This was the book I needed to read after seriously questioning the whole purpose of my Scandinavian summer and the direction my life was taking.
I have always thought that a book about taking a journey would be a fascinating read. There Are Other Rivers is that narrative and speaks to the process more than the content of a journey. It is the story of Alastair Humphreys‘ walk across India yet this story could take place anywhere.
Humphreys writes about how he came up with the idea for this journey (roughly, find a river to follow that went from coast to coast). The execution is incredibly simple and he writes of both the monotony and the diversity that exist simultaneously. Anyone who has ever undertaken a crazy sounding adventure will be able to follow the narrative. The journey sounds impressive and exotic yet the day to day is mundane: find water, find food, find a place to sleep, repeat. If you’re lucky you’ll find some great companionship, an interesting vista or temple, an animal you’ve never seen before. Eventually this becomes your normal and it’s hard to believe that this was ever exotic.
While this book is a great reminder to those adventurers like me who have had serious doubts about the purpose of our adventure I believe that this has a broader appeal. Many people haven’t pushed themselves to take an adventure because of their fear of the unknown. One of the topics that Humphreys tackles in his blog and other books is the barrier to entry to adventure. This topic is the reason I stumbled across his writing in the first place since it is a subject very near to my heart. He has written extensively and received acclaim for branding and pushing the idea of microadventures, that is, doing something that is within the bounds of your daily life but pushes you to see the world differently. There Are Other Rivers helps demystify the exotic and make the idea of crossing India on foot seem just as normal as going to work everyday. One of the benefits of travel is to see firsthand that people across the world are more similar than different. Walking across a giant country like the US or India is no different than walking across your small town except that the way your problems are solved may be different. If you need water while walking across your town you may stop at a friend’s house for a drink. In India Humphreys refills from various local sources and must treat his water to prevent illness. In Norway I would stick my bottle in an ice cold river and drink through a simple filter. Fundamentally we are just getting a drink of water but we have learned about how other humans, with the same need as us, solve this problem.
