Long life
Abroad alone
Nigel Nicolson
tied Two Roads to Dodge City. This is not an advertisement, as it has long since been out of print.
It would never have worked if we had travelled together. We would not have had a book to show for it, or rather two repeti- tive books like Peter Fleming's News from Tartary and his companion's, Kini MaiHart. And there was another reason. I wanted to plan ahead, knowing where I would sleep each night of the three months, preferably in comfort, while Adam left things more or less to chance apart from the weekly letter- drops, seeking the excitement of the unex- pected, discovering his lodgings more by serendipity than by choice. I solicited hos- pitality: he found it no hardship occasional- ly to sleep in his car beside a desert road. We would never have agreed, and each morning would have set out under a cloud of mutual disapproval. As it was, we learnt more by correspondence about each other's natures than ever we would have learnt by conversation, and when eventual- ly we met on Wyatt Earp Avenue in Dodge City, we were wrapped in a cocoon of affection.
I still prefer travelling alone, specially walking alone, whether it be through Wilt- shire cornfields or the foothills of the Himalayas. I agree with Robert Louis Stevenson that if you go in company or even in pairs, 'it is more in the nature of a picnic'. Ours is admittedly a selfish atti- tude. No two people have the same degree of endurance. No two demand the same degree of comfort. Alone one can start and stop, and eat and drink, without having to consider the wishes of another. One can exclaim with delight, or moan with despair, entirely at one's own motivation. It halves the expense, and even the danger.
Once as an undergraduate I walked alone through the Peloponnese. As it was midsummer and very hot, I walked much of the way in the late evening, extending it into the night, and it was midnight under a full moon when I found myself on the track that led from Sparta to Kalamata through the Taygetos mountains. The path was cut into the cliff, a sheer wall above it, a precipice below. Suddenly a huge sheepdog barred my path, hideously growling if I stepped forward, advancing if I stepped back. We stood in confrontation for four hours until the dawn and shepherd came. They were the most frightening four hours of my life. A companion would have been no use; he would simply have put two lives at risk instead of one.
A week later I waded across the Alphous into the unpeopled ruins of Olympia. Oh the joy of that moment! No guide obtrud- ed, no comment was called for. All my love of Greece welled up in silence, and I had no wish to share it. Age has not changed my attitude. It is not misanthropy, but the desire to have the choice of solitariness when away from home. I do not want to be one of 50 people in a coach. I am going to Spain this week, alone but far from lonely.
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