“Of the gladdest moments in human life, me thinks, is the
departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one
mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leader weight of Routine, the cloak of
many Cares and the slavery of Home, one feels happier. The blood flows with the
fast circulation of childhood. A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, to
Memory, to Hope – the three sister graces of our moral being.” ~ Sir Richard
Francis Burton
I first saw his portrait hanging above the entrance of the
Ondaatje lecture theatre in the Royal Geographical Society Building in
Kensington Gore last year. I was there
for the very rewarding London Trauma Conference but to me the building itself
was reason enough to go. This place was
an Aladdin’s Cave of unpublished pictures, maps, and journals of generations of
explorers. On the walls were the names
and pictures of great journeymen, the stuff of childhood heroes: Cook, Livingstone, Falcon Scott, Shakleton,
Hillary. This one portrait seemed out of
place. The face and the style of
painting was western but the setting hardly one of glorious accomplishment. The
figure wore a tattered cloak similar to the ones I had seen among the beggars
of Mumbai and was hunched in a corner of a dilapidated indian hovel. His face was one that seemed to have a hard
life stamped on it by a rather large boot. Slightly asymmetrical and a lower
cheek bone on the left, thin, straggly black hair and a huge scar below the
left eye that I learned later was from a Somali bandit’s javelin. Most noticeable were the eyes. Not the eyes of the down – and – out; these
were fully engaged, interested, watching, wary.
So this was Richard Francis Burton.
He seemed to have lived several lives. It was not a cushioned existence. He had been
thrown out of Oxford, the army, various expeditions into India, Arabia and
Africa. He was the first westerner to
see Mecca. He spoke over twenty
languages and managed to pass off as an Arab among Arabs for years, enabling
him access to the lives of locals that can only come with having lived among
them. He was a prolific writer,
romantic, poet, explorer and cartographer, and probable spy. His experience among these peoples led to his
publication of Arabian Nights and,
later more infamously, the English translations of Perfumed Garden and the Karma
Sutra. His life seemed illustrative
of Bilbo Baggins’ warning: “it’s a dangerous thing, Frodo, going out your front
door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing
where you might be swept off to.”
One of the aims of the Long Ride from Singapore to Sweden
(hereafter the LRSS) is to give singaporeans especially a taste of this sense
of adventure. We want as many people on
board as possible to see and feel some of the things we pass through. Some of
it will be breast cancer related, a lot of it will not. But it will be an adventure – a journey of no
predetermined outcomes and unknown experiences.
How to do this? Well we’ve spoken
to seasoned documentary writers from the major
television channel, who are thinking of coming on board. It’s all about two main ingredients – the
message – which is what you’re trying to convey – and the narrative – the means
of keeping the story going. In our case the obvious narrative is two mad men on
bikes. And this week we’ll be having our
third meeting with a prominent international foundation. They have an agenda of
trying to broaden the horizons of singaporeans and also to make them realize a
quality I’ve just learned about called CQ – cultural sensitivity. Something we will have to put into practice
every moment from the time we leave our own shores. The notion that others may be given to consider
adventures of their own from our little outing is actually quite exciting.
George is the gardener who is partly
responsible for the very gardens that made it a difficult place to leave! We should allow for the serendipitous moment
that is the distinctive of all adventures.