News from the North

If you have the overwhelming urge to see me make a fool of myself on national television (well, an obscure cable channel), now is your chance. My Mystery Ink interview will air on Wednesday, September 29th at 10 am, 6 pm and 2am on the Global Mystery channel. All showtimes presumably EST. Don't touch that dial.

I'll be spending the next few months living in Paris. Because, well, I could, and it's Paris. I'm pleased to report that DP/TOTD has recently received a spate of excellent reviews from publications as august as The Times of London, as far-flung as Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, and as, um, capitol-of-Canada as the Ottawa Citizen. Other reviews: "A well-paced thriller with plenty of twists and some creepy moments that keep the pages turning." - Time  Out London "A compelling thriller about the mysterious deaths of travellers in Third World countries, committed, the lead character suspects, by other Westerners" - TNT  Magazine Chosen by Metro Today as one of their 'Top Summer Reads'. "A sharp debut that never lets up on the tension, with a denouement that is both shocking and utterly right ... Jon Evans ... isn't about to develop into something special - he's already there." - January  Magazine "It's very, ve...

"I Survived The World's Most Dangerous Road" proudly proclaims the T-shirt I did not receive. Because they're out of shirts, not because I post from beyond the grave. 3600 vertical metres in 5 hours is quite a ride. We began in stark high-altitude where nothing grew but lichen and where the sides of the road were limned with ice, and, layered in many clothes, bombed down steep and exquisitely sinuous asphalt at speeds circa 70kph/40mph. Then, suddenly, two lanes shrank to one, asphalt turned to extremely rocky dirt, and the adrenaline began to seriously flow. To our left, about a metre or two away, sheer drops of up to 1000 feet. To our right, equally sheer cliffs (at one point we rode behind a waterfall for about fifty feet). Before and behind us, enormous trucks oozing their slow way up and down incredibly twisted rocky road. When they stand off, which happens fairly often, the downhill vehicle has to back up to a passing bay, aka one of the little projections of ro...

There is nothing quite so headclearing as four days of hard slogging through tranquil wilderness. The Inca Trail is a busy trail, far from remote, worn smooth by tens of thousands of boots a year, yes; but that doesn't detract even a little from its beauty. Am I glad I walked it. (For values of "I" that do not currently include my calf or quadricep muscles.) Roughing It DAY ONE. Stride up trail, manfully proud of carrying my own 12kg/25lb pack. Magnanimously make way for our stream of 18 sandal-clad porters, the largest of whom is six inches and forty pounds smaller than I, each weighed down by roughly 40 lbs each of food, water, tents, fuel, chairs, tools, pots, pans, plates, cups, etc etc. A glorious day, surrounded by raw wilderness, as I desired, entirely untrammeled by civilization, making our way on foot down the magical Inca Trail, like the Incas themselves, as it should be! The rest of the world should throw down their shackles of cars and fixed-wall buildings....

Am back in Lima, fighting off a 24-hour jungle bug. You'd think an evening spent in the grip of fever would spark Stokeresque visions and creativity, but in sad fact I feel all mundanely uninspired. So click if you dare, but I fear this travelogue will be less entertaining than usual. At play in the fields of the Lord Iquitos: a strange place. The largest city in the world (pop. circa 400,000) with no road or rail connections - everything and everyone must come or go by air or riverboat. This lends it a real frontier-town feel, which the DEA helicopters, downtown cafes dominated by a small crew of dissolute British expats, and gutted turtles and caimans (gators) for sale in the local market do nothing to dispel. Still, it's civilization; it has an international airport, banks, pharmacies, a cinema, cheap Internet cafes, a five-star hotel, and a thriving tourist industry, the last focused mostly on expeditions to lodges set in jungle proper. It's not at all apparent when in ...

Only 48 hours away from 60 hours of travel (but less than 2 calendar days; aren't time zones wonderful?) with the routing: Sydney-Auckland-LA-Miami-Lima. I do it for the love, yes, but mostly for the frequent-flier miles. The Blue Mountains Easter weekend was spent camping in the Blue Mountains, an hour west of Sydney (ok, 4 hours with Easter traffic), with two old friends of mine, who in order to protect their identities I shall call Chris & Chris, rather than Chong & Andrea. It was an uneventful weekend spent sleeping in tents and walking through peaceful verdant eucalyptus forest. Except for the eventful bits. The driving pointer rotated to me on Saturday, and I was eager to drive, as I'd never driven a left-hand-side stick-shift before - in fact, had only driven a stick maybe 10 times total before. My travel companions were considerably less eager. I thought I might get some pointers from them, some benefit from their vast experience, but sadly they unhelpfully spe...

Aotearoa I spent all of 72 hours in New Zealand, which is long enough to realize that the whole country is clearly some kind of elaborate scam. The people are too friendly, the landscapes too beautiful, the atmosphere too agreeable. Actually I think they're overdoing it. I mean, who hears bus passenger after passenger call out "Goodbye, thank you," to the driver when exiting - during rush hour, no less - without getting a little suspicious? I don't know whether they're trying to lure settlers in order to sacrifice them in some kind of Shirley-Jackson-esque unholy blood rite, or if the body snatchers have taken over, but there's clearly some kind of catch. A three-day stopover in NZ is a bit like taking a single sip from a single bottle from one of the world's great wine cellars. All I really had time for was a quick rentacar drive to the to the Coromandel Peninsula, where I took an increasingly narrow and windy road north, ocean to my left, Mirkwood to my...

By far the most exciting event that almost happened on this road trip was my Jessica Simpson moment in Tijuana. ( context for non-North-American readers.) I went into McDonald's, continuing my policy of dining in as many of their international branches as possible. Hoping to find another country-specific delicacy like Japan's Egg Teriyaki McBurger or India's Maharajah Mac, I ordered the most incomprehensible item on the menu, the McPechugo. The girl behind the counter somatically indicated that it would take a little while. I nodded and moved to the side. Picking at my French fries, it occurred to me that in French, a language which is at least a cousin of Spanish, "peche" means "fish". I came to the shocking conclusion that for the first time ever, in all my hundreds of McD's dining experiences in over a dozen countries, I had ordered a Filet-O-Fish. I decided to let the order stand; ordering such in Tijuana seemed somehow fitting, and also a good ...

Monday I was a little weak but basically recovered, and got about six hours of skiing in at Brévent-Flégère. I hadn't been on skis since January 2002. On the other hand I started skiing when I was 5, and it is, in fact, just like riding a bicycle; I was bombing down the black slopes in no time at all. Tuesday, at La Tour, was one of my favourite ski days ever - my legs were strong, and I found one of my favourite runs of all time, "Belle Place", and spent most of the day going up and down its variations. Wednesday, at Les Grands-Montets, started off poorly. "In French," said the man who had just recovered the poles I had abandoned about 50 feet upslope, when I hit an unexpected ice patch, caught an edge, faceplanted into the mountain (bestowing a large bruise beneath my right eye which I still proudly wear) and tumbled for a fair ways, "we call this un jour blanc ". Thick white squalling snow, visibility of about 5 feet, which makes skiing extremely...

Today I trekked 45 minutes upriver through primary jungle into a cave, a cave made of rock forged by the dinosaur killer that hit the Yucatan 65 million years ago, a cave infested by vampire bats and blind chittering spiders, a cave used a thousand years ago for Mayan bloodletting rituals and at least 13 human sacrifices whose calcified remains still litter the cathedral-like grand chamber. What I'm trying to say is: You want atmosphere? We got atmosphere. It was a damp journey. The cave was carved by a cold river which is mostly wadable but is often chest-deep and sometimes required swimming, not to mention a fair amount of (very easy) rock climbing. The river is also responsible for the phantasmagoric rock formations found everywhere inside, formations that look like glittering crystalline curtains, arches draped with rippling fabric, frozen waterfalls, enormous columns of melting candle wax, Gigeresque fluted tenebrous ribs, pockmarked by perfectly spherical holes in the ceiling...

Burning Man Avant-garde apocalypse, beatnik bacchanal, counterculture carnival, Discordian Disneyland, Mad Max meets Mardi Gras. "Burning Man is a self-service cult. Wash your own brain." Dehydration, dust storms, and decadence, a potluck Las Vegas, a pyromaniacal playland, a true Bazaar Of The Bizarre. "Burning Man is all about finding playmates. It's like recess for kids." The Road Warrior crossed with Fellini Satyricon as co-written by Pynchon and DeLillo. Sex, drugs, and psychedelic trance, sorrow and survivalism, a camping trip in a neon wonderland, a mad scientist's mirage made flesh. And ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, and only the desert remains. People have written a lot of things about Burning Man, some of it even coherent, but I didn't find any actual description of the mechanics of the event, so I think I'll take a hack at it -- partly for others, partly for memory, partly because I think I may be using the playa as a fiction...

ONE DAY IN EXPATLAND 9AM Wake in luxurious, high-ceilinged expat mansion in expensive Ma'adi suburb. Drink grande cappucino. Host gives me keys to apartment, introduces me to driver, tells me car and driver are at my disposal. 9:30AM Slightly confused by situation; unaccustomed to travelling with own transport. Humbly request of driver that perhaps he could take me to pyramids at Sakkara, if it isn't too much trouble. Apologize profusely for taking up his day. 10AM Arrive Sakkara. Visit step pyramid. Hot out. 11AM Politely ask driver to stop to buy water and then go to Dashur pyramids. No water stop. Remind driver of water request. Buy water, visit Dashur pyramids. Very hot out. 1PM Ask driver for lunch recommendations. Driver recommends McDonald's. Give driver sidelong look and have him take me to Nile Hilton for lunch. Hilton pleasantly air-conditioned. Blistering heat makes exterior difficult. 3PM Have driver take me to Giza Pyramids. Look around briefly. Glimpse Sphinx ...

All credit to Moses. Nowadays Mount Sinai is a straightforward two-hour hike up a well-worn trail, but three millennia ago it must have been absolute murder. I was expecting a mob of people and was amazed to find myself absolutely alone at the summit for sunset. Amazed and grateful. Standing atop a fantasyland of jagged, pitted, striated crags and canyons, eroded by the wind into twisted coiled dragon-shapes, stained by the last crimson rays of the sun, on the very mountain where Moses, so legend has it, received the Ten Commandments -- a magical moment. I suppose I can't in good conscience leave you with the notion that I have become lone-wolf-in-the-wilderness Intrepid Man. I wasn't that alone. Not far below the summit are a half-dozen Bedouin huts/shops providing tea, Coke, chocolate, and mattress/blanket rental; two more overnighters showed up shortly after sunset; and just before dawn an Italian tour-group horde arrived. But still. In the middle of the night, unless all t...

"dude, that town is fucked up ." Sarajevo is battle-scarred. Mostar is gutted. There has been enough reconstruction that it isn't obvious at first. Stand on one of the hardly-used bridges, above the steep and beautiful ravine atop which the city perches, and it looks postcard-pretty. If you look closer you notice it's too pretty. All the buildings are new. Go a block to the west and you step into a war zone. This is where the front line was. Rows of half-collapsed heaps of gray concrete and brick, torn open by ragged misshapen gaps like Godzilla took bites out of them, punched full of bullet holes, many of them roofless, covered with dust, full of rubble and trash. Chimneys and random jagged spurs that happened to survive the tank and shellfire jut out like broken bones. Don't get me wrong. This is not a dead city. The streets are lined with parked cars, bright billboards are posted right in front of the wrecks, and every second or third lot boasts a brightly pain...