I Went On A Chourney

the best journey i ever went on was from Bombay to Agra in a train. it took 32 hours and i think i read my "train book" for about half an hour, there was so much to see and hear and smell... we played cards with some sisters on the bunks below us. we bought chai from the chai man, and samosas and chana on banana leaves at various stations. we felt the change in temperature, gradually getting colder as we progressed north. we saw women wahing their saris in a river and spreading them out to dry in the fields, making a bright patchwork agaist the parched grass. farmers and cows, industrial towns (i think we went through Bhopal), rivers and the bright, bright sky. we slept and woke up to men tending their moustaches in the mirror below us. i was quite sorry when we got to Agra, in a way! although the Taj Mahal was magnficent.

they are saying "ill-fated" abt shackleton exp'n becoz no one will watch if you say but EVERYONE GOT HOME SAFE (which = true). Except ship's cat Mrs Chippy which they possibly ate at particularly fraught point but quietly forgot to mention. Taking sides: Shackleton (all safe) vs Scott (all dead).

nyc when i was 14, ille de la cross to le ronge when i was 15, vancouver every 6 mo. and for a year and a half when i was 18 , la in june .

the worst journey is commuting every day. DAMN i wish i worked closer to home! second worst is driving back from faraway gigs when you need to work the next day - we drove home from Sheffield the other night and got back at 4.30am, not pleasant.

I'm still on it and I wish I'd never set off. Everyone, stay where you're at. Or you'll wish you hadn't. The rest of the world is the same as where you're from, except that nobody gives a shit.

I am about the only person in the world who likes long coach journeys. I love to travel, arriving is a bit of a let down (and also more challenging).

I love long coach and train journeys too but I hate delays for some odd reason.

I went on a train journey from Pitlochry (an hour north of Edinburgh) to Winchester last year which was fun - drifting through the hours, reading a book and looking out of the window. It's exciting because you don't ever quite know where you are. And nothing beats pulling into a London terminus after a long journey. But then they made me change in Newcastle (via Edinburgh and Carlisle) instead of Edinburgh because of engineering works and I was a bit scared because I suddenly realised I was in Newcastle of all places completely at random. It is also strange that I have now properly been to Newcastle but the station is all I have seen.

"Hypothesis - that Lord of The Rings became so popular in the 50s and 60s in part because it relies so strongly on a sense of travel, of journeying that was (more so that its bucolic Englishness) vanishing quickly from the world thanks to the convenience of automobile and aeroplane."

Hypothesis two: that as discovery and conventient travel diminshes the scope of 'terral incognita', the utopia shifts from the spatial to the temporal plane (tho' this might also include other planets). Sorry, pointless aside. But does Tolkein create a new terra incognita, or is his landscape nostalgic construction of english pastoral? Have never read him, sorry.

Journey-as-quest: Best part of a journey for me = being temporarily outside time, life, plans. Physically moving forward, psychically slipping sideways.

Shackleton's voyage "ill-fated" as much because it failed in its noble quest* as the need for a hook to get people to watch, surely? Joy of the Endurance story is how it turns the heroic (and ultimately fatal, in Scott's case)journey inside out, turning quest into a hope of home via (for most of them) doing very little *except* endure, keep going, for long periods - the journey over the snow, the stay on Elephant Island? INteresting thing is shift from Scott (noble, 'heroic', self-sacrificing, fatal) to Shackleton as figure to know/care about. Shackleton for a long time set up as a chancer, quixotic and - worse - a swashbuckler and *entrepreneur* who saw opportunity for bucks in the trip (via the Hurley photos and the film 'South', which was strangely underwhelming when I finally got to see it). Sorry to hijack, Tom: I luv to talk Shackleton.

*I have forgotten even what he was supposed to be doing, which demonstrates either how little it matters to the Shackleton narrative or how useless both my geography and memory are.

Tolkein creates terra incognita mostly by means of maps - he includes places on them ("Sea of Rhun" fascinated me as a kid) and then does not describe them hardly at all and no character ever goes there. A dead easy trick that many subsequent fantasy authors ignored to their cost.

his "true quest" was doing something rather lame and pointless, i think walking to the s.pole from a new direction (= the third = so what who cares?)

(the shire = nostalgic reconstruction of olde rural england yes [or ireland in movie heh], but everywhere else on journey, grate or horrible = v.much NOT england)

i prefer shackleton too: is the new anti-huntford pro-scott book any good tho?

i saw a biog of tom crean in waterstones last night: a phrase from (ponting's or cherry-garrard's) book on scott, the "lone march of tom crean" always jumps into my mind; i guess i will be buying this sooNoR

i remain obsessed by the other two wizards (=blue) who went "east" and are nevah mentioned again

My life has been a journey. I love taking the corners and ending up in a strange place.
The fact I can travel abroad is a luxury. I am happy that I am able to learn firsthand what Japan, the US and other European countries are like. There is nothing like being in a different culture. You discover there are other worlds, you learn to put things in perspective,...

London to Colchester, and London to Canterbury. Pretty easy journeys really...what did I discover about myself? Nothing I didn't already know! :)

journeys by plane are terrible by default, seeing as they involve waiting in airports, possibly the worst places on the face of the earth. the flight is always delayed, there are always screaming kids, everything is grey, drab and depressing and you can almost see your will to live dribbling out of you as the wait goes ON and ON.

although vancouver airport is quite a nice place to be.

Did anyone see that prog the other night about the mentalist who went to the north pole in a submarine, eh?

My flight from Vancouver airport was delayed by 12 hours so we got to stay in an anonymous airport hotel for free (a hilton or something which was a bit of luck). and explored an anonymous shopping mall and a chinese takeaway which looked like it had some kind of secret meeting taking place. oooo! thought the airport was alright apart from the domestic bit, actually. it's all rather large, isn't it?

My trek to the Odeon Tumbridge Wells to see Josie And The Pussycats. Two separate train journeys, wandering about the whole town lost, finding a map seller, then walking for weeks through weird parts of subirbia, a footpath through the middle of dark woods, a narrow one- way railway bridge where you just had to guess whether there was a car coming the other way and run through it. Then had to endure The Strokes discussing their Art on the radio on the walk home.

And what was it like?

Long and arduous, or personally meaningful? I've asked for it on DVD for xmas, if that's what you mean.

When I was 10 my family drove in an early 60s VW bus from New Jersey to Central California, visiting some relatives and tourist attractions along the way. It was about the happiest time of my life - every day was an adventure, and I didn't have any responsibilities. I've thought of driving around the US again with no time table, seeing all the places I've heard about that intrigue me, but at my age I wonder if I'll focus more on the inconveniences than the adventure.