"TRAVELS OF A FAILED CHAMPAGNE ANARCHIST" muguruki's Profile

My first travel memories are of being car sick in the back of my dad’s Hillman Imp somewhere around Penmaenmawr on the way to Anglesea. A lay-by was quickly spotted and pulled into, once I stopped feeling queasy and I had had my gob thoroughly wiped clean by my mum’s spittle moistened hanky, we were on our way again to the paradise island that lay beyond the Menai Straits. Luckily the travel sickness stopped not long after we arrived just in time for me to get mumps.

In the early seventies a week in a musty caravan in Benllech Bay was what any asthmatic little lad would want from a family holiday.

Thankfully the delights of carsickness and asthma have now given way to other travelling ailments such as malaria and amoebic dysentery. So if any of the following pages don’t make any sense I am putting all the blame entirely on the side effects of taking too much Imodium and Larium.



You may think that a lot what I have written here is half finished, that is mainly due to the fact that I’m an idle git and can’t be arsed finishing things. These pages are being constantly updated but at a very slow rate. Hope you have more patience than I have.

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Jain temple, Mombasa.

In recent years the country I have most visited is Kenya. There are loads of countries in the world that I want to visit but Africa keeps drawing me back, and East Africa in particular. Kenya being a destination for package holidays has the advantage of having some really good 'late' or 'flights only' deals to Mombasa, so good in fact that I have to take advantage of them.

Traditional stall in Owino Market, Kampala.

The one country I really want to go back to is Uganda. Love the place, I think a lot of it is to do with the people its probably one of the friendliest places I have been. Uganda is a fairly small country that makes it a real easy place to travel around, from the dusty dry northeast to the lush green southwest.

The guidebooks to Uganda that are on the market concentrate the real tourist sites of the south but for me the best parts of the country are in the north and east of the country.

A big part of travelling for me is trying out different food (and drink). Being a vegetarian can make finding meatless food a bit of a challenge. So when I'm in a country for the first time the first phrase I usually learn is "I am a vegetarian".

Myself being a Virtual Tourist of some repute, as well as being known for making the best onion bhajis in north Wales, and also an all round decent bloke it may well seem unbelievable to you reading this that I have yet to get the call from BBC radio 4 asking me to rush down to broadcasting house and appear on Desert Island Discs.

So in anticipation of Kirsty Young getting on the blower to me and demanding to know which of my eight discs I would rescue if the lapping waves were to threaten to wash them into the ocean; my Desert Island Discs are listed below.

I always thought it would be easy to list my eight faves but as soon as I finish writing them down I think of another that must be included but then have great difficulty in eliminating one of the tracks from the existing eight. So for the time being or maybe just for today my eight all time favourite musical tracks are as follows.

If I have done it properly the song title should also be a link to a clip of the song from somewhere on t’net. So happy listening and queue those seagulls……

1. Yu Gung - Einsturzende Neubauten.
2. An Opposition Spokesman - The Red Crayola
3. I am the Fly - Wire
4. Big Dummy - Magazine
5. Youv'e been duplicated - Chrome
6. Showtime Showtime - Empire Bakuba
7. Next – The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
8. Dresden Style – Swell Maps

and on the subs bench i would have Roger Milla

Whether I’m travelling or not I read quite a bit and not unsurprisingly the bulk of what I read are travel books. I would usually go for an African travel book but will read pretty much anything on Africa, African history, or travel to pretty much anywhere, come to think about it some of my favourite fiction is African based. I always think combining travel and food writing is a really good combination for a book and as I write this I am half way through Honey and dust by Piers Moore Ede. A book about travelling the middle east and tasting honey “tremendous stuff”.

Paul Theroux is possibly my favourite travel writer. He is one of a few authors that can write fiction as well as he writes non-fiction.

My favourite books by him are: -
Dark Star Safari
Fresh air fiend
Sir Vidias Shadow
My secret history

Other writers/books I have enjoyed are: -
Eating the flowers of paradise by Kevin Rushby. Travelling through Yemen and Ethiopia chewing miraa, well you would wouldn’t you.

Places In Between by Rory Stewart is a tremendous book as he walks through Afghanistan just after the fall of the Taliban.

The most overrated books are: -
100 years of solitude
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

I’ve started both of these and got through about 100 pages of each before off loading them to the charity shop.

“Un uomo solo al comando, la sua maglia è bianco-celeste, il suo nome è Muguruki.”

I don't give a blue "tuk".