GLOBETROTTER
GLOBETROTTER
SOMETHING TO DECLARE:
Why I secretly love the trauma of travel
in the UK at ChristmasIn the UK, we should add a third
item to Benjamin Franklin’s
seminal list of life’s certainties:
death, taxes and chaos for travellers at
Christmas. The national press has already
forecast rage and ruin on our sclerotic roads
and overstuffed trains, as breakdowns and
strikes threaten to freeze the country’s
transport infrastructure yet again.
While Santa’s elves ramp up production
north of the Arctic Circle, the old gremlins
crawl out from beneath piles of last year’s
unloved toys to engage in their own brand of
merrymaking. They urge union bosses to
petition for yet more stocking fillers; they
transform our clogged motorways into
diabolical chicanes of bollards; they snap up
the cheapest train tickets months in advance.
There’s nothing startlingly new about any of
this, of course – with minor variations, we
witness a seasonal spasm every year; it’s as
much a part of Yuletide as mince pies, mulled
wine and ill-advised knitwear.
The nadir of my own travel experiences
featured a much delayed flight from Lisbon to
Heathrow, an agonising journey to Victoria
(strikes, overground and underground), and a
nightmare crawl up the M1 aboard a rammed
Megabus (after a dusting, perhaps a centimetre,
of snow). Compare this day-long ordeal with
the Christmas I spent in Australia, one of the
few places where I’ve celebrated it abroad.
After a faultless flight from Melbourne to
Sydney, my hosts and I sped down free-flowing
roads (named, mockingly, the M1 and A1) to
Jervis Bay. Christmas Day was a scorcher, a
beaut: surfing, prawns on the barbie,
kangaroos and cockatoos in the backyard.
And yet... for all the surface shimmer of that
dreamy experience down under, I still felt a
stab of longing for the UK that went beyond
mere homesickness; call me a masochist, but
some perverse part of me secretly yearned forJames Kay is the editor of
lonelyplanet.com. He will
not be handing out any
Toblerone this year
because of ‘shrinkflation’.PIGS IN AN
AIRPORT
‘Emotional support animals’ are
officially a trend. Ducks,
kangaroos and monkeys have all
taken to the skies this year to
help their aerophobic owners
through the flight. Our favourite
ESA: LiLou the pig, who brings
joy and calm to all passengers at
San Francisco airport.SNAKES ON
A PLANE
There is nothing emotionally
supportive about smuggled
creatures escaping at 30,000 feet.
This year, we’ve had a pair of
tarantulas running amok in the
cabin of an AirTransat flight, and a
five-foot snake that made a bid for
freedom from the overhead locker
of a plane bound for Mexico City.the trials and tribulations that our sceptred
isle serves up so reliably.
For my memory of those hours spent
stripping the last few molecules of oxygen
from the stale air at the back of the
Megabus is not as grim as you might
expect; in fact, the abiding impression is
one of spontaneous camaraderie – a
well-documented phenomenon here at
times of crisis.
Slowly but surely, perfect strangers
struck up conversations and swapped
stories in the gloom, as rivulets of
condensation streamed down the windows
and the blinking lights of passing
roadworks became an acceptable proxy for
the twinkling LEDs of home.
Some kindly soul even sacrificed a
present for the greater good, unwrapping a
family-sized Toblerone and distributing
chunks of choc among the denizens of theback seat to shore up their plummeting
sugar levels.
The shared suffering created a sense of
solidarity, I think – just like me, those
travellers were battling to reach a distant
place where family and friends had
gathered, and some of them had overcome
even greater obstacles. There was a quiet
heroism about it all; an unspoken belief
that, however much hassle travel at
Christmas might involve, the effort would
be worth it. In the end, perhaps,
the pain of the journey is
equivalent to the pleasure of
arrival.