I once endured a five-hour bus journey by Lough Swilly Bus from Burtonport to Letterkenny in Co Donegal. Two towns in the same county, yet the journey was like travelling from Belfast to Cork in a horse-drawn carriage.
No, I take that back. Horses would have been faster than the long, monotonous, dull haul on a bus that was incapable of doing more than 20 miles per hour.
On another occasion, I went to Tory Island, off the Donegal coast on a local fishing-boat. None of your regular ferry services, mind you. Just an ordinary boat which tied up at Magheraroarty Quay.
In we all jumped, about 15 of us, and handed the skipper a fiver each. Skipper is probably too grand a word for the size of boat that was in question.
Then off we went without as much as a life-jacket between us and not a care in the world, for as we all know, Tory fishermen keep a little piece of the island on board as protection against sinking. (Who needs a Mae West when you can have a superstition?)
Dublin to Nairobi
I mention these little adventures in Donegal for the last time publicly. Indeed, I will expunge them from my memory after having read Manchan ar Seachran (Coisceim), about the exploits of Manchan Magan, an inveterate young traveller who has presented a series of programmes on Teilifis na Gaeilge about his wanderings. Where I suffered the indignity of a Lough Swilly bus for a few hours, Manchan, when a 20-year-old student, travelled from Dublin to Nairobi in an old army lorry.
Where I risked death in crossing a few (admittedly treacherous miles) from the mainlnd to Tory, Manchan travelled down an Africa river in a pirogue, a cut-out canoe, for five days.
And that's not the half of it. In his journeys, carried out over six months, Manchan and his 19 travelling companions passed through Morocco, Algeria, the Sahara, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Republic of Central Africa, Zaire, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. All this in the back of a wildly-driven lorry and with strangers for company.
He came out of it well enough to write a book and it's a good read: candid without being lurid, sharp without being bitchy. His companions are referred to by their Christian names and were an eclectic bunch: three nurses, a retired businessman and his wife, a couple of Essex boys, a Londoner, a couple of public school girls, a Northerner and his girlfriend, an ex-squaddie.
Not exactly an ideal mix and Magan is possessed throughout with his search for the ideal. An insult by the group to Moroccan sheep-herders leaves him annoyed and angered so much so that he seeks the herders out later and smokes a pipe in their company. Throughout the book, he is conscious of being the white European abroad, much more so than any of his companions, it seems.
Optimist
Ever the idealist and optimist, Magan started off hoping that the group (as he constantly calls them) would develop a collective and caring consciousness - which they didn't. They were 20 individuals travelling as a group, rather than a group of 20. He wasn't the only explorer trying to find himself in another continent. He met three one-legged Vietnam veterans as they toured on their Harley Davidsons, farmers from Devon bringing a Massey Ferguson tractor to Ethiopia and others just doing the rounds.
Magan has a sharp eye but his naivety shines through as well. While in Zaire some of the group have their passports and money stolen. Like innocents abroad, Magan and his friends contact the authorities to recover their property.
The locals shake their heads in disbelief and direct them to the army. The local army commander, the aptly named Hercule, turns detective and sends out a search party which returns with two suspects. Both men are promptly given a hiding but are not the thieves.
More suspects are rounded up the next day and they, in turn, have their pan knocked in by the squaddies. Eventually, it dawns on the intrepid travellers to offer a little reward and, abracadabra, Hercule solves the case and recovers the goods. Bravo, mon brave.
Still, for the most part, the group seems to have put up with each other well enough and any expressed aggression was verbal rather than physical. That's not to say that gossip, alcohol, drugs and sex didn't help oil the wheels of fraternity. Nevertheless, after six months of constant travelling, they all seem to have been glad to get rid of each other.
Indian Ocean
Magan ended the trip swimming in the Indian Ocean while smoking marijuana. Not a bad way to end any trip, I suppose. (From a linguistic point of view, I was delighted to learn a new word in Irish: marachuan, a masculine noun of the First Declension.)
It's a refreshing book. It's not just that there's a keen sensibility in the telling or that it's something a wee bit different in Irish, it's also the fact that there are still 20-year-olds in Ireland who have the courage to tune in and drop out, to use a phrase from ancient history.
By the way, did I mention that I crossed the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge on my own. Twice. Unaided. Or that I travelled 20 yards by currach from the ferry to Inis Oirr. Not interested? Can't think why not.