In Search Of The Mysterious, The Strange And The Unknown!

My first inclination to travel to remote regions came from my Grandmother, when I was probably six or seven years old, despite the fact that she had never travelled very far at all in her whole life. In fact, I don’t think that she ever left England.

But she would tell me stories of China, inducing images of Emperors and pig-tailed mandarins, peasants and bandits, and this was coupled with a children’s book; an encyclopaedia I presume, with grainy, black and white pictures of strange scenery. It was extremely evocative though I did not understand that at the time. I was just excited by the mysterious, the strange and the unknown. I was hooked, and wanted to go there!

I was hooked, and wanted to go there!

Ever since then, the places where I’ve most wanted to travel, other than Britain and Europe, have almost all been in Asia. The list of places that I have at the moment that I would like to visit, are almost exclusively Asian.

Yes, she has a lot to answer for, that sweet old lady.

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When I was a teenager, I began to use maps in a rather ad hoc, hit and miss manner. They were there for me when I was really stuck or if I just wanted to know in which general direction something lay. It would be a very long time before I began to use them in a skillful way, able to predict the exact lay of the land, navigate in the fog or the dark, or find my way through complicated landscapes with the map and compass.

And, do you know, since I’ve learned to do that, I often feel as though I’ve actually lost something rather magical, although I don’t suppose that I can blame it all on that. The maps I used as a teenager would tend to be the Bartholomew’s Touring Maps, small scale with little detail. I would feel, as I headed along a Cornish footpath, that I only knew roughly where I was going. It always felt like an adventure; an exploration.

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Now, I need to be more and more remote before I can get that feeling, and even then it does not always work. Some ten years ago, I spent a couple of weeks in Ladakh, in the Himalayas in the far north of India, and I was surprised at just how easy all of my walking was. Setting off with map and compass, I always knew exactly where I was, only confused at times by the multiplicity of tracks criss-crossing the landscape. Even then, referencing mountains and villages with map and compass would invariably allow me to set my position.

That doesn’t mean that I wanted to get lost, just that there was a small part of me that said even this is all tame! I can also be put off, when using a map, by the knowledge that over the interesting looking ridge that I am heading for, there lies a motorway or building estate. So I then spend ages trying to plot a route that I have to perfect rather than head off in the direction that I want to go, exploring as I go, correcting my course as I travel.

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Nothing can tempt me more than a track leading tantalisingly into the distance, perhaps meandering through Mediterranean scrub towards a notch in the skyline, perhaps leading through a glowing archway of trees. Even now, when using map and compass to navigate, I often have to resist the temptation to ignore the map and head off to follow an interesting looking track.

There are plenty of other things that can destroy a sense of adventure in travelling, other than over-familiarity with maps, of course.

I think that this must be a part of my I wonder what’s over the other side of the hill? nature. It’s another reason why I’ve never been able to lie on a beach—apart from the fact that this seems a particularly pointless pastime in any case. Any time that I’ve tried it, it never seems to be more than a couple of minutes before I begin to think What’s round that cliff, I wonder? or If I head back up the river, I think I might find a way through those hills. And then I just have to go to find out.

There are plenty of other things that can destroy a sense of adventure in travelling, other than over-familiarity with maps, of course. I remember the shock and the sense of being let-down I received in Germany about 35 years ago, when I spent the best part of a morning struggling up an ill-defined track through thick woodland to the top of a berg in the Black Forest (I was using a tiny touring map at the time, which showed main roads at best).

My elation at arriving at the top and surveying the panorama of hills and mountains around me was completely destroyed within a minute, as a coach roared up the other side of the hill, came to a halt a few feet away from me, and then disgorged about 30 Japanese tourists. They spent about two minutes firing off photographs of everything in sight, including myself, before leaping back into the coach, roaring off downhill and leaving me gob-smacked in the sudden silence and slowly settling dust.

(First published in My Writings by Mick Canning)

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