The World Is Becoming Smaller

My life extends to nearly seven decades, I have been a traveller for most of these years. At the age of five, my mother, sister and I flew to Singapore to join my father, a serving British Army officer.

The fact that the flight extended over three days will give you a hint at how tortuous flying between continents was in those days. However, it was an exciting adventure, given that overnight stops were made in Cairo and Calcutta, where my first glimpses of an exotic life played out around my very young, disbelieving eyes. India was particularly stunning in that regard as, perched on the back seat of the clanking, fume-belching motor vehicle, that served as our conveyance to our hotel, we wove our way through the pressing crowds obstructing the chaotic streets. Manually pulled rickshaws, humped back cows, women in strange gaudy clothes assaulted my eyes and the pungent smells, my nose.

Probably in that single journey, my lust for travel was born.

This was an adventure to another planet and, yet, it was the same Earth on which I had been born. However, it was very different, alien to my comfortable middle-class English upbringing but the seed had irredeemably been planted, and I have grown with that flowering ever since.

These days, I can flick on my Samsung phone and, through social media, converse with anyone from Marrakesh to Macao. So easy, so commonplace, so boring.

For those younger, let me illustrate how that would have been viewed in my childhood.

The comic book was my primary source of entertainment: the TV was not available, certainly no other electronic gadgets which routinely support our modern day living. The comics were mostly American, especially DC Comics, and I avidly followed the adventures of Dick Tracy, the detective with his amazing talking watch. 

How prescient!

Originally conceived in 1931, it was a syndicated comic strip but - man! - that watch! I never imagined that, in my lifetime, I could buy one from eBay. Here we are, in my lifetime, the talking wristwatch has become a reality, a commonplace lifestyle item. I guess if there ever is one science fiction gadget that reflects how we routinely interact with one another, this is it.

In 1954, there was no calling home as telephone calls were just so expensive. Ordinary handwritten mail was usually the way that families and loved ones stayed in touch with one another: airmail usually taking a week from Malaya to the UK. If you were lucky, it might take up to three weeks to get a reply to simple questions.

Personally, I have never been more connected but I do ask the question: has the romance of the unknown flown from my life? If I am travelling anywhere on this planet, all I have to do is access any of the numerous travel guides, airline websites, blogs and Youtube to discover the best deal, the nicest place to stay, even, ask my Facebook friends for recommendations.

The trouble is: the world has become a smaller place, it is losing much of its mystery. Consequently, regretfully, I have come to the conclusion that I am a man out of his time as I read of the adventures of travellers in past times.

A slow boat to somewhere unknown. A camel ride across hot, vacant deserts. Hacking through tropical jungles. Distant destinations hinted at in writer's dispatches.

Perhaps, Robert Louis Stevenson had it right all along.