With the news, before Christmas, that America is going to commit 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, it’s easy to pass over this piece of information without considering much more than politics behind the headline.  Since the invasion in 2001, notably now over 8 years ago, the news from ‘on the ground’ in Afghanistan has dwindled to a distant murmour.   There are still undoubtedly people out there recording it for us to see, but the story isn’t getting through.  It wasn’t until I saw the photo exhibition on this website, that I started to get any kind of idea what it must be like, and even then, watching this at home can’t possibly come anywhere close to what ’s it’s going to to be like for those 30,000 soldiers, or any of the other people involved with that war.

Strangely, in a small town outside Riga, myself and my girlfriend picked up a book by the Royal Geographical Society.  Titled The Royal Geographical Society Illustrated , it’s a mainly photographic record of some awe inspiring explorations to far flung corners of the world – from Shackelton’s fateful Arctic exploration, to tiger hunters in India, to photographs of the the first Europeans to discover the Holy city, Lhasa, on the Tibetan plane.   While it might be tinged with a kind of colonial philosophy about the ‘discovery’ of distant places and peoples by Europeans (or mainly the British in this case), it is also fantastically illustrates what a culturally and geographically diverse world we have lived in.

But at the same time as laying out  the records of these great ‘discoveries’ of the past 160 years, it also somehow highlights how we have been eating away at the world’s diversity.  Never before have I had such a sense that the world is getting smaller and smaller.  As we pack more and people in, it seems that the last great wildernesses are shrinking, and the ‘unique peoples’ are being amalgamated into the juggernaut of general society.  Many of the tribes and peoples in this book don’t exist any more.

Exploration isn’t the same any more; from watching watching Jeremy Clarkson ( BBC presentor for the car related program topgear) drive to the North Pole in in a  4×4,  to the cue of people waiting in line on an in season day to stand at the top of Everest, there are obvious examples of how things have changed.  Could the golden age of geographical discovery be over?

There are still strands of geographical exploration which stand out as reaching into fresh territory, most obviously perhaps, there is space exploration, and Robert Ballard’s talk on deep sea exploration might demonstrate another example.  There are also always people pushing the limits somehow, climbing mountains by new routes, sailing round the world in faster times etc etc.  But is this anything new, or just more of the same?

My instinct tells me that there will always be great discoveries to be made, stagnation isn’t possible, but when mother nature has had enough, we’ll be gone.

Pictures to follow…

persevering with digital I took these pics in and around Riga :-

Almost a year after publishing my first book about experiences in Africa, I’ve taken a little time to reflect on the project.  The book, Bamako Boom Boom, was written to chronicle the sights, sounds and emotions of visiting somewhere like Africa for the first time.  I hadn’t done much reading or research before leaving for the trip – if I had I would have known too much to present it as an initial reaction – previous knowledge would in fact have tempered the formation of my own views.

Reliving the experience by writing it down reinforced my interest in Africa, so much so that when the final manuscript was sent to be printed, I went on a reading binge – taking in all I could find on the subject.  The most notable findings were Blayne Hardens ‘Dispatches from a fragile continent’, Richard Dowden’s ‘Africa’ and various works by the Polish journalist Ryzard Kapusincki.  These comprised some of the most thoroughly researched, well thought-out, and incisive writings about Africa I could find.  I was worried that conclusions I had come to and expressed in my book, wouldn’t in fact be based on enough of a breadth of experience to be classed as anything more than naive.

I didn’t realise it before I went but Africa fascinates me.    It sits out there on it’s own, and is the continent that the world would miss the most – in a complete reversal of the value traditionally given to it in political and economic spheres.  It’s disparate collection of people, places and cultures, which never ceases to dumbfound, horrify and amaze,  is as thrilling as you’ll find.  For me, this has manifested itself into a long term interest in the continent; it’s unlikely I’ll stop thinking about it, and words and pictures are the product of the thought.  It would at least be nice to think that the first attempt at recording some of these thoughts didn’t produce something rubbish.  For the time being at least, I’m not cringing.

World class climber talks about Bamako Boom Boom on his blog!

http://davemacleod.blogspot.com/2009/08/creative-people-misha-somerville.html

Finally sorted out online payment and so Bamako Boom Boom is now available to buy mail order on the internet from www.stingraybooks.co.uk.