Barry and Margaret Williamson
October 2010

Introduction

This article is written for travellers' eyes only. If you are a tourist, a holiday-maker or someone who stays at home, watches comedians fronting TV travel documentaries and reads other people's travel 'blogs', this isn't for you!

The polemic was stimulated by discussion among fellow travellers of a journey from Tunisia to Turkey, and it focused on the problems of traversing Libya. Of the two of us, only Barry has been to Libya - and that was only for one long night, flying to Singapore in a four piston-engined RAF Hastings Bomber. That journey, one of the best ever, took five days, flying only by day, unpressurised at a height of 10,000 ft in the WW2 bomber converted to carry servicemen. It staged in Libya, Iraq, NW Pakistan, Ceylon (as was) and Singapore. After a week in Singapore at RAF Changi (now the international airport), I flew in a twin-engined Valetta to Hong Kong in two days and three stages, landing in North Borneo and the USAF air base at Clarkfield in the Philippines.

Those were the days, my friends, we thought they'd never end. However, they did and we digress!

Now, we think a motorhome would be the least appropriate way of travelling in Libya, or any other third world country (**see footnote below) for that matter. Here are two of several ways of looking at this.

One way is the effect this way of travelling must have on the local people. Third world countries are typified by the extremes of direst poverty and great wealth. There may well be a ruling elite dictating to an isolated and repressed peasantry/working class. In a motorhome, you are immediately associated with the former. Imagine the extremes. Imagine the peasant family, eking out a subsistence living, sat on the mud floor of their hut with few if any furnishings, owning little but the clothes they wear, and cooking on wood gathered locally or on a paraffin stove. A few of the many millions living on a dollar a day.

Subsistence living means eating what you can grow and raising money for extras (salt, sugar, tea, clothes, etc) by selling an excess of produce (if any) or taking whatever work there may be. Barry worked and lived in India for a total of two years over seven visits. In the villages and in the slum areas of towns and cities, a family would only eat if the man of the family could return home with a few rupees to buy a little basic food. He would earn the money by labouring, touting, begging, fetching and carrying. Even bicycle rickshaw wallahs, renting their machines from a Mr Big, might return home in debt having had no business that day.

Imagine this family then, sitting on the floor of their hut, their shanty, their lean-to – and then a motorhome (or worse a convoy of motorhomes) sweeps past, raising a cloud of dust. Imagine the conversation. 'Was that the latest Hymer 305S with the permanent bed?' 'No it looks like that, but it's actually the Dethleffs 476B with the double floor and 4.3 kW generator.' 'But it doesn't have the rear garage for their electric bicycles.' 'That's so, but the low profile does help with fuel consumption.' 'Don't think much of its ground clearance.' 'Yes, but listen to that common rail, turbo-charged, intercooled diesel engine.' Etc.

From the point of view of the intrepid motorhomer, travel by motorhome can be, and usually is, the best possible way of insulating yourself from your surroundings. Contact can be almost non-existent. You travel in the motorhome, with the best suspension and insulation from cold, heat and noise so that your comfort is not disturbed. You cook and eat in the motorhome so that you don't have to eat locally. You carry with you as much as possible in the way of food and other supplies so that you don't have to shop locally or taste the local food. You sleep in the motorhome so that you don't have to risk a third world hotel room. You shower in the motorhome and you certainly wouldn't use the local WC! You wait for a multi-national company, Esso, BP, Shell, before you risk buying local fuel. You carry sufficient spares to service and repair the motorhome yourself.

Overall, you make no local contact. Indeed, your version of the country comes directly from the pages of the Rough Guide or Lonely Planet, both written by and for semi-literate youth or decaying hippies. You see the world outside through screens – your windscreen, your SatNav screen, your TV screen, your DVD screen, your computer screen, your rear view mirror.

Not least, the disadvantage of the motorhome is that it restricts where you can go. It is too big, too precious, too flimsy and too overloaded to risk back roads, gravel, stone, sand and mud. This leads to the development of specialist vehicles, seen at their extreme in the Afrika Corps outfits seen heading south and east out of Germany. A recent blog of a journey through Libya describes the purchase and modification of an ex-British Army forward control LandRover, probably a former ambulance. It turned out to be ideal for having fun in the sand dunes! But how do the third worlders themselves travel? What kind of vehicles do they need?

Your guide book takes you directly, using the bypass, to tourist 'hot spots'. These are a motley collection of whatever can be scraped together locally to detain the tourist for a while. A church(?), an ancient site of some sort, a strangely shaped rock, a waterfall, the scene of a recent earthquake, a folk museum, artefacts made crudely by 'indigenous' people, 'souvenirs' made cheaply by peasants working thousands of miles away for a subsistence wage in Chinese sweat shops, postcards with fuzzy and artificially coloured views of the local tourist object ('Sunset over the Big Dune'), T-shirts proclaiming 'I have been Somewhere that Should Impress You'.

Your blog emphasises the intrepid nature of the undertaking. The locals don't speak English, they drive erratically on the wrong side of the road, their currency is worthless, the road surfaces are terrible, there aren't any proper campsites, you should see and smell the toilets, etc. But you are coping well and had a great time driving a sand buggy up and down the dunes – and the local drink, made from fermented camel dung, is great stuff (and so cheap).

In the 'blog' a road trip can, and does, become no more than an ego trip.

Overall, you see the country as it is supposed to be, as defined by the Tourism Industry, as it was in the past, and never as it really is, now. How many tourists and holiday-makers even know which country they are in?

What is the alternative? Obviously it is to eschew tourism in all its forms and travel in a way that maximises contact with local people and their ordinary lives. Learn a little of the language or, at least, a language they might use as a second language. (For example, in Tunisia and Morocco, French is used widely). Travel by local transport, bus or train. Ride a bicycle. Try a motorbike. A reliable car or a van would be better than a motorhome; our recent journey in Tunisia in a swb (5 metres) Sprinter white van enabled us to mix as equals with all the other white vans in that country. Hitching might be possible in some countries.

Don't even take a tent – use local accommodation, help the local economy a little, make contact. People with a tent want and need to hide – on a campsite, if there are any, or out of sight if there aren't. If you can't afford a room, don't go. Third World countries should not be a playground for the poverty-stricken of the West.

In these ways, you make constant contact for food, for somewhere to sleep, for information – and people want to talk to you. You are more at their level.