Mountain Road

Destination: The Whole World

Books for the Travel Library:

The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World…Via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes by Carl Hoffman (NEW March 2010)

The Routes of Man:How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today by Ted Conover (NEW February, 2010)

I can’t seem to move these days without tripping over a book that has to do with roads and road trips.  And here come two brand new books that tackle some of the roughest and most interesting roads (in the broadest sense) in the world.

Carl Hoffman‘s travel plan involves the most dangerous land, sea and air routes he can find. An Africa train lends its name to the title of the book, Lunatic Express, but the rest of the conveyances are pretty crazy, too.  I once had a travel writing teacher who said that travel writers should expose themselves to danger and then write about it in order to get the most compelling stories.  Hoffman must have heard that lecture through an amplifier.

Throughout this travel book he seems absolutely driven to destroy himself, proudly quoting newspaper articles about disastrous crashes of trains and sinking of ships, deadly robberies of buses, and airplanes that fall out of the sky.  He does have a way with description, although his road trips major in places that are dirty, humid, hot, smelly and uncomfortable–not exactly tourist attractions.  I really enjoyed reading his conversations with the fascinating people that he meets, in particular a Swiss businessman in Mombasa whose greatest accomplishment was that he never paid taxes.

“I spent three years in Uganda before coming to Kenya, and those were the best three years of my life,” he said. “In Kampala I met a woman.  It is the only time I have been in love.  She was thirty-five, from the Rwenzori mountains.  She couldn’t read or write, but she was a born trader.  She knew it deep in her blood.  And she was beautiful.  She said, ‘Give me two thousand dollars.’ I did. She traded in charcoal, and every night she arrived with a pile of Ugandan money on my table.”

In a rather-too-frequent moment of self assessment, he says “…I, too, craved adventure, even if risk and loneliness was its by-product.” I say rather too frequent, because I was somehow not convinced of these intrusions of rationality into his self-centered rush to risk. He even takes his daughter with him on a rough bus ride in South America, hoping, he says that she will understand what he does. Perhaps, I was thinking, he should stay home once in a while and find out what she does? And although he talks frequently about how he has ruined his marriage, he thanks his wife at the end of the book, for 27 years of unfailing support.
A chapter at a time, the book amuses and entertains,but as a whole book, it felt contrived. He found out how “the other half travels” but rarely actually felt danger. Excellent writing, but a flimsy frame with personal ponderings that to me seemed gratuitous.

Routes of Man (meant by author Ted Conover to be pronounced “roots” so you get the double meaning), on the other hand, sets forth a strong premise that kept me fascinated throughout. Six long chapterd of reportage are each followed by a brief discussion on the  idea of travel and related thoughts–paths, roads, speed, progress.

Conover is considering  big issues here — issues like the destruction of traditional cultures and the relationship of the military and roads (dating back to the Romans and up to the Israelis). His style includes vivid enough pictures of places* and portraits of people, but the ideas take center stage, and in a calmer voice (even when he lands in some scary places) than Hoffman’s. (Conover is no stranger to the put-yourself-in-danger school of writing, having worked as a guard at Sing-Sing among other things, to get his story.)

*Conover traveling on an iced-over river in the Himalayan:

Depending on the light and the sky, the water will be pitch-black or pellucid blue, the surface rippled by crystals of ice, a giant moving Slurpee, swirling around frozen banks and then disappearing under sheets of ice.

The subtitles reflect the fact that most such appendages are written by a marketer rather than the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the book as a whole. Lunatic Express doesn’t set out to “discover the world” but rather to “experience” the world travel as it is seen by the masses, as opposed to the privileged tourist. And as to the subtitle for Routes of Man? I give up. That’s a little of the book’s meaning–but not much.

These both make a good addition to a traveler’s library, but if you only get one, you can choose which fits you best.

Photo from Flickr through Creative Commons. Click on picture for more information about photographer.  Publishers of each book gave me a review copy–which will turn up in a Giveaway one of these days.

Do you think travel writing is more interesting when the writer has but him/herself in danger? And which of these books appeals to you more?

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

On the road in Arizona

Although this is only Tuesday, and we don’t make another Great American Road Trip stop until tomorrow, I can’t stop thinking about road trips. Much as I hate to admit it, people looking for a good read about road trips can go somewhere other than A Traveler’s Library. So in all fairness, here are four really good spots that I recently discovered.

• CNN’s gathered their articles about American Road Trips in one handy spot. Enjoy, but don’t forget to come back to A Traveler’s Library.
• Before you leave on your own road trip, read this. Ten Things that Should Always be in Your Car
• Reading for planes, trains and (on audio) automobiles. From The Millions.com . Thanks to World Hum for pointing us to this.
• A brand new book about roads and how they affect civilization, reviewed in the LA Times, The Routes of Man by Ted Conover. I am currently reading a simliar book called Lunatic Express , which I will be reviewing in the next issue of Indie Travel Podcast Magazine. I know,they do not sound similar,but both are (more or less) about men engaging in extreme travel in various dangerous parts of the world, and contemplating the effect that road building has on society.

This content is a post from: A Traveler's Library To comment on this post or search for related information, click on the link to A Traveler's Library. We'll leave a light on for you.

©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.