and experiences.
If, however, you decide to stick with public transport and one day find yourself on a local bus on a potholed road, your driver leaning on his horn, foot down on the wrong side of the road, hurtling towards a battered Toyota , ask him to slow down, that could be me driving!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally averse to using public transport when travelling. I’ve had some memorable river trips using passenger ferries in South East Asia, and I love overnight trains. Waking with a jolt as you lurch into the station of some obscure Eastern European town in the early hours, and poking your head out of the window to find yourself transported back to the Cold War era is one of my favourite travel experiences. Watching the dawn break, sat with legs poking from an open train door as you chug through the Indian countryside is a never to be forgotten memory.
Road travel however is a totally different matter. Make that road travel when I’m not driving. I’ve endured a bus cum-mobile sauna between Moldova and Ukraine , feeling I’d lost a stone in weight as I perspired for ten long hours as we bumped and lurched through the night. On another occasion, I crossed the Andes during a transport strike, smuggled onto a school bus full of Chilean teenagers, the only transport allowed over the Los Libertadores border crossing that day. Cunningly disguised in the same red caps as the kids , my partner Kirsty and I endured a nine hour journey on an old US school bus more suited to short hops along the freeways of California. One of the most unpleasant bus journeys I endured was on the winding roads of Northern Thailand. There, a double act of teenage bus drivers indulged in a bizarre challenge to see who could induce travel sickness in the most passengers, throwing their vehicle round the hairpins at breakneck speed¬. Very good they were too, achieving a 100% success rate by the time we stumbled off in Chiang Mai.
Discomfort is one thing but outright danger is another, and I’ve experienced my share of white knuckle rides over the years. All too often, bus and taxi drivers in developing countries have a fatalistic attitude towards road safety,placing their trust in a plastic Madonna, Buddah, Ganesh or, that greatest icon of hope of all, a Statue of Liberty, they overtake on the brow of a hill and play chicken with oncoming trucks. Safely protected by a spectacular horn blast and good karma, they ignore the odds that one day, there will actually be an oncoming vehicle as they tear round that blind bend on the wrong side of the road. Maybe the good Karma is what drives the risk taking? Maybe that Laotian bus driver thinks whatever the next life brings, its bound to be better than driving for 18 hours a day on dirt roads with no shock absorbers?.
So after these experiences, I began planning my trip to Sri Lanka. A route using mainly trains and local buses seemed feasible, but weighing up the options to get from Kandy to the Ancient Cities, with limited time available, and having experienced the ‘safe’ option of hiring a driver in India, I kept coming back to the self drive option.”You can’t do it. You need to hire a driver” I was confidentally told by a colleague who had visited the country. Internet forums, were equally dismissive, citing lethal road conditions and a total lack of self drive vehicles. I persevered and eventually located one local ‘fixer’ who would rent me a car. I must admit to being nervous as we approached his somewhat unofficial ‘office’ in an old cargo container, and viewed the battered Toyota we would be renting, but he drew me a map on the back of a cigarette packet, pointed me in the right direction, and off we went. And there began my self drive odyssey which has covered 6 continents to date, with, touch wood, no serious calamities. No serious calamaties apart from Texas…
Texas is in America and as everyone rents a car there I class that as inadmissible evidence in the ‘self drive debate’, It wasn’t actually a catastrophe either. I misjudged the clearance of my car as I approached a small landslide and caused some minor damage. Okay, so I ripped the whole undercarriage out of the car. And it was in the desert. In the desert, 5 hours drive from the nearest town and next to a sign saying ‘Beware of Mountain Lions’. Everything turned out okay in the end though, thanks to a four car hitchhike marathon and a very understanding Rental company!
That incident was the only time I’ve actually managed to seriously damage a car, though I suppose you could say I’ve had a few close shaves, the encounter with the elephant being one. We had opted for a self drive safari in Namibia’s Etosha National Park. Maybe a VW Polo wasn’t the best choice of vehicle, but it was cheap. Cheap and white. Maybe it was the bright colour which attracted the young bull elephant as we watched him drinking at a water hole? Camera in hand, I observed through the viewfinder as he ambled towards us. Its hard to say when the amble turned into a charge but within seconds, I was verifying VW’s claims on the 0-60 capability of the Polo as we screeched away in a cloud of dust, closely followed by a ton of bellowing pachyderm. I couldn’t fault the VW’s performance. We even used it to traverse the eerie sand roads of the skeleton coast, a nervous journey given that I’d earlier blown a tyre on the rough gravel roads, and we had to undertake the drive through some of the worlds most inhospitable and remote terrain with no spare!
An element of planning is essential when considering a road trip in a developing country and an internet search for a good road map before you leave home usually pays dividends. Just don’t assume that the map will be totally correct! Rivers can be seasonal, bridges can collapse and ferries can sink, rendering your well planned schedule irrelevant. I’ve spent hours sat gazing across a wide Uruguyan river, willing a ferry moored on the far bank to sail in our direction. A sleepy eyed boatman eventually stirred from his prolonged afternoon nap as the light was fading and I was beginning to wonder whether our map’s description of ‘Irregular Ferry’ was referring to a period of weeks or months rather than hours.
Rickety ferries, with the rear wheels of your car touching the water, are one test of nerve, driving into a flooded river are quite something else, and a situation I encountered in Costa Rica. Luckily, on this occasion we had the foresight to rent a 4 wheel drive vehicle, but our roadmap seemed strangely light on certain detail. Such as rivers. Wide fast flowing rivers. Local people had developed a novel cottage industry in directing drivers toward the least hazardous crossing points. At first, I nervously insisted on wading across to test out their route. Trusting a wizened, 80 year old lady in a shawl to know the shallowest point of a riverbed seemed like a leap of faith too far, but they never got it wrong. The most hair raising crossing consisted of two ten year old boys trying to explain the complex crossing procedure for a 40 metre wide torrent. Unable to understand their quickfire Spanish instructions,I got them to climb aboard and they guided me across with a combination of shouts, squeals and flailing arms. They looked less than impressed when they realised they had to get back to the other side...
Roadside shake-downs by corrupt African cops, getting lost and rescued by shepherds in the Bosnian mountains, an accidental detour through a Brazilian Favella- I’ve found the opportunities for adventure and incident are endless with a self drive car. For me though, its the freedom which is the real draw of going it alone. Travel agents will upsell the benefits of using a local driver – “He’ll stop anywhere, take you wherever you want to go”, will be the sales pitch. In reality though, by the tenth time you’ve asked him to stop at that great photo opportunity, you’ll notice his eyes rolling in the rear view mirror. To you, a group of kids trying to shift a stubborn mule by the roadside in Mozambique represents a chance of a great shot of local life, perhaps entitled ‘Getting their ass into gear’? To your driver, it’s the motoring equivalent of a pensioner changing a wheel on the hard shoulder of the M40, and he’ll make sure you soon get the message.
Its these roadside interactions which are the real joy of self driving for me. In many countries, particularly in Africa,the pot holed roads between towns and villages are a colourful procession of everyday life. Away from the tourist centres, villagers are only likely to have seen a white face as a fleeting glimpse in a passing vehicle. To stop and speak to people on the road usually elicits a delighted response, particularly from children. Taking a photo of a grinning gaggle of barefoot kids, then showing them the display screen usually results in initial puzzlement, followed by a realisation that they’re looking at themselves, which dissolves into a shrieking melee of excited hands grabbing the camera for a closer look.
Having taken into account the benefits of renting a car to drive yourself, particularly in a developing country, it’s important to ask if it’s right for you. If you’re nervous on the M25 at rush hour, or avoid the one way system in your hometown, it’s unlikely you’d want to negotiate a 5 lane highway in a city centre where all the signs are written in Cyrillic lettering. It’s also best to have at least some experience of driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. Have a test run in Mallorca before tackling Mogadishu!
Another key point is to forget all the rules of the road as you know them. In many countries the only rule is ... there are no rules. The biggest vehicle has right of way, and you have to accept that. Driving with the mindset that everyone else is a homicidal maniac who will be out to get you is no bad thing. When approaching a blind bend, or brow of a hill, always assume there will be another vehicle speeding towards you on the wrong side of the road. If you see a vehicle approaching on your side of the road, don’t be tempted to play chicken. The best result you can hope for is draw. That means neither of you moved , in which case you both lost! Drive defensively but confidently. Don’t hesitate or change direction at the last minute. If you take a wrong turn it’s not the end of the world, and most accidents are caused by indecision.
Driving yourself is certainly not for everyone, but if you’re a fairly confident driver who’s willing to accept that driving standards and etiquette varies greatly by country, it can open up a whole new world of travel possibilities and experiences.
If, however, you decide to stick with public transport and one day find yourself on a local bus on a potholed road, your driver leaning on his horn, foot down on the wrong side of the road, hurtling towards a battered Toyota , ask him to slow down, that could be me driving!
November 1, 2019
Why The Two Week Traveller?
Ever since childhood I've been a wanderer and an explorer with an inquisitive mind and an urge to find what's over the next hill, or round the next corner. As I got older I became an avid reader of travel books,which served as a source of inspiration to explore the farthest flung locations in the world. Unfortunately, I left school at 16 and began work 3 weeks later. My trips have therefore all been made utilising my two week holiday allowance. Luckily I stayed with the same company for many years and my allowance increased to over 6 weeks leave per year, therefore allowing me to take a few holidays a year, and visit many countries. At the time of writing, it's somewhere approaching 150.(I'm not an obsessive country counter!)
I've found, both when travelling and when at home that I'm one of those people that seems to attract incidents. 'Things' tend to happen to me! Therefore, over the years, I've amassed quite a selection of anecdotes - scary, funny, sad, unbelievable and just plain weird.
Colleagues and friends have often said to me that I should write a book. I always dismissed the idea. I've read a lot of good travel books. I know that most full time writers will have better stories than mine.
One evening a young colleague posed the 'write a book' question, and I gave my usual answer. Her reply set me thinking .
She said "But those books are about lengthy journeys, taken over months or years. Your stories are all from two week trips which anyone could take. I've never read a travel book like that. Your stories are an inspiration to me, and they will be to others. You show that you can go anywhere and do anything, even when you're holding down a fulltime career."
I therefore decided to write the book. It's for anyone who loves to travel, but also has to work. Everyone who understands that the journey is as important as the destination. And anyone who, like me, would rather be eaten by a lion, than run over by a bus!
The Two Week Traveller
I've found, both when travelling and when at home that I'm one of those people that seems to attract incidents. 'Things' tend to happen to me! Therefore, over the years, I've amassed quite a selection of anecdotes - scary, funny, sad, unbelievable and just plain weird.
Colleagues and friends have often said to me that I should write a book. I always dismissed the idea. I've read a lot of good travel books. I know that most full time writers will have better stories than mine.
One evening a young colleague posed the 'write a book' question, and I gave my usual answer. Her reply set me thinking .
She said "But those books are about lengthy journeys, taken over months or years. Your stories are all from two week trips which anyone could take. I've never read a travel book like that. Your stories are an inspiration to me, and they will be to others. You show that you can go anywhere and do anything, even when you're holding down a fulltime career."
I therefore decided to write the book. It's for anyone who loves to travel, but also has to work. Everyone who understands that the journey is as important as the destination. And anyone who, like me, would rather be eaten by a lion, than run over by a bus!
The Two Week Traveller
