April 30, 2005, The Times (London)
By Michael Palin
Our guest columnist says reports that he is hanging up his travelling boots are exaggerated
As they moved swiftly on to other matters I sat there, bent double, my heart beating unnaturally fast, pretty close to how it was on the Urubamba River in Peru after I’d drunk palm wine fermented with the saliva of old ladies.
The phone began to ring. Friends, family, my trusty film crew, an anxious book publisher. My poor wife was beside herself. She so looked forward to my long trips abroad.
The papers called, then radio and TV stations. A media avalanche was coming down on top of me with seemingly unstoppable force.
How I longed for John Prescott to punch someone or Piers Morgan to find some sensational photographs. But there was no escape. The only other news that day was a national election.
The truth is that I could no more stop travelling than I could stop drawing breath. Travel tests me physically and mentally. It sharpens my reactions, my appetites and my judgment. It’s in the blood.
In a world some seek to smear with bigotry and prejudice, travel has given me valuable reassurance. In all the journeys I’ve made I’ve very rarely been greeted with the fist of anger or the wagging finger of accusation. From what I’ve seen the instinct to befriend and assist is much stronger than the urge to do harm.
It’s not an easy option. The essence of travel is letting go of habit and prejudice and relishing the unfamiliar. Food you’ve never eaten before, a language you’ve never spoken before, religion that mystifies, customs that confuse, politics that perplex, all question everyday assumptions about how you live your life.
But the more unusual and exotic you want your experience to be, the tougher it is on the system. Certainly, crossing the Sahara and travelling the length of the Himalaya tested myself and my team to the limits and I feel the need for some thinking time before deciding on another journey.
But there are many different ways to cut the cake, from a single one-off programme to a series that doesn’t necessarily involve a huge journey. One of the most rewarding episodes we shot was one of the slowest. It was way back on Around The World In Eighty Days and followed our progress from Dubai to Bombay at a steady four miles an hour on a dhow, with neither radio or radar, crewed by 18 Gujarati fishermen.
As a result of the confined space and the length of time spent together, extraordinary friendships grew up between people from two different worlds. For a short, magical few days everyone was equal. All our material and technical superiority meant nothing. The Indians knew how to sail the boat and we didn’t. And that was all that mattered.
Whatever shape or form my future plans assume I could never conceive of a life that didn’t offer the possibilities of such encounters happening again.
And that’s a travelling life.
