One Foot in Front of the Other - First Steps

In the late 1960s the author first set off into the big, wide, wonderful world - into a world that is so different today for the first time traveller. The first brief journey was a voyage on the old 'Tofua', the so-called 'banana boat' which then regularly serviced, from Auckland, the South Pacific Islands of Fiji, both Western & American Samoa, Niue & Tonga. This was the first step and a wider world now awaited. By the late 1960s, the Asian Overland was the ultimate adventure. In 1970 Nepal was still a mysterious Himalayan kingdom at the end of the hippy trail. India and Pakistan were tolerating each other, just, in an uneasy peace that would soon be broken. Afghanistan was a happy kingdom at peace with itself and its neighbours, and Iran was under the dictatorial tutelage of the Shah. The journey, with one of the early Overland tour operators was to be a journey of discovery, visiting places that were little known to the contemporary world of the late 1960s. The trip was an enjoyable, educational eye-opener. The general consensus seemed to be 'He must be crazy!' England in those days was the ideal venue for a working holiday, and for a kiwi who had never been near a farm, he soon had employment as a farm labourer! There was also potato-picking in Wales, hop-picking in Kent & grape-picking in France. Other adventures followed - a visit to Leonard Brezhnev's Soviet Union which, at the height of Cold War propaganda, was then thought to be a place to be avoided, after all so the rumours said, you could disappear without trace into the maw of the KGB and maybe end up in Siberia! There were meanderings in France, Spain and Morocco, and throughout the United Kingdom before he eventually made the decision to return home, also on another epic Overland journey, this time through Africa. The author initially travelled by truck to Nairobi before hitch-hiking south to Johannesburg, where after a period of work he caught a ship from Cape Town back to New Zealand. Again there were many amazing experiences in places that are still little visited. There was the vast fascinating expanses of the Sahara with wandering Tuaregs and charming remote oases; Hausa processions in Kano; mysterious cloud-enshrouded rainforests with horrendous roads in the Congo; the occasional glimpse of Pygmies in the Ituri Forest and the fascinating game parks of Tanzania, abounding with animals. After working for a spell for Kentucky Fried Chicken in Johannesburg the author hitch-hiked back to Rhodesia, then under the UDI of Ian Smith. visited Portuguese Mozambique which was then in the throes of a guerrilla war and spent time on this pristine coast before hitch-hiking around coastal South Africa to Cape Town to catch the ship back to New Zealand. This narrative has been compiled from diaries, letters home, personal articles, photographs and memories of the happy days of my first travels. This book serves as a background to the author's second book, which recounts his experiences as a tour leader when returning to the Asian Overland in the more turbulent times of the late 1970s and, later, as a special interest tour leader/guide in India, Turkey and the Middle East in the days before terrorism, international politics and vicious local wars took hold. All the photographs used in this edition were all taken by the author at the time of the events narrated. The photos have helped immensely in recalling many of the events that took place. I like to think that this book is a cameo of the golden days of travel before international politics destroyed, or restricted, many of the places I now feel privileged to have visited in happier days, sentiments which I know are shared by many of my peers.