Around the World in 80 Disasters

Travel has never been easier. Or more sanitised.

From the accommodation convenience of Booking.com and Airbnb, restaurant recommendations of TripAdvisor, travel assistance of Google Maps, and online ticket reservations, it is increasingly hard to find a bad meal or place to stay these days. And that is before social media, blogs and vlogs, which have taken the element of discovery out of the travel experience.

It was not always thus. Indeed, all the indispensable tools of today did not exist just 25 years ago, an era where the Lonely Planet guidebook was king. If it was in the book, it was worth visiting, and if it wasn’t, the only way you would discover a place was by chance.

The physical act of finding the right bus, a place to stay, and somewhere to eat and drink was a core part of the travel experience. It was hit and miss, built character, and provided travel memories and stories that live on today.

My first travel memory was a flight to Dublin at the age of six, way back in 1975, flying solo with my 8-year-old brother under the watchful eye of a lovely Irish air stewardess. My first solo travel experience was at the age of 13 and a school exchange, living with a French family in the Champagne region of Reims.

A taste for travel had me emigrating from the UK at the age of 18, backpacking solo around South America aged 20, working in random jobs from the edge of Siberia to post-genocidal Rwanda, and finally an overland trip from my village pub near Oxford to South Africa in 2001.

All were done without phones, camera, social media, and the plethora of online tools available today. And I remember almost all of those experiences as though they were yesterday.

And yet when Facebook Memories reminds me of an event five years ago, I have difficulty recalling the occasion at times. My brain has become dulled by the convenience of modern travel. It just isn’t travel as it once was.

Of course, things had a much higher chance of going wrong especially if you were a spontaneous non-planner, as I was. There were plenty of disasters along the way – plane crashes, guns to the head, running out of money, and many more – but they were real, character-building experiences that helped to shape a person.

Around the World in 80 Disasters is my ode to a world of travel that has all but been lost, a collection of disasters which are entirely my own. Some I learned from, others I am not proud of, several are very funny, and a few are tragic. But they encompass my life in travel, mostly away from the modern era.

Rather than list them chronologically, I thought it made more sense to group them by region, and so we begin with hitchhiking to the Soviet Union from Manchester in 1991 and ensuing adventures in the former Soviet Union, before moving to another part of the world.

All these disasters happened, and I was involved in each and every one, and looking back, they have played a huge role in shaping the person I have become. I hope you enjoy the book, and I would love to hear your feedback on paul@paul-bradbury.com