About this ebook
“Real” travel writers are glamorous, but real traveling is all I know. Vacations are when everything is safe and convenient and when you come to expect words like ‘aioli’ on the menu and when every “adventure” can be charged to American Express. Real traveling, on the other hand, is when everything can happen and nothing happens as planned and, whatever happened, mañana it will seem like a damn fine stroke of luck. At its most banal, day-to-day, real traveling is anything but normal and never glamorous. Except, maybe, in retrospect. The reality is that —very often— I have no idea where I’m going, except that I am. Nor how I’m gonna get there, except that I will. All these stories unfold as they may. That’s what these books are about. That’s what makes them different.
The Travelogues pick up where traditional travel literature leaves off. They don’t mess around, pretending to describe every experience as if it were the feature in Condé Nast Traveler. They do, however, reveal what it’s really like to travel Out There. They describe everything: the good, the twisted, the ugly, and —occasionally— the sublime. No punches are pulled. It’s all in there. These are all out-of-the-ordinary experiences that lie within reach of ordinary people like you and I. Anyone can go and do those things. You too..., but only if you want to.
That’s what the Travelogues are. That’s what “The South” is. Go ahead: discover the new kind of travel writing.
About the author
He organized an expedition up Everest, floated on a self-built raft down the Amazon, lived in the townships, got mixed up in political demonstrations in Mongolia, partied it up on Ko Pha Ngan, and met the Pope. He panned for gold in the Land of Fire, crossed minefields in the world’s biggest desert in the back of a pickup truck, and found romance while trekking through Uganda.
You might think that the author will do virtually anything while pursuing his stories. And I think you might well be right about that. You might also think that the guy’s an expert adventurer or a professional globetrotter... Except he’s not.
Whenever people ask me who I am, I answer as the situation warrants. I assume whatever identity seems expedient at the moment. I am frequently a ‘student’, sometimes a ‘teacher’ or an ‘artist’, once or thrice I've put down ‘monkey-trainer’ on one of those inane forms they make you fill out while rotting in line to be blessed by immigration. Despite what I’m doing, I rarely tell anyone that I am a writer. I never thought it necessary to be a ‘writer’ to write books. I still don’t. Quite to the contrary: I like to think my stories provide you, the reader, with a fresh angle on what’s it really like to be Out There because I am an outsider, somebody who hasn't been taught to play by the rules.
So… I’m not a “real” travel writer. Neither am I an expert ‘adventurer’ nor a professional globetrotter. I had never intended to write these books. Then again, I hadn't expected to travel around the world that first time I left home… I’ll still claim it had all happened by accident. But after I've come back this last time, having now made four trips around the five continents, not even in my wildest dreams can I imagine that I might do it again. Yet I know I will. Soon enough I’ll be somewhere Out There, where the sky is broad and the road is wide. Because the journey is life. It never ends.
