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Michael Palin, English comedian, actor & author has famously written his way around the globe. His travels have taken him to Eastern Europe, the Himalayas, the Sahara Dessert, both the North & South Poles, and most recently Brazil.
Everplaces were lucky enough to talk to Michael about his travel experiences, and his new novel The Truth; a tale of a luckless writer who travels to India in search of environmental corruption, his principles and the truth.
In Around the World in 80 Days you travelled through some 20 (I think) countries over land and sea; whereas your most recent series, Brazil, looks deeper into just one country.
Some people like to race around collecting stamps on their passports, while others prefer to get a deeper feel of a culture. Where do you sit? Has this changed with experience?
I’ve never been interested in tick-box travelling. For me the essential value of travel is to make a personal connection with the place you are in and the people you meet. This requires more than just an overnight visit and I’ve been very lucky with my BBC travels to have time to get to know people and experience the country a little more deeply. But never enough time!
In The Truth, the protagonist travels to some rich, far-flung locations (& some mundane ones too). How did you research the locations, are they drawn from personal experience, and how much is fiction?
In The Truth, I needed to find out about potential environmental hot spots. I had read an Amnesty International report on what was happening with the aluminium plant in the Nyamgiri Hills in India and I spent a week out there researching this particular story. It had all the elements that I really wanted to incorporate in the book, but as ever with a work of fiction, not everything happened as it does in the book.
Your novel touches on the effects of globalisation and progress, where tribesmen use laptops and westerners pen & paper. When you travel are you a pen & paper man, or what technology could you not do without?
I’m very much a pen-and-paper man when I travel. I always take a notebook – made by a company in Glasgow – with me, and make all my notes by hand. I add to these notes with some entries on a personal voice recorder.
I admire those societies who can make a lot out of very little and don’t like being dependent on electricity or digital communication. But things like Satnavs and smartphones have become tools which you can’t really ignore.
Technology has undeniably made travel easier and the world smaller, and smartphones have put a map and phrasebook in everyone’s pocket. Is this a good thing, and does this make stumbling upon that rare tourist-free secret harder?
I think the most important thing about travelling is to have some unique personal experience. Some of the most unforgettable moments in my travels have not been programmed or set-up, or found on a website, they are the accidental encounters, the surprises, the unplanned moments, strange foods, unusual landscapes, unfamiliar music. Yes, stumbling into experiences you’d never expected is very important to me.
You’re a man of many talents. What plans do you have for the future?
In the spirit of spontaneity I never plan too far ahead. I want to keep working, exploring, discovering new places and new things. There is no App that does this for me, I just have to keep a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world and try and do something fresh each time.
Michael Palin’s second novel, The Truth / Sandheden is out now. If you’re lucky enough to live in Denmark, Michael will be speaking on the 22rd March at the Royal Library, and you can sign up to the event here.
We have created a short collection of Michael’s favourite places from his travels which you can view here.
Thanks to Keith Bergman @ Hetland Books for helping to set this up.
Photo credit: Basil Pao