'…a rattling good travel book.' Birmingham Post'A book which insists that you do not put it down…Alastair Scott is a remarkably talented travel writer.' Western Mail'He must be the most readable of the new generation of travel writers.' The Scots MagazineIn this book, Alastair Scott presents an account, by turns comic and astonishing, of his remarkable journey from South East Asia home to Scotland. Though by itself it contains event enough almost for a lifetime, the book is also the last of a trilogy covering his five-year pilgrimage around the world.Travelling on foot and by public transport - including camel, elephant and Calcutta's (very public) Black Hole buses - Alastair Scott slips, trots, lumbers and squeezes through the cultures of the Far and Near East. He carries a notebook, a will to understand and a bent towards small absurdities. An optimist, except at the Somme, he carries a universal bath plug where there are no universal drains.This is a richly evocative picture of diverse lands and people: a hasty funeral in the lush islands of Indonesia; a bizarre game of football in Thailand; an extensive journey in China, just one year after the country opened to independent travellers; Burma, by Horsecart Number Twelve; recollections of a relative lost on Everest; a rhinoceros hunt in Nepal; microcosmic India; the Tibetans of Ladakh; the barbed wire of the Bible land; the mightiest castle in Syria; the men-only monasteries of Mt Athos; the return of a Scot; a journey from Bali to Skye.
