What about your trip

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What about your trip?

Around the world in 80 poems (1)

Credit: Keith Findlater

“I’m going travelling whether you come with me or not!”

Without this ultimatum from my partner I may never have stepped off the career ladder to circumnavigate the globe. In April 2006 my girlfriend and now wife took the plunge and left our comfortable jobs to travel the world for a year. It was the best decision we have probably made in our lives, so good in fact that we came back married.

I had never really written any poetry prior to my travelling but decided it would be a great way to document our trip, so I started writing poems in the first week from our hostel in the heart of Mexico City and I carried on until the last leg of our journey on the Trans-Siberian Express across China and Mongolia to Russia. Any way, we returned to the UK in March 07 and I eventually took the advice of my many travel companions and compiled my book which I self published through a online company (author house).

345 days, 16 countries, 4 continents, 3 hospitals, 2 wedding rings, 1 police station and a day lost forever. From burping Mexicans to hot baths on the beach, BBQ rat in Laos, a leap of faith in Vietnam and an irate nun in Russia, my poems follow the ups and the downs of life of two novice travellers on the backpacker trail. I hope they make you laugh? Make you ponder? Make you cringe? Or make you wonder…why anyone would quit a comfortable job to circumnavigate the globe.

Let me take you on a taster trip around the world with some of my observations, the serious and the funny that will inspire you to either book the next flight to somewhere new or convince you to never go on holiday again. So whether you are a globetrotter or a ‘rather-not-er’, read poetry everyday or would rather play on the motorway, just sit back, fasten your seatbelt and enjoy the experience. Will these poems give you rhyming reasons to travel the globe…or not?

Pop culture (Mexico)

The Indian people of Chamula
Say “Kushee” instead of “Hola”
And like many other people
They worship Coca-cola
It’s part of their culture
From the workers to the Chief
More than a fizzy pop
Rather a religious belief
In the colours of the corn,
From cans and bottles they slurp
The evil spirits are released
When they belch or burp!

Sent by Graham Relton (17-03-08)

Graham can be contacted about his book:
'Around the World in 80 Poems:
Rhyming Reasons to Travel the Globe…Or Not!'

at garelton@googlemail.com

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