Travel Writers of the World Unite!

After recieving an email from Peter Hartikka in Amsterdam I am now convinced that there is some weird force that makes travel writers congregate in the same place at a certain time.

Readers of Swahili for the Broken-Hearted may remember that I came across Ted Simon, the author of Jupiter’s Travels, in Addis Ababa. He was in the middle of retracing his steps of 25 years earlier and took offence when I said I had read one of his travel books. (They were travel literature, he insisted, with a stern glare.) I have since found out that Paul Theroux, the grumpy old grand father of travel writing, was in Nairobi the same time as me on the same trip. He was doing the Cape Town to Cairo thing as well, but in the opposite direction, for his book, Dark Star Safari.

Thanks to Peter’s email I have now discovered that a smilar gathering was going on in Kathmandu when I was passing through on the journey that would become The Wrong Way Home. apparently the ‘established writer’ I mentioned who had stuck up a notice in the Pumpernickel Bakery looking for a ‘strong, financially independent, broad-minded female’ was Jeff Greenwald.

OK, Jeff’s not up there with Paul Theroux or even Ted in the ‘travel literature’ stakes. And even Peter described The Size of the World, the resulting book as ‘spiritual mumbo-jumbo written by a neurotic and self-absorbed American.’ But it is still, as Peter says, a ‘curious coincidence.’ I know I’ll be keeping an eye out for the ‘opposition’ on my next big trip. Although I’m not sure what the odds are on meeting Bill Bryson on a dilapidated train full of people downing vodkas.