Travel Writing – Page 6

Anticipation and Preparation

England to Australia (1973)

I met him on the boat from Newcastle to Bergen which was taking me to my new job working in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t anyone special, just a young man travelling around Europe, but there were several of us on the boat and we sort of drifted together as young people do, chatting and having a few drinks in the lounge. We all exchanged addresses before disembarking and going our separate ways. Margie, the exchange student from Wisconsin, invited me to stay in her student bedsit as I didn’t need to continue on my journey for another couple of days. Josh, the Scotsman headed off on his bicycle laden with tent and sleeping bag and panniers filled with ‘stuff’. He was cycling all around Norway this summer. Jon, the South African, was also travelling, but using local buses and trains, staying in hostels and cheap guest houses and making his way through Scandinavia and then down to southern Europe.

During my six months working at the hotel I received several postcards from Jon. He was returning to South Africa after his European travels, but wanted to know if I fancied joining him and travelling overland as far as India. He knew that I was intending on going to Australia after my stint finished at the hotel. It was tempting. I had always fancied visiting India where my mother had been born. And it was en route to Australia. We could split up there and go our separate ways.

In the days before the Internet making such travel plans was not so easy. You had to write to the embassies of the countries that you wanted to visit to get information about visas, transport, accommodation etc. Then contact those travel agents who specialised in the areas where you were travelling to for useful pamphlets and scour bookshops for suitable literature. Living in Norway at that time made it harder for me as everything had to be done by post. Fortunately there were leaflets available about the ‘hippie trail‘ written by other travellers, with details of places along the route where you could pick up information for the next part of the journey. Using all these resources we managed to concoct a plan.

From London we would head across the Channel to the Netherlands where Jon had a cousin we could stay with, then through Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, spend time in the islands before heading for Turkey, Iran (Persia at that time), Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally India. Jon would depart from Bombay on a ship to Durban, South Africa whereas I would continue south to Madras (now Chennai) and find a route across to Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

- - map √
  - rucksack √
  - new hiking boots √
  - water purification tablets √
  - dried food sachets √
  - toiletries √
  - change of clothes √
  - farewells to friends and family √

Two weeks after my return from Norway I was ready to go.

~wander.essence~ anticipation and preparation

Call to Place : India

In the beginning…

My grandfather, Herbert Beddall was born in Sheffield in 1889. He lived in Dunsville near Doncaster and worked as a blacksmith. He married Annie George in April 1908 when he was only 19 years old; Annie was 24 and they were cousins. My grandfather suffered from ill health and the cold damp winters in the north of England did not help, so in 1913 he and his wife and baby son got on a boat at Liverpool docks and went to India where he worked as a silversmith and gunsmith. In 1916 he returned to England where a daughter was born, my aunt Marjorie, but it wasn’t long before he returned to India and his youngest child, (another daughter, my mother Iris) was born in 1919. When she was born they were living at Angus Jute Mills, Gourhati in the Chandannagore subdivsion part of the Hooghly-Damodar Plain near Calcutta. The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the Danes and the British dominated industry, trade and commerce in this area for more than two centuries.

Herbert Beddall – definitely not in India!

Eventually the family returned to England and settled back in Thorne near Doncaster, South Yorkshire. My grandfather died of a heart attack whilst cycling to work in March 1938, aged just 49. My mother was only 18 years old.

As a child I always romanticised about living abroad. It seemed such an exciting thing to do; I adored learning about explorers who went out into the unknown and discovered unknown lands and reading about the settlers. I thought my grandfather must have been very adventurous and wished he had lived long enough for me to have known him. As it was my mother’s vague childhood remembrances of India had to do. Her tales of the “Amah” sleeping outside the bedroom she and her sister shared in order to protect them from any intruders was completely alien to our very English suburban way of life.

Because of this background, India in particular appeared very exotic and greatly appealed to me; I didn’t need too many excuses to want to go there, but it seemed no-one else in my family was keen.

The inspiration for my particular travels came from the ‘hippies’ of the 1960s heading to mystical India to seek spiritualism and so-called enlightenment. One of the key elements was travelling as cheaply as possible for as long as possible, using buses, trains and hitch-hiking their way as far as possible from the ‘evils’ of Western capitalism.

It wasn’t until 1973 when I turned twenty years old that my own overland adventure began following that famous ‘Hippie Trail’ through Europe, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was a journey that would shape my life.

~wander.essence~ Call to Place

Paris Focus: Art and French Lessons

When I saw this painting (well actually NOT the painting as that had been loaned elsewhere) but a copy of it in the Musée de l’Orangerie I was immediately taken back to 1968 when I was a young teenager in a Grammar School near Leeds.

There we had an amazing French teacher who earned himself the nickname of ‘Lurch’ as he was a big, tall chap with short cropped blonde hair and for some reason reminded us of Lurch, the butler, in the Addams Family programme on TV at the time.

He was a wonderful teacher, making our French lessons fun and interesting, with great humour. One of his comments in my end of year report has stayed with me all my life: “Jude is an excellent conversationalist, just a pity it is not in French“. Saying that I loved languages and especially French, so much so I even went to work as an au pair in Geneva several years later. He unfortunately for us, left to teach in Chad at the end of this school year, leaving us to do our French O level with a rather disappointing replacement.

But back to the painting. One of the ways he taught us the language was by studying scenes or paintings and this was one of them. The teeny dog, or was it a cat? The family in the cart – where were they going? Who were they? Is that a child or a pet monkey? Such a painting could stimulate many a conversation. In French. Of course 🙂

Paris Focus: Walking the Right Bank Passages

Paris in springtime is what most people think about when the city of Paris pops up. I am sure it is utterly wonderful, strolling alongside the River Seine hand in hand with a loved one, perhaps a river tour on one of the cruise boats, sipping champagne in an old-fashioned intimate restaurant where the waiters wear those long black aprons and hover politely. But what to do when it rains? Paris in the rain can be cold and miserable. Yes, there are the numerous art galleries to visit, but if you have already been there and done that then perhaps a wander through the 19th century ‘Les Passages’ might do the trick.

Put on your walking shoes, hide the credit card and let’s go exploring!

Les Passages

I shall also add the original post to Jo’s Walks

Please leave any comments on the original post.

A Small World

This happened 40 years ago, but has always stuck in my memory.

I settled into my seat with a sigh of relief. My young son curled up on the seat beside me, peering out of the grimy window. My partner was sitting behind me, asleep already, with my two-year old daughter beside him. At last I could relax from the horrendous 4 day train journey we had just undertaken from Tunis to Casablanca. I was tired of being molested by Algerian men who thought nothing of putting their hands on my thighs or brushing against my breasts despite the fact that I was travelling with my partner and with two very small children. It made no difference to them. I was not a person with feelings, I was an object of desire.

Then from behind came a hand on my shoulder. My own hand formed a fist – I was in no mood for any more physical contact. Before I could turn around I heard someone exclaim my name. As I turned my head, a face I instantly recognised appeared before me – my best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Merv from Bradford, England. I gasped, and stood up to hug him tightly. How could this even be possible? The last I had heard of him, he was in Melbourne, Australia. The last he had heard from me, I was in Johannesburg and married to an Englishman. That was two years ago. A lot had happened since.

As the bus from Casablanca to Tangiers began to shakily move off, we stood looking at each other with huge wide grins on our faces – what a serendipitous moment!

~wander.essence~ On Journey