I’ve just had a lovely long trip
in which everything went smoothly, the sea was like glass, the weather was
perfect, the food was great, I didn’t get sick… which means that it will soon
fade to just a pleasant but vague memory. It’s strange but the only trips we
remember vividly are the times when things go wrong.
I still remember every detail of
my first trip to Greece, wandering from town to town with a backpack, catching local buses, sleeping in people's spare rooms. We were
two naïve girls alone, constantly having to fend off unwanted advances from
Greek men who kept their own women shut away. There was only one occasion
when it got really worrying—when we found ourselves alone in a house with three
men and two beds. We had been invited there by an elderly man and assumed his
wife would be waiting for us. A soldier and another man had accompanied us up
the hill and we assumed they were escorting us out of chivalry. When they stayed and there was no wife to be seen we got distinctly nervous. Well, nobody
tried anything and we gave a good speech about promising our parents that we
would not stay where there was no lady to chaperon, and eventually the soldier escorted us
down the hill again. Pfew.
Another trip I
remember vividly was the time we tried to be among the first tourists to
Ladakh, the Himalayan kingdom that had been off limits because of its proximity
to China. We had hired a Ladakhi driver to come for us with a vehicle at 4 in
the morning, so that we could reach our destination by nightfall. He arrived, his
face completely expressionless, not seeming to speak or understand any known
language. The vehicle was an open jeep. Freezing cold. We drove and finally
climbed the Zoji-la pass, 15000 feet. Road had streams running across it, herds
of nomad sheep and goats wandering down it—oh and a 3000 feet drop on one side.
We reached the top, kept going through wild, Himalayan no man’s land and at 4
p.m. we reached a road block, manned by the Indian army. It turned out there
had been a landslide, washing away twenty five kilometers of road. The driver had obviously known this before we
started. We had no choice but to turn around and drive back.
It
began to get dark. It was bitterly cold and we discovered the driver had other
little quirks—like thinking he could save gas by switching off the engine every
time we went downhill. Since the hills often involved sheer drops this was not
good. I sat with my hand poised and every time it went near the key I slapped
it away. We were horribly conscious of
that three thousand feet drop on the Zoji-la. We had had nothing to eat since a
breakfast stop at first light. We finally got back to our houseboat at midnight
and the driver left without a word or a smile.
Yes,
I remember that trip pretty well. And the French farmhouse in which my first
task every morning was to sweep up the bits that had fallen down during the
night, or the camping trip when it rained solidly for a week and our site
became a lake. My theory is that humans
aren’t meant to have it easy. We are built for survival and struggle and it’s
only then that we feel fully alive. Maybe that’s why we like mystery novels—we
create times of stress and heightened emotion when humans are at their most
vulnerable.
So… any good survival stories to
share?
I'll be giving away an ARC of my upcoming Royal Spyness book called HEIRS AND GRACES to the best story.
