Gift: Around the world in 50 years?
In early September I got an intriguing email from an Everyday Tourist reader in Calgary, who I didn’t know, saying how much she loved reading my blogs and would like to send me a book she had seen recently at Pages bookstore in nearby Kensington Village. After a few emails back and forth turns out we don’t live very far apart so she dropped off the book in my mailbox. It was “Around The World in 50 Years” by Albert Podell, published in 2015. I had no idea who Podell was but assumed it would be a light read of travel adventure stories from different countries over the past 50 years. Boy, was I wrong!
Let The Adventures Begin
The book begins with Podell’s amazing Trans-World Record Expedition quest to literally drive around the world, no matter how poor, remote or dangerous. This epic road trip is more about survival and vehicle breakdowns than fun flaneur finds and quaint towns and villages. He spends most of his time in welding shops getting his 4 X 4 fixed or negotiating visas, then in quirky cafes on busy pedestrian streets, hiking remote trails or visiting an off the beaten path museum that I am interested in.
I almost stopped reading. After adjusting to the fact this will not be an entertaining read, but an educational one I was hooked.
After he completes the Trans-World Expedition, he then set the goal of visiting every country on the planet. Born in the USA in 1937 that was his first country, Canada was second in 1962 and last were Yemen and Equatorial Guinea legally in 2014.
Podell provides the reader with incredible insights into the turmoil in the world today, especially in Africa. I have often said “I am always saddened by man’s inhumanity to man,” a phrase Podell uses in the book when he talks about the atrocities that have and are happening in Africa and other places around thin world. This is not a book for the meek, as there are lots of stories of genocide, wars and revolts. He loves the use of the acronym “TIA” i.e. This Is Africa after a tale about the poor state of the infrastructure, political, police and business corruption.
While it is full of facts and history, there is always a bit of sarcastic humour. There is a page where he summarizes the street life in each of the capitals he has visited.
Addis – More than a hundred thousand undernourished, skeletal people – mostly withered old men, or women caring sickly babies – begging, incessantly, for something to eat in a poor land where upward of seven million are famished at times. Here are a few examples:
Nairobi- Lots of upright guys in dark business suits and shiny ties bustling about in the heat, toting briefcases and looking as if they were rushing to important meetings.
Juba – The women sitting in the sun of the open air market hawking their tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers while several hundred unemployed men, former soldiers, sit in the rare shade beside an unpaved road looking slightly stunned that their long sought and hard fought independence has not brought instant prosperity.
Kampala- Dozens of enterprising young dudes hanging out beside motorcycles on the corners politely asking if you need a ride to anywhere in the city, whose seven steep hills make Rome look like a landing field.
Adoption a Child or Two
Near the end of the book, Podell shares two touching stories about an Ethiopian boy Dinkneh, and a Ugandan girl, Amiina, he has been supporting for years through ChildFund International. In each case he visits the child and family buying them a goat which will help them live a better life. It is hard to imagine buying a goat could make such a difference in a family’s life.
In Dinkneh’s case he buys the family two goats but was concerned when Dinkenh’s mother choses a male goat that was the year old son of the older female goat. He then cautioned the mother not to breed the female with its son. Turns out that even after more than a thousand years of raising goats, sheep and cows, and scores of years of USAID, CARE and Heifer International teaching Ethiopian herdsmen the basic principle of animal husbandry, they remain ignorant, with inbreeding common and highly detrimental.
Off The Beaten Path Places
Semuliki Park Hot Springs
Podell also shares some amazing stories and amazing places he visited for example in Uganda he visited the Bigodi Wetland Sanctuary (127 bird species), Semuliki Park (Pygmies and hot springs), the snow-capped Rwenzori Mountains (aka The Mountains of the Moon – the highest chain in Africa), the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (home to the only mountain gorillas left in Uganda), the Kibale Forest (famous for chimps), the town of Kabale (The Switzerland of Africa).
There are also stories of countries in Southeast Asia that I have never heard of. Some only a tiny islands - like East Timor or Timor-Leste which only became a sovereign state in 2002. The west side of the island is part of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. Located in the Coral Triangle, the waters around Timor-Leste boast around 600 reef-building corals, more than 2000 species of reef fish and six of the world's seven marine turtle species. The entire island is only 256 km long and 92 km wide at its widest point.
Podell doesn’t share any stories about visiting Canada, but at the end he does include Canada, as well as Switzerland, France, New Zealand, Peru and Nepal as his favourite countries for scenery. For food, his favourites are Mexico, France, Italy, China, Thailand, Vietnam and Lebanon.
Global Observations & Concerns
Increasing evidence of global warming
Spread of radical form of militant Islam through the Muslim world
Schoolyards in South Korea, Japan, India, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Germany and Switzerland where kids show in their dress, deportment, attitude and actions that they take school and education more seriously than American students do.
Increasing emergence and virulent nature of epizootic diseases, those that originate in birds and animals but infect humans as they push into the jungles in search of land and bush-meat protein.
A band of hard-charging competitors – Asian tigers, African lions, and South American jaguars – increasingly becoming able to dine on our dinner. They have gleaming, efficient 21st century infrastructure, abundant supplies of, or access to raw materials and above all, citizen willing to work diligently, despite low wages, to have a better and eventually a more prosperous life for themselves and their children. Note: I wish he had shared more about this.
Cities like Seoul Korea combine traditional market streets with modern infrastructure and amenities that exceed what many cities have in North America.
Last Word
ALBERT PODELL has been an editor at Playboy and three national outdoor magazines and written more than 250 freelance articles. He was co-leader of the Trans-World Record Expedition and co-author of Who Needs A Road, an adventure classic still in print after nearly five decades.
He holds a B.A. in government from Cornell, was the graduate fellow of the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago and received a law degree from New York University.
He lives in New York and is an all-around outdoorsman.