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We have all hatched grand plans: to ditch school or job, to purchase
motorcycles and head out in search of America, ride horses around Lake
Baikal, go to a game in every Major League ballpark, personally administer a
full mouth-on-mouth kiss to each member of the Texas Congressional
delegation. These ideas usually hit us when we are working under deadline
with the window open, the sun shining, the breeze holding the perfume of
blooms. There is, at such times, absolutely no way to concentrate on
adenosine triphosphate, the Treaty of Utrecht or last month's sales numbers.
On a May evening in the early 1920s, Richard Halliburton gazed out onto the
Princeton campus and was overcome by the futility of study: "Economics! --
how could one be expected to moil over such dullness when the perfume and the
moon and all the demoralizing lure of a May evening were seething in one's
brain?" While his roommates continued to moil away the evening, Halliburton
lounged by the lakeside, read Oscar Wilde's exhortations to seize his Youth,
and plotted a romantic adventure to the far corners of the world.
Unlike the plans most of us conceive, Halliburton's hare-brained scheme came
to fruition. The trek lasted nearly two years, taking him from France to
Japan, with plenty of stops in between. He climbed the Matterhorn, Mt. Fuji
and the Great Pyramid, hunted tigers, broke into the Taj Mahal and the
Alhambra, sold his belt to avoid starvation and made sworn enemies of every
train conductor in India. Along the way he repeatedly chose routes that a
reputable travel agent would pay you to avoid, and visited places that the State
Department has had on the "Banned for Life" list since the first Cleveland
administration. The variety and multitude of his stops defies compact
description; in most cases he visits a place for a particular reason, but in
every case the attainment of that goal is equal in importance to the process
of finding the place, getting there and discovering the unexpected. This is
no Bland Tour of Baedeker's or Fodor's highlights, but six hundred days of
nearly complete freedom in travel.
In one of the book's more memorable invitations to disaster, Halliburton
finds that there might be a shortcut from Rangoon to Bangkok, allowing him
to circumvent a two thousand mile ship voyage around the Malay Peninsula.
These days, there is a road that takes this shortcut across the Isthmus of
Kra; when Halliburton decides that he will take this shorter route to
Bangkok, there is a bare trail through eighty miles of jungle -- and he's
making during the monsoon season. He tries for two days to find a guide, but is
told that even an elephant would sink in the mud. In the end he hires the
village idiot, and they struggle for three days through the jungle, finally
reaching the Gulf of Siam after cobra attacks and a whole lot of rain.
Make no mistake -- Halliburton's station in life as a Princeton graduate and
the son of a wealthy Memphis family cleared many obstacles from this
adventure. At the beginning of the journey, his parents offer him a
European grand tour, but he chooses to make his way over as an ordinary hand
on a freighter. Despite these noble intentions to avoid a cushy berth,
Halliburton obtains a letter from the president of the shipping company (no
doubt the father of a Lawrenceville or Princeton classmate) instructing the
ship's master to give Halliburton the job to earn his passage. These
safety nets of privilege appear throughout the book, but they are generally
played for comic effect; it's clear that Halliburton preferred taking his chances
in third class over a cabin deluxe.
Modern readers of Halliburton's account of his travels may have a
complicated relationship with the book. A cringe-inducing comment about
"teach(ing Egyptians) proper respect for a white man" follows soon after a
moving account of his midnight view from the top of the Great Pyramid. His
unabashed expressions of cultural and racial supremacy enrage, but then his
vivid, compelling and reverent descriptions mollify. Although some of
Halliburton's social theories may remind us of awkward conversations with a
grandfather, modern sensibilities cannot dismiss his power of description.
Halliburton is at his finest when conveying his sense of wonder and good
fortune to be seeing remote parts of the world. After a long journey by
steamship, dugout canoe and dilapidated car, Halliburton arrives at the
temple of Angkor Wat:
"In solitude I climbed the worn steps that led up to the second gallery, and
found myself in the midst of the most magical array of stone tapestry on
earth.... From afar Angkor with its ascending rows of colonnaded galleries,
its hundreds of elaborately barred windows, its labyrinth of roofs, steps,
cupolas, towers, looks more like a mirage than a reality. Only close at
hand can one fully appreciate the inconceivable intricacy and beauty of its
details and ornaments. The Egyptians might have raised this vast pile of
stones in place, but only the Khymers could ever have executed the
carvings."
The Royal Road to Romance is a fascinating book. Its corny
exultations of adventure, perverse fixation with traveling cheap and
breathtaking images of distant places make every adventure a delight to
read. This Travelers' Tales printing has no edits to modernize language (or
attitudes), and this adds to the book's strength as a historical chronicle
read in a modern age; it's easy to see the world as Halliburton saw it.
Richard Halliburton wrote several more books after this one, documenting his
many subsequent journeys. In fitting fashion, he was lost at sea while
attempting to cross from Hong Kong to San Francisco in a junk. I have no
doubt that he selected his vessel for its low, low price and for the promise
of a very different kind of journey.
-- Dave Kessler lives in San Francisco and dreams of writing Dennis Miller's color commentary for Monday Night Football.
· · · · · · ·
About the Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Travelers' Tales got its start in 1993 when travel writers James O'Reilly
and Larry Habegger teamed up with writer and publisher (and James's brother)
Tim O'Reilly to produce a new kind of travel book, one that would paint a
portrait of a country through the experiences of many travelers. Through
true stories, these books would give readers a depth of understanding that
can only come from people who have been there. Reading each book would be
like sitting in a cafe filled with fellow travelers swapping tales about the
place you're headed next - you come out changed, and eager for more. Over
time, this basic premise has been expanded to include a variety of
anthologies, travel advice books, and single-author narratives.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Travelers' Tales currently has
more than 60 titles in print, and publishes approximately 8-12 titles per
year.
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