HIS "ONE MAN" CARAVAN

Radio Record, 25 March 1938, Page 31

HIS "ONE MAN" CARAVAN

Adventurous Round World Tour On Motor Cycle N the last few years books of biography and travel have enjoyed a remarkable vogue, and, in a field that suddenly became highly-competitive, the standard of the travel-writer was forced to improvement. But, even against those incomparables, Farson and Curle, 1 doubt that the lover of book-adventuring will find many faults with Robert E Fulton’s "One Man Caravan." Fulton was, at the time of his adventure, a 28-year-old American student already widely travelied and familiar with the cities of Western Europe. One night at a London dinner-party, when the wine was flowing freely, someone asked him: "What are you going to do now, Mr. Fulton?’ He replied: "I’m going round the world on a motorbike." He made that statement as a harmless piece of braggadocio-with not the faintest intention in the world of supporting it. But, before he had time even to think, a representative of the Douglas Motor Cycle Company present at the dinner promised to provide him with a specially-fitted cycle! A day or two later he was invited to the factory to select the machine. By now, not daring to explain that his joke was a joke, he decided to go through with it. Thus began one of those adventures about which nearly every young man of imagination dreams. Defied The Desert OUNG Fulton travelled at leisure through France, Germany, Austria and the Balkans ... through modern Turkey and across the Bosphorus into Asia Minor. There he defied the deserts of Syria and Palestine, wandered through the hazaars of Bagdad, and down to the mouth of the Twin Rivers. . The rains of winter turned him back from Persia, so he took ship to India. cycled over the burning plains of Bengal, gate-crashed the North-West Frontier Province and forbidden Waziristan, tricked permit of entry to travel through the Khyber Pass to Kabul ... spent Jong, memorable _ nights under the stars with the caravans of the world’s fiercest people. In_ the Himalayas, after problematical ski-ing, he nearly froze to death with his guide. In Afghanistan his chief difficulties were caused by people warning him not to go in! After India, the young traveller might well have been excused from the yest of the contract, but the wine of effort was in his blood. He travelled through Sumatra and Java, back through the Federated Malay States and Siam, through Southern China to

Shanghai, and from there made 2000 miles excursion into the interior. Not once in all his time among the world’s worst reputed peoples did he suffer insult or injury-though, as he himself says with pleasant whimsy, he came to look on the village gaol as the village hotel. Such is the tale of the "One Man Caravan." It is told with a becoming modesty, eagerly, undramatically. It is never anything more than superficial-it does not aim to be. It is the simple, ‘unadorned, unphilosophical tale of adventurous youth seeing the world in the best way possible-as one of the world’s citizens. As such I enjoyed it more than * haye enjoyed'any book of travel in years. And I believe thai many thousands of other readers will enjoy it as wholeheartedly as I did. "One Man Caravan," by Robert E. Fulton (Harrap, London). Our copy from the publishers.