By Tom Thumb, Posted Dec 10, 2006
Sections: Intro El Camino de Santiago Cape to Cairo Raft the Amazon? New York to LA Road to Kathmandu The India Rickshaw Race Trans-Siberian Train Pilgrimage to Kailash Hajj to Mecca Improvise More Travel Ideas
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50 years on from the Beat Generation and Messrs Kerouac, Cassidy and co are still held in deep regard, acquiring an almost mythic status in their urge to roam their great continent in pursuit of the elusive jazz moment.
Today, the US is still quite sharply divided between the cooler cultures of the coasts and vast, sprawling tracts of farmland, desert and fundamentalist Christians in between who think Darwin was a blasphemous heretic. The homogenising effects of cable TV have done much to take the fun out of travel in the States but you can still get a collage of where the heartland of the modern world empire is at by traversing its width.
Hitchhiking would be an ambitious way to go these days, even if Kerouac still inspires teenagers to try their luck following his thumb prints. A better bet is probably to buy your own second hand car or van and sell it on arrival on the other side. You can save money by camping out in some of the most spectacular scenery you’ll ever see along the way and put on some weight by eating diner food.
Another option is to use the Driveaway scheme where you can deliver someone’s vehicle across country for them while they fly. Just be sure to count the dents and scratches before you sign the papers…
Read Kerouac’s On the Road for inspiration.
Tom Thumb’s personal website
and you can find him on Facebook, too.
Hand to Mouth to India is the tale of when I hitchhiked from England to India at the age of 20 with no money at all.
Passing through England, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and finally arriving in Goa where I slept on the beach all season and wrote the book.
Buy it on the Kindle or on the Nook
Tales of a Road Junky covers the last 12 years of my journeys around the world. telling the tale of coming of age in the Goa trance scene, rescuing foreign prisoners in Delhi, selling fake Rolex watches in the street in Tokyo, getting into trouble with the medicine mafia in Brazil and delving deep into the heart of Israelity in the Promised Land.
Buy it on the Kindle or on the Nook
Imagine you, the room you’re in, the planet and everyone in it were all just a Story, figments of imagination in the mind of a Storyteller. But with Hoomanity set on self-destruction, the Storyteller’s health begins to fail and if he should die, what would become of the Story that he tells?
All hope for our world lies in the hands of a 9 year old boy and a foolish Bloon…
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