Review: Adventures of a Continental Drifter

Elliott Hester did what most of us occasionally fantasize about while staring blankly at an Outlook inbox. In 2002, he sold everything he owned and disappeared into the world.

Adventures of a Continental Drifter chronicles his first year of escape. Six continents, countless questionable decisions and enough bizarre encounters to make staying home seem both sensible and terribly dull.

The cover has more than a whiff of Raiders of the Lost Ark about it, which turns out to be appropriate. Hester has a remarkable talent for wandering into situations that would make a normal traveler quietly reconsider his life choices. There are abusive security officers in Cairo and sauna parties in Helsinki. He describes Argentine football as: “I went to a riot and a soccer match broke out”.

In Bangkok, he gets mistaken for Mike Tyson while attempting to escape from seedy clubs, which is the sort of sentence that suggests your holiday has either gone spectacularly right or catastrophically wrong.

Then there’s Tahiti. Paradise, apparently, was fully booked. With no rooms available, Hester ends up sharing a bed with a Canadian schoolteacher named George, a man whose snoring is described in terms normally reserved for wounded livestock and industrial machinery. There is “relentless howling”, “long gargling reverberations” and the general impression that something large, drunk and possibly feral has crawled into bed beside you. And then it gets worse.

This is where the book works best. Travel, after all, is rarely about the postcard moments. Nobody comes home eager to tell you about the perfectly adequate hotel room, the punctual train or the pleasant sandwich. The stories worth keeping are born when plans collapse, strangers appear, dignity evaporates and you find yourself thinking: Well, this wasn’t in Lonely Planet.

In the epilogue, Hester briefly considers giving up the road and settling into something resembling a normal life. The thought doesn’t survive long. He compares settling down to choosing to remain inside The Matrix. Accepting the comfortable illusion while the messy, unpredictable real world waits outside. It’s melodramatic, perhaps, but anyone who has spent too long staring at departure boards will understand the sentiment.

There is always another city. Another border. Another questionable hotel room. Another George. Let’s hope Hester keeps drifting. Because somebody has to make the bad decisions. And then write them down.