Ok, you can’t just ‘up-and-go’. You might need vaccinations; a medical check-up; appropriate currency; specialist clothing; the indispensable Collins Phrase Book…it’ll take a little time to get yourself sorted. Something you cannot buy is ‘awareness’ yet this is probably the most important ‘commodity’ a traveller can possess.
The only thing we in the UK need to actively fear on a daily basis is a motoring accident and this is largely within our own control; diseases here are few and far between and there’s little we can do to avoid affliction so we don’t actually fret about them. In a nutshell, we have a pretty cushy lifestyle 24/7 day-in day-out – but it’s very different in other parts of the world.
My own experience and my observations of fellow travellers show just how easy it is to be complacent in lands where very different rules apply, and actually taking on board the stark realities of a new and exotic environment isn’t easy to do: nothing’s going to attack you, is it! And because the sun is shining and everybody’s happy, nothing’s going to happen to you, is it! Well, that’s pretty much the attitude I used to travel with before I had a few scares.
Fortunately nothing other than stomach bugs has attacked me, though my over-confidence could well have seen me devoured by a lion in the Arusha National Park, Tanzania, some years ago. Our guided walk through the bush seemed so…so…innocent! The day was warm and very pleasant; we chatted as we strode through the grasses and around the forest perimeter completely at ease with the world. Yes, we knew that this was lion and elephant and rhino country and that any one of these species could kill us but did we really believe it and conduct ourselves accordingly? No! Before long, our tightly knit group became a disparate motley of punters needing the firm discipline of our rifle-toting guide. It hadn’t seemed fair being called back into line…I mean, we were on holiday! And he had a gun! But toward the end of our afternoon stroll among the birds and the flowers we caught sight of a periscopic lion’s tail moving through the grasses and quickly decided our guide wasn’t such a bad guy after all…
The Kavak Canyon in Venezuela terminates in a chamber filled with the eternal thundering of a water bore that has punched a shaft deep into the rocks; just how deep was unknown to me and a fellow adventurer when we felt the urge to cool-off and unthinkingly waded into the roiling pool – this would be a shower to remember, woo-hoo! Fortunately, our movements caught the eye of our leader who loudly barked at us to STOP! We did so and immediately saw the error of our enthusiasm…it would have been a one-way ticket to oblivion; unseen death by drowning in a dark and freezing shaft. We waded back onto terra firma somewhat humiliated for failing to see what was such an obvious danger: our bones would have been whirling around that icy cauldron to this day…
It really is the easiest thing in the world to drop your guard on holiday. Back on the Serengeti I sat on the bonnet of our group’s Land Rover puffing on a cheap cigar and watching a gaggle of my colleagues down by the stagnant river. They’d spotted a distant croc and were pointing at it. Through my binoculars the beast looked nothing less than evil-made-flesh; a truly ancient throwback from prehistoric times with the meanest, meanest visage. It was both fascinating and horrifying but not at all beautiful, not even in the way that Nature imbues the pike with good looks and grace: this was one nasty bastard. I heard my friends chuckle and took the bins from my eyes to see what they were up to and – oh, my god, I thought, there’s an Attenborough moment coming up! At any moment, a croc could come crashing and slashing from the mire to drag one of them off…
It didn’t happen, but how easily it could have. Who could blame a bunch of Brits weaned on elf ‘n’safety and political correctness for failing to recognise the possibility of imminent consumption? Things like that don’t happen in Coulsden, do they? No. But they do in East Africa and in Australia where my brother was on holiday a few years ago. He’d been determined to photograph a big ‘saltie’ and took himself off to an estuary, camera in hand. He later explained to me his irrational assumption that anything nasty would be ‘over there’…’ on the ‘far bank’ without realizing that the ‘far bank’ was no different to his! It was only when he saw a fifteen foot monster emerge from the grass and slide down into the murk that the penny dropped – did he run!
Possibly the most bum-clenching account I’ve heard was from a mahseer fisherman who’d spent all afternoon and early evening fishing from an area of beach below the white water of the Cauvery River. On arrival back at camp he realized he’d left his forceps on the sand and immediately returned to retrieve them. There, right where he’d been sitting, was a full-grown tiger quenching its thirst. Had the beast been watching him? And for how long, he’d asked… Spine-tingling stuff!
Don’t be complacent! There are things out there that will eat / crush / bite / enter you if you don’t do your homework first and take the right precautions. Most importantly though – be aware!
Cliff Hatton
