Customer Reviews

The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

"The Lunatic Express," is a great title. The title alone drew me to this book. In Carl Hoffman's rogue travel memoir, Hoffman travels to countries in the third world by train, plane, boat, ferry, bus, car, truck, pedicab and taxi, taking on five continents in six months. The twist to his tale is that he travels as a local would--not as a Westerner would be expected to.

The countries he visits include Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil in South America; Tanzania and Kenya in east Africa; Mali and Senegal in west Africa; Indonesia, India and Bangladesh in south Asia; Afghanistan, China and Russia. Some countries are just a quick pass; in others he stays a longer time.

I liked this book because Hoffman brings into sharp focus values that traveling Westerners tend to take for granted: privacy and personal space; quiet; the expectation of safety; the expectation for a reasonable level of comfort. Hoffman is willing to give these up to experience separation and to live in the moment.

What nearly destroyed this book for me was the back story: Hoffman as a worldly, middle-aged man who regularly engages in "travel escapism," yet at the same time, wallows in whiny guilt and self-pity for doing so.

Of significance, Hoffman carries an omnipresent cell-phone that he uses with much frequency. So much for the genuine experience of travel separation. His cell-phone is as much an ersatz travel companion as his spouse, a child or a travel friend. On an "as-needed" basis, he makes use of first-world technology to "stay-in-touch" or to make hotel or other travel arrangements. At one point, he uses the cell phone to order Christmas presents for his family from half-way around the world.

The puppy-love affair with a young Western woman in New Delhi with whom he pals around for nearly three weeks is the one truly pathetic part of the narrative. At this juncture, it is obvious that Hoffman is depressed and lonely. During his time in New Delhi, he chooses to live in first-world digs. Unfortunately for the reader, this breaks up the adventure/angst of third-world travel. It is not that the reader wishes Hoffman to fall apart. However, Hoffman's back story is replete with fulsome hypocrisy that nearly destroys the good parts of this narrative.

And yet, I still recommend reading this book because there are compelling parts to his tale along with sparkle and keen insight into local culture and conditions. I especially enjoyed his ferry-travel journeys in Indonesia and Bangladesh. He is temporarily "adopted" by a ferry-board family as he travels to a remote outport in Indonesia. He writes..."the more I shed my American reserves, phobias, disgusts, the more they embraced me."

Hoffman experiences much kindness and outreach from total strangers in this and in other situations where there is no opportunity for him to reciprocate.

I worried that this was going to be kind of slim, like Sebastian-Junger-On-A-Risk-Tour, and kind of exploitative. But it's the opposite. It's like a really really long article from the Atlantic, or a series of articles, where you learn what life is like around the world, and how the many billions of people who do not live in the first world get around. There's plenty of fascinating risk-taking, yes (he hitchhikes through the gobi desert...in 38 degrees below zero weather; and takes a bus tour...in Afghanistan, while the war is going on!), but Hoffman is a highly empathic writer who makes you feel like you know what it is like to commute in India, or be a taxi driver in Kenya, or to ride an ancient wooden ferry in the Amazon. He has some great Harper's-type stats about risk levels, but he is most interesting when talking about what it means to be affluent (quiet and privacy, as well as safety, and liability laws, not to mention bathrooms in trains...), and showing what you only can learn about the world and what it means to be human by traveling on an Indonesian ferry, in steerage, for a week, with roughnecks on their way home from months in an oilfield.

In less talented hands, "The Lunatic Express" could have ended up condescending, maudlin, exploitive, or worst of all, dull. Fortunately, Carl Hoffman is far too good of a writer to allow this to occur. Instead, Mr. Hoffman has given us a book that, much like the world it describes, is complex, colorful, exciting, and never less than engrossing.

The underlying concept of the book is to experience modes of transportation around the world that would give safety inspectors the vapours. After reading these descriptions I will never again complain about beltway traffic. Yet Mr. Hoffman is never insulting. He implicitly recognizes that there are reasons for the way things are, and manages to imbue his descriptions with a sense of dignity.

This respectful approach extends to the many interesting individuals he encounters, both on and off the road. He celebrates their idiosyncrasies, but never becomes patronizing. These people emerge as fully-rounded characters who live in a world fundamentally different from our own.

And this world bursts from the book with brilliant realism. Mr. Hoffman straddles the boundary between prose and poetry, even when what is being described is sometimes terrifying. Indeed, there are sections of this book that are so vivid and exciting that the reader feels the need afterwards for a stiff drink. (Or at least some soothing tea.)

Further, like all good travel writers, Mr. Hoffman is able to express the personal impact of his travels in a way that is honest and never narcissistic. We get the sense that these travels have changed him, much as reading this book changes the reader.

For me, personally, this book is special because it made me fully appreciate that for millions of people daily life consists of a crowed and frantic maelstrom. It made me realize that the entire planet could be considered something of a Lunatic Express. And with this knowledge comes a greater respect and admiration for the world as a whole, and for individuals, like Carl Hoffman, who bring it to us.

I guess you could call this extreme tourism. Instead of rafting down rivers or exploring caves, though, the author focuses on the world's most dangerous forms of transportation. Afghan airlines, Indonesian ferries, Indian trains - they're all there. These forms of transportation also happen to be what the world's poor take everyday.

And that's the real interest in this book. Hoffman never really is in danger. But the insights he gains in how the other half lives are really invaluable. His own openness, as well as his own excellent writing skills, help make this happen.

But you've got to admit, the adventures that simply come his way couldn't really be anything but fascinating - prostitutes in Havana, peeing out the window of a train rolling through the Sahel, eating whatever they bring him in a Chinese restaurant with no English speakers, smoking hash with the guy responsible for the casualties (i.e., bodies) that are created everyday on the incredibly crowded Mumbai trains.

As long as he's simply describing what's going on, Hoffman is right on target. Unfortunately, he's also prone to musings about what it all means. Now, this could have been very effective in the right hands. Hoffman, however, is very focused on himself, almost solipsistically, and without much real insight to boot. He actually comes off as not an especially pleasant character, which is a little ironic, as he seems to make friends very easily with the foreigners he meets.

A couple of reviewers have raised objections which I felt someone should respond to:

"He cheats (has a cell phone and a computer, occasionally stays someplace nice, etc.)." That's a quibble, though, given the other thing he puts himself through. I can't imagine myself ever going through the things he does.

"He never stays in one place long enough to get to know the country and people." That wasn't the point of the book. At the same time, he does get to know someone pretty well in almost every place he goes. And, personally, I think he was able to learn quite a bit about a place simply from riding these very unusual conveyances.

"He's really hard on the US (a Greyhound from LA to DC is the last leg of the trip)." I think there was something to the difference between the we're-all-in-this-together atmosphere of the rest of the world and the atomized individualism of the US. At the same time, though, I think he was also simply projecting a lot of his own troubles onto the people he met, plus he was no longer the star of the show as the out-of-place American.

Hoffman grabs you from the get-go with the fabulous title. He then delivers a terrific book.

One of Hoffman's challenges was to keep the material fresh as he took the reader from one difficult form of transportation to another. He pulled it off with vivid writing, an eye for detail and compassion for those he meets along the way. He pulls you into his adventure, and you smell, feel and sense the rigors of how he traveled. I marveled at his willingness to endure back-breaking trips on buses (I for one won't do that anymore) and his willingness to put himself in danger, as he did in Afghanistan.

I loved his line where he said, at a certain point, that he just decided to hell with it, he was going to drink the water the locals drank, bathe when they bathed, eat what they ate, etc. I think anyone who has done travel out of the ordinary would identify with the choices and questions that he faces, even if they don't decide to submerge themselves as deeply into the worlds he chose to inhabit.

What ultimately sustains the book are Hoffman's ponderings about life and travel -- eternal questions for the examined life.

This is a great book for anyone who has ever stepped off the beaten path. It's also a great book for college kids, as a way to encourage them to explore before they get settled in life.

If local travel means putting oneself in the shoes of a local, then travel writer Carl Hoffman
has earned status as expert local travelite with a compelling story to tell. His latest book is The
Lunatic Express: Discovering the World via its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and
Planes. He relays his round-the-world journey on human conveyances that represent how the
global majority transports itself. His trip includes everything from airlines in Cuba to railways in
Africa to ferries in Indonesia and back again through the States via Greyhound buses.

Hoffman was first attracted to local transport in all its harrowing forms through the media
coverage of various disasters. Each chapter begins with a journalistic excerpt about a fateful
incident on some form of public transit. Using these anecdotes as well as statistics about
injuries and deaths, Hoffman plans a route on the world's worst transportation. This goal is not
sensationalism or stuntman bravado. Rather, he aims to contrast the luxury of tourism travel
versus the necessity of how the global poor get from point to point. "I gradually began to
realize," he writes, "that the big numbers of today's tourism industry obscured a parallel reality,
excluded a whole river of people on the move. Excluded, in fact, most of the world's travelers."

Each segment of the trip is its own story, but common threads weave it together. Dualisms
and paradoxes emerge. Hoffman begins by comparing affluent travel and public mass
transit. Transportation reflects the security, comfort, and regulation of affluent societies versus
the danger, overcrowding, and lack of controls in the less developed world. As he traverses
South America on its notorious bus system, he writes "I was starting to trust the efficiency of this
whole ad-hoc, unregulated system."

The dualism of personal space versus touch and contact also reoccurs. In the economics of
third world transport, "speed and maximum capacity are of the essence." He rides matatus, the
minibuses in Kenya that pull people aboard until they reach the absolute limit. He rides trains in
Mumbai where the crushing pressure of the crowds becomes fatal. In an interview about the
book, Hoffman reflects that the trip was a reevaluation of what affluence means. "I've always
sort of thought of it as objects, as things. Traveling as I did for five months, I decided that it really
had nothing to do with things. It was all about space. In places like Indonesia, you're with 3000
people and no personal space whatsoever." Spaces that are private and quiet and clean occurs
to him as a "luxury that is profound."

A final dualism Hoffman explores is connection versus otherness. At times the language
barriers and cultural divides between himself and his fellow passengers overwhelm him. He
spends pages in isolation, receding into himself. Yet the best moments of the book are the ones
where he breaks through the otherness and connects with locals. On a packed ferry in
Indonesia, he achieves this sort of communion. "The more I shed my American reserves,
phobias, disgusts, the more they embraced me. In the weeks ahead I would accelerate what had
started gradually over the miles. I would do whatever my fellow travelers and hosts did. If they
drank the tap-water of Mumbai and Kolkata and Bangladesh, so would I. If they bought tea from
street-corner vendors, so would I. If they ate with their fingers, even if I was given utensils, I ate
with my fingers. Doing so prompted an outpouring of generosity and curiosity that never ceased
to amaze me. It opened the door, made people take me in. That I shared their food, their
discomfort, their danger, fascinated them and validated them in a powerful way."

This passage, and the book as a whole, illustrate the ideas of the local travel
movement. Hoffman continually chooses authenticity and connection with locals over the
beckoning camaraderie of other foreigners. He plunges directly into the dense humanity along
his route and discovers what life is like for the majority of the world's people on the move. Turn
here for encouragement as a local travelite and a reality check for anyone complaining on an air-
conditioned flight.

I loved the premise of this book, even though as a happily married father of three children 11 and under, I'm not nearly as crazy as Carl Hoffman and certainly would never take such risks. However, as someone who loves to travel (albeit in comfort), "Lunatic Express" was quite entertaining -- a crazy trip on the most dangerous transportation modes across 5 continents during the course of 6 months.

As Hoffman notes, living in the developed world, we take for granted the general safety of our travel, especialy on trains, planes, boats and buses. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for those in "Third World" or "Developing" nations. Safety on these means of transport in these countries is nerve wracking and nail biting to say the least. Much of the equipment is poorly maintained and been put out of service by First World countries and there is little to no regulation.

The truly refreshing aspect of Hoffman's book are the encounters he has with everyday people who not only help him experience the cultures and countries he visits, but literally help him survive some utterly suicidal trips (i.e., Afghanistan). Hoffman does his best to assimilate himself into the culture and forego any luxury or comfort. When "Lunatic Express" focuses on his travel experiences with all the local flavor, the book is wonderful. Unfortunately, like some other readers mention, I found the parts that focused on his self-analysis of his "reasons for this type of adventure" or the family troubles he was confronting a bit self-serving and uninteresting. This was especially true of the love-at-first-sight encounter in India that did nothing more than provide a view into Hoffman's shallow side.

All quibbles aside, the bulk of this book is a first-rate adventure tale through some of the most unsafe trips you could ever dream up. I'm glad Hoffman survived his journey so we have this entertaining read to enjoy.

This book was given to me at Christmas by my mother since I am preparing to go on a multi-month backpacking trip myself. I think the intent was to scare me out of it, but this book did just the opposite. While the ostensible concept is that Carl is taking the most dangerous forms of transportation he can find, what really ends up happening is that he connects with the places and people he meets much more fully as a result. In short, the book reads like the trip every culturally-interested tourist dreams of having: meeting locals, learning their culture, trying their food, and opening yourself up to new experiences. Throughout his travels you get great, once-in-a-lifetime stories and heartwarming introspection. If you're at all interested in reading a memoir of a man who embraces the opportunities afforded him by travel, definitely give this a read!

The real magic of this book is that Hoffman captures the thrilling sense of possibility and romance of travel AND the hard, dusty, bone-wearying hardships. Early on he quotes another writer about the simple essence of travel: A boat. An island. A journey. Nothing could be simpler, and more exciting. What's out there? What's the world really like? It's such a powerful and profound impulse, that of discovery. And yet at the same time, any journey is full of danger and peril.

THE LUNATIC EXPRESS overflows with the wonders of discovery - you'll love reading about swaying hammocks on a boat on the Amazon, about islands so small and isolated that friends walk down dirt roads hand in hand with each other, about the incredibly crazy, intense trains of Mumbai, and so on. But you'll also love reading about the people who take those trips as a matter of daily, weekly, or monthly survival, going from job to job on dangerous conveyances, just trying to make ends meet. Hoffman writes that his friends thought he was crazy to subject himself to third-class travel on ferries that could sink or long bus trips on muddy cliffside roads in South America, and they're right. But pushing himself into that uncomfortable place is what's so rewarding for Hoffman - and the reader - because he meets people and has experiences and grows in his understanding of the world in a way that only the best, most challenging possible journeys provide.

And he writes about it all beautifully. I don't think I'm brave enough to do anything that Hoffman did (or that the people he writes about do routinely), but I was very happy to read about it all and marvel at how much is happening every day around the world that we never, ever think about. Great book.

The idea for this book is brilliant---travel the world aboard the most dangerous forms of transport available. In doing so, the author met people that regular tourists would just never meet, and went to places that are not on any tourist's list. I loved hearing about these people and places. His impressions were fascinating---one insight I found very interesting was how crowded most places are---how solitude is something most of the world just never wants or gets. I also decided that clean public bathrooms are a luxury I will appreciate more.

The most depressing part of this book is at the very end, on a Greyhound ride back in the US. The author barely met a person he didn't like on the whole trip, except for in the US and in China. Part of this is probably that in the US, he could understand the depressing talk around him, and in China, there was no-one that understood English in the places he went. He liked friendly, outgoing people with some knowledge of English, and he found them in abundance. That's where I found the book a little unbelievable, although I know he was accurately recording what he saw and felt. It just seemed incredible that he never really encountered a severely scary situation or a truly nasty person in anyplace but China or the US, even though he was aboard many dangerous airplanes, buses, trains, ferries and trucks. Yes, the trains in India were certainly not something I'd ever want to go on, but somehow they were described more like a wacky and potentially fatal amusement park ride than a horrible form of perhaps government indifference. Sometimes I felt a bias in the author's thoughts that seemed a little paternalistic---the kind natives vs. the stupid nasty yokels that live here.

That being said, I really enjoyed my reading of this book. I loved losing myself in journeys to places I know I will never go, hearing about the foods, the sights, the smells, the sounds. Well written.