Gallivant with 'Ghost Train' author Paul Theroux
— -- Three decades after traveling from London to Tokyo and back via Russia, mostly by train — chronicled in his 1975 best seller The Great Railway Bazaar — Paul Theroux did it again, retracing most of his original route. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (Houghton Mifflin, $28) describes his latest odyssey, which he discusses with USA TODAY.
Q: The most striking change you saw? A: Without question, Vietnam. From a country that was a muddy, flattened, bloody, beleaguered hell hole … to the country it is today: flourishing, forward-looking and, almost incredibly, forgiving.
Q: The biggest disappointment? A: Burma was a military tyranny when I took the train to the far north all those years ago. Nothing has changed, though it seems quite a bit worse: poorer, more oppressed, more exploited, thanks to China and India's support of the Burmese generals.
Q: The best surprise? A: I stopped at a wonderful guest house called Candacraig in Maymyo, Upper Burma, in 1973. I became friends with the elderly manager, Mr. Bernard. On my return 34 years later, the place was still lovely and being run by Mr. Bernard's son, who remembered me and said how happy his late father was to have appeared in my book.
Q: How tempted were you to try to retrace your 1973 route through Afghanistan? A: After I read about the numerous abductions and killings of Western wanderers like myself in Afghanistan, it was an easy decision to detour through Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan — some great train rides in those countries. And lately they have been in the news, so I think I was lucky in my timing.
Q: What's your all-time favorite train ride? A: There's something wonderful about boarding a train on a rainy day in a cold dreary place and, after a day or so of travel in a sleeper, arriving in a sunny place. Lots of trains qualify, not only the Orient Express (Paris-Istanbul), but also the Twilight Express in Japan (Sapporo-Kyoto) and even the Amtrak Crescent from New York to New Orleans.
Q: You live in Cape Cod and Hawaii. Is that as pleasant as it appears? A: Some people go to England for the weather and the food. But mine is, I suppose, the life I always aspired to —being barefoot, living in a sort of water world, and bathed in marine sunshine. It's a wonder I get any work done.
Q: Any place you haven't visited that you'd like to? A: Many, many: Alaska, Greenland, most of Canada, Iceland, and others, including Scandinavia, where I've never been. And Mississippi, Montana, the Ozarks. The world is very big and, in spite of opinions to the contrary, the world is round.
Q: Would you rather be known as a travel writer or as a novelist? A: I started my writing career as a fiction writer and I have published 27 works of fiction, but you can put "writer, traveler" on my tombstone.
Q: Do you agree with The Guardian's description of you as "the Indiana Jones of American literature"? A: Very nice. I'm flattered. But I have only been shot at three times: twice in Africa, once in the Philippines. I have been bitten by snakes, and once by bats in an outhouse one night in Central Africa. I think Indy can top those.
Q: Any advice to travelers? A: If you're planning to write something about your travels, go alone, go overland, go cheap, and leave all electronics behind. To all travelers, I urge patience.
Q: What's the difference between a traveler and a tourist? A: I think the provable maxim, that travelers don't know where they're going and tourists don't know where they've been.
Q: What are you writing next? A: Travel stimulates my imagination — maybe that's why I do it. The Mosquito Coast came from my South American travels. My last novel, The Elephanta Suite, was suggested by my recent trip. I'm now working on a novel about a crime in Calcutta.