A Backpacker's Journey

The Ugly Americans

June 15, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 0 Comment

I have met many delightful Americans while travelling in foreign lands, but I think it is safe to assume that collectively Americans go abroad less and are generally less well liked overseas than travellers from comparable countries because of their sense of superiority and belief in American exceptionalism. They may just be TOO exceptional for foreigners to appreciate. I encountered two of the most exceptional while hitchhiking around Europe in 1971. A few weeks earlier I had met a wonderful…

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Night of the Living Dead

June 6, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 0 Comment

I have travelled a lot in Third World nations and I have had my share of annoying stomach bugs and other minor intestinal ailments, but one time in October, 2008, on the fabled Snowman Trek in Bhutan – a beautiful Himalayan country east of Nepal and south of China – I experienced the worst night of my life. I woke up just before midnight and felt a horrific rumbling in my guts unlike anything I had ever experienced. It just…

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A Walk on the Wild Side

May 27, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 0 Comment

I have always had a fascination with trains. It started because my parents never owned a car or ever drove one, so we often travelled on trains and buses and it was a lot more comfortable and fun to ride the trains. I would stare out the window at the scenery flashing by and imagine I was running at super speed beside the train, leaping over fences, dodging other obstacles, creating an exhilarating sense of freedom and agency that my…

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1969 – A Tale of Two Rock Festivals

May 17, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 0 Comment

Purely by coincidence I happened to be very close to the two biggest North American rock festivals of 1969. Everyone knows about Woodstock, but the other one is often described as the greatest rock festival that nobody remembers. Except for the 110,000 of us who were there. That’s what happens when the organizers make no attempt to film three days of tremendous musical performances. It has no afterlife. When the most famous rock festival of them all followed 12 days…

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Flying the Hippie Airlines

May 7, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 0 Comment

By 1971 I had hitchhiked around virtually every corner of North America except the American deep south, meeting people of all kinds and travelling through mountains, deserts, the prairies, the bible belt and the great plains, plus visiting many of the continent’s big cities and basking in that California sun. Now, it was time for something new and different – Europe. I was excited by the idea of experiencing different cultures and interacting with the local people, but a little…

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A Close Encounter

April 25, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 7 comments

It was a beautiful mid-October day in the Dolpo region of western Nepal in 2014. Under bright blue skies our group of 13 trekkers left the lovely village of Saldang, and crossed the 4,565 metre (14,977 foot) Khoma La mountain pass, before slowly descending to the village of Khomagaon, just in time to witness a wonderful series of horse races, part of a grand and colourful wedding celebration. I was enjoying myself immensely and mingling with the huge crowds of…

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Like a Rolling Stone

April 21, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 0 Comment

Sometimes I just can’t make up my mind. That’s when I leave things up to fate. It was late September 1970, and I had been hanging out at my parents’ place in West Orange, New Jersey, for about a month. It was my second visit that year and it was clearly time to move on. But where to? I could hitchhike back to Edmonton and see if I could land a job, but I was also tempted to head north…

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Aye, there goes Bobby Sands

April 10, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 0 Comment

The body of Bobby Sands was moved to his family home in the Catholic Twinbrook neighbourhood of West Belfast on the day the 27-year-old hunger striker finally died of starvation a little after 1:00 am. Thousands of friends, relatives and fellow paramilitary volunteers came to the wake to pay their respects, and two days later Sands was given a hero’s funeral by the Provisional IRA. It began with a mass at his local church, St. Luke’s Chapel, followed by a…

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Take Me to the Worst of It

April 3, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 4 comments

When I arrived in Belfast on April 30, 1981, to cover the imminent death of 27-year-old Bobby Sands and the climax of the IRA hunger strikes in Long Kesh (or Maze) Prison, I had to really scramble to find accommodation of any kind. Every major British, Irish and American newspaper and every big English language television network seemed to have descended on Belfast and grabbed virtually all the available hotel rooms in the fractured city. I got one of the…

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The Boys of Belfast’s Ghettos

March 26, 2018 Tom Barrett Comments 1 comment

Just when something you have been looking forward to for a very long time is near, a totally different and very enticing opportunity comes knocking at your door. You can simply ignore it, or attempt to radically change your plans. About ten days before I was to fly to Shannon Airport in the west of Ireland, in early May, 1981, and begin a bicycling trip around the country, I realized that a major political event in Northern Ireland that I…

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