For every day will be Sunday to thee, and wherever thou goest thou wilt have a priest, a church, and an altar along with thee.
William Law
When Stephen and I told friends of our plan to backpack round the world for a year, responses were mostly envious – “Can you take me in your suitcase?” Some people asked where we were going; a few asked, “What for?” I was 54; Stephen ten years older: perhaps this was not predictable behaviour.
I was born of a family that travelled – though not always from choice. My mother is Russian, but had to leave St Petersburg at the age of five. Her family then moved on to Latvia and finally Switzerland, where she was brought up. Her first marriage took her to Egypt for ten years, where she met my father who brought her to England. My father was brought up in Peru and, in his work for the Colonial Office, spent a great deal of time in Africa. When I was five we spent a year in Malaya. Travel was in the blood: it was no wonder that I had itchy feet. But bringing up my two children, then plunging into my own business, meant that my desire to travel had to go underground for a while. Once my children were independent, the possibility became a reality.
The birth of this particular journey lay in a heartfelt need to make connection with some far-flung friends who had been significant influences on my life, especially my spiritual life. I came to recognition of a spiritual life quite recently. Only after my marriage broke up in 1987 did I realise an overwhelming need for another dimension. When, after several years of seeking, I found Friends (the Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers) my life changed.
Their practice of silent unmediated worship – no priests, or rather “the priesthood of all believers” – spoke to me. They have no creed – faith is dynamic; what we believe today may not be the same as that which we believe tomorrow. A faith that is lived through testimonies to peace, truth, equality and simplicity. I found a community of independent spirits, taking responsibility for their lives and for the betterment of the world. From a lifetime of feeling that I couldn’t make a difference to poverty and injustice, I found myself among people who were making a difference; in small ways, individuals were quietly showing by example that life could be better.
For some years after that transition, I assumed that my finding of Friends had come out of the blue – no Quakers in my family – then realised that I had had unrecognised signposts all along the way. In a period of a few months, a series of encounters with people from my past made me realise that Quakers had always been there in my life: I had simply not been ready to embrace them.
So it was as a consolidation of that recognition that I wanted to pursue other friendships that I knew had spiritual significance for me, friendships that might help to answer the question “Who is there that can tell me who I am?”. There was Samuel in a remote village in Kenya, a young Roman Catholic priest with whom I have been corresponding since meeting at Taizé, the ecumenical monastery in France that I had visited in the years of my seeking. There was Lucinda. Like me, a former literary agent, she had given up work a few years before me, and is now running retreats both in Italy and in her home town of Toronto, Canada. There was Sasha, outside Moscow. We had also met at Taizé, and he had come over to stay with us one Christmas and told us of how tough life was in Russia.
Martha also came from my life as an agent. A writer and translator from the Chinese, she had fallen in love with Mongolia and now lives there for part of the year. She had set up a weaving cooperative with her own money and was something of a role model for me. And there was my cousin in Guatemala to whom I had always been close; a publishing friend in Sydney whom I hadn’t seen for years and a member of our Quaker Meeting who had sold up and emigrated, and was currently travelling round Australia.
A second strand of motivation was born out of a discomfort with my own affluent lifestyle. In the world of publishing for nearly thirty years, I had begun to feel increasingly out of synch with the prevailing mores. It was a comfortable world, and an insular one. I felt there were other worlds to explore and other work to be done: it was a dissatisfaction not only with my work but with my place in a “glamorous” arena – a glamour I had never believed in. When I became a Quaker, I found the impetus to move on, to move outwards and involve myself in the wider world. I sold my literary agency and worked, first of all as a volunteer, then as an employee for a Quaker charity in the East End of London, in the fifth most deprived ward in England. I was asked to start a community centre in this largely Bangladeshi area, from which stemmed an initiative to help the mostly refugee and immigrant local women to found their own businesses. Our microcredit programme was born.
I had also been working with homeless people in central London, people whose lives had slipped out of gear. They were often divorced men who had left their houses to their wives and children, feeling they could manage, then slipping into drink as life overcame them; young people leaving “care” or abusive homes; men leaving prison or the army, unable to cope after the protection of institutional life. After those four years working with men and women who live in this country in poverty and deprivation, I wanted to spend time in developing countries, experience for myself how most people in the world live. I had moved outwards from one world to a very different one. It had given me a hunger to see more.
Then, as my partner Stephen and I came back together, we began to discuss the idea of travelling, and other ideas came up. Stephen had lived in florida and Hawaii and wanted to revisit them. If we were to go to the States, I could visit friends in florida and I’d always wanted to see the desert in the south-west. Stephen had relations in San Francisco and also in British Columbia to which he had been evacuated in the war. We had both always wanted to go to India, and this became the centrepiece of our trip.
In particular, Stephen had a strong motivation to travel “among Friends”, to visit Quakers in other parts of the world, especially those living isolated from any local Meeting. We are a small faith worldwide, about 200,000, and generally pleased to receive visitors of like mind and heart. “Travelling in the Ministry” is a traditional form of service among Friends; we would be tiptoeing in the footsteps of many fine people. Despite the dangerous conditions, extensive travel to other Meetings was commonplace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the early days of Quakerism, the Valiant Sixty travelled all over England, proclaiming their faith; some went to Holland, even to Russia. John Woolman came from the States to England, arriving late for the Yearly Meeting of Quakers there because he refused to use stagecoaches which he felt mistreated the horses. Susanna Morris from Philadelphia, who died in 1755, travelled back and forwards across the Atlantic, the last time at the age of 70, despite having endured three shipwrecks on her previous voyages. Nothing that we could do could begin to come up to the valour of these stalwart Quaker souls.
Nonetheless, the blessing of our Meeting was important to us and we asked for and were given a “travelling minute” – a letter from our Meeting to take with us as an introduction, to be endorsed by each Meeting that we visited. To our surprise, before we left we were asked to address a gathering of some thirty Friends about our plans for the journey. The warmth of our send-off was unexpected, and one Friend thrust a fiver into my hand to give to any worthwhile project we might come across. Stephen and I had been so absorbed in the practicalities of our preparations that we hadn’t had time to realise the emotional power of such a leave-taking. It is hard to explain how important the support of our Meeting was throughout our journey; we felt it with us everywhere we went. Each time our minute was endorsed, each time we received an email from a member of our Meeting, we felt the warmth of its embrace.
Our original idea was simply to go, and let ourselves be guided by the Spirit about when to move on and where. This would have enabled us to involve ourselves fully in a project if it presented itself, without constraint. In the event the only affordable method was to buy a round the world ticket which demanded a route and a (changeable) timetable. In the planning, our newly re-established relationship trembled under the tensions of our differing points of view (I really didn’t want to spend so much time in first-world countries; Stephen didn’t want to go to South America or Mongolia) but compromises were eventually made. We were both concerned that we were not going to be staying anywhere long enough to make a difference, that we would always be “passing through”, but we realised that we would have to consider it as a series of “tasters”; perhaps we would find a place or a project to which we wanted to return.
Planning the trip was time-consuming. Fortunately, my son Guy works in the travel industry and was able to sort out a route that fitted in with the demands of the ticket: up to 15 stops, 39,000 miles, and one year. Though we did not want to be tied down, it was important for us to contact the people we wanted to see – and this included Quakers on a list of isolated Friends and Meetings in various parts of the world. Despite my Luddite tendencies, I learned how to communicate on email, and contacted dozens of people all over the world. I tried to alternate “easy” and “difficult” countries – I knew some places would be tougher than others, and in many places we had no contacts.
I was determined to go somewhere for a holiday before launching into the journey proper. Brazil had not been on our original list, but when my son suggested a place on the Brazilian coast I remembered bumping into a publishing friend who had mentioned that she had bought a house there. Feeling very cheeky, I phoned her and she and her partner very kindly allowed us to use it.
So, the decision was made to go to:
Brazil, for a holiday;
Peru – my father was brought up there, and I wanted to see it, as well as the Mayan ruins;
Bolivia and Costa Rica for the many Quakers there;
Honduras where Stephen had been for a conference;
Guatemala, to visit my cousin;
Then the States and Canada – we decided to drive along the south from Florida to L.A. and then up the west coast into British Columbia;
Hawaii, where Stephen had lived;
Tonga. I was very keen to visit a South Sea island, and Stephen wanted to do some sailing, so after a lot of juggling Guy managed to get us to Tonga;
Then to New Zealand and
Australia – Friends in both countries encouraged us to extend our planned few days there.
Thailand, originally mainly because it was a Buddhist country, but increasingly to visit isolated Friends;
three months in India, with a commitment to volunteer at a number of projects, also to particular ashrams and a wish to see, for instance, the Himalayas.
Then to Singapore to catch a plane to Beijing, again only for a few days to catch the Trans-Siberian express to
Mongolia, and on to Russia – Moscow to see Sasha, and St Petersburg, my mother’s birthplace.
Last stop, Stockholm, not on our list, but beautiful, and the home of my singing teacher!
It was simply not possible to go to Africa on our ticket. I would have to visit Samuel another time.
We were invited to stay by relations and Quakers, and we joined Servas, an organisation of international peace and friendship, members of which host travellers for a couple of nights – a magnificent way of meeting local like-minded people.
The timing of the trip was crucial. Stephen, having come to the end of his computer programming contract a couple of years short of retirement age, was free to leave his freelance work; two of the projects I had been working on had come to fruition, so I too was able to leave. After lifetimes of bringing up children and working we were free. I rejected any notion of “a year out”. For Stephen it was a year of transition to a new life; for me it was the next step in a journey that had started with my leaving the world of publishing. For both of us, the journey was a spiritual one. Quakerism is not a cut and dried religion: it is a way of life and a community of seekers. This trip was an expression of our way of life and a context for our seeking. As a form of outreach, we had printed visiting cards with our names and “Quaker Travellers” on them. If people were interested, they would ask, and it would provide an opening for conversation.
The practicalities of going away for a year were formidable. financially we were able to go because we each had some savings to pay the fare, and our weekly budget for the year was established by the rent we received for our flats in London – perfectly adequate for living in third world countries; tight in, for instance, the USA. But we wanted to travel simply, on local buses and trains, eating local food and staying in the homes of local people or in backpackers’ hostels. I knew from experience that travellers cheques were no use in some countries, so we decided mainly to rely on ATMs abroad, though I did take some dollar travellers cheques for emergencies, together with some currency for our first stop.
We bought rucksacks – wonderful new versions that had optional wheels. For wrinklies like us it was essential not always to have to carry our stuff, and in the event we used the wheels most of the time. Water bottles; torches, sheet sleeping bags (Guy had bought me a luxurious plum-coloured silk one to pamper me on the trip), mosquito net, heavy duty insect repellent (deet) for the jungle. We had a battery of jabs, but decided against those for rabies and Japanese encephalitis. We were given conflicting advice about the use of malarial prophylactics: increasingly people feel that it affects indigenous people badly if the drugs used by them as medicine for malaria is also used by visitors as deterrent. But in the end we bowed to our doctor’s advice.
We were anxious to travel light, and took a minimum of clothes – for hot weather only, as the cold countries came at the end of our trip, and we decided that we could buy padded clothes in Beijing. Nonetheless, we both ended up with an extra bag. My weakness was for books: not only a guide book for each of the first countries, but dictionaries/phrase books and books to read that were relevant to that country: Marquez and The Power and the Glory for Latin America, Faulkner and Steinbeck for the States, the Upanishads and other Hindu scriptures for India and Tolstoy for Russia. I also carried a portable CD player with a dozen or so favourite CDs. Stephen took a short-wave radio and a number of practical items, such as compass, string, pliers, emergency blanket (a piece of foil), blow-up cushion etc. I decided to send some things ahead: to the States and to Australia, where friends kindly agreed to receive them – mainly books, but also modest clothes specifically for India. I had been to Bangladesh a few years earlier and had bought a couple of salwar kameezes at Whitechapel market for the purpose. Practical loose trousers and tunic, with scarf draped to hide any notion of female form, they make life easier, and are a courtesy to local sensibilities.
A large portion of my extra bag was taken up with dozens of bottles of pills. In January, three months before we were due to depart, I was assailed by violent night sweats, hot flushes and mood swings. Belatedly, the menopause was upon me, and my energy was depleted, just as I needed it most. I was adamant about not taking HRT so I went to a Chinese herbalist. It was evident that I could not take a vast volume of herbs with me, or indeed brew them up en route, so the doctor gave me phials of little black pills, a whole phial to be swallowed morning and night. Enough for three months, the little bottles rattled as we went.
A lot of the work was in planning for our absence rather than for our trip. My daughter kindly agreed to check our mail; I gave my son Power of Attorney to deal with any problems that came up. My mother agreed to store my belongings, and Stephen’s sister stored his. The flat was to be let furnished but we had to remove personal possessions: thousands of books, records, clothes, pictures etc. My children borrowed a number of pictures, books and discs, all of us knowing that they would find it hard to return some of them! I gave post-dated cheques to my accountant for the income tax; I put everything on direct debit, including my credit card. To let the flat, I had to buy a lot of new equipment – the tatty things we were quite happy with would not be appropriate for anyone else. The bed that had been propped up with books for years had to go, as did the oven with a wonky door. Both items that could be mended easily in countries such as Egypt or India, but no one would do it here.
I had always avoided learning Spanish. I speak French and Italian and didn’t want to confuse myself but, faced with three months in Latin America, I knew that the time had come. Stephen, who does not find languages easy, went to Spanish classes for some time before we left. We had originally planned to leave in early March, so I had left work a month earlier to give me time to get ready. Stephen was unhappy at the idea of missing his last meeting of the Quaker European committee he was on so, in the end, we deferred our trip until mid-April. This meant I had a lot of time to prepare, not only in practical terms, but mentally. Whereas Stephen was working until the last moment, I had been thinking of the year ahead for some time.
Our flight was to leave at 2200 hours on April 18th, 2001. At two o’clock that morning Stephen turned to me and said “I think we should put this off for a bit; I don’t feel ready to go.” I then spent most of the day accompanying my daughter to court where she was appearing as a witness – our usual lives and responsibilities were still pulling at us, and I found parting from my children unutterably hard.
But at last, after all those hours, days, years, we were free, ready to go. Armed with passports, spare photos for the visas that would have to be obtained later on in the trip, a book full of airline tickets and a filofax full of addresses, we set off for Heathrow, and a 13-hour trip to our first stop, Rio.
On the eve of our journey I wrote in my journal:
People ask “Where are you going?” then one or two ask “What for?” A good question and hard to answer. To gain a new perspective, from seeing how life is in developing countries, away from the spoilt affluence of this insular part of the world; to learn to be less busy, to respond to the Spirit, to be more spontaneous; to be useful, humble, learning and contributing, to try to live in the present and respond to the needs that present themselves. It will change us – who knows how?