Let’s Go TravelA collection of travel stories to inspire you to get up and go. Steve Shelley With a special invitation to aspiring travel writers, and bonus content to help you travel more. Copyright © Steve Shelley 2018 The right of Steve Shelley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1998. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Version: 1.2 pdf download updated May 2020 Picture credits: author A LonePenguin book www.thelonepenguin.com Published in 2018 by Strategic Alignment Ltd, York, England. We’re all travellers We’re always on the move. Human beings are a migratory species. We travel, just as we breathe, eat, drink and procreate. It’s been hard wired into our DNA ever since our species migrated out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. Travel is what enabled us to survive and populate the planet. Even nowadays, ask people what their ideal life would look like, travel will likely be a part of it. Ask people what they want to do before they die, travel most likely will be on the list. Ask what they want to do more of, travel will be on the list. This book celebrates travel. If you like to travel, it’s for you. If you would like to travel, it’s for you. And if you wish you could just travel more - and do less of the humdrum 9-5 stuff - then it’s definitely for you. If you’re interested in less stress and a more healthy lifestyle, both physical and mental, the evidence is that travel is important to your wellbeing. But I’m sure I don’t need to argue the case here. Tell us your story This first edition is a collection of my own stories. But for the next one, I want you to help me ‘co-create’ it. That’s right, I want to hear from you. I want to include a much wider range of stories from travellers who’ve been places, met people, and done things that I haven’t. Let’s together create the world’s most dynamic travel book. Obviously we won’t be able to include everything from everyone. There will have to be a great deal of editorial discretion, I’m sure you understand. But if you are an aspiring travel writer or blogger then please let’s hear from you. I’ve included some guidelines in a later chapter. Selected contributors will be listed as co- authors and you’ll be free to use the book to promote your own travel interests (subject to a bit of small print). A special offer Over the years, I’ve been lucky to have had a lot of travel opportunities, going right back to my early childhood. I’ve found ways to make some money from travel, and I’ve met a lot of people whose paths I would never otherwise have crossed. I won’t claim that I have the ideal life but it’s pretty good and it’s important to me to be able to help others get out into the world. In another later chapter, I share my tips on how to get out of the rat race and travel more. For now, I shall only say the sooner you do it, the better. Enjoy the read, and I’ll see you on the beaches and in the cities and wild places of the world. Steve Shelley, York, England, April 2018 In case you doubt how much we humans like to travel, here is an image from FlightRadar24. A few thoughts before we start • Travel is the best eduction • Travel teaches tolerance and understanding • Travel feeds your sense of wonder • Travel is a journey of discovery, of self discovery “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” – Mark Twain “Travel is never a matter of money but of courage.” – Paolo Coelho Contents 1 Africa: a road less travelled 3 - An appointment with destiny 2 Island hopping in the Seychelles archipelago 17 - Paradise on Earth 3 Three faces of Spain 22 - Tales from Andalucía, Cantabria and Catalunya 4 Legal alien 29 - Fantasy and familiarity in America 5 Zanzibar: the Spice Island 34 - The aroma of cloves is in the air and on the furniture 6 Grand designs: the opening up of Europe 39 - The world’s greatest visa-free zone 7 A is for Athens 46 - The Greeks continue to party 8 A walk around York 51 - England’s quirkiest city 9 A smuggler's tale 57 - And an alpine adventure 10 In the footsteps of the explorers 61 - In search of the seekers of the source of the Nile 11 A whisky safari 67 - The distilleries of Islay and Jura 12 On the far side of nowhere 71 - The flip-flotsam of Kiwayuu 13 Shopping like an Egyptian 76 - An unlikely place for a shopping expedition 14 Uganda: 'positively reeks of adventure' 81 - Back on its feet (in 2001) 15 Miscellaneous musing and random ramblings 86 - About travel, of course 16 How you can travel more 90 - Make travel part of your ideal life 17 Tips for aspiring travel writers 94 - And how to submit your articles for our next edition About the author 97 The Story of The Lone Penguin 98 1 Africa: a road less travelled I watched the elephants march across that red dust savanna as if they had an appointment with destiny. I know that I did. That’s why I’m here. But I didn’t realise it until much later. Much, much later. Do you ever have those moments when you think that the hand of fate is doing more than just beckoning, it’s actually pushing you in a certain direction? I honestly can’t remember what it was that set me off on my great African safari. But I can clearly remember what kept me there. It was the film ‘Out of Africa’: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills . .” Thus opens Karen Blixen’s poetic account of her sojourn in Kenya from 1914 to 1931. Seventeen years. Did it change her life? I don’t know. But it changed mine. I managed 30 years. But then she had lost the love of her life. I found mine. There was a high degree of chance about my going Africa. I was working in London in the days when a pay rise to £4,000 a year meant I had sufficient disposable income, even after paying the mortgage, to afford for the first time to venture out of Europe and fly long haul. Even now, this is a great adventure, to go out and discover that enormous world out there beyond your usual comfort zone. Scanning the brochures for somewhere with good weather, the choice came down to Tobago or Kenya. I can’t recall why the Caribbean lost out but, as my leave came around, we found ourselves on board a Sudan Airways 707 to exotic Nairobi. Well, as it often is in August, it was grey and drizzling. But never mind, it was still exciting. We set out on a classic African safari to the Masai Mara and camped on the escarpment to the west overlooking that vast savanna. It was the time of the great wildebeest migration and there were wild animals everywhere. Lions prowled around our tents at night. Comfort zone, what was that? This was nothing at all like home. It was an adventure beyond our wildest dreams. We were hooked. I went home and bought a Land Rover. I was going to do Africa properly. Planning an expedition is more logistics than day dreaming, more left brain than right. There was a lot to do. I mean for a start, where were we going? ‘Africa’ is a pretty big target. Just to give you some idea, it’s bigger than the USA, China, India and Western Europe put together. It’s huge. And there weren’t many maps. Even now in the Google era, it’s not much better. I suppose it would have been possible to ‘just go’, but you need to know how much fuel to carry 1 and, based on how long it might take between stops, how much food and water. And money. Route planning would be essential. Then there’s the fact that I love doing it: poring over maps, working out distances, researching places to see and things to do. It’s nearly as much fun as the trip itself. But it’s not the dots on a map that appeal, so much as the spaces in between. And in Africa there were, and still are, many wide open spaces. They went onto the skeleton itinerary: the Sahara desert, the Congo rain forest, the East African steppes, the Kalahari and the enigmatic Okavango ‘swamp’ on its doorstep, the Namib. All of which made the the foot of Africa at Cape Town the natural ultimate destination. Far to go! It was a challenge to estimate the longest distance between fuel stops, in the absence of much concrete information.