Overland Echoes

In 1980 I left the comfort of family, friends and a good job in England to embark on a series of overland adventures; adventures that would ultimately take me around the world.

I had the privilege of experiencing international travel before the advent of mass tourism. In a time before Lonely Planet and Google drew the maps, every trip was an exploration. It was an amazing time to travel. It was a time when most Indians rode on bicycles, the Turkish coastline of the Mediterranean wasn't packed cheek-by-jowl with apartment blocks, and backpacking was the only way to reach many exotic destinations. I was lucky to experience a time before mass air travel, before the internet, before the sameness that permeates so many places now.

These early experiences of travelling shaped the rest of my life. What I took away from this time of adventure were my memories, boxes of slides, and a pile of travel diaries. The diaries languished in the bottom of a box for years, unread. But I rediscovered them, in later life, when I turned to sorting through my accumulated possessions. In my diaries, I found a detailed journal of overland travel in the 1980s; a record of adventures that can no longer be experienced.

This book revives those memories of carefree adventure. It describes a journey from London to Australia overland and back through Central America. An account based on the diaries I wrote, the slides I took, and the postcards I collected. It grows out of those faint echoes of overland travel.