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IT was in January 1961 that I first fell in love. I had already been traveling for four years by then. Our family preferred the “paquebots,” or ocean liners – Ferdinand de Lesseps and Jean Laborde of the French Messageries Maritimes line, and would ride the steamers from Mombasa, through the Suez Canal or round the Cape of Good Hope to Marseille. Aboard these ships, I was introduced to French food and took part in a performance of Blanche Neige (Snow White). But until 1961 I had been too young to enjoy romance on these voyages.
By 1961, however, I had grown into a self-confident young man, eight years old, and I was embarking on a great adventure: flying all the way to England, wielding my brand-new cricket bat and unencumbered by the inconvenience of doting parents. On a Vickers Viking 27-seater turbo-prop aircraft of the newly formed British United Airways airline, I
took off from Nairobi’s Embakasi Airport, as my mother stood weeping and waving me into the sky. What grand excitement was in store, I thought, as we flew over the Great Rift Valley to our first stop, Entebbe, on the Ugandan shores of Lake Victoria, then along the course of the Nile River to Wadi Halfa in the Sudan. I began to feel the yearning for an adventure romance welling up inside me, as I stared out of the porthole window over the Sahara Desert, heading towards Benghazi in Libya, by the Mediterranean Sea.
That’s when it happened. On a stopover, a new crew boarded the aircraft and – behold! – a young, strikingly beautiful stewardess stepped aboard. She was a family friend who happened to be working on that flight. She said she’d come to take care of me, and so she did as we flew on to Malta, Rome and, finally, Gatwick. I put my head down on her lap and drifted off to sleep. Sweet dreams, indeed, for a child of eight!
I’ve had a seemingly inexhaustible passion for travel ever since then, often visiting as many as 15 countries in a single year, always learning, listening to languages I know inadequately, seeing new sights, smelling new fragrances, absorbing the unique sounds of markets and temples, hearing the delighted, uninhibited chatter of children sighting a white man for the first time.
And eating, eating, seldom asking what it is, always keen to experience the “exotic” things that people of other cultures choose for nourishment. I won’t deny that there have been moments when my courage has failed me and I have declined a particular dish, but I have braved earwig soufflé in Macao, snake in Taipei and sea urchin in Verdun, so I think I’ve done pretty well, haven’t I? And don’t forget that I’ve had to survive the rigors of English cuisine for much of my life!
So what is it that drives me on? Haven’t I experienced as much as any one man could possibly want in a lifetime? Not at all! There will always be more provinces, more cities or tiny villages, more islands to feed one’s lust for new experiences. But there will also be those favorite places that one goes back to time after time, where familiarity becomes the attraction.
I tell friends that I have three favorite cities to which I return as often as possible: Hong Kong, Sydney and Edinburgh. These places, so distant from each other, have two things in common: they are all cities with spectacular harbors (especially that of Sydney, which is incomparable); and they all hold a piece of my personal history. I have lived in all of them at one time or another, and there is the continual pull of familiar places and faces waiting to welcome me back. I am made to feel like a long-lost son, in a way one seldom experiences closer to home. Actually, I suppose I have one more favorite place: Mayrhofen, in the Austrian Tyrol. No seaport there, but glorious clean snow-capped mountains that remind one how refreshing a simple change of scenery can be.
Then there’s the music and wine to go with travel. Wine has long been a passion of mine, not just because it offers wonderful drinking experiences, but also because every year produces different flavors and textures – so it is an annual round of new learning. The great beauty of wine for me, though, is that it draws me to wonderful, peaceful places in France and Spain and Italy and Australia and Argentina and South Africa, where I can talk to the winemakers about the trade they so love, and come away with a deeper understanding of what I am drinking. There is one place, however, which brings together my enjoyment of both wine and music. It’s called De Morgenzon (The Morning Sun) and it’s a vineyard in the Stellenbosch region of South Africa’s Cape Province. There they play Baroque music to the grape vines, day and night, in the belief that the gentle sound waves help to relieve the stress caused to the grapes by the hot summer sun. I don’t know if the theory works in practice, but the wines taste wonderful!
And so I continue to travel the world, taking pleasure from all that each of the continents has to offer – nature, peoples, music and humor. Almost everywhere I go, companionship seems to be a common trait of humanity. Is it a surprise that I’m a romantic? But when all’s said and done, it’s funny how good it feels to get back to one’s family, to one’s private places, to one’s own bed. There’s really no place like home, is there? Or is there?
By 1961, however, I had grown into a self-confident young man, eight years old, and I was embarking on a great adventure: flying all the way to England, wielding my brand-new cricket bat and unencumbered by the inconvenience of doting parents. On a Vickers Viking 27-seater turbo-prop aircraft of the newly formed British United Airways airline, I
took off from Nairobi’s Embakasi Airport, as my mother stood weeping and waving me into the sky. What grand excitement was in store, I thought, as we flew over the Great Rift Valley to our first stop, Entebbe, on the Ugandan shores of Lake Victoria, then along the course of the Nile River to Wadi Halfa in the Sudan. I began to feel the yearning for an adventure romance welling up inside me, as I stared out of the porthole window over the Sahara Desert, heading towards Benghazi in Libya, by the Mediterranean Sea.
That’s when it happened. On a stopover, a new crew boarded the aircraft and – behold! – a young, strikingly beautiful stewardess stepped aboard. She was a family friend who happened to be working on that flight. She said she’d come to take care of me, and so she did as we flew on to Malta, Rome and, finally, Gatwick. I put my head down on her lap and drifted off to sleep. Sweet dreams, indeed, for a child of eight!
I’ve had a seemingly inexhaustible passion for travel ever since then, often visiting as many as 15 countries in a single year, always learning, listening to languages I know inadequately, seeing new sights, smelling new fragrances, absorbing the unique sounds of markets and temples, hearing the delighted, uninhibited chatter of children sighting a white man for the first time.
And eating, eating, seldom asking what it is, always keen to experience the “exotic” things that people of other cultures choose for nourishment. I won’t deny that there have been moments when my courage has failed me and I have declined a particular dish, but I have braved earwig soufflé in Macao, snake in Taipei and sea urchin in Verdun, so I think I’ve done pretty well, haven’t I? And don’t forget that I’ve had to survive the rigors of English cuisine for much of my life!
So what is it that drives me on? Haven’t I experienced as much as any one man could possibly want in a lifetime? Not at all! There will always be more provinces, more cities or tiny villages, more islands to feed one’s lust for new experiences. But there will also be those favorite places that one goes back to time after time, where familiarity becomes the attraction.
I tell friends that I have three favorite cities to which I return as often as possible: Hong Kong, Sydney and Edinburgh. These places, so distant from each other, have two things in common: they are all cities with spectacular harbors (especially that of Sydney, which is incomparable); and they all hold a piece of my personal history. I have lived in all of them at one time or another, and there is the continual pull of familiar places and faces waiting to welcome me back. I am made to feel like a long-lost son, in a way one seldom experiences closer to home. Actually, I suppose I have one more favorite place: Mayrhofen, in the Austrian Tyrol. No seaport there, but glorious clean snow-capped mountains that remind one how refreshing a simple change of scenery can be.
Then there’s the music and wine to go with travel. Wine has long been a passion of mine, not just because it offers wonderful drinking experiences, but also because every year produces different flavors and textures – so it is an annual round of new learning. The great beauty of wine for me, though, is that it draws me to wonderful, peaceful places in France and Spain and Italy and Australia and Argentina and South Africa, where I can talk to the winemakers about the trade they so love, and come away with a deeper understanding of what I am drinking. There is one place, however, which brings together my enjoyment of both wine and music. It’s called De Morgenzon (The Morning Sun) and it’s a vineyard in the Stellenbosch region of South Africa’s Cape Province. There they play Baroque music to the grape vines, day and night, in the belief that the gentle sound waves help to relieve the stress caused to the grapes by the hot summer sun. I don’t know if the theory works in practice, but the wines taste wonderful!
And so I continue to travel the world, taking pleasure from all that each of the continents has to offer – nature, peoples, music and humor. Almost everywhere I go, companionship seems to be a common trait of humanity. Is it a surprise that I’m a romantic? But when all’s said and done, it’s funny how good it feels to get back to one’s family, to one’s private places, to one’s own bed. There’s really no place like home, is there? Or is there?