Steve Bougerolle - Travelogue 1992-1997

Travels 1992-1997

Map of my travels In 1990, I began planning a six-month trip around east Asia, which I would take after I finished university. At that point in time I had been working long and unsocial hours in front of a computer terminal for about thirteen years, and most of the time I was always under pressure to get grades and degrees. This life had worn me down considerably. Although I was solidly on my way to a Ph.D, I had already decided I didn’t want to keep on in Physics (my field of study), but wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do next.

As my background reading progressed my plans expanded to two or three years in Africa and Asia. I wanted to be free and see the world, and with academic thoroughness I made serious plans. My motives gradually changed from a simple desire to get out and see the world to a more conscious plan to "survey" it; to become familiar enough with large sections of the world that I would feel at home travelling and working there. My trip ultimately took four and a half years of my time, quite a bit longer than I had originally planned!

This is a revised, second version of this story. I wrote the first version shortly after the end of that travel in 1997, mainly for my friends and family. It evolved slightly and eventually found its way into these web pages. At many times since then I resisted the urge to re-write it until five years later, when the time to do it seemed right for all sorts of reasons. The general thrust of change has been to show much more about the places I visited, and to include less details about myself that would not be of interest to people who don’t already know me. People who are more interested in me than in where I went might find it profitable to skip to the epilogue and read that first (or only).

I have changed several names to save embarrassment. I often remember fondly the people I travelled with, and miss them at times and certainly don’t want to make trouble for them. Nevertheless, some of their antics are too good to leave out of this story.