Momentary Encounters That Bring A Journey To Life With Nick Jubber

Hello travellers, I’m Jo Frances Penn, and in this episode, I’m talking to Nick Jubber about the momentary encounters that bring a journey to life.  We talk about how religion weaves its way into travel, especially in the middle east and north Africa, and how sometimes we can sense the intensity of faith, even when we are not religious ourselves. Nick talks about the nomadic life and the attraction of desert places, finding the roots of fairy tales across Europe, and how travel is changing, even while our desire to explore remains.  Nicholas Jubber is the award-winning author of five travel books, including Epic Continent and The Timbuktu School of Nomads. His latest book is The Fairy Tellers: A Journey Into the Secret History of Fairy Tales. Show notes * How religion winds its way into Nick’s travel writing * Discovering spiritual moments and meaning even if not religious * The romance vs. the reality of the desert * Lessons learned from nomadic life in the desert * Assessing risk and safety while traveling * Finding the roots of fairy tale in Europe * How travel might change in the future * Recommended travel books You can find Nick at NickJubber.com Transcript of the interview Jo: Nicholas Jubber is the award-winning author of five travel books, including Epic Continent and The Timbuktu School of Nomads. His latest book is The Fairy Tellers: A Journey Into the Secret History of Fairy Tales. Welcome, Nick. Nicholas: Oh, thanks, Joanna. Thanks very much for having me on the show. Jo: I’m excited to talk to you about lots of things. Let’s start with the latest book. So, a quote from The Fairy Tellers: “Grow up in suburbia, and either you tend to stick it out, or you spend your life looking for ways to flee those privet hedges and cul-de-sacs.” I read that line, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Tell us a bit more about you, and how you became a travel writer from that background. Nicholas: I grew up in a very typical middle-class kind of lifestyle. I think that there was this part of me that wanted to break out of there. I think that, for me, travel is often driven by a combination of a sort of escapism and curiosity. I think that from growing up in the cul-de-sac, and then I went to a boarding school run by monks. And then I worked after university in a job where I was working with a lot of filing cabinets and doing Excel spreadsheets. I was utterly bored out of my mind, and constantly reading about faraway places. Then an opportunity came to teach in Jerusalem, at a school in the Old City of Jerusalem. And I thought ‘That would just be fantastic.’ So, I went along there and sort of carried on traveling really ever since. It was a fascinating time to be in Jerusalem. The intifada had broken out. It was a terrible time. There was fighting on the streets. But there was a real sense of history in the making, and debate about what was going on and the world, as we were moving into the 21st century. So, a sense of a really exciting time to be traveling in that particular region in the Middle East. That led me to traveling to different places around there, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, all the way down to Ethiopia, which ended up in my first book, The Prester Quest. And then from there, more journeys. As soon as you start traveling, you see different places that you want to go to. And I think, ‘Oh, I want to go to Iran now. I want to go to Afghanistan. I want to go to Central Asia. I want to go to India.’ And so it just snowballed on and on from there. Jo: Yeah. Absolutely. And it’s so interesting, because we have had some overlap.

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Escape and inspiration about unusual and fascinating places, as well as the deeper side of books and travel. I'm Jo Frances Penn, author of thrillers and non-fiction, and I'll be doing solo shows about my own travel experience and interviewing authors about how travel inspires their writing. Interviews cover places to visit and tips for travel as well as thoughts on modes of travel like walking, cycling, and travel by train and other modes. Plus book recommendations for every interview so you have things to read on the move.