Travel whimsy

"The word skullduggery so close to Huck Finn-ery blew my tiny mind."

In need of short, salient snippets of travel whimsy on an almost daily basis?

I'll put a few of the best ones here, but for now you can pootle along to leophillips.tumblr.com



Oblivia

I think this ['The Happy Isles of Oceania', by Paul Theroux] was the first piece of travel writing that I ever read that didn’t paint everything with a rosy glow. The father of Louis (and Marcel), Paul Theroux set off around rather a lot of the South Pacific islands during the time of his divorce, with the minimum of kit aboard his one-man inflatable dinghy.

He was in one of the most beautiful places in the world - and I remember him pretty much hating everywhere he went. Finding squalor and thievery, vandalism and skulduggery, it was something of a revelation for me and struck a chord with some of the places I’ve been in the world. Far from this being a trip of idyllic Huck Finn-ery (although strictly speaking, that story itself wasn’t so idyllic), we find an example of how difficult travel can be if thoughts weigh heavy on top of you - and the effort it takes to turn things around in places that don’t unfurl themselves to you as you had hoped the might. The title itself really is something of a misnomer, and this book does well to shatter the illusion that people have about getting away from it all.

Besides, getting away from it all is something reserved for holidays - this is about travel, and if you look at the etymology of the word itself (which I’m sure I will go into in the future whether you like it or not), you begin to understand the difference.