The Tao of Travel

On the No Mercy quest to find a monstrous creature, perhaps a living dinosaur, Mokélé-mbembé, said to haunt a lake in a remote part of the Congolese jungle, O'Hanlon takes an American, Lary Schaefer, who sticks it out for most of the way but finally succumbs and heads home. These departures leave O'Hanlon with the guides and the bearers.

He thrives on conflict, adversity—much of the adversity in the form of insects. He suffers bad bouts of malaria and even a sort of dementia in places, and never fails to anatomize his ailments: "My penis had turned green. To the touch it felt like a hanging cluster of grapes. Swollen tapir ticks as big as the top of a thumb were feeding all down its stem. 'Keep calm,' I repeated out loud, and then I scrabbled at them" (In Trouble Again). And: "Ants, red-brown ants, about a quarter of an inch long, were running in manic bursts down my shirt-front, swinging left and right, conferring with their fellows, climbing over the hairs on my arms ... a bagful of ants fastened on my genitals" (No Mercy).

Gusto is O'Hanlon's watchword, though his hearty tone masks a scientific mind, a deep seriousness, and (so he says) a depressive spirit. Perhaps his fear of gloom is another reason why he travels with others. His books are often compared with those of Victorian adventurers, but in fact they are distinctly modern, sometimes hallucinatory, and depending almost entirely for their effect on dialogue. O'Hanlon uses his traveling companions and local guides as foils, for humor, and to extend the narrative.

V. S. Naipaul and His Women

IN THE PROLOGUE to An Area of Darkness, Naipaul mentions difficulties on his arrival in India—paperwork, red tape, and heat—and then says, "My companion fainted." In the U.S. edition of the book, this was changed to "My wife fainted." Patricia Naipaul accompanied him throughout his travels in India, as well as for the three months he was resident in Kashmir, but she is mentioned only that one time. In A Turn in the South, Naipaul's mistress went with him and did all the driving and most of the arranging of hotels, as his biographer reported. This mistress also went with Naipaul on his Among the Believers tour through the Muslim world, though halfway through the Beyond Belief sequel she was replaced by Nadira Khannum Alvi, who later became his wife and uncredited traveling companion.

John McPhee, His Fellow Paddlers, and His Wife

IN SOME OF his travels, McPhee seems to be on his own—in Looking for a Ship (1990) he is the only landlubber on board. But halfway through Coming into the Country, about his travels throughout Alaska, he mentions his "increasing sense of entrapment," and then parenthetically, "(my wife was with me)." The earlier part of the book is full of his traveling companions, four or five of them.

Bruce Chatwin and Friends

CHATWIN, AS HIS letters show, was compulsively gregarious. His apparently solitary travels, for In Patagonia and The Songlines, were often made with a friend or a guide; other trips were made with a male lover or with his wife, Elizabeth. I once mentioned to him that in recounting travel experiences one had to come clean. Chatwin replied with a shrieking laugh, "I don't believe in coming clean!"

Colin McPhee and Jane

IN A House in Bali (1947), his enthusiastic account of living on that island, McPhee is a musicologist bewitched by Balinese music. He builds a house, makes friends, and studies the music. Many of his friends seem to be Balinese boys. In one passage, McPhee is swept into a turbulent stream. He is spotted by some boys onshore:

It was then that I noticed that one of the more boisterous [boys] threw himself into the water, swam to a boulder and jumped over to where I was struggling. He knew by heart every shallow and hollow in the river bed, for he quickly led me ashore ... When we reached land, this naked dripping youngster and I stood facing one another. He was perhaps eight, unfed and skimpy, with eyes too large for his face ... I offered him a cigarette, but he suddenly took fright and was off into the water before I could say a word.

The boy's name is Sampih. He becomes important to the narrative and to McPhee's life in Bali. McPhee adopts him and mentors him, though he does not mention that the whole time he spent there he was with his wife, Jane Belo, a lesbian, and an anthropologist, the author of a definitive study of hypnotic states in Bali (Trance in Bali), and that it was she who funded his trip.

Eric Newby and Wanda