There are three seasons in my life – before the expedition, after my return, and during the trip.

The day before departure I imagine how big the world is and how long I could travel to reach the end of it. I imagine what could happen and remember places I have visited before. I always think about the day I will be going back home and I never know it if will happen. Maybe this nearest trip will be my last one.

Discovering the world is fascinating. I have been doing it all my life. As a small girl I travelled with the heroes of books, films, and photographs. I felt the snow on my face, the ice-cold wind, and crackling cold from Jack London’s books. I wandered around in the desert, searching for the green valley where life flourished in the novel by James Curwood. I rode elephants together with Captain Korkoran, I explored the wild moors with Edgar Allan Poe, and I listened to Sherlock Holmes playing his violin in London. I trekked thousands of miles on dusty American roads with the protagonists of John Steinbeck’s books and I learnt about the world of the French Bohemia with Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso.

I had been dreaming that I would see with my own eyes everything I had experienced in my imagination for so long and so strongly that this dream had to come true. There was simply no other way.

When I set my foot on a Caribbean beach for the very first time, I thought I found myself in paradise. I quickly looked around me, but within my sight there were only two donkeys and not a single angel. I took it as a proof that I was still alive.

When I filled my lungs with the humid, sticky air of the Amazon jungle for the first time, I became enchanted forever. I don’t know any other place in the world, which has so much beauty, cruelty, purity, pain, life, and death at the same time. There are still places out there which have never been trodden by human feet, where a powerful energy of nature dwells. Sometimes I feel it in my own body - pervading me completely and filling me from within. I carry it inside me every day, also when I am in Poland.

The jungle changed me as a human being. It taught me courage, independence, and how to use the supersensual capabilities that everyone of us possesses, but which become stifled and suppressed in the noisy and aggressive city jungle.

When I began climbing the high mountains in the Andes and the Himalayas I was enraptured by the coolness of the mornings, deserted spaces, and the violet bellflowers, which were covered by frost at night to come alive and bloom once again at dawn. I counted twelve steps, after which my lungs refused to breathe, begging for oxygen in the air which was too thin. Then I grabbed my trekking sticks and I counted another twelve steps. In this way I discovered that we can overcome the weakness of our body and reach the summit.

Near Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa the earth is flat and it stretches miles on end as a boundless ocean of grass. One day I wrote: “The day is dawning. The sky starts turning blue above the savannah, I hear the calls of birds, hyenas, and lions, the zebras shiver watchfully … The air smells of freedom and happiness…”
Twenty-four hours later: “Once again the morning is coloured blue and pink, Mt. Kilimanjaro sparkles in the sky, and the birds sing such beautiful melodies that my heart melts from happiness …”

On tropical islands I ate coconut ice-cream, finding it hard to believe that something so tasty could exist in the world. On the island of Zanzibar I ordered rice with such hot spices that they burnt the skin on my lips. How incredibly this dish tasted in a local bar full of locals speaking Swahili! …

For many years I collected within myself those sensations, emotions, pictures, and the thoughts that go with them. I am happy to be able to share them in books, reportages, features, radio broadcasts, and television programs. Thanks to travelling and owing to everything I saw in the world, what I experienced from people on different continents, my life has become full and colourful. In fact I feel as if I have lived many lives because every journey is a new quest not only through countries, but also through life.

It also took me a long time to learn how to travel wise. I discovered how to pack my luggage well and what to do in order not to lose it. I learnt from my own mistakes and I drew conclusions. Each time I travelled again I was better prepared and I reached my goal more and more effectively – even if the goal was not the same I had defined in the first place.

In this book I wrote about almost everything I know about travelling. I wrote about the difference between a foreign language and a universal language, how to become friends with local people, how to avoid being attacked by a criminal, how to diagnose yellow fever and malaria, where to buy a cheap airplane ticket, how to avoid poisoning, and how to cure oneself from the most common travelling inconveniences.

I also write about what to do to make travelling easy, I explain why sometimes it is better to travel alone, and how to behave in Muslim countries, at a Japanese table, and in a Hinduist temple.
I was writing this book for several years, collecting conclusions, discoveries, and travel inventions. Then for a few years I was making notes. One day I sat in front of my computer and I began to write the first chapter.

I was writing and writing, and the book was growing bigger and bigger …

Months had passed and I still had the feeling that there are other very important things I have to write about, so I spent the whole summer and autumn writing, wondering why it takes so long.

A few months later, during a meeting at National Geographic publishing company I saw a thick folder which would not close because of the hundreds of pages it contained.

- What is it? – I asked casually.
- Your new book – I heard – It is three times bigger than the books you wrote before.

It was only then when I realised why writing took so much time. I do hope that my observations, conclusions, and discoveries will be useful to you. I wish you wonderful journeys during which you can discover not only the world and the people, but also the true yourself. I hope we will meet someday on the road!


Beata Pawlikowska

Havana – Caracas – Mombassa – Bogota – Zanzibar 2007

Translated by Michał Nowakowski

Introduction - excerpt from the book "THE GLOBETROTTER'S GUIDE, or The Travelling Blonde", published by National Geographic Poland 2008

Comments and letters: beata@beatapawlikowska.com