| |
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.”*
Back in the summer of 1999 I was working as a factory labourer for Anglian Windows. Sitting on trolleys used for moving giant plates of glass around, reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac for the first time whilst eating cheese and tomato sandwiches the idea of hitting the road for indeterminate lengths of time, visiting new countries and meeting new people started to germinate in my mind. Later on I started to work for Flightbookers in London and being able to talk to people who have traveled, and being confronted with the practical side of travel, the idea really began to bear
fruit, I spent many hours with Kelvin Goodson constructing many plans of how we
could conquer the world.
My first inspiration came from Jez Armitage, whose stories of South East Asia and traveling the West coast of the USA motivated me to acquire stories of my own. Another traveller with stories to tell that would inspire anybody is Frank Buykx, who I had the pleasure of working with in between trips. I
have been helped out with practical issues such as getting airline tickets, as well as with humorous updates of life in England by John Scent and the technical support and photography advice from Colin Brown has been second to none. My time spent in between trips would be infinitely more boring without my family and friends.
Whilst travelling I have had the pleasure of sharing rooms with some terrific travel partners. I still share many memories with my partner for my first three trips, Claire Bromley. In South East Asia the time I spent with Dai Tivers and Ben Parsons in Laos was fun, I couldn't wish for a better partner for my tour of duty of Vietnam than Paul Tovey and the experience of travelling with Debbie, Nathan and Scott in Malaysia still leaves me in fits of giggles. Bumping into ex-colleagues Brendan McDonagh and Becky Newton on different sides of the world was an uncanny experience to say the least and meeting Luke Waterson and Poppy Clinton in Mexico and finding our paths had previously crossed also led to a firm friendship. In
South America I managed to annoy everybody on the Uyuni tour by chatting continuously with Frances Neal, and managed to travel with Virginie from France and Janine from Germany by making Spanish the common language. Ali Hughes experienced India for the first time whilst travelling with me in 2005 and my time with Monika and Lenka Albrechtova in Nepal, Tibet and India was unforgettable
and since then Monika and I have been travelling and living together. Stanislav and Zuzana from
Moravia and June de Bree of the Netherlands provided excellent company for our
trip through Indonesia, Malaysia an the Philippines in 2006. In West Africa in early 2007 we tried, mostly unsuccesfully, to synchronise our travels with Silke and Ciaran of Leipzig, Germany. Two Argentinians made a couple of long Chinese train rides feel shorter on our way through China later that year. We made it to Mongolia where we caught up with Monikas cousin, Martin, and together with him and his mother we first experienced rural Mongolia. A few weeks later we were glad to have a group of fairly relaxed people for a more-than-stressful trip through the Gobi desert. Petr and Lucie, Honza and Andrea, Marieka and Alena, Viktor and Mira and Monika and I managed to stay positive throughout the idiocy! After crossing Siberia we were wandering through Riga and bumped into a Latvian guy called Casper who we had last spoken to over breakfast back in Lome, Togo.
Through this website I aim to improve the communications between myself and those of you who follow my progress on the road. This will be achieved by providing a more comprehensive multi-media report. In the same way I aim to increase my readership through attracting visitors with colourful pictures, even more colourful reports and an aesthetically pleasing website.
Are you experienced?
* Samuel Johnson
| |
