hey mate! Just in case you’ve been forwarded this email but would like to subscribe - click the link here.

Across Borders, Many Times, What Endures...

Colin Thubron on Curious Worldview - Spotify

Colin Thubron On Curious Worldview - Apple

Colin Thubron On Curious Worldview - Youtube

Colin Thubron is one of the greatest living travel writers. 

He started with the Mirror To Damascus in 1967 and with more than half a century and 18 travel books later published his journey along the Amur River just a few years ago. He’s a contemporary of Theroux, Chatwin, early Dalrymple and inspiration for the newer generation of his genre, the likes of Rory Stewart, Levison Wood and many, many more. Colin has been a dream guest of mine for many years.

This interview travelled a line across the map of his career. Colin reflects on his many experiences in Russia and China, the impact of historical events like the Cultural Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union - and the broader evolution of travel writing throughout the years. He gets into the effects of globalisation on cultural identities and how it’s effected his experience over the decades. Colin observes the complexities of nationalism and patriotism, and as well discusses the role religion in his life, the nature of belief, and the rationality behind it all. Colin then comments on mortality and his legacy which leads to a discussion on how travel can serve as a coping mechanism for grief. Plus, together we also touch on the choices and more difficult trade offs surrounding parenthood and career, his aspirations for future literary projects, and the influence of serendipity behind it all. 

I can see from the analytics that not even 20% of you who are listening are following the show, I wish this to be 100! Therefore I would ask that you please consider following the show - whether on Spotify or Apple, this, alongside the reviews makes all the difference in the world… 

Colin Thubron on Curious Worldview - Spotify

Colin Thubron On Curious Worldview - Apple

Colin Thubron On Curious Worldview - Youtube

Consider sharing this interview with a mate, colleague, brother, sister, whoever you think might be interested in this as well.

Here is a transcript of the opening exchange from the conversation…

Ryan
The best kind of travel is introspection in motion.

Colin
I can't remember whether I ever said that. I must have done, but I can't help it.

Ryan
It's Among the Russians, 1983.

Colin
I'm surprised I said that.

Ryan
Does it make you cringe a little bit to hear your own words said back at you?

Colin
Well, particularly with that, when I was so focused on what was out there and so unusual for me, I'd never been in Russia before and I was so fascinated and hypnotized by what I was looking at that to imagine that it mattered what I was thinking about in my head is surprisingly, you know, cringing a bit.

Ryan
Is that a sort of theme you've tried to move away from throughout your career writing? More an observation of where you are and less of an introspection?

Colin
just how it happens, you know, I never kind of planned that sort of thing. You know, how much it should be telling about me, which is quite a sort of obsession with some travel writers. It's never in my inclination. I'd be more fascinated by what's out there and felt myself to be comparatively unimportant. But of course, people slightly miss the personal life. I've been told in my books that they're a little bit, there's too little of me in there, which I can't do much about now. But and often people remember.

the personal details of what you've written in a way that can be sort of negate some of the things that you thought were important.

Ryan
I think that's because that becomes the most relatable part of the pros to an extent, because we are not there seeing what you're seeing. We're rather seeing it through your eyes and therefore how you might feel in any particular moment becomes maybe what we remember and latch onto a bit more.

Colin
I remember writing a book on China. I was sort of obsessed by what was happening in the cult, what had happened during the Cultural Revolution. And I felt the whole theme of the book was this about my understanding of the Cultural Revolution and how it changed during the book. Nobody ever seems to remark on that at all. What people constantly remember is that I saved an owl in a marketing wangzhou in old Canton.

and eventually set it free out of a train window. And everybody remembers this episode and nobody ever mentions the Cultural Revolution to me. So it does remind me of Haim Portsent or telling the personal incident.

Ryan
How do you make sense of that, that in the backdrop of this incredible story of China's Cultural Revolution, this very narrow, almost seemingly insignificant story of you saving an owl becomes what they remember?

Colin
Well, in some ways, a little bit depressing, but it teaches me a lesson that what is really memorable is often not theory or ideas and so on, or even politics. It's some personal incident. And what you cherish is when, of course, you meet somebody whose personal life has been affected by something like the history of the Cultural Revolution, which is not hard to find in China. It's almost everybody of a certain generation has been affected by it.

So those are the sort of incidents that you cherish, the ones that speak for a society or a past.

Ryan
As you're going through day after day, night after night, how much of the book are you actually starting to compile through your notes? Do you almost have a finished thing ready to go when you get home?

Colin
You do in your head, but the notes are very rough. They're sort of impressionistic, really. And they're very full, but they're not in coherent prose. know, nobody could read them comfortably and think that they make sense. But they do contain a lot of detail, because often it's the detail of a description that makes it live, to my mind, rather than the generality of a scene or a conversation. It's sort of a particular texture of that rock or...

……. continue the conversation with the podcast here.