In the virtual footsteps of Savage Pilgrims.

Tags

d h lawrence, danny baker, fading red light, henry shukman, julian cope, lahore, london, new mexico, one three one, reluctant fundamentalist (the), savage pilgrims on the road to santa fe, st petersberg, taos, travel writing, usa

I have found a interesting concept to accompany some of the books I read, especially those about travel or based on fixed locations. Virtual tourism. I have been reading Henry Shukman’s excellent Savage Pilgrims on the Road to Santa Fe, an account of his travels in New Mexico, an odyssey of a young man chasing his dreams and fleeing his own personal demons in the footsteps of D H Lawrence, an odd parallel with the last book that I read, Julian Cope’s One Three One, which also takes place partially in the footsteps of the same author.

Whilst relaying a series of magical and bizarre encounters, a flying priest, amiable cowboys and lonesome cowgirls, pueblo-dwelling hippie artists and bar room philosophers, it is the descriptions of the countryside that really stand out. Especially when he bases himself in the mountain town of Taos. His renderings of the look and physical feel of this town that mixes high alpine altitude with arid desert geography and particularly the way that it’s greenery reminded him often of his childhood in England, had me hankering for a view of the place, sometimes the words were just not enough. So Google Earth it is then.

It was fascinating to virtually walk through the town, down Kit Carson Road to the central plaza, look at the names of the shops and catch candid glimpses of people randomly caught on film from the mapping process. It is not anything like I imagined it to be. Greener for a start and between the telling pueblo architecture I could see what he meant when reminiscing about the country of his birth.

Why not try it, zoom in to street level and wander the settings of your favourite books. I have recently wandered the East London streets of Danny Baker’s biography, wandered the bridges of St Petersburg I encountered in Fading Red Light and even hovered over the tea shops and back streets of Lahore, the setting for The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Until I have the money to visit these places properly, virtual tourism is an interesting way of seeing the places featured in some of your favourite books.

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Chatting over the garden fence of the global village – July ’14

Tags

australia, india, ireland, portugal, romania, singapore, spain, sweden, uk, usa

The geographical break down of the readership of this blog is always going to reflect the nature of the articles and the last time I posted the conclusions of the statistical report of this blog, I had posted a number of articles that related to travel and the global village at large, which in turn made for quite a wide range of countries making up the readership. Over the last month I have posted less and have written more articles of interest to those closer to home and this has resulted in a less expansive, more parochial response.

As always the UK makes up most of the readership, with the US coming in second but it was good to see a few new countries on the list, especially as they don’t directly reflect the subject matter of the posts this month.

So thanks also to readers in Australia, Portugal, Sweden, India, Romania, Ireland, Spain and Singapore (in that order) for taking an interest in my thoughts, musings, scrivening and scribbling.

Chatting over the garden fence of the global village – June ’14

Tags

australia, canada, global village, google, italy, nepal, netherlands, pakistan, singapore, uk, usa

One of the aspects of blogging that I find fascinating is where your words, thoughts and ideas end up being received and read. I write various more localised and more specific blogs and articles and due to their very nature you know where your target audience lies, for this blog, however, things are much more interesting. A lot depends on where and how you advertise your blog, one of the most obvious outlets is through the Facebook/Twitter/Social Network channels but that only really means that you are posting largely to people you are already connected with. Blog communities are a bit more difficult to gauge but probably account for some of the more random travel plans of your writing and subject matter and the tags you use will also dictate what the search engines home in on. It is therefore interesting to check in the analytics of the blog to see a breakdown of readers by country. My last month looks some thing like this.

UK – 50.0%

USA – 18.7%

Singapore – 10.9%

Australia, Pakistan, Netherlands and Italy – 6.2%

Canada, Belgium and Nepal  –  1.5%

The top two more than likely mainly relate to friends on the likes of Facebook, Australia too possibly and Nepal due to the fact that I wrote about photo-journalism in Kathmandu, but some of the others are quite intriguing and have to be put down to the random factors mentioned above. I think I might do a little monthly round up of the top ten countries who check out my work and see how it changes over time. It also means I can use those countries as tags, which in turn act as beacons in search engines and so set up a whole vortex of perpetual motion or some sort of blogging wormhole that sucks google into oblivion. That will teach them to avoid paying their taxes!

 

The Occidental Tourist

Tags

america, city lights book store, dean moriarty, egypt, germany, greece, home, israel, jack kerouac, jordan, neal cassady, on the road, sal paradise, san francisco, usa

On reflection, any traveling I have done has always taken me east from the UK; Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Germany, Israel; a subconscious decision to head into morning rather than the setting sun? Maybe. It is odd therefore that one of my favourite travel writers, if you can use the term for someone who was essentially a hitchhiker in his own country, is Jack Kerouac. Whilst reading about his road adventures through what he defined as the Beat era of post war America, his hedonistic travels involving bars, music, women, drugs and thrill seeking of the modern era, my own adventures have been more based on visiting much more ancient cultures, visiting biblical and classical locations. The reason that I bring this up is as part of my blogging regarding the new house as recently a friend of mine returned from a business trip to America where he was lucky enough to visit The City Lights Book Store in San Francisco. Whilst selling underground literature, left field poets and non-mainstream taste in books, it was more famously the place where emerging writers and poets, such as the people who would become central to the Beat movement would hang out (apparently it was one of the first places in the area to have a coffee machine) and try out their new works. As a house-warming present he brought me back a poster of Kerouac and Neal Cassady, the central characters of On The Road who appear under pseudonym as Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

In a house full of more ancient  and oriental facing references, from pictures of Rameses The Great at The Battle of Meggido, to a collection of Turkish Hats, From East European bank notes to a brace of Indian cavalry sabres, it is nice to have a touch of the more recent occident looking down on it all. Two road warriors of the modern age, breaking through a whole new underground wild west and immortalised in this famous picture of youth and brotherhood. I’ve always likes the idea of seeing America, the America off of the tourist trail, the trucker bars and the southern bayou’s, the railway yards and the down town cafes. Maybe one day I will but for now I have Dean and Sal’s presence to remind me of a road that beckons.