Grounded

I recently read the book Grounded by Seth Stevenson. The premise of the book is that the author and his girlfriend attempt to travel around the world without flying.

 

While I personally love flying I would also like to circumnavigate the globe without leaving its surface. I have long held the dream of doing a world cruise .This being the easy way of doing this kind of trip.

But reading this did make me want to try it the harder way too.

 

Before I picked up this book I’d had an idea of a long overland trip.

I want to catch the Trans Siberian train from Russia to China via Mongolia. Then travel across China to Tibet (there is a train that does this route now). I would then visit Bhutan, Nepal etc before travelling around India.

I haven’t looked into the feasibility of this trip in regards to border crossings, visas and the best time of year to be in each place. (The trouble with travelling between hot and cold places is the extra clothes you need to pack. If I go to a hot place I would rather take only my smaller carry on sized pack).

 

I really enjoyed reading this book so I was actually rather surprised when I read the reviews on Amazon and found so many of them to be negative.

Yes I did think when reading the book that they didn’t spend much time in each place and that if I’d done it I would have spent longer exploring every destination.  But I just thought hey to each their own if that’s the way they want to travel it’s their trip.

Plus being a fan of snark I liked their comments about the people they encountered along the way. I laughed out loud at some of their quips.

 

I was not disappointed that the book did not go into much detail about all the places they visited. I am sure there are many books that do and if that’s what you want it can’t be hard to find one.

But this book focused on the actual journey of how hard it can be to circumnavigate the globe without leaving the ground and I liked that the fast pace of the book about their slow trip made this a quick easy read.

The book wasn’t bogged down with details but it still had some interesting facts about things like the development of container shipping.

 

Somewhat ironically the uncomplicated writing in this book means that this would be a good book to read on a long flight.