TRAVEL DIARIES

London to Kathmandu 1983–4. Entering Jugoslavia

Travelling with an old Israeli military jacket, acquired during my year in the occupied territories (1976–77), I had to carefully unpick a seam, extract just enough cash from its hiding place, stitch it up again and hope I’d exchanged the few Pounds for enough Dinar to see me through to Greece. Food kitty funds had been collected in London, and most other fees are included in the cost of the trip, although plenty of wild camping has been promised -or threatened, which will require night guard duty, due to the anticipated popularity of certain washing line items that’ll be difficult to replace with like quality.

During long and less eventful drive days, games of yahtzee and scrabble break out between bouts of reading from the extensive library of travel related books, guides and maps. Playing tricks on each other is inevitable, and more than once my boot laces have been tied to a locker handle behind my feet, causing me to fall when standing to leave the truck. I can be a slow learner. Evenings around the night campfire are spent drinking cheap liquor while discussing a variety of global and local topics, or playing charades. Titles to act out such as ‘Moby Dick’, ‘I Am A Walrus’, ‘Planet Of The Apes’ are chosen for ridicule value rather than for their challenging level of difficulty, and the generally mellow mood becomes more so with an availability of herb for anyone wishing to inhale. Bedtimes have been late in these early days of travel through Europe, but the terrain is expected to become physically demanding once we enter Turkey. It hasn’t taken long for the small group of early morning athletes who jog ahead -or in my case walk- along the road until the truck catches up (it usually does), to decide to conform to the popular practice of the sleep-in to get more rest.

Icelandic Ormy’s birthday, on October 3rd, slipped past unannounced. We’ve quickly learned that announcing anything is not a preference of his, neither is working as part of a team. He’s a thinker, reader and writer, which is going to make more work for the rest of us over the coming months.