From time to time, I may update aspects of the travel tales on theancienthighway.com. This is likely to occur when I recall an anecdote that seems worth telling, but which for some reason was never included in my original story. This happened recently when, for example, l retrieved the hard copy of ‘Arriving in Mumbai’ from out of the archives and uploaded it to the website. As I was doing so, my near brush with Mumbai’s notorious red light district sprang to mind. I don’t know why it never found its way into the original, but it’s there now.
The Ancient Highway Blog will act as a mechanism for highlighting such updated material, and of course for drawing attention to new stories as well.
Planned updates include additions to the story about travels through Estonia and Latvia. This set of travel notes had its basis on a series of bullet points that I included in a letter, posted from the Baltics, to a friend. She encouraged me to elaborate on these, turning them into a longer travel tale. This I did and it became the first of my journeys that made it onto paper.
Looking back onto these snippets now, I realise that there is noteworthy material that could sit at the start of the trip (headaches with its planning); not to mention episodes following my crossing from Latvia into Russia – why I wouldn’t want to take on board Russia’s jewel in the crown, Saint Petersburg, in the original tale I will never know, but watch out for the update.
A new Ancient Highway Story is circulating at the back of my mind. it concerns my previous treks around parts of Germany that are closely connected to its infamous past. Actually, this idea isn’t that new – Once upon a time, when I returned from my exploits around the land of the Third Reich, I filled a thick notepad with a host of observations. The intention was to turn these into my first ever tale. But several months on – in the middle of a house move- that pad vanished into thin air.
In the process of searching for missing writings, I recently uncovered a couple of boxes of memorabilia – tickets stubs, hotel cards, rail tickets, visas etc – stuff that I had no recall of saving, but sadly no pad with Germanic travel jottings.
One day I might venture up into the far recesses of our loft and find weathered notes from journeys I have no recollection of having made. ‘Yes dear’, my wife might say, ‘Don’t you remember? It was that time when you buggered off and left us all in the lurch for a month at work. If you are planning on doing it again, just make sure you take the kids with you this time.’
…. But back to this post. A related, but completely new story concerns explorations over the other side of the Iron Curtain. There is a clear link with the German piece mentioned above, not least because much of it involves, well, Germany as a starting point.
Further updates on these planned pieces to feature in this blog.
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