Quite Random

It isn’t all dragonfruit and sunsets

Friday morning and my usual train’s cancelled. The platform is swelling with people. The guy to my right is smoking, so the smoke, as well as tiny flecks of ash, blow across me. That pushy blonde woman and her fella, the one who looks like a model from a Grecian 2000 advert, show up. Naturally, she pushes in to the front of the platform. Finally a late train rolls up, and everyone shoves in. A woman behind me appears to have developed limbs like Mr Fantastic, and pushes her arm round an unfeasible distance in front of me, blocking me though I’m in front of her, to grab a handrail and yank herself on to the train. Once in, we all stand in silence, and I think even sardines would bitch about being in such close proximity to others, especially when the air is polluted by morning breath, the tinny tempo of iPods, and stupid, stupid ringtones.

Ah, the London commute. Only one of the things I won’t miss while I’m away.

The thing is, the grass is not always greener on the other side. I may be going away, and it may be fantastic fun, but I’m thinking about all the crap stuff about travelling today, particularly in Cambodia. It’s good. It’s called managing expectations. Some of the things I’m thinking about include sweaty waits at border crossings, smarmy Italians, insanely dangerous roads, pushy rickshaw drivers, not wanting to get really ill because the hospital costs $750 a night, karaoke turned up full-blast on buses, being pursued round markets by pathetic children with eyes the size of saucers, rolling around a sweat-drenched bed being kept awake by cicadas with 120–decibel songs, a complete absence of decent baked beans, rude Israelis, ruder English people… did I mention the smarmy Italians?

None of this matters anyway. If this is the worst I have to worry about, I don’t have anything to worry about at all.

Apocalypse Cow!

I’ve bought the plane tickets, sorted the insurance, got my earplugs already, now I’m looking for those trousers with the zip-off legs, trying to figure out what jabs I need, and sort of asking myself in the back of my head what on Earth I’m doing. 31 July I head to Cambodia. Again.

This time round, I’m going to work with Earthwalkers Fund on a variety of projects, some admin and fundraising, teaching, maybe sustainable development work. I’m taking someone with me this time, a damn fool girl who is getting on a plane with me even though she hardly knows me and I annoy the hell out of her. She’s a vet, so hopes to form a close relationship with some of Cambodia’s many overworked and undernourished cows.

I have modest expectations. Only that this could be even better than last time, I’ll engineer a career change out of the experience, not have any more accidents with tuk-tuks, and lose three stone without the aid of an unpleasant stomach condition.

New blog on the way.

Get out of the Tube

A big problem with travel in London is that many people don’t need to take half the journeys they do using public transport, particularly the Tube.

At weekends, the Piccadilly Line is choked with tourist traffic moving around the West End and Covent Garden. The front end of some Tube trains is practically in the next station before the back end has left the last one, and some stations are mere minutes away from each other by foot, but those unfamiliar with using alternative routes stick to the Tube despite congestion, overcrowding, and in the summer, dizzying heat. In one day in early December 2006, the London Underground network carried four million people, and the average almost every day is three million. That’s a billion or so noisy iPods, smelly armpits and bad tempers every year. Walking has got to be a more attractive option – cheaper, healthier, less stressful by far, and London is a damn site better looking when you’re not thirty feet underground.

The Real Underground map illustrates clearly that the Tube Map everybody knows isn’t an accurate representation of the geographical arrangement or distance of stations (it’s basically a circuit diagram, having originally been designed by engineering draughtsman Harry Beck in 1933). Fortunately, maps such as the one on the right (see shortwalk.blog.co.uk for more info) provide information on the walking times between stations, printed versions are available providing walking routes as alternatives to taking the Tube, and Walkit.com provides a fantastic resource for planning walking routes in London.

TfL’s Journey Planner also provides some useful information on getting from A to B, including walking some parts of the way, but doesn’t focus on walking, or cycling, and won’t give routes using exclusively either mode - apparently, TfL haven’t been overly keen on supporting development of Walk It - digital-lifestyles.info quotes a TfL official as saying that it would be “counter-productive to invest public money in another journey planning tool specifically for walking”.

See also Going Underground, Underground Etiquette, and the London Underground song (NSFW lyrics).

Sustainable

The etymology of the word POSH, at least the explanation that it was put on the doors of those who could afford a room in the shade on the voyage to the colonies and back (Port Out, Starboard Home), is unsubstantiated, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Nevertheless, it’s a plausible story. I mean I wasn’t there at the time, but I’ve watched Titanic. Rose’s fiance was well-to-do, so she travelled in a room the size of a tennis court. As Jack was as poor, he travelled in the rat-infested steerage section, with nothing but alcohol and toothless Irish women to keep him company. Comfortable travel was the preserve of the rich – but at least they had bitching parties in steerage.

In the last ten years, cheap air travel (pennies for tickets within Europe, or £75 to Hong Kong, less than it costs to take the train from Leeds to London at peak time) allows more people to reach destinations that were unaffordable for most of the last century, and even with Ryanair, in reasonable comfort. The world shrinks. I have taken advantage of this revolution in affordable travel – too poor to travel far for most of my life, I’ve been able to circumnavigate the globe on a ticket that cost less than a 1998 Ford Fiesta.

Now, it turns out that air travel is unsustainable. My flights so far have generated around ten tonnes of CO2 – while I wouldn’t take away the experiences I have had, I can’t undo the damage I’m responsible for, so the best I can do is bung fifty quid the way of a company which plants a few trees to soak up some of that CO2.

An alternative method of travel if you want to see places and not choke mother Earth? Go by land and sea. I’ve been germinating some ideas for my next trip, and I’d like one characteristic of it to be that my travel is as ‘sustainable’ as possible. So I’ve looked at the excellent and comprehensive resources provided by The Man in Seat 61 and other websites. But here’s the problem, as highlighted in this case study – it costs more to travel overland – quite a lot more. It takes longer – quite a lot longer. London to Bangkok by air costs £575 and one day. London to Bangkok overland costs £2,282 and 22 days. Going overland saves nearly a tonne of CO2 emissions, or two thirds of what you create by flying, and no doubt it’s an interesting experience, but unless you’re prepared to travel in the same level of comfort as Jack in steerage, it’s exorbitant for most people, both in terms of money and time. So overland travel seems to be indulgent but impractical, green but inaccessible.

So, should you even travel anywhere? I can’t say I deserve the right to travel and do all the things I want to do, and then tell anyone they can’t have a package holiday unless they tick enough ethical boxes. And I certainly can’t tell someone from a developing country that they can’t fly wherever they want and see whatever they want to see, just because they’re new to it and they haven’t offset their carbon emissions. Sustainability is something we’re all being told we should ‘do’, and yet sustainable travel is made extraordinarily difficult. Airlines could factor carbon offsetting costs in to their prices if they weren’t terrified of losing business by bumping up the price of a return to New York by a tenner, railways in the UK are overcrowded and overpriced, rural bus services are as common as rocking horse droppings, and it’s easier to buy a car than it is to fall off a log. If you want sustainable travel, you positively have to battle for it.

Affordable air travel seems at the moment like something that has a thirty year life span, if that. It can’t always be this cheap, fuel is finite, and those who argue that climate change is not our fault are dwindling in numbers in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And all the time, sustainability is a buzzword that seems to mean less and less unless you have the time and money. So sustainable travel becomes POSH.

Hotel or Hostel?

I’m off to Spain this Sunday, starting off with four days in Barcelona. Do I:

• Stay in a hotel, where I can crash, chill out in peace, snore to my heart’s content, and enjoy a shower all to myself, but possibly have less fun
• Stay in a hostel, where I will feel bad about keeping my dormmates awake with my snoring, may have to try and sleep despite someone else snoring, be ignored by moody guitar-playing Israelis, share a coin-operated shower with forty other people, but probably have more fun

?

In bits

Alan Bennett wrote in his first collection of diaries ‘Writing Home’ how he kept his diary on scraps of paper, whatever was handy at the time. He also wrote when he had the time and inclination, not religiously and every day. I’m with Alan. Lately I just can’t keep this blogging lark up. Thing is, masses is happening, I just don’t have the energy to commit it all to keyboard, and most of it isn’t worth remembering anyway. Blogging isn’t really about detailed diary-keeping anyway (well, for some people). Blogging is all about edited highlights. I have a lot going on, just not a lot that would make it into edited highlights. If you saw a movie trailer of the last few weeks you’d probably decide to wait for the movie to come out on DVD, and even then you’d only buy it in the sales out of curiosity. Actually, you’d probably leave it to come on the telly and watch it one night because there was nothing else on. Hell, I wouldn’t watch it. QI’s on the other side.

A year ago yesterday I was sat in the VIP lounge at Santiago Airport, nursing a hangover, sleeping on the sofa, taking advantage of free snacks and waiting to go to Peru to walk the Inca Trail, my stomach still engorged from the fantastic food and wine of Argentina. Where will I be a year from now? Mmm. The idea for the next trip is germinating.

A year ago this week…

Meh… what would I want with a view like this when I have Brixton Tube in the mornings?