Retiring in style
- Book: Turning Left Around The World
- Location: World
- Author: David C Moore
What did you do to mark retirement? Hit the golf course on a Monday morning? Flash your bus pass and splash out on a shopping spree? Splurge on the all-you-can-eat buffet at Beefeater on a Wednesday lunchtime?
David & Helene Moore‘s celebration was somewhat more ambitious – and demanded deeper pockets – than most of us can probably contemplate. They decided to travel around the world, visiting 15 countries over 10 months, venturing to far-flung destinations in South America, Asia and Australasia. And all in style – ‘turning left‘ – thanks to successful careers and the tailor-made services of luxury travel specialists Audley Travel.
David has written about this remarkable trip in ‘Turning Left Around The World’, adapting his ‘Moore Ramblings‘ for friends and family into a full-blown book, published by Mirador and with a perfect cover illustration by humorous artist Tim Bulmer.
The book is written sequentially, covering their 306 days on the road in 30 separate chapters. And as literary editor of the Silver Travel Book Club, for TripFiction partner Silver Travel Advisor, I was privileged to dig a little deeper behind the pages in this Q&A interview with David and Helene: https://www.silvertraveladvisor.com/blog/silver-gap-years-and-bucket-list-travels/turning-left-around-the-world
David’s writing style is conversational, and he is an entertaining host on this epic journey. The relationship and banter between David and Helene adds a nice warm, human touch to the physical aspects of the trip.
‘What on earth is this?’ I asked my wife Helene, as she presented me with a large tube accompanied by two boxes of pins, one blue the other pink. ‘It’s not more DIY is it? You know I don’t like DIY.’
‘No, and you’re not very good at it either. This is about us, now you’re planning to retire.’
But amongst the light-hearted luxurious approach to their adventure, David and Helene resolve to ‘try anything once‘, and David proves to be an astute observer of people, culture and history in each place, with a touching respect for local traditions and sensitivities.
Their itinerary included many of the ‘must-sees‘ around the world. I’ve shied away from joining the hordes of people invading Peru’s Machu Picchu, but David’s insight into the Lost City of the Incas, and particularly its remarkably enlightened Emperor Pachacutec, may have swayed me:
Anticipating many years in advance, ‘he instructed his R&D deparment to scrutinise the area within 100 km of the capial Cusco to identify a defensible area they could retreat to if there was an invasion. Seems to me Pachacutec was thinking when, not if. His brief had three strategic requirements: it must be geographically impregnable, provide a natural water supply and have innate resources to enable them to build a small self-sufficient city.‘
Machu Picchu was constructed in the 15th century, on a ridge almost 2,500m high up in the Andes, abandoned a century later when the Spanish Conquistadores arrived, but was not really known to the outside world until 1911. Remarkable.
I had tears in my eyes reading what David says about the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the ‘brutal and barbaric torture at Tuol Seng‘ under the despotic Communist rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, ‘responsibe for the deaths of over two million of his own people, or 1 in 4 of the population.’ Madness.
There are plenty of light-hearted and uplifting experiences along the way, and if you like a travel book to entertain, educate and enrich your life, ‘Turning Left Around The World’ absolutely achieves that.
Thank you, David & Helene.
Now, where’s my passport…..
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