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.