Books: In the Land of Far Beyond

(2 of 2)

The mountain passages of this part of the world were like the bloody birth canals of civilization. Today Glazebrook finds mostly shards and indifferent descendants. Like VS. Naipaul, the best of contemporary novelist-travel writers, he takes a melancholy view of lands that are past their primes. In the city of Kenya he discovers a universal shabbiness imposed by the use of concrete: "The Asiatics' love of bright colors, too, is betrayed by the plastic paint they slap on everywhere, which flakes and peels as the colors of their native fabrics and tiles never did." A few passages border on old-fashioned disrespectful wog-whomping, though some of the author's deepest disdain is reserved for the scraggly, underwashed Western students who can be found everywhere: "They were hot and smelly, and seemed to be sitting on top of me, sticking bits of themselves into me in a way Asiatics don't."

The experience of hardship and inconvenience is largely the point of Journey to Kars. Travel is defined as an accumulation of instances of self-sufficiency. Being dumped into a remote town, at night and reservationless, is a challenge to be savored; cashing a traveler's check in Trabzon takes two banks an entire morning and involves the police. Months on the road lead to some choice distinctions ("It isn't the badness of bad hotels which is distressing, it's the badness of 'good' hotels"). There are also useful tips:

On eating: "If you wait and watch, you find that the kind of food you like exists in a slightly different form in most cuisines . . . Until that time comes, far better to be hungry than sick."

On itinerary: "For peace of mind, I need to have taken steps to settle all questions in view! ... Once I know how to leave, I am free."

On authoritarian governments: "A repressive regime suits the traveler better than the anarchy which preceded it, so long as his documents are in order."

On getting to know a place: "You have to drum a town into your head with your feet. You have to walk till you're lost."

On wandering alone: "I probably prefer to travel with my chimeras, and leave the baby behind. Someone said once that traveling with your family was like waltzing with your aunt."

Journey to Kars takes many risky directions. It is to be hoped that Glaze-brook's next book is not titled You Can't Go Home Again.

—By R.Z. Sheppard

Excerpt

"If you want to look with interest and contentment into a bay for any length of time, it is better that it doesn't have a whale in it. Now, it occurred to me that the freakish landscape of Cappadocia illustrated the same truth. What you need of such a weird spectacle is one good view of it, and this I had ... The uneasy moonscape stretched away on every hand, and, below me, clinging to the roots of the fortified pinnacle of rock I stood upon, were the ruinous mud huts of the old village, their terraces heaped with melons yellow and green. Fantastical that landscape is, the tufa towers riddled with painted churches, like the sandcastles of giants' children, and I was amazed by it; but amazement is pretty soon exhausted."