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Anxieties of a Reluctant Traveller

By Jack Harry - Winner of BackTracker Erasmus Competition 2015

For one reason or another I’ve never had ‘that’ trip away. A lack of enthusiasm, money or organisation have always come between me and my seminal exotic getaway. Fortunately this isn’t a sob story; I’ve had my Vodka and 0% beer fuelled post-GCSE coming of age week away and my parents’ generosity meant I got drunk on Las Ramblas and went to clubs where I saw people on hard drugs for the first time after being accepted to university. In years that followed though, most of my spare money was put towards underwhelming scores rather than an Iguazu Falls piggybank, not that I minded, I was happy to watch Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and its spin-offs in smoke filled rooms and decide that it wasn’t really for me.

The thing is, I study languages and now find myself in Chile for 5 months. The first part of my Year Abroad was spent in Bordeaux and it was easy enough not to drift too far from my ‘yeah it’s pretty nice, very French, but a bit boring’ line that I’d got in my head from the outset, but here I’m plunged into the world of the gap-year, the wanderlust afflicted and the nomads. I may have stopped smoking weed now (cheers panic attacks), but my opinions on travelling are still laden with some of the pretension and a lot of the cynicism from my wake and bake days. One of the things that has stayed with me is the uncomfortable immediacy of it all, seeing ‘X and two other friends are at Machu Picchu’ pop up on my newsfeed seems hugely mundane and has induced in me a paralysing and restrictive fear of going to any ‘bait places’ so tangible that it led to a Bucharest ’14 mini-break.

I consoled myself with the thought that mine was a ‘nobler’ quest, that of the linguist who wouldn’t submit to any throwaway 21st century tourism and I stressed the importance of my studies to anyone who’d listen. I wasn’t bringing a Go-Pro, I was the second coming of Hemingway. Then came the first geotagged mobile upload swiftly followed by a tweet and an Instagram on the hostel WiFi. I’m not saying I’ll be taking selfies with Mapuche children before my time in Chile is out, but maybe the first inklings that I might have been a bit of a dick when I was denigrating others are starting to appear. I haven’t had a blindingly obvious epiphany that there isn’t just one way to travel, that it’s subjective and everyone gets different things out of their experiences - I knew this already, but living abroad forces you to confront this and accept it as a truth rather than some wafty notion.

The Street Art King of Granada: El Niño de las Pinturas

Ok, ok we get it. The Alhambra is the tourist attraction in Granada. The whole of Spain even. And it’s no doubt every bit as beautiful and impressive as it’s made out to be. But there are a whole load of other amazing things to see in Granada as well. The art of 'el Niño de las Pinturas’ (translated as ‘the child of paintings’) is one such example. Home-grown in Granada, this street artist uses the old Jewish quarter, Realejo, as his playground. It was at the age of just 11 that el Niño, a.k.a. Raύl Ruiz, first picked up a can of spray paint. Now, he has travelled all over the world and has murals all over the place - from New York to Venezuela, Morocco to Hungary and has collaborated in projects with organisations such as Doctors Without Borders. His main passion is street art, having his art accessible to everyone. And you’ll be able to find more than enough amazing art to keep you going in Granada. Drag yourself out of bed early as quite a few of el Niño’s murals are on shop shutters. You won’t regret missing that lie-in as these are often the best and most striking pieces. Keep a look out for his portrait of Joe Strummer from The Clash, a notorious figure around Granada in the 80s and 90s after the band went tits up. Treat yourself once you’ve explored to a drink in Bar Ízaro, Calle de Elvira 125; a bar that actively encourages street art, and is covered with paintings by el Niño himself. Inspired by the natural world and the people he meets, his colours and intricate portraits will intrigue you, as will the use of poetry in his work. Some examples: “el camino que nos une no necesita mapa” (the road that unites us needs no map),  “cansando de no encontrar respuestas, decidί cambiar mis preguntas” (tired of not getting responses, I decided to change my questions) and “el mundo está oscuro, ilumina tu parte” (the world is dark, light up your part). Food for thought while you’re making your merry way around.

See more of el Niño’s work at: http://elninodelaspinturas.es/

Apocalypse maybe in a little bit - Nha Trang (part 1)

‘Don't you think it’s a little risky for some R&R?’ and other forced, clichéd references to popular culture.

You know that bit in Apocalpyse Now when they get to that bridge and they find utter carnage: there are people firing into nothingness, I think there are flares being set off by renegades– ‘Who's the commanding officer here, soldier?’ – you know the one. Nha Trang by night slightly resembles this. I recall the guidebook saying that the place was a ‘heavyweight’, and the combative undertones are not to be ignored. It is not nightlife to be taken lightly. Some of the travellers in our hostel were nursing bandages after rubbing locals up the wrong way. Another evening, a petty argument with a barman led to a full-scale evacuation of the vicinity after knives were drawn, although I fear that we might have been writing in a scene from Kidulthood into our otherwise Inbetweeners trip. To my sheltered home-counties mind, I thought that the insistent question ‘where’s Charlie?’ was testament to the permanence of Hollywood rather than a yearning for narcotics. I found Vietnam to be the most interesting of the Southeast Asian nations to travel through; but Nha Trang has a certain grittiness about it that can be quite unpleasant.

With that being said, there are a couple of exceptions. The first is The Sailing Club. Tarnished with the label of ‘an institution’, it feels a bit like that restaurant Sandy Cohen opens with Jimmy Cooper in The O.C. For the homesick, it is the closest thing you will find to Embargoes in that part of the world, but it is on a beach. I thought it was pretty cool at the time, and to be fair it probably is, but I don’t want to be judged as tasteless if you go and find the cast of Ex on the Beach dancing to Pitbull, which is a very real danger.

The Gates of Hell, Turkmenistan

Goodness gracious great balls of fire

What do you get if you chuck a burning match into a pit of methane? Why, only the fiery setting for Lucifer’s steamy wet dream.

Local legend has it that this is what the Soviet Union did back in 1971. The Darvaza Crater, nicknamed the Gates of Hell, opens up ominously in the desert of the Ahal Province in Turkmenistan.

Apart from the astonishingly depressing white marble dream world of the capital Ashgabat, reminding us why psychotic despots shouldn’t be given the pin code to the national credit card, Darvaza is perhaps one of very few things to see in Turkmenistan. But by Lucifer, it’s worth it.