Freelance writer Seth Stevenson and his girlfriend Rebecca were in a rut.
Tired of the workaday grind, they decide to turn life into an adventure. Grounded is the journal of their trip around the world by ground only.
Selling almost everything and putting the rest in storage, the leave with packs on their backs and no keys in their pockets. Bunking on cargo freighters and cruise ships, riding rickshaws and bicycles, moto scooters and buses, they circumnavigate the 25000 miles of the Earth.
Washington DC to Antwerp, Estonia, Antwerp, Estonia, Japan, Beijing, Hanoi, Bangkok, Singapore, Australia to LA, and points in between.
They ride the Tran-Siberian railway across Russia to Japan, bicycle with a tour group through Cambodia (where I learned the currency is the Khmer), and have a hair raising connection to an Australia bound cruise ship in Singapore. The short version: they need to book passage to Australia, then on to New Zealand and then the US. The options are limited from New Zealand when you aren't flying, so connections are tight.
They arrive in Singapore to find their freighter has been cancelled, but there is a top-end luxury cruise ship leaving for Australia the next day. They race out of the hotel to the dock to plead their case. Although they are not allowed to pick up passengers en route, the captain calls the operations officer. While they are waiting, Rebecca races back to the hotel for the baggage, just in case. The captain consents, and they are allowed to join the cruise - which is not leaving the next day, but right now! Someone in a white suit and epaulets runs up to him, passes Seth through security, they sprint down the narrow hallways to the raising gangplank, and jump onto the deck. The horn bows, the ship moves. They both laugh, saying "I've never done anything like that!" and then... "Where's your luggage?".
There is more where that came from in Grounded. Unlike most travel literature, the book is more about the journey and ways that it happens, than the place visited. Like the TV show Amazing Race, they sometimes have a few days in each place to explore, other times, it's from train station to boat or bus. It's not getting there, it's the journey, and I highly enjoyed the ride. I don't know whether I would be saying that had I actually been on the Trans-Siberian with a drunken snoring Russian bunkmate, or driving a rented car through the outback directly across the continent of Australia (which I did not know was as big as the continental US).
Recommended if you love travel lit, or just want to escape from your work for a few hours and join them on a leg of their journey.
2010 / Paperback / 320 pages
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