Jupiter's Travels : Four Years Around the World on a Triumph Author: Ted Simon | Language: English | ISBN:
B001T4YV38 | Format: PDF
Jupiter's Travels : Four Years Around the World on a Triumph Description
Jupiter's Travels -Ted Simon's astonishing 4 year motorbike journey around the world
The book that inspired Ewan McGregor's Long Way Round
In the late 1970s Ted Simon set off on a Triumph and rode 63,000 miles over four years through fifty-four countries in a journey that took him around the world. Through breakdowns, prison, war, revolutions, disasters and a Californian commune, he travelled into the depths of fear and reached the heights of euphoria.
He met astonishing people and was treated as a spy, a welcome stranger and even a god. For Simon the trip became a journey into his own soul, and for many others - including bikers Charley Boorman and Ewan McGrergor - it provides an inspiration they will never forget.
This classic text, which has informed a whole genre of travel writing in the thirty years since it was first published, will never be bettered for sheer adventure, passion, humour and honesty.
Brought up in England by a German mother and a Romanian father, Ted Simon found himself impelled by an insatiable desire to explore the world. It led him to abandon an early scientific career in favour of journalism, and he has worked for several newspapers and magazines on Fleet Street and elsewhere. Ted Simon is also the author of Riding Home and The Gypsy in Me.
- File Size: 6292 KB
- Print Length: 448 pages
- Publisher: Jupitalia Productions; 2 edition (November 30, 1978)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001T4YV38
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,931 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #27
in Books > Travel > Food, Lodging & Transportation > Road Travel - #38
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > Essays & Travelogues
- #27
in Books > Travel > Food, Lodging & Transportation > Road Travel - #38
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > Essays & Travelogues
This book captures first hand the now little known adventure of a British journalist who set out to ride around the world on a motorcycle. It is an incredible story and something any reader should enjoy. Every teenager/student should be issued with this book so that they can understand what adventure is [they should also be issued with Ernest Shackleton's story]. It is also a period piece capturing something of the flavor of the early 70s -- although not so obtrusively that it would offend those who scorn that period. The writing is direct and honest. The author does not shy away from ridiculing himself at times -- the linen suit incident still stays with me 15 years after I first read this book. This book provides insight into not just the authors thinking but the behavior of people in different cultures across the world (Ted came to accept problems calmly as help always seemed to come along). I read this book while in hospital and sadly gave it away to a fellow patient who I had been friendly with. It probably changed my life, as I still sometimes think of some of the incidents described. I will buy a copy for my son one day so that he will understand what adventure is. [Contrast this to that dreadful "Zen & the Art of..." book]. Ted travelled around the world on a Triumph Trident (perhaps the last ever made) -- not a BMW or a Harley. No support team, cell phone or GPS satellite navigation. This book let's you share the experience.
By sir_isaac_newton
Hard to determine how to rate this book. I just finished the last page...
I have to admit that it's truly a travel book. ZMM by Pirsig is much more of a philosophy than a book about travel. Simon instead takes you through Africa and the Atbara desert, roads that had channels cut through them deep enough that he had to keep his legs up near the handle bars, various bribes at numerous country borders, and tea stops along the way for rest. He also intrigues you with a prison escapade in Brasil and a fever in India as well as waiting for rivers to drop in Austrailia while drinking stubbies and eating steaks with truckies at a local outback cafe.
My negative comments are relatively simple: 1) No hard description of what he's up to in the beginning, just jumps right in, and all of a sudden you're in Africa. 2) A great lack of description of most of the mileage (runs from place to place sometimes). Perhaps this is a given for such a long trip. [Please don't be deterred by this... he's very descriptive for most of the journey.] 3) Lack of a map showing the whole trip. [Small maps are given in each "Chapter"- if the chapters could be called that.]
Writing style compared to Pirsig is very different and much less refined, but in a way this also allows us to go along with Simon on his great adventure. The writing and the road-miles seem to roll together. And in this way I think it's true to form. I have to admit that it was a great book even with the minor faults above. And as far as the god-talk previously mentioned, it's easy to forgive someone who can recall his experiences, in most of the major countries on the globe, first hand a slight misplaced grandiosity. :^) Especially with how much he's been through by the end.
From one rider to the other, my hat's off to Simon.
By Allen Hall
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