Not just the ability to have many books at the same time, but the actual books themselves, stacked vertically, the titles popping out at me every time I walk past, begging to be read. After that, probably hot water. Hot water, and good food. “Solid food,” I’ve begun to call it. Did you know that most of the world eats mush? Or rice. Mush with rice is also popular.
Now they were standing face to face on the steps, a meter apart. He wondered if was unusual or suspicious for a woman alone to talk to a strange man in public. The capital cities were usually more liberal, but there was no way to know for sure.
There are myths to travel. There are mythic voyages of the ones who went before. A long time ago, somebody rode a motorcycle all through Indonesia, and then spent four months in a crumbling room in Jakarta penning the very first Lonely Planet. We all want to be that person, every last backpacking one of [...]
St. Petersburg is gray and opulent. It’s splendid and magnificent, a beautiful imperial city that even 80 years of communism and eight months of sunless winter can’t completely disguise. It’s also falling apart, slightly shabby, and strangely ordinary at street level. It wants to be grand, but it isn’t, not quite. Something isn’t quite [...]
Eventually I realized that I knew nothing about Africa.
I’d heard something about millions of people starving, about AIDS, about war, corruption, and drought. I’d seen the infomercials. I’d caught snippets of Live-8 on television, and I couldn’t avoid the GAP’s huge advertising campaign. Donate money to the cause, Bono told me. But all of it was just a bit too mythical, heavy on pathos but shy on fact. There remained for me the central unanswered question: what is wrong with Africa?
So I went there.
I could go anywhere, anywhere at all, but I don’t want to.
I have discovered that I am a tourist. I am a market. My guidebook promised me exotic lands and I ignored the inherent contradiction of thousands of backpackers tramping through untouched lands. And I hated the camel trek. Actually, the camels were cool, but no one actually rides them anymore. The locals have cars now. I would have got just as much exploration done had I stayed home and gone to an amusement park.
Screw it. I’m going off the map. There may not be anything there, but I’m going anyway. I’m going to claw my way into a situation that wasn’t sold to me.
28 degrees North, 12 degrees West. A point of no importance in the middle of nowhere. That’s my destination.
When the overloaded Toyota pickup roared off there was nothing at all but sand under my feet and the black outlines of a few desiccated trees in the nearly moonless night. I had been dropped off somewhere along the 400 kilometer desert track between Timbuktu and Gao, and suddenly found myself standing completely alone, at night, in the most nowhere place I’d ever been. I had two liters of water, a tin of sardines, half a kilo of dates, and two mangoes. I needed to find civilization in the next forty-eight hours or so.
I have trouble with the exact emotion. I was too present to form the right words at the time. Now, so soon afterwards, the feeling is already slipping away. What remains most vividly is a succession of wide-eyed moments, vignettes into the larger experience. I’m going to write those down before I forget them, and [...]
I just had mint tea with an old Berber woman.
She wore a deep blue blouse, and a black velvet skirt. Around her head was a dark shawl with gold threads woven through it. The palms of her hands and the soles of her feet were almost black with henna. There were ornate rings on her [...]
I just slept in a mud-brick house belonging to an isolated shepherd family on a desolate plain near the Algerian border. It was a beautiful place, and a privilege to meet such people. And I paid good money for the experience. That’s the part which makes me uneasy.
