Introduction
The very idea of this book comes from certain blips and recordings I made while traveling abroad. The places and names have not necessarily been changed to protect anyone in particular. In this age—the iInternet times—everyone is connected, desired or not. However, in the times when I traveled, things were different. One actually took along film for one’s camera. One actually wrote postcards and letters. Yes, placing a stamp on said postcard was most important, as was knowing where the nearest post box was.
This was a very different time. We carried Walkman stereos, and went into bigger towns to find places to make calls home. We took other travelers’ addresses and made promises to write and visit. We carried rather large, bulky backpacks—sometimes called rucksacks. They were stuffed with rolled -up articles of clothing in various degrees of cleanliness. We nearly always carried a book, which, when finished, could be traded along the way.
As we made our way around the globe, we would meet interesting people. We would talk on board trains, laugh on planes, and come to understand each other on board ferries that plied the open waters of our itineraries. We shared conversations, sleeping bags, and nourishment. We got close—real close sometimes. Strong friendships grew out of similar travel plans. Sometimes those plans changed just to [so we could] continue traveling together;, other times you split up, leaving a strong sense of loneliness, which would sometimes last longer than you thought it would.
My name is Andrew and I am a travel addict—recovering, though. In 1985, I was bit by the travel bug. This left me with a feeling like…well…a mixture of heroin and golf. Yeah, it was that bad. I suppose some of you are wondering, and I guess only a golfer or heroin addict could relate, but I was truly hooked, gone, severely out there. That intense addiction would last 15 fifteen years, and although I still fight the bug, I believe I have come to understand…and control it. While on my travels, I met many other addicts, and wonderfully rich relationships came from these “‘chance’” meetings.
Here, in this collection of stories, you, the reader, will come to understand how and why these relationships came about, and what made them as special as they remain to me even now, some thirty years later.
