You’ve traveled all your life – are you still excited about it?
I love life and when you travel, you live twice as much every day.
Sometimes twice as bad?
In any case, you experience novelty more intensely and your memory is refreshed again with new experiences…
Thomas Mann writes that if each day resembles the previous one, they end up being the same.
The journey means that no day is the same as the previous one. But I agree with Mann, and so would you if you went by boat from Japan to the US: we traveled nine days and changed our watches every eight hours. An eternal journey was made.
Don’t you think that cities, no matter how much you move, become more and more alike?
It is the fault of the satisfied tourist who does not move from the centers, where the big franchises are frequent and are always the same.
Do guides make sense since Google Maps or the whole internet exists?
More than ever. The other day I went to Winnipeg, the coldest city in Canada, and there was the same restaurant we recommended 20 years ago in our guidebook. This is a reference that is not given by the network. If this restaurant is there, it’s worth it… Like me.
Why don’t I see paper guides anymore?
Today they are taken on mobile, but they are taken.
Quick: the most hidden place on Earth to declare my love to someone.
The Solomon Islands, because in their capital there is a chapel in the mission and if you ask, they give you the key to the house next door. There I would declare my love to my wife who is traveling with me.
I’ll be bratty: do you pay twice as much and have half as much fun when traveling with your partner?
You with your partner and me with mine.
If you want company, says Herodotus, travel alone.
The fact is that each destination also depends on who visits it. And traveling alone for some is even more intense than accompanied. And we put the Salomós in our guide despite the fact that no one ever went to visit them.
Where would you go to live?
Across the planet: traveling is my life.
And to die?
Where I was born, Bournemouth, England. People repeat that it is the waiting room of God: perhaps because on its beaches in the south the sunset is melancholy and sweet.
Are the English great travelers because England is enjoyed by going away?
There is a tourism museum in Bournemouth that is well worth a visit.
Is nomadism in vogue like traveling?
My family raised me in Pakistan, then we lived in the Bahamas and finally returned to England; but only a year to go to the USA, where I went to university, I met my wife and with her I decided to travel to live and live to travel.
How long is the trip of your life?
Half a century, friend. fifty years…
Have you tried other trips without moving?
Except for a couple of drunks, I don’t like alcohol. In any case, I have tried local marijuana and LSD just to avoid repeating it.
Which trip would you repeat right now?
If traveling is sometimes not so much where but with whom, I like to discover the world with my children. In reality, it is they, the children, who teach you the world again.
If you leave: you must be humble.
God has not given me the gift of writing well, but I am still able to reveal some detail.
And traveling in a large group?
The key is that they all agree to choose who they dislike and that he takes it well. He will be the one to blame for anything that isn’t perfect and so the rest of the group will get along great and enjoy the whole trip.
Does this holy baron have to be paid?
Well, you don’t have to because he doesn’t usually realize that he’s the bad guy.
Which destination is worth it to then leave this world in peace?
A trip to my youth in the time machine knowing what I know now and giving myself permission to forget it too.
Where would I never return?
I wrote Darklands about these destinations; but I would go back: to the Congo River … fascinating. Or in Detroit: the dream of the working class; today it is the sleepy city.
It was the cradle of the modern automobile.
Hong Kong is also down; or go to Sofia, where communism collided with reality; or Romania: the beauty of Transylvania and the recovery of Bucharest, or Albania, forgotten.
What saves you from this sad Europe?
Plovdiv, in Bulgaria. But go to northern Chad and you’ll see Gaddafi’s Soviet tanks being destroyed by Toyotas with ingenious missile launchers from the local guerrillas.
Isn’t it a dangerous country?
The risk is exaggerated because there are interests for everyone to always go to the same destinations… Oh, and I forgot about the Lost City, in Colombia: don’t miss it!
