The Travel Addict's Puzzle: Around (most of) Half the World in Forty Days - Couverture souple

Brown, Philip Gerald

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1517215692 ISBN 13 : 9781517215699

Editeur : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015

Synopsis

The Travel Addict’s Puzzle (Around (most of) Half the World in Forty Days)The Travel Addict’s Puzzle relates the adventures the author recently had while travelling alone from Eastern China to Bulgaria on public transport. The present tense progress is broken up with the story of how he and his wife managed to reach China overland through South East Asia, despite having totally different expectations of the journey, and subsequent travels through China, which are largely of him chasing his wife around the country travelling on crowded hard-sleeper trains, while she travelled in style on planes and bullet trains for her work.He embarks upon a quest to find the rural heart of China, which is challenging as what appears to be a village on a map often turns out to be a city of half a million people, but towards the end of the book he does manage find what he’d been searching for. The author is not afraid to express his own views and opinions in trying to make sense of the different cultural experiences that he encountered through his travels and at one point concedes that his wife would call him a grumpy old man.From China he crosses the vast deserted steppe of Kazakhstan along the old Silk Road, and through Kalmykia, the only Buddhist republic in Europe and where the capital city has been inspired by a work of fiction. He then skirts around troubled Chechnya and attends a vodka fuelled wedding proposal in North Ossetia, crosses the Caucasus Mountains to enter beautiful Georgia through the back door and finally spans the breadth of Turkey to Bulgaria and the European Union. As a self-confessed travel addict the author also use the journey, and references to past travels, in an attempt to discover the driving forces behind the urge to travel. The answers develop as being far more complex and detailed than may have been thought and this is perhaps the only travel book that addresses the intriguing psychology that underpins the travel bug. Notions such as searching for an imagined Arcadia from childhood, collecting images that become the building blocks of an individual’s identity and creating a kaleidoscope of movement in an effort to resist change, are just some of the conclusions that are drawn from reflecting upon the experiences gained from travelling. The book is an honest account of a man who is no longer young but still possesses a drive to explore the world and the people in it and to try to make sense of it all, whilst secretly revelling in the knowledge that the more that is understood the deeper the mysteries become. Humour, much of it self-deprecating, is used throughout the book which is essentially meant as light reading and designed to entertain.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Philip Brown paid little attention at school but managed to scrape through a few exams. A variety of short lived jobs and some travel adventures enabled him to avoid embarking on a career for several years before training to become a professional social worker. At this time he was fortunate to meet Liz who (unlike himself) was able to temper a wayward spirit with a degree of common sense. The couple lived on an old wooden narrowboat in and around London for the next 6 years before he resigned as Mental Health Development Officer for the London Borough of Camden and she left her career in medical research, in order to travel overland to Manchuria where they taught English in a medical university. In 1989 they were at Tiananmen Square shortly before the troops moved in, following which their time in China became untenable. After further travels through Central America and India they settled in a cottage in rural Lincolnshire where their children Henry and Emily were born. With an attitude to always take opportunities when they arise the family moved to New Zealand. Philip continued to be employed in social work, including a spell on Pitcairn Island where he used his spare time to try his hand at writing poetry and won the 2010 Margaret Reid prize for traditional verse. With their children making their own way in the world Phil and Liz are enjoying their new found freedom to experience other countries and cultures. In the last four years they have lived in Southern China, the Siberian steppe of Kazakhstan and now a small town in Malaysia. This has allowed the author to indulge his passion for travel and has resulted in the publication of The Travel Addict’s Puzzle.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Date d'édition: 2015
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1517215692
• ISBN 13: 9781517215699
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 267
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Printed by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg