Trevor Carolan - Road Trips: Journeys in the Unspoiled World

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Copyright 2020 Trevor Carolan. All Rights Reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisheror, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, is an infringement of the copyright law.

Book Design by Mark Hand.
Cover Image Credit: johnwoodcock (iStock)
All Photos courtesy of Kwan-Shik Kwon
Printed on Antique Natural, FSC-Recycled.
Printed and bound in Canada.

Mother Tongue Publishing acknowledges the assistance of the Province of British Columbia through the B.C. Arts Council.We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Title: Road trips: journeys in the unspoiled world / Trevor Carolan.

Names: Carolan, Trevor, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200209825 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200209965 |

ISBN 9781896949802 (softcover) | ISBN 9781896949819 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Carolan, TrevorTravel. | LCSH: Voyages around the world.

| CSH: Creative nonfiction, Canadian (English) | CSH: Travelers writings,

Canadian (English) | LCGFT: Creative nonfiction. | LCGFT:Travel writing.

Classification: LCC G465 .C37 2020 | DDC 910.4/1dc23

For Patrick, Erin, and Ailish Always the heart

There are two kinds of simplicity, the simplicity of going away and the simplicity of return. The last is the ultimate in sophistication.

PATRICK KAVANAGH

Not all places are meant to be foundnot all times are right for the finding. Sometimes what you find will not be what you soughtsometimes you will find what cannot be looked for.

PATRICIA MONAGHAN

INTRODUCTION

They say write what you love. I have always loved travelling, and when Im not on the road, I take pleasure in reading about the travels of others.Travel tales have been with us since the days of Herodotus. A Greek historian and scribe, he loved sharing details of the places and people he encountered around the ancient world. He understood that with story-telling, the older things are, the newer the wisdom we find in them. Its how you tell the tale.

Travel writing allows readers to shift gears to another place and time, filling their senses even in an armchair with news of the details that make life worth living. Effective travel reporting captures the world and makes us want to be part of the story. Often, critical decisions are involvedand consequences. Travelling, unlike holiday-making, can be like standing at the corner of Mindfulness Avenue and the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Which way now? What comes next? You pay to learn.

Veteran travellers know that the secret to a smooth journey lies in preparation, and that good fortune is best repaid with courtesy and restraint. You remain grateful for the small gifts of the road. Locals recognize that the only outsiders who are truly gleeful, and shouting about it, are fresh off the boat, drunk, or havent had the mosquito bites and diarrhoea yet. Good judgement comes from experience.

Travel is a chance to see and learn, to wipe the slate clean and try new things. If living well is the best revenge, there arent many better ways to prove that than travel. A meaningful journey gives us the opportunity to get away and reimagine ourselves and our possibilities, to encounter the sacred and sublime, to be healed and return whole.

On the road, the best way to cultivate a deeper sense of a destination is to walk through and around it. Nothing else offers the immediacy and fine detail of walking and carefully observing. Walking slow is the Tai Chi of learning about new cultures and peoples. Theres plenty of walking in the stories that follow.

Travel is about exploration, about experiencing the human and physical ecologies of a place that makes it unique and worth sharing, what the Taoist master Lao-tzu called the ten thousand things. Good travel reporting recalls remarkable landscapes, intriguing peoples, and encounters with art, music, history, architecture, food and wine, literature, cultural signifiers. These are the basic elements in Road Trips.

Travellers have long known that their journey is at least as important as the destination, and that like preparation, timing is everything. Pandemics, natural disasters, or unhealthy political climates can mitigate against adventuring, and an easy chair and a good book of travel tales always make an ideal complement to a cozy fire or a restful summers day when the wisdom of caution, frugality, or the comfort of home may be uppermost.

During many of these journeys that follow, I am joined by my wife, Kwan-shik. Whether haggling in bazaars, navigating hotel and flight routes online and off, or choosing the right roadside eating stall, her patience, humour, street smarts, and Korean bodyguard character have paid off time and time again. Its good to share company on the road.

Happy trails and happy reading. As Socrates had it, may you count the wise to be the wealthy, and may your travels be blessed. Peace under heaven

Trevor Carolan
North Vancouver, 2020

MARRAKESH BLUES

Id been thinking about the Sahara for a while.

A book on my shelf kept reminding mePeter Maynes A Year in Marrakesh. We found it thirty years ago in the Himalayas near Pokhara, and Ive always attributed my recovery from paratyphoid fever there to clean well water, that book, and the village barbers superb red opium. It was costly, but for fifty Nepali rupees and my copy of Jack Kerouacs The Town and the City that a Gurkha shopkeeper took in trade, it was a fair deal and left me enough for a last visit to the barber.

I read Maynes account in the dreamy cloud you get from long recuperative days on the O, half-asleep, half-awake. An Englishman, he departed India after partition and repaired to Morocco in 1950. His portrait of the red desert city is enticing. Id also read Paul Bowles, who wrote about Morocco for decades after taking Gertrude Steins advice that he settle there. Bowles fixed on Tangiers international zone, an out-of-time, autonomous city-state that William Burroughs fled to, seeking cheap living, hashish, Arab rent boys, and the stinging solitude that creeps in from the