Five continents...fifty four countries...105 border crossings...over two and a half years...a seemingly infinite WOW!!! In February of 1986, when I was 28 years old, I quit my computer programming job, sold everything I owned, liquidated my assets, and began to travel with the simplest of goals in mind: enjoy myself, feel a great sense of freedom, and accomplish something which is personally rare and special. If, by chance, I learned something, that would be fine too, but that certainly was not the main objective. What I ended up accomplishing was a whole lot more than any of those things, more than I could ever easily describe. What made my journey so unique was not the style of travel. Young backpacking budget travelers are a dime a truckload, particularly in Europe, and have been for a couple of decades. I didn't set any records as others have done, such as walking or bicycling around the world. Some may have traveled for longer or to more places. Nevertheless, the combination of things I did, the number of places I visited, and the length of time I traveled made it a rare and special experience indeed, worthy perhaps of some note. At least, I hope you'll feel the following recollections will be worthy of the time you spend reading them.
The high pace that I kept and the number and variety of high-quality experiences I had in this single journey amazes me more now that I look back on it. Bicycling and Eurailing around Europe, trekking in the Himalayas of Nepal, hitchhiking across Australia, climbing to the top of Kilimanjaro, riding for days across the West India desert by camel, tramping through the jungles of Gorillas in the Mist, visiting the homes of people in the Soviet Union, sleeping in a nomadic herdsman's tent near Mt. Everest in Tibet, taking Spanish courses in Barcelona, playing guitar and singing for money in the streets of Venice, working on an archaeological dig in Czechoslovakia, snorkeling along a coral reef in Sri Lanka, cruising up remote portions of the Nile in Sudan, soaking up the sun on the beaches of Tahiti, falling in love in Budapest...all of these and seemingly countless other special experiences occurred on one long fantastic trip! From about as far north as one can easily go at the Arctic Ocean, to about as far south as one can easily go in Southern New Zealand ... from the ancient temples of Egypt to the grandiose and golden temples of Burma ... from the gates of Auchwitz concentration camp in Poland to Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan ... from the outback of Australia to wildlife safaris in the Great Rift Valley of Africa ... and from sea to shining sea in this great country of ours ... I had what was for me the experience of a lifetime ... perhaps ten lifetimes!
It was sensory overload, to be sure; and yes, one does get quite jaded at times. No one could ever hope to absorb and appreciate, let alone remember all the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations that bombarded me on such a long journey. Even before the trip was finished, my recollection of some of the earlier parts of the trip had become substantially blurred; but, retaining memories was not the main goal. Living in "the now", for the moment, or in other words, experiencing for experience's sake was all the reward I needed. Even so, I have a feeling that throughout my life I will continue to reap benefits and discover things I've learned from this very trip.
Instead of writing a wordy dissertation, I've decided that it may be more fun and informative to give some details and general impressions about my trip through lists. These lists give some statistical facts about the trip itself and some opinionated observations rating the many places I visited on various criteria.
DEAN OMAN'S WORLD TOUR I: STATISTICS, FUN OBSERVATIONS AND OPINIONS: This Edition: July 1998
All opinions expressed are purely subjective and are based only on the countries I visited, and exclude all other countries. There are just over 200 nation-states in the world. On this first journey, I visited about a quarter of them (54 countries). Significantly, I did not visit South America and large portions of Western and Southern Africa, the Far East, the Middle East, the Caribbean and most of the other island nations of the world. A second journey I took in 1995-1996 covered many nations of Central and South America, Southern Africa, Antarctica, and the Trans-Caucasus region. This second journey is discussed in a separate document, "Dean Oman's World Tour II" (August 1997). Another document, "The World According to Dean" (August 1997), contains updated lists of the best and worst that the world has to offer. The following was mostly written soon after the first journey and remains essentially unchanged since before the start of my second journey (September 1995). Prices are given in 1986 to 1988 dollars, as they were at the time I spent them. Inflation has doubled or even tripled the costs of travel in most places since then, while some places remain about the same, and a few have actually become cheaper.
Elapsed time: 946 days, (31 months and 3 days).
Trip Start Date: 10 February 1986
Trip End Date: 13 September 1988
Start and end location: My home in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Total on-the-road expenditures: Approximately $20,300
or around $655 per month or $21.45 per day.
Approximate breakdown of expenditures:
Food: 30%
Transportation: 25%
Accommodation: 20%
All else: 25% (includes film, processing, postage, money conversion
commissions, visa fees, entrance fees, shots and doctors fees, tuition
for a Spanish course, and purchases such as cameras, guitars, memorabilia,
etc.).
Over 6000 slides and photos taken or purchased: Approx: $2500.
1088 postcards with postage: Approx: $800.
Total postage for all items sent: Approx: $1200.
Money conversion commission costs: Approx: $400.
1986-1988 prices:
Western Europe (8 months):
$800 per month average
Eastern Europe (4 months):
$700 " " "
Africa (6 months):
$600 " " "
Asia (8 months):
$450 " " "
Aust. & N.Z. (2 and 1/2 months):
$800 " " "
U.S.A. (2 and 1/2 months):
$800 " " "
NOTE: All amounts are approximate and all-inclusive.
Accommodation costs (1986-1988 prices):
Cheapest overnight accommodations: Lodges along trails in Nepal: 20 cents.
Most expensive accommodations: Washington DC $16; Bucharest, Romania
$15,
Mt. Kilimanjaro $15; Sofia, Bulgaria $14; all other accommodations
were $12 or less.
Average overnight cost: Europe $8, U.S. $9, Australia $9, Africa $2.50,
Asia $2.
NOTE: These costs/prices were possible in Europe, Australia, and the
U.S. primarily at Youth Hostels, and in Africa and Asia at budget hotels.
I also spent many nights in people's homes and on trains, busses, and
boats.
Unusual Rental accommodations in which I stayed:
1. A nomadic herdsman's tent, near Mt. Everest, Tibet.
2. Tibetan's homes made of stone, mud, and grass, Tibet.
3. A cave inside a 100 foot tall cone-shaped rock formation, Central
Turkey, $1.30 per night.
4. A Saharan oasis tent, Zagora, Morocco.
5. A youth hostel on a boat, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
6. A youth hostel in a medieval castle, Toledo, Spain.
Modes of transport used: 18 air flights, dozens of boat and ferry trips, a hydrofoil, sailboats, trains, busses, subways, trolleys, trams, trucks, vans (called matatus, bemos, etc.), rented and friends automobiles, taxis, mopeds, auto rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, a dugout canoe, a waterbike, river rafts, camels, an elephant, oxen carts, over 3000 kilometers of bicycling, several thousand kilometers of hitchhiking, and an approximate average of six miles walking per day. Also, these were hired to carry my packs: a donkey, a horse, some yaks, and some humans.
Cheapest ticketed transportation:
1. A Ugandan train (1st class sleeper, 500 kilometers, 16 hours): The
fare: U.S. 67 cents.
2. Trans-Siberian Railroad from Budapest, Hungary to Beijing, China
(1st class sleeper, 7 nights, 7000 kilometers): Fare $65.00 when bought
in Budapest...several hundred dollars when bought in a Western country.
3. $99 Trans-Atlantic flight, New York to Brussels, People Express,
(now defunct).
Examples of unusual food for sale:
1. Fried Grasshopper, Burma (did not try)
2. Sparrows and frogs on a stick (did not try)
3. Spiced raw hamburger, Poland (tried)
4. Salted lard (eaten by itself), Hungary (tried)
5. Tsampa (barley flour mixed with yak butter tea), Tibet (tried)
6. Yak burgers, Tibet (tried)
7. Vegemite (very salty yeast), Australia (tried)
Also, many fruits, vegetables, and seafoods I'd never seen before and
still can't identify by name.
Examples of some good deals on food (1986-1988 prices):
1. Lobster dinner (abundant), Zanzibar, Tanzania, about $1.00.
2. Stir fry, all you can eat, Lhasa, Tibet, about $1.00.
3. Falafels and fava-bean (burrito like) pocket bread sandwiches, Cairo,
Egypt, stuff yourself on several for about 50 cents total.
Most expensive countries I visited: (This list is not based on any accurate measurement, but on my personal impressions of what I was spending to travel in these countries. It is in approximate order, taking into account exchange requirements and rates at the time I was there, and the kinds of things I typically purchased):
1. Norway, 2. N. Zealand, 3. Polynesia, 4. Switzerland, 5. Austria,
6. Finland, 7. Sweden, 8. Burma, 9. Romania, 10. Italy, 11. France,
12. Denmark, 13. Australia, 14. W. Germany, 15. Bulgaria
Note: I did not visit Japan, which is probably the most expensive. Also, the U.S. falls somewhere between this list and the next list.
Cheapest countries I visited (in approximate order):
1. Sudan, 2. China, 3. Nepal, 4. Bangladesh, 5. India,
6. Indonesia, 7. Pakistan, 8. Zaire, 9. Egypt, 10. Uganda,
11. Turkey, 12. Kenya, 13. Sri Lanka, 14. Morocco, 15. Thailand
Most beautiful scenery, natural features
(per square mile):
1. Norway, 2. Nepal, 3. New Zealand, 4. Switzerland, 5. Austria
Greatest amount of beautiful scenery, natural features (overall): U.S.A.
Most unusual natural area I saw on this trip:
Cappadocia Region, Central Turkey. Badlands-like rock formations.
Countries (or regions)
where the culture(s) interested me most:
1. Tibet, 2. India, 3. China, 4. Burma, 5. Pakistan, 6. Indonesia,
7. Bangladesh, 8. Sudan, 9. Zaire, 10. Soviet Union.
Countries where the history interested me most:
Ancient History: 1. Egypt, 2. Israel, 3. Turkey
Recent history: 1. Poland, 2. India, 3. Soviet Union
Most Interesting Country (all things considered): India is in a class by itself, followed by China, Indonesia, and the Soviet Union; but India is exceptional! Everything you want to know and everything you don't want to know about the world is in India.
Countries (or regions) I would recommend most...
(remembering that I have not yet visited South America)
...to the adventurer: Zaire, Tibet, Sudan, Indonesia.
...to the traveler: India, Nepal, Pakistan, Turkey, Kenya.
...to the culturally sensitive and experienced tourist: Egypt, Thailand,
USSR.
...to the live-like-a-lush-cheaply tourist: Greece, Spain.
...to the money-is-no-object tourist: French Polynesia (Tahiti).
...to the afraid-of-the-language-barrier tourist: U.K., Ireland.
...to the average culturally ignorant bozo: A cultural geography or
language course.
Where people were most hospitable
and generous to me:
1. Sudan, 2. Pakistan, 3. Turkey, 4. Czechoslovakia, 5. Poland, 6.
USSR, 7. Australia
Most Cheerful and Warm People: Tibetans and Burmese.
Least Hospitable and Friendly toward the single traveler:
The Chinese in China. This seemed at the time to be largely a function
of the huge language and cultural barriers and of past political indoctrination.
The Chinese outside of mainland China have always seemed much more warm
and friendly than those I met while I was in China.
Least Touristed Country I visited: Sudan...there was a three week period during which I traveled many miles, but saw almost exclusively local people.
Greatest harassment to buy things: 1. Morocco, 2. Sri Lanka, 3. India.
Greatest Likelihood of theft off my person:
1. Djakarta, Indonesia, 2. New York City, 3. Rome, Italy.
Greatest likelihood of being conned: Morocco.
Most Dangerous Countries (guestimation of my risk at the time I was
there):
1. Uganda (political instability).
2. U.S.A. (potential threat of personal violence).
3. Pakistan (terrorist bombings related to Afghan conflict).
4. Bangladesh (civil unrest).
5. Israel (civil unrest).
6. Morocco (potential threat of assault).
Statistically, most U.S. cities have much higher violent crime rates
than most foreign cities.
Most Dangerous Drivers (when sober): 1. Pakistan, 2. Egypt, 3. Turkey
Craziest automobile traffic: Cairo, Egypt.
Greatest bicycle traffic: Beijing, China.
Noisiest traffic: Bangkok, Thailand.
Most intense traffic overall: Old Delhi, India (impossibly congested
with vehicles, rickshaws, animals, etc.......but, somehow, it manages to
keep moving).
Where I enjoyed food the most: Criteria:
taste, healthfulness, variety, price:
1. U.S.A., 2. China, 3. Thailand, 4. Greece, 5. Hungary, 6. Nepal,
7. Australia, 8. Pakistan
Best Beer: Czechoslovakia, W. Germany, U.K., Netherlands.
Worst Beer: USSR and U.S.A. (My opinion has changed since first writing this. American beer is much better now with the rise of microbreweries. Some American beers now rank among the best).
Best Ice Cream: 1. U.S.A., 2. Hungary, 3. Denmark, 4. Italy.
Best Pizza: U.S.A.
Best Chinese Food: U.S.A.
Country with most possibilities
for fun: U.S.A.
Nicest country in which to live (all things considered): Australia.
Worst country in which to live (all things considered): Bangladesh.
Those who travel internationally the
most (per capita):
1. W. Germans, 2. Japanese, 3. Australians, 4. New Zealanders, 5. Swiss,
6. Swedes,
7. Danes, 8. Dutch, 9. British, 10. French, 11. Canadians, 12. Americans.
Average starting paid vacation time (new employees):
U.S.A. and Japan --2 weeks; Many European Countries -- 4 to 6 weeks.
Most politically and culturally aware: Swedish, W. Germans, Swiss.
Most politically and culturally naive (among the Western industrialized
nations): Australians, Americans.
My picks for the most attractive
women:
1. Polynesian, 2. Indian, 3. Israeli, 4. Spanish, 5. Italian,
6. Sudanese, 7. Bulgarian, 8. Finnish, 9. Hungarian, 10. French.
Most overweight: Americans, Australians, and Soviets.
Most beautiful woman I met while traveling: A Soviet.
My picks for the most
beautiful cities I visited on this trip:
(In order, based primarily on architecture, environmental setting and
ambiance):
1. Prague, Czechoslovakia
2. Edinburgh, Scotland
3. Venice, Italy
4. Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia
5. Seville, Spain
6. Salzburg, Austria
7. Barcelona, Spain
8. Paris, France
9. Sydney, Australia
Most ugly city: Djakarta, Indonesia.
Most Amazing City: Warsaw, Poland. This is a city that went from a population of several hundred thousand to a population of zero when it was completely evacuated and leveled in World War II. It is said that only two people remained alive when the Soviets arrived to "liberate" the city. Much of Warsaw has been rebuilt as it once was, using architectural drawings and photos that had been saved, and the city now has 700,000 people.
Most Interesting City Historically: Jerusalem, Israel
Most Exciting City: New York City
Most Spiritual City: Lhasa, Tibet
Cleanest Major Cities: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with Singapore a close
second.
Cities with the greatest number of things worth seeing and doing:
1) New York City, 2) Washington DC, 3) Paris, France, 4) Rome, Italy,
5) Jerusalem, Israel
Where "people watching" and photographing was most interesting for me:
1) India, 2) China, 3) Indonesia, 4) Pakistan, 5) Bangladesh, 6) Burma,
7) Zaire, 8) Sudan
Man made structures that are most worth seeing:
Beautiful but overrated: Taj Mahal, Agra, India.
Most important structures to see:
The Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt
Less famous structures that are no less amazing:
1) Abu Simbel, Southern Egypt.
2) Temples of Karnak and Luxor, Luxor Egypt.
3) The temples of Pagan, Burma.
4) Waleichka Salt Mines, Krakow, Poland.
Most beautiful church: St. Basils Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow.
Most beautiful mosque: The Blue Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey.
Most beautiful Buddhist temple: Rangoon, Burma.
Most beautiful Hindu temple: Tarichyppalli, India.
Most spiritual place: The Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet.
Most colorfully religious people: The Hindus of Bali, Indonesia.
Sights that had a big emotional impact upon me:
1) Auchwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.
2) The Berlin Wall, Germany.
3) Mother Teresa's Orphanage and the Home for Dying Destitutes, Calcutta,
India.
4) Afghan refugee camps, Peshawar, Pakistan.
Other sights having symbolic significance for me:
...Mahatma Gandhi's homes in Ahmedabad and New Delhi, India. Seeing
the movie "Gandhi" in 1982 was the spark that inspired me to take this
very long journey.
...taking the "Magical Mystery Tour" in Liverpool. The Beatles were
the biggest musical influences of my youth and perhaps a reason why I came
to lug a guitar along with me so many miles.
BORDERS CROSSED (IN ORDER OF OCCURENCE): (OVER 50 COUNTRIES, 105 BORDER CROSSINGS)
U.S.A.
10FEB-10FEB 1986 1 DAY
BELGIUM
11FEB-11FEB SEVERAL HOURS
FRANCE
11FEB-12FEB HALF DAY
SPAIN
12FEB-08APR 56 DAYS
GIBRALTER
08APR-08APR SEVERAL HOURS
SPAIN
08APR-10APR 2 DAYS
MOROCCO
10APR-25APR 16 DAYS
GIBRALTER
25APR-26APR 1 DAY
SPAIN
26APR-06MAY 11 DAYS
FRANCE
06MAY-15MAY 10 DAYS
W. GERMANY
15MAY-28MAY 13 DAYS
NETHERLANDS
28MAY-01JUN 4 DAYS
BELGIUM
01JUN-01JUN COUPLE OF HOURS
NETHERLANDS
01JUN-01JUN COUPLE OF HOURS
W. GERMANY
01JUN-09JUN 9 DAYS
E. GERMANY
10JUN-10JUN SEVERAL HOURS ON TRAIN ONLY
W. BERLIN
10JUN-15JUN 5 DAYS
E. BERLIN
15JUN-15JUN SEVERAL HOURS
W. BERLIN
15JUN-15JUN SEVERAL HOURS
E. GERMANY
15JUN-16JUN SEVERAL HOURS ON TRAIN ONLY
POLAND
16JUN-25JUN 9 DAYS
USSR
25JUN-09JUL 15 DAYS
FINLAND
09JUL-12JUL 4 DAYS
NORWAY
12JUL-16JUL 4 DAYS
SWEDEN
16JUL-19JUL 3 DAYS
NORWAY
19JUL-19JUL 1 DAY
SWEDEN
20JUL-20JUL SEVERAL HOURS ON TRAIN
DENMARK
20JUL-25JUL 5 DAYS
W. GERMANY
25JUL-28JUL 4 DAYS
SWITZERLAND
28JUL-28JUL SEVERAL HOURS TRAIN & STATION
FRANCE
28JUL-29JUL SEVERAL HOURS TRAIN & STATION
SPAIN
29JUL-30JUL 2 DAYS
PORTUGAL
30JUL-01AUG 2 DAYS
SPAIN
01AUG-02AUG 1 DAY ON TRAIN ONLY
FRANCE
02AUG-03AUG 1 DAY TRAIN & STATION ONLY
W. GERMANY
03AUG-05AUG 2 DAYS
FRANCE
05AUG-11AUG 7 DAYS
IRELAND
12AUG-19AUG 7 DAYS
U.K.
19AUG-29AUG 10 DAYS
FRANCE
29AUG-29AUG SEVERAL HOURS TRAIN & STATION
BELGIUM
29AUG-30AUG 1 DAY
FRANCE
30AUG-05SEP 6 DAYS
W. GERMANY
05SEP-07SEP 2 DAYS
AUSTRIA
07SEP-10SEP 3 DAYS
SWITZERLAND
10SEP-15SEP 5 DAYS
FRANCE
15SEP-17SEP 2 DAYS
BELGIUM
17SEP-17SEP COUPLE OF HOURS ON TRAIN ONLY
NETHERLANDS
17SEP-18SEP 1 DAY
W. GERMANY
18SEP-21SEP 3 DAYS
LUXEMBOURG
21SEP-22SEP 1 DAY
W. GERMANY
22SEP-24SEP 2 DAYS
AUSTRIA
24SEP-25SEP HALF DAY
ITALY
25SEP-26SEP 1 DAY
FRANCE
26SEP-26SEP AN HOUR ON TRAIN ONLY
MONACO
26SEP-26SEP SEVERAL HOURS
FRANCE
26SEP-26SEP AN HOUR ON TRAIN ONLY
ITALY
26SEP-28SEP 2 DAYS
SWITZERLAND
28SEP-28SEP SEVERAL HOURS
ITALY
28SEP-30SEP 1 1/2 DAYS
VATICAN
30SEP-30SEP SEVERAL HOURS
ITALY
30SEP-02OCT 2 1/2 DAYS
GREECE
03OCT-10OCT 7 DAYS
TURKEY
10OCT-23OCT 13 DAYS
GREECE
23OCT-24OCT 1 1/2 DAYS
CYPRUS
25OCT-25OCT SEVERAL HOURS
ISRAEL
26OCT-04NOV 9 DAYS
EGYPT
04NOV-28NOV 24 DAYS
SUDAN
28NOV-20DEC 22 DAYS
KENYA
30DEC-19JAN 1987 30 DAYS
TANZANIA
19JAN-24FEB 34 DAYS
UGANDA
24FEB-06MAR 10 DAYS
ZAIRE
06MAR-08MAR 2 DAYS
UGANDA
08MAR-18MAR 10 DAYS
KENYA
18MAR-04APR 17 DAYS
USSR
05APR-06APR 1 DAY
GREECE
06APR-01MAY 25 DAYS
BULGARIA
01MAY-11MAY 10 DAYS
ROMANIA
11MAY-15MAY 4 DAYS
YUGOSLAVIA
15MAY-22MAY 7 DAYS
AUSTRIA
22MAY-27MAY 5 DAYS
HUNGARY
27MAY-20JUN 24 DAYS
AUSTRIA
20JUN-20JUN SEVERAL HOURS
W. GERMANY
20JUN-29JUN 8 DAYS
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 29JUN-15JUL
16 DAYS
HUNGARY
15JUL-24JUL 9 DAYS
USSR
24JUL-09AUG 17 DAYS
MONGOLIA
09AUG-10AUG 1 DAY TRAIN AND STATION ONLY
CHINA
10AUG-04AUG 55 DAYS
NEPAL
04AUG-17NOV 44 DAYS
INDIA
17NOV-03DEC 17 DAYS
PAKISTAN
03DEC-12DEC 9 DAYS
INDIA
12DEC-12JAN 1988 31 DAYS
SRI LANKA
12JAN-24JAN 12 DAYS
INDIA
24JAN-03FEB 10 DAYS
BANGLADESH
03FEB-07FEB 4 DAYS
BURMA
07FEB-14FEB 7 DAYS
THAILAND
14FEB-04MAR 19 DAYS
MALAYSIA
04MAR-14MAR 10 DAYS
SINGAPORE
14MAR-21MAR 7 DAYS
INDONESIA
21MAR-14APR 22 DAYS
AUSTRALIA
14APR-14JUN 61 DAYS
NEW CALADONIA 14JUN-16JUN
1 1/2 DAYS
NEW ZEALAND
16JUN-30JUN 15 DAYS
TAHITI
30JUN-02JUL 2 DAYS
USA
02JUL-20JUL 18 DAYS
MEXICO
20JUL-20JUL SEVERAL HOURS
USA
20JUL-13SEP 54 DAYS
TOTAL 943 DAYS = TWO YEARS, 7 MONTHS AND THREE DAYS
Countries in which I spent
Countries which I entered
the most time on this trip:
and exited the most:
1. USA
72 DAYS
1. W. GERMANY 10 times
2. SPAIN
71 1/2 DAYS
2. FRANCE 10 times
3. AUSTRALIA 61 DAYS
3. SPAIN 5 times
4. INDIA
58 DAYS
4. BELGIUM 4 times
5. CHINA
55 DAYS
AUSTRIA 4 times
6. KENYA
47 DAYS
ITALY 4 times
7. W. GERMANY 46 DAYS
5. USSR 3 times
8. NEPAL
44 DAYS
SWITZERLAND 3 times
9. TANZANIA 34 DAYS
INDIA 3 times
10. GREECE 33 1/2 DAYS
GREECE 3 times
11. USSR
32 DAYS
NETHERLANDS 3 times
12. FRANCE 27 1/2 DAYS
E. GERMANY 3 times
Biggest mistakes I made:
1. Not taking anti-malarial pills in Northern Sudan and subsequently
acquiring malaria.
2. Remembering I left my guitar on a train in Italy as the train pulled
away.
3. Going swimming and forgetting to remove my money belt (containing
passport, travelers checks, and other important papers which became
smeared and, in some cases, void as a result).
Wisest decisions I made:
1. To travel very lightly (usually carrying around 15 pounds).
2. To stay ahead of the climate changes and go to places when the weather
was best.
3. To stay flexible about my travel plans.
A Small Sampling of the Sublime, The Ridiculous, and The Weird...
1. While riding a train in Uganda, it paused twice, once because someone had a heart attack and died and a second time, it was said, so that people could witness the public flogging of a thief who had been caught on board. 300 miles took 16 hours and cost 67 cents.
2. One of the rides I had while hitchhiking through Northern Finland and Norway was with three van loads of French teenagers and several adult teachers. After hanging out with them for three days, they dropped me off at a gas station where I played one last song on my guitar and all 24 of them lined up to shake my hand or give me four kisses alternately on both cheeks (French style).
3. In Sudan, the train stopped in the middle of the desert and most everyone, men and women, boys and girls, got off and urinated or defecated in full view of everyone else. There was nowhere to hide, except that most people were wearing clothes that draped over them so that all anyone could see was what was left on the ground.
4. Turkish Customs officials, upon searching our train compartment (an area shared by six) discovered that an attractive Turkish woman was bringing with her some illegal items (not drugs). She attempted to bribe them with candy, cigarettes, money, etc. which they accepted, and after some negotiating (in Turkish) and some behind the scenes behavior, she and one official returned to our compartment a few hours later openly affectionate and she apparently had gotten away with her illegal act.
5. At a typical crouch type toilet in Goa, India, I was doing my business when I heard some snorting from below. It was a pig who was chowing down on my fecal waste and, before I was finished, was sticking his snout up toward me hoping I'd drop more.
6. As I tried to take a couple of quick photos of a colorfully and exotically
dressed lady along a rural road in Indonesia's rainforest, she calmly shook
her finger at me and waved me off. Her companions warned me politely
but firmly that I shouldn't take photos without asking, and especially
not of her because she is a voodoo woman. I said, "She is a
what? Oh, sorry!" and walked away.
What followed was probably just a series of coincidences. First
of all, my camera (a tiny one designed to be inconspicuous) suddenly inexplicably
stopped functioning, and I could no longer depress the shutter button to
take more photos. Frustrated, I went back and tried to fix the camera,
but the electricity and lights went out in the room. I thought, okay,
this is an opportunity to open the camera and salvage the partially exposed
film. Unfortunately, as I was manually rolling the film back into
its cartridge, the electricity came back on exposing part of the film to
the light. At that moment, my travel companions noticed that one
of my eyes seemed to be very red. As it turned out, my shutterbug
eye had acquired conjunctivitis, an itchy, mucuousy condition that made
me miserable and required multiple visits to a doctor over the next six
weeks. Meanwhile, although I was able to process part of the film,
the only part that didn't turn out were the photos that I had taken of
the so called voodoo woman and her companions in the village. I could
never get the camera to work again. Was it coincidence or voodoo?
A selection of some of the more special experiences:
1. Wilderness adventures such as climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya, trekking to the advanced base camp of Mt. Everest in Tibet and to the Annapurna base camp in Nepal.
2. Participating with people from many countries in International Peace Work camps in the Soviet Union, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the U.S.
3. Staying in the homes of people where it was not so common for Westerners to do so. Homes I visited in Africa and Asia were often very basic and without any modern conveniences, but the hosts were extraordinarily kind, gracious and generous. In Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, my visit to people's homes was not always officially sanctioned by authorities.
4. Meeting unusual and special people: famous people, such as Mother Teresa and former California Governor and Presidential candidate Jerry Brown; adventurous people, such as several Americans attempting to climb Mt. Everest or a man from Poland who bicycled across the Sahara Desert; people with unusual stories, such as a young man from China who escaped into Burma, was captured by authorities there, fled back into China, and finally crossed into Nepal where he was awaiting political asylum.
5. Going on wildlife safaris in Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire and Nepal.
6. Taking interesting ways to get somewhere, such as going on a camel trek in the Western Indian desert, hitching a ride atop a truck to cross the Himalayas from Tibet to Nepal, riding a boat up the Nile in Sudan, or bicycling around Europe.
7. Falling in love numerous times. Unfortunately, romantic relationships are complicated by cultural and language barriers as well as the challenge of maintaining romance across large distances.
8. Singing and playing guitar for enthusiastic audiences around the world. Earned money playing in youth hostels in Spain, Ireland and Greece and on the street in Italy, Hungary and Australia.
9. Making numerous friends while traveling and then visiting them at
their homes when I arrived to their corner of the planet. A typical example
was to become acquainted with someone in a place such as Egypt and then
visit them months later in a place such as Australia.
Breaking the language barrier:
1. At my Spanish class in Barcelona, my teacher, speaking in Spanish, asked the class what they liked best about Spain. When my turn came to respond in Spanish I tried to be a little amusing and said that the thing I liked best about Spain was the women there. Most of the people in the class were women, but I couldn't understand why several of them were laughing quite hard and at length, and why the instructor was looking at me funny. Later, I discovered that the teacher had actually asked, "What do you like to eat in Spain?"
2. My friend Gary Brown told me that "bahnhof" in German meant train station. For some reason, a couple days later, I confused "bahnhof" (probably since it began with "bahn") with signs saying "einbahnstrasse" (one way street). I imagined that the arrow on the signs were pointing my way to the train station. I followed the signs until I realized that I was going around in circles. Then, I stopped a man and asked him which way do I go to get to the "einbahnstrasse". He looked at me strangely and said, "Well, you can go this way or you can go that way". "Really," I said, "How is that possible?" He pointed to the signs, and said, "they are all einbahnstrasse, so you can follow them any way you want". We both walked off bemused and befuddled, but eventually I realized my mistake.
3. After 16 months of travel, I learned to speak very, very slowly (and probably a little more loudly) in halting English so that foreigners would better understand what I was saying. (Where ... are ... you ... from)? I also tended to pronounce English words as I imagined them to sound according to the local accent. One time, in Czechoslovakia, I spoke with a person for several minutes before realizing that he too was speaking very slowly and precisely to me. Finally, he asked me, "And ... where ... did ... you ... learn English ... so ... well?" "Minnesota", I said. "Oh, so you've travelled to the States," he responded. "No, I was born there." He laughed and said, "Oh ... I'm from Ohio. I thought for sure that you were from Czechoslovakia. Well, I guess we can speed up our talking then." Amazingly, though, the habit of speaking slowly and precisely was a habit that was hard to break in our later conversations, and to this day I sometimes catch myself doing it whether I'm talking to foreigners or native born Americans.
4. At a camp in the Soviet Union, some of the young American women in our group suggested to our Russian host that we should all go skinny dipping. The Russian host confused the woman's expression "skinny dipping" for "scuba diving", and he said that he couldn't go skinny dipping because he didn't bring his equipment. We all laughed at his mistake, and then I said, I don't know about you, but I bring my equipment for skinny dipping whereever I go.
5. After 29 months of speaking broken English, I finally arrived back
in the States unable to speak normal English. I got off the airplane
at Los Angeles International Airport, immediately got on a bus, and as
I was looking for a place to sit on the bus, I found myself again resorting
to speaking broken English. Instead of asking a woman, "Is this seat
available?" or "May I sit here?" all I could do was point to the seat,
look at her in the face and ask her the simplest of questions. "Okay???"
I asked. She looked at me strangely and said, "Okay what?"
Near misses, nerve wracking moments and harassment:
1. In Morocco, on two occasions, I and my companions were threatened with physical violence. Both instances were mildly intimidating, but neither we took too seriously. One Moroccan, angry because we did not want him to be our guide, threatened to throw rocks and get his friends after us; another threatened to set our hotel room on fire. Even after making the threat to set our hotel room on fire, he still tried to charm us into taking him as our guide.
2. Crossing by bicycle from Holland to West Germany, I was strip-searched by German border guards thinking they might find drugs. They didn't find any, of course, although they found a sticker I had with the symbol of a marijauana leaf on it, which was an advertisement for a cafe in Amsterstam that had, among other things, "space cakes" (hashish brownies) on their menu.
3. I forgot my money belt in a public shower in Nairobi, Kenya. Luckily, a friend of mine was the next one to use the shower and returned the belt to me.
4. Exchanging U.S. dollars for local money is illegal in some countries if it is done on the street rather than in banks. Some governments keep the value of their currency artificially higher than the free market would value it making things very expensive. Like most backpacking tourists, I sometimes exchanged money with the local people since I could get much more of the local currency in exchange for my dollars. In some countries, laws against the currency black market are not enforced, and in places such as Uganda or Sudan, even the police were openly promoting or engaging in it.
Meanwhile, Tanzania was a risky place to be breaking such a law. There, some police (or men impersonating police) accused my friend and me of exchanging our U.S. dollars for local currency on the street rather than at the official rate offered by banks. Denying the fact that we had indeed done so, we insisted that if they truly believed we had done this, they should take us to the police station. Since they were reluctant to do bring us to the police station, I figured that they probably were not police at all and, as sometimes was the case in that country, they probably were trying to intimidate us into paying them a bribe. Instead, we showed them some fake bank receipts, which we had purchased from some guy on the street. Perhaps they realized that they weren't going to get a bribe from us, or perhaps they believed the bank receipts were real; but in any case, they let us go.
5. At a Bulgarian border crossing, a border guard told me to take my baggage and to get off the train. "No good", he said of my passport. Some of the visas had been smeared when I inadvertently went swimming while wearing my money belt, but the Bulgarian visa looked fine. After some insistence by me (across a huge language barrier, where nodding the head meant "no" and shaking the head meant "yes") he let me go on another train two hours later.
6. I was interrogated very thoroughly both entering and leaving Romania. On the way out of the country, one upstart young Romanian soldier accused me off being a Romanian Mafioso. Border officials temporarily confiscated my camera and several rolls of my film only to return them to me one and a half hours later just before the train was scheduled to depart.
7. After climbing the crumbling face of a rock in Tibet, I was unable to get back down without quite a bit of coaching from my companions and five times the courage it took me to get up there in the first place.
8. Also in Tibet, riding on top of a truck for several hours across
the Himalayas, my companions and I, overwhelmed by the beauty and pleasure
of the experience, were nearly oblivious to how cold we were becoming as
high winds whipped against us. After we got off the truck, we were all
bordering on hypothermia and shaking so uncontrollably that it took 20
minutes in a warm cafe before we could actually hold steady a warm cup
of tea (using both hands) without spilling it on ourselves.
The most miserable experience:
Riding in the back of an unbelievably overcrowded small flatbed truck in
Uganda with nearly 40 other people. Only my feet and calves were inside
the truck and my butt hung way over the side, nearly getting sideswiped
on numerous occasions by other passing vehicles. Many parts of my body
got pinched, smashed, bruised, battered, squished and suffocated. The circulation
was cut off in both of my legs, while my hands were being sliced into by
the sharp-edged metal bar onto which I clinged for dear life.
After four hours covering a mere 60 miles over atrociously bumpy
dirt roads, I thought I was going to die. I would rather have another
severe case of malaria than to have another truck ride like that.
In places that were making news at the time:
1. April 1986: In Spain and Morocco, where there were attacks against Americans and American-owned enterprises (i.e. McDonalds and Burger King) in response to the U.S. attack on Libya.
2. May 1986: In West Germany, participating with tens of thousands of people demonstrating to close nuclear power plants in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
3. Early July 1986: In Kiev, 60 miles from Chernobyl, 2 months after the accident.
4. September 1986: In Paris, as a terrorist bomb exploded at the police station across the street from where my mother and I were standing.
5. October 1986: In Israel, where I saw a Palestinian Arab who had just been badly injured by Israeli police.
6. December 1986: In Khartoum, Sudan, where refugees were flooding in from a war which still rages on in Southern Sudan.
7. March 1987: In Uganda, where nearly a million people had been killed by civil conflict in the 70's and 80's, where civil war still occurring in some parts, and where I could hear unexplainable gunfire in the capital city of Kampala.
8. April 1987: In Greece, when threatening to go to war with Turkey over a border dispute.
9. September 1987: In Tibet, but away from the capital city of Lhasa where several people were killed in riots by Tibetans protesting Chinese rule. China closed the borders of Tibet to foreign tourists the day I left the country.
10. November 1987: In Katmandu, Nepal, when a young lad, believed to be high on drugs, went out the third story window of my hotel and died from the fall. It was not a pretty sight.
11. December 1987: In Peshawar, Pakistan, where more terrorist bombs were exploding than anywhere else in the world at the time (except perhaps Beirut). One bomb was defused by authorities across the street from where I was staying.
12. December 1987: Rode across the Punjab Province of India in a police-escorted caravan of vehicles. Due to previous terrorist incidents by some Sikh Moslems, it was only possible for foreigners to cross the India-Pakistan border the three times each month that the border was open.
13. January 1988: In Sri Lanka, where war was occurring in the North, and where there were occasional terrorist incidents in the South not far from where I was or where I had been traveling.
14. February 1988: In Dacca, Bangladesh, when rioting to overthrow the current regime was occurring in other parts of the city.
15. February 1988: In Burma, six weeks before the borders were closed to all foreigners due to civil unrest. The leadership of the country changed four times later that year, and the border remained closed to most foreign visitors for a couple of years.
16. June 1988: In New Caledonia, French Polynesia, where a war
of independence was occurring within 60 miles of where I was.
A sampling of some unusual cultural habits, customs, and laws:
-- In the major cities of Spain, the afternoon siesta (rest time) had the effect of adding two more rush hours for a total of four each day. Typically they would occur 8:00 to 9:30 AM, 12:30 to 2:00 PM, 3:30 to 5:00 PM and 7:30 to 9:00 PM. And cars would often drive over 50 miles per hour along busy downtown streets.
-- People would often park their cars on the sidewalks of Barcelona, so pedestrians have to watch out for cars coming at them.
-- In Valencia, Spain they have a festival where people from around the country bring huge caricatures of famous people, animals or other artwork and burn these things in effigy. People work all year to create, typically out of wood, the best of the so-called "faltas" (meaning mistakes), and then burn them all in one huge public bonfire. Among others, I remember effigies of Reagan and Thatcher.
-- In Morocco, whenever the king would show up in town, all the hotel rooms throughout the whole area would become unavailable. Our paths kept crossing and on at least one occasion we actually had to get back on the bus and go to another city to find a place to stay.
-- In many countries of the Middle East and Africa, people would eat without any utensils, but rather by using their right hand to scoop food from the same communal bowl shared simultaneously by others. The left hand is used exclusively for wiping one's bottom.
-- In Bulgaria, nodding one's head up and down means "no" and shaking it left and right means "yes", the opposite of virtually everywhere else in the world. I may be wrong, but in India, people seemed to be doing a figure eight with their heads for both yes and no.
-- In many African countries, people have scars carved into their faces in shapes or symbols representing the tribe to which they belonged.
-- In many parts of the developing world, I was given special treatment merely for being a foreigner. Local people, often total strangers to me, would often insist that I be moved to the front of often incredibly long lines or that I have a seat on a bus when none was otherwise available.
-- In Britain and in many former British colonies people drive on the left side of the road. Burma is more unusual in that they drive on left and the steering wheel is also on the left.
-- Also in Burma, currency denominations were 3's, 15's, 45's and 90's.
-- Unlike the solemn, sober events of Western countries, funerals in Bali, Indonesia are much more lively events. People put on colorful masks, dress in exotic costumes and march and sing together.
-- Singapore is nearly a spotless city since littering laws have stiff fines which start at $500 (1988 dollars) and are very strictly enforced. Even gum chewing seemed to capture the watchful eye of officials there.
-- In Malaysia, signs posted in many places reminded drug dealers and drug users that the penalty for getting caught is nothing short of being put to death.
-- In Amsterdam, Holland, by contrast to Malaysia, "space cakes" (hashish brownies) are on the menu of local coffeehouses. Amsterdam is also noted for the openness of prostitution, and many women (and some men) sit on display in large spotlighted picture windows or on outdoor platforms and try to entice customers into their places of business.
-- In Nepal and India, I witnessed several public cremations. As women family members wail loudly, the underlying grass and wood is lit on fire, the body is burned, and the remaining ashes are swept off into the adjacent river.
-- In Tibetan Buddhism, people stand up, bend down on their knees, touch their head to the ground, lie down, pull themselves forward and repeat this process called "prostration", sometimes over miles and days, saying prayers as they go.
-- In Australia and New Zealand, voting is required by law and participation
is nearly 100 percent since people are otherwise threatened with a loss
of various governmental benefits.
Some other moments that pop into my mind ...
-- watching a one-legged man in Cairo hopping through rush hour traffic and catching up to the open door of a bus and being yanked onboard.
-- sitting in a movie theater in Dongala, Sudan watching a hopelessly bad American sci-fi movie with all of the women sitting on one side of the theater and all of the men sitting on the other side.
-- sitting on a small boat off the coast of Zanzibar when the boat motor had died, and floated helplessly back toward shore, watching as most people got sea sick (excluding me for some reason) before we were rescued by another boat.
-- while in a shower in a Barcelona youth hostel, I didn't pay attention that the water was running onto the floor until someone knocked on the door screaming at me to turn the shower off. My mistake caused a huge pool of water to flow out into the hallway and into the adjacent women's dorm room while making a huge mess out of everything. It was embarrassing having to clean up the flood in their room at 6:30 in the morning when they might have otherwise been sleeping. The management made a big scene about my mistake as well.
-- having a great time singing traditional American patriotic songs with several very drunk Russians on the 4th of July in Kiev.
-- watching my Polish host's dog kill and, before we could stop her, actually chew up and swallow most of her neighbor's pet kitten in her back yard. My host, otherwise a very kind, calm and composed woman, was VERY upset and tearful over the episode.
-- walking up to Brandenburg Gate on the east side of the Berlin Wall with a Polish couple I had just met who, in Polish words and gestures, expressed their very deeply felt angry emotions about the Wall.
-- trying to extract our bus from a muddy ditch with three dozen Chinese and Tibetans. Half pulled with a rope on the front end of the large bus while the rest of us tried to push the bus from behind. Later, another bus helped to pull our bus out of the ditch.
-- eating lunch in a Tibetan cafe while a very large pig, also inside the cafe, stood slobbering his lunch only a couple feet away from me.
-- seeing a man with no arms and no legs who had been placed at a street corner in Nairobi with a cup for begging.
-- viewing for the first time the breathtaking New York skyline from a boat with some Russians I'd met two years earlier who at that time could never have dreamed of such an opportunity.
-- trying with a travel companion to pick up (or to be picked up by) a couple of assertive young women in a Glasgow bar only to discover after inviting them to our table that we could hardly understand a word of their very thick Scotch-English dialect (even though they said they understood our American English very well).
-- walking by myself on the Serengeti Plain in Kenya and watching as my movements alone would set into motion large herds of gazelle, wildebeests, giraffes and zebras. I later discovered that I could have been a sitting duck for lions that had recently been sighted in the park.
-- being welcomed for dinner into the small two room home of a large extended Turkish family (with perhaps a dozen children and several adults) who made their living working in the cotton fields. Only one child knew some English. They had almost no furniture, but their television was playing the American program "Knight Rider".
-- walking through the Israeli Knesset (Parliament building) with a Palestinian Arab who said he had spent a year in prison for merely possessing some books forbidden by the government. He thought for sure he would be arrested again for being at the Knesset gate were it not for the fact that he was walking with an American.
-- arguing with Chinese officials that I deserved to have my money back for a train ticket when trains were being canceled for 7 to 10 days. Luckily, I had been hanging around with a young attractive Canadian lawyer, Mary Bredin, who was much more persuasive in her arguments than I, and she managed to persuade the officials to give me my money back. Her lawyerly skills were provided to me pro bono.
-- enjoying billions of stars and the desert sun as I rode for three days and nights across the Sahara and along the Nile on top of a truck with 21 Sudanese people, only two of whom knew any English, and even that was sparing. Our truck occasionally got stuck and great effort had to be expended to get it out of deep desert sand.
-- shouting loudly "Let me have air ... I need air!!!" at three in the morning waking up everyone in our train car and hearing them laugh as I hung my head out the window. Almost no one in this Sudanese train understood what I was saying, but I was probably going delirious due to the early stages of malaria infection.
-- putting on miner's clothes and having black coal dust patted on my face by makeup artists preparing me to be an extra in an HBO movie "Lion of Africa" (along with dozens of others in the background).
-- getting caught up in a love "quadrangle" ... being among three young men in Melbourne, Australia competing for the affection of one woman. Her longtime boyfriend, whom I had also come to know well in Budapest, had just proposed marriage to her, but she seemed to be more torn between me and another Australian guy she had recently met. With heads ruling hearts, I went back to America and she married the new guy.
-- never feeling more exhausted and fulfilled than when I spent 16 hours (starting at 1:00 A.M. after no sleep) climbing from 15,000 to 19,340 feet and descending to 12,000 feet on Mount Kilimanjaro.
-- sharing affection with women in semi-public places -- in a park in Madrid, on the Seine in Paris, on an island beach, near Perth, Australia and elsewhere.
-- flying down a vineyard lined country road in a French sports car at over 100 mph.
-- smearing thick black mud all over my body and then trying to wash it off while floating (or bobbing) on top of the dense, caustic salt water of the Dead Sea, the lowest place on Earth.
-- trying to fall asleep while listening to the prayer chantings of an old wrinkled Tibetan man, who shared his dark, smoky, fire-lit mud hut with us. A calf also slept by our side. The chantings went on for one hour.
-- feeling absolutely wonderful in Tatopani, Nepal in a natural hot spring, after ten days without bathing during our trek to Everest in cold, dusty Tibet.
-- slipping, sliding and slashing our way through the jungle mud and brush of Zaire in search of mountain gorillas, and upon finding them, enjoying the antics, particularly of the playful younger ones.
-- being extraordinarily well received, very roundly cheered and called back for encores while entertaining folks in Dublin and Athens hostels, at a large assembly in a Ukrainian school, and at a bar packed with tourists and locals in Lhasa, Tibet.
-- looking out my bus window while waiting at a stop light and seeing an elephant waiting in the next lane, likewise waiting for the light to change -- just another day in India.
-- spoon feeding a man, and then massaging his skin and bones back in the Home of Dying Destitutes, Calcutta. He was gone the next day.
-- watching my Canadian travel companion grab the microphone at a small open-air Islamic place of worship in Bangladesh as he started to sing loudly, "Well shake it up baby, now! Twist and shout!!!" The sound was broadcast over the loudspeakers throughout the local community, and soon we found ourselves like pied-pipers being followed as we walked down the road by a large group of mostly very rambunctious children.
-- watching the geckos (green, lizard-like creatures) crawl across our hotel room ceiling in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as the overhead lamp and ceiling fan began moving and the bed shook from a small earthquake.
-- treading through nearly a foot of water on downtown streets in Djakarta, Indonesia after an afternoon cats-n-dogs tropical rain storm. The water drained away or evaporated after a day or so.
-- after constructing a cross-country ski bridge with a group of Russians and Americans on a work camp in New Hampshire, we all got on the bridge for a photograph that would be a symbol of old national rivals working together. A loud snap was not the camera going off. We quickly jumped off the bridge to prevent the whole thing from collapsing.
-- hanging on the side of an overcrowded freight train box car with many Indians, some of whom road on top of the train.
-- seeing an accumulation of several hundred human skulls spread out evenly on the ground along the side of a road in front of a gas station in Uganda. The locals wanted westerners to know what their former leader Milton Obote had done, and what our countries ignored. Several hundred thousand people died during his reign.
-- watching a parade of the Turkish President, stopping to take a photo of a man appearing and claiming to have the world's largest mustache, and then suddenly realizing that we were capturing more attention from the people lining the parade route than the President was.
-- holding an AK-47 rifle, among others, in my arms in the small Pakistani town of Dharra, near the Afghanistan border. About 80 percent of the business in this town came from several dozen mom-'n- pop shop weapons merchants servicing the Afghanistan war.
-- nearly getting crushed in a rush of pushing, shoving Indians trying to get on a boat in Bombay and to find a space to sit on the boat deck. Anyone falling in the rush would have been seriously injured.
-- listening as an Egyptian man seriously tried to negotiate an exchange of camels for my travel companion's girlfriend. At one point, they shook hands on 50 camels, but then the man got upset when my travel companion said that he would not actually make the trade.
-- rejoicing as I received the word 30 miles up the trail in Nepal that
my favorite home town team, the Minnesota Twins, had beaten my other home
town team, the St. Louis Cardinals, in the World Series.
Scenic Viewpoints -- Gasps of Awe!!!
-- overlooking the sprawl of humanity that is Barcelona from Mount Tibidabo, a 1600 foot climb on my bicycle.
-- coasting for 10 miles on my bicycle (after a similar climb) along the rugged Spanish coastline near Calpe, a magnificent rock that bursts out of the blue Mediterranean waters like a pie in the face.
-- perched atop the Rock of Gibraltar along with the nest eggs of high flying birds. This 360 degree view makes your knees weak.
-- hitchhiking the mountainous terrain along the fjords of Norway with a coriander sky and a never setting soft golden sun I could watch without going blind at two o'clock in morning.
-- walking on a snow field with my mother and down a deep, green U- shaped valley with the pointy Matterhorn at our side. It's everything the postcards show it to be.
-- feeling intoxicated and light on my feet from the thin air on top of Kilimanjaro ... like walking on the moon.
-- overlooking the enormous collapsed caldera of an ancient volcano that is now the Greek Island of Santorini and may have been the origin of the legend of Atlantis.
-- passing over the Himalayas from Tibet into Nepal, the road descends 12,000 feet in short order, and the landscape changes from barren windswept rock to lush green valleys with spectacular waterfalls that pass right over the road itself. Meanwhile, physiologically, the change in altitude makes you feel you could leap over tall buildings in a single bound.
-- watching the sun rise over Annapurna base camp, in Nepal, standing in 18 inches of snow on a crisp clear morning completely surrounded by a panorama of snow capped mountains exceeding 20,000 feet.
-- listening to loud pops as the Fox Glacier in southern New Zealand
cracked and melted into the surrounding subtropical rain forests ... a
strange juxtaposition of conflicting images.
Seeing people I knew in various parts of the world: Some were prearranged meetings. Others were amazing coincidences.
I had prearranged meetings with...
...a French friend, Marc Castro, now living in Paris, but who used to
live in my apartment building in St. Louis, Missouri. (Feb. and Sep. 86).
...my mother who was on vacation in Torremolinos, Spain. (April 86).
...my friend since our adolescence, Gary Brown, now living with his
German wife and children near Frankfort. (Several times -- May, June, July,
Aug., Sept. 1986 and June 1987).
...Graham Smith, with whom I bicycled in France and Germany (May 86)
and visited at his home in Edinburgh, Scotland (Aug 86).
...Agnes Guilloteau, a young woman I met in Madrid Spain (May 86),
whom I later visited at her home in Poitier (Aug. 86) and in Paris, France
(Sep. 86).
...my mother, again, who traveled with me on a Eurail pass for two
weeks in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Holland. (Sep. 1986).
...other long time friends, Hatem and Kathy Mostafa, who were traveling
and visiting Hatem's relatives in Egypt. (Nov. 1986). I saw them again
on the same trip at their home in San Diego, CA (July 1988).
...Brenda Grove, a Minnesotan I first met in Nairobi, Kenya, and with
whom I traveled for 10 weeks in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire (Jan.-Mar.
87). Later, we met at Gary Brown's home in West Germany (June 87) and on
a study tour of the Soviet Union (Jul.-Aug. 87).
...Marilyn Ladner, with whom I spent a week in Aswan, Egypt (Nov. 86).
I later visited her at her home in Perth, Australia (Apr. 88).
...Dave (Ozzie) and Lynn Osbourne, who I met at a hostel in Athens,
Greece (April 87) and later visited in Adelaide, Australia (May 88).
...Tim and Jenny Mead, who I also met in the same hostel (as listed
above) in Athens (April 87) and later visited at their homes in Brisbane,
Australia (June 88).
...Peter Graffeo, with whom I traveled in Yugoslavia (May 87), and
later visited at his home in Melbourne, Australia (May 88).
...Mary Teichel and John Bennett, who I met in Budapest (June 87) and
later visited at their homes in Melbourne, Australia (May 87).
...Michael Malley, who I met at a work camp in Czechoslovakia, followed
by another camp in the Soviet Union (July 87), and later visited on this
same trip at his home in Boston (September 88).
...Michael Morales, with whom I traveled for over two weeks in Ireland
and Great Britain (August 86) and later visited at his home in Phoenix,
Arizona (July 88).
...Eliana and Dina Temkin, who I met in Luxembourg (Sep. 86) and visited
at their home near Los Angeles, CA (July 88).
...J.W.Cheatham, with whom I traveled for one week in Greece (Oct.
86), and visited in Los Angeles (July 88).
...my brother, Dale, and his family in Maryville, Tennessee (Aug 88).
...Mary Shea, who I met in Moscow and with whom I spent time in Finland
(July 86) and visited at her home in New York City (Aug 88).
...Jeri Suarez, who I met during the work camp in Czechoslovakia (Jul.
87) and later visited in Roanoke, Virginia (August 88).
...Britta Neugard, who I met during the work camp in Czechoslovakia
(Jul. 87) and later visited in Washington DC (August 88).
...Soviet friends, Svetlana, Sasha, and others I met on a work camp
in the Ukraine (June 86), and saw again in Moscow (July 87) and, in the
case of Sasha, in New York City (August 88). Other Soviets, named Sergei
and Grigory, I met in Estonia (July 87) and saw again during this same
trip at a work camp in New Hampshire (August 88).
...and others.
I had many, many coincidental meetings.
Some of the more unusual coincidences were
with...
...a guy named Collin, with whom I spent some time in Zagora, Morocco
(April 86) and later met coincidentally in Venice, Italy (Oct. 86).
...a man I met on a safari in Tanzania (Feb. 87), and later met coincidentally
while riding a moped on a quiet rural road on the Greek Island of Santorini
(April 87).
...three people, from Germany, Belgium, and Costa Rica, who had been
with me on a work camp in the Soviet Union (June 86), coincidentally attended
a work camp with me in Hungary (June 87).
...Florence, a French woman I met on a work camp in Hungary and visited
in Munich, Germany (June 87). I later coincidentally met her in Lhasa,
Tibet (September 87).
...another woman I met in Hungary (June 87), Gwen, an Australian, I
also coincidentally saw in Lhasa, Tibet (September 87).
...Jeff and Shiela Gair, Canadians with whom I spent time in Beijing,
China (August 87), and coincidentally met again in Katmandu, Nepal (Nov.
87).
...Ross Fraser, an Englishman with whom I traveled in Tibet (Sep. 87)
coincidentally checked into my same dormitory room (out of many) in Katmandu,
Nepal (Nov 87).
...Patty Anderson, another Minnesotan, whom I met in Lhasa and on the
trails to Everest in Tibet (September 87), coincidentally responded to
notices I posted in Katmandu seeking a backpacking companion for the trails
in Nepal (October 87).
...Rick Nacius, with whom I shared a room in Lhasa, Tibet (Sep. 87),
and his travel companion Rick Kendrick, who I met at the Nepal/India border
(Nov. 87) and later coincidentally met in Jodhpur, India (Dec. 87), Calcutta,
India (Jan 88), Rangoon, Burma, and Bangkok, Thailand (February 88).
...Hank and Linda Mekkelholt, from New Zealand, who I met in China
and Tibet (September 87) and later coincidentally saw in Katmandu and Pokara,
Nepal (Nov 87), Calcutta (Jan 88), Bangkok (Feb 88), and finally arranged
to visit at their home in Sydney, Australia (June 88).
...and many others.
People with whom I traveled the longest:
Brenda Grove: (Teacher of the deaf and blind, Minneapolis); 11 weeks
in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire (Jan. - Mar. 87).
Jeff Edwards: (Geologist, Lake Tahoe, NV); 3 weeks in Tibet and Nepal
(September - October 87).
John Stevens: (Actor, Director: Vancouver, Canada); 3 weeks in India,
Bangladesh, Burma, and Thailand (February 88).
Alan Garcia and Syd Frankel: (Professors of Music and Math, respectively);
3 weeks in Spain and Morocco (April 86).
Tjobjorn and Pererik (Sweden); nearly 3 weeks in Indonesia.
Michael Morales: (Carpenter, Phoenix): over 2 weeks in Ireland and
the U.K. (August 86).
Also, I traveled with many people in four two-week work camps in Eastern Europe and the U.S. Additionally, there are many with whom I traveled for less than two weeks.
Some other interesting people I met: a multimillionaire who owned an
island hotel frequented by the rich and famous, a published author who
had traveled in over 60 countries, a housewife who went to jail for obstructing
the entrance of an American military base, a woman who hid and escaped
to the West when the Russians invaded Hungary in 1956, a young man who
escaped from China into Bhutan and was obliged to flee again back into
China and then into Nepal ... and many, many others with interesting stories
to tell.