People I've Met On The Road

The twenty-one short stories in this book are all true, or they are based upon true events and real people I have met during a lifetime of overland travelling. A British Army deserter, left behind and driving a taxi in Iraq; An Indian illegal immigrant, living secretly in a Paris laundrette; A homeless cyclist, trying to escape from a terrible family disaster; The psychotic son of an English duke, armed and hiding-out in a French village house, with no roof, no floors and no underwear; A German man living rough in a nook among heating pipes over a river, who makes a fortune from scrap; And an ageing Columbian man who set off on a worldwide walking trip 30-years ago and never stopped. Most, if not all, of my travel experiences have been positive, at least in retrospect. It has been a valuable life-lesson to me that even disasters can produce positive outcomes, if you let them. Hard lessons, are just as valuable as happy ones - even the final lesson, which is perhaps the hardest and most valuable lesson of them all. My fellow travellers and the experiences they have shared with me, have truly enriched my life. Whilst some of these travellers have known deep sorrow and others are relatively privileged, most of them are optimists, with a belief that life is what you make of it. Standing still is not an option. Truth and destiny are somewhere out there.