Canadian author reflects back on a trip made by a young man who ‘is as foreign to me now as the temples and mosques he explored’
Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You may unsubscribe any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails or any newsletter. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
“I did not want to see the man,” he writes in his new travel memoir, Strange Bewildering Time, a book that is often as much a work of sobering meditation, as it is a thoroughly engaging yarn.Article contentThe images and memories come from a different time, a time that now, in the era of mobile phones and their like, can seem eerily remote.
“I still think of the kindness of the Iranian people,” Abley tells Postmedia. “Indeed, never in any other country, even Britain where I could speak the language and understand the culture pretty well, had I experienced the kindness we met as young strangers in Iran … and other countries as well.” “That’s absolutely what I don’t want readers to take away,” he says with a laugh. “I want them to take away a sense that the world is an extraordinary place full of marvels … also a sense of the importance of travel as a way to understand other cultures first hand in a way you cannot do by watching TV travelogues or internet websites. A sense of discovery and curiosity and so on matters much more to me than any sense of nostalgia.
“There was this train journey in Northern India,” Abley is now recalling. “It wasn’t that it was dangerous in a physical sense, but that was when I was fighting hardest to maintain a sense of control over my surroundings. I don’t think I was really prepared. And the heat was so extreme that it sort of heightened this sense of derangement.”Article content
Philippines Latest News, Philippines Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
New study shows Saskatchewan has third highest clinic wait times in Canada | Globalnews.caThe wait times at Saskatchewan walk-in clinics jumped in 2022, and also exceeded the national average, which sits at 37 minutes, by approximately 14 minutes.
Read more »
Low visibility, low volatility make strange pairingRecession forecasts seem to be appearing and disappearing with great regularity
Read more »
Letters Feb. 9: Grocery price-gouging seems selective; new holiday a new cost for businesses
Read more »
Letters Feb. 9: Grocery price-gouging seems selective; new holiday a new cost for businesses
Read more »
Victoria has second-highest wait times in Canada for walk-in clinicsVictoria patients waited an average 137 minutes — more than two hours — per visit at walk-in clinics in 2022, the second-highest in the country after North Vancouver
Read more »
Franklin Jonas Is ‘Nostaglic For The Bad Times’ In Debut Single ‘Cocaine’Franklin Jonas is following in the musical footsteps of his famous brothers by releasing his first solo single. On Tuesday, Feb. 7, the younger brother of Jonas Brothers' members Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas unveiled his debut single and accompanying music video. The single, 'Cocaine', draws inspiration from his past struggles with alcohol and substance…
Read more »