Riders to the midnight sun

I’m almost done with an excellent travelogue, Riders to The Midnight Sun, written by a Marc Llewellyn. The book is based on his journey with his girlfriend, across the former Soviet Union, all 4500 kilometers of the straight line from one end in Ukraine, across the Baltic States, to another end in Russia. The amazing thing was they accomplished all of this on bicycles, hence the title of the book.

Marc’s first hand accounts offered much insight into the lives of the people in each individual country after the dissolution of the USSR. The many colorful characters and incredible incidents he runs, or rather, rides into, sums up to a pretty interesting read, and more importantly, has dug up some quite thought provoking subjects for both the author and the readers themselves. He even contributes some of his existentialism philosophy, which are scattered all about inside the book, and I have extracted my favorite bit out to share with you:

“..Life is a process of dying and renewing yourself, and there are certain circumstances that allow you to do that; and the best of them is travel. The journey is one of those frequent opportunities in life to take stock and to renew. Remove yourself from your normal occupations and you are free of them; you can shed your old skin and become anyone you want to be. You can try on a different personality. No-one will ever see you’ve changed, except when you come back, of course. It’s like falling in love, when your personality thaws a little, and allows for a little change in shape, before it refreezes again.

But you can’t change, of course, without reflection. The real traveler is active, not passive. He moves about but actively reflects on life and what is happening to him and lives each moment as it arrives. So many tourists go away and let new experiences wash over them like plankton in the sea, without grasping them and allowing their imagination to flower – you can travel down to the end of your street, and experience it differently every time, as long as you are aware, and have new eyes to see. And you must be there, in the present, like the Buddhists who close their eyes and walk all day barefoot on the warm ground just to feel it under their feet and know they are alive.”

Man, I’m itching to throw everything down and go backpacking right this very instant haha.