MAGAN'S WORLD:OUR GREATEST role model for a life of adventure once air travel is no longer economically or ecologically possible is Tintin, who from 1929 to 1983 managed to explore the world largely on ships and trains. The plucky reporter and his annoying little fox terrier, Snowy, travelled to Peru, India, Egypt, Indonesia, Tibet, the United States and the Soviet Union all by sea or land. He then somewhat blotted his eco-credentials by blasting off to the moon in 1954, 15 years before Neil Armstrong.
Tintin was the perfect traveller; sniffing out the best opium dens in Shanghai, infiltrating Al Capone’s mob in Chicago and befriending the Maharaja of Gaipajama in India. He was astute enough to notice that the smokestacks in Bolshevik factories were actually burning straw to give the impression that the Soviet Union was working to full capacity, and that his preconceptions of the Chinese were as inaccurate as theirs were of him.
His objectivity was less evident in Africa where he appeared to see nothing wrong with killing 15 antelope as opposed to the one needed for dinner or blowing up a rhinoceros by inserting dynamite into its back – it was his publishers who requested a rethink. His lack of sensitivity to racial niceties in Tintin in the Congocaused Britain's Commission for Racial Equality to suggest recently that it be removed from shelves for its depiction of crude racial stereotypes.
Tintin’s creator Hergé regretted his earlier naivety, saying he was the victim of his country’s ingrained prejudices, and to an extent the book provides a valuable reminder of quite how deplorable Belgium’s behaviour was in the Congo in the late 1920s, when the book was written.
What is most remarkable about the comic strip is how accurate Hergé’s depiction of far-flung locations were considering he never left his studio. He was too busy drawing the Tintin strip to travel and so depended entirely on library research and his collection of photographs, cuttings and National Geographics, as well as old tickets and brochures, etc, given to him by more peripatetic friends. He chose topical subjects to educate young readers on the issues of the day; focusing on totalitarian regimes in the 1930s and Middle Eastern oil squabbles in the 1950s.
AS A TESTAMENTto how accurately Hergé managed to recreate foreign worlds, (or perhaps, as a sad marker of the commercialisation of our culture) the Tintin estate has now teamed up with a travel company to offer Tintin tours.
On The Go Tours arrange guided trips to Jordan, Egypt and India in the company of official Tintinologists. In Jordan one can walk through the pages of The Red Sea Sharksand Land Of Black Gold, both of which are set in the fictional world of the emirate of khemed which body-doubled for Jordan. One visits the Crusader castle of Shobak, swims in the Dead Sea and rides Arab thoroughbreds on the trail of Tintin and Captain Haddock into the "rose-red city" in search of an exiled emir. "Thundering typhoons!" is Haddock's rather predictable reaction to the glory of Petra.
Tintin offers us an opportunity of returning to an age when travel was the preserve of explorers and the beau monde; when one was more likely to meet Professor Calculus or Bianca Castafiore than a stag party from Essex. (Although to be fair Castafiore’s caterwauling was worse than any stag party – her arias brought South American dictators to their knees.)
It is little wonder that Tintin is on the cusp of a renaissance, with Spielberg now directing three of his movies; the first due in the winter.
In the meantime, if nostalgia tempts you to buy a Tintin book for a child or grandchild, consider doing what my godmother used to do and buy one in a language the child is studying at school so that you widen both their geographical and linguistic horizons.
* onthegotours.com