The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes [Hardcover]

"The Lunatic Express," is a great title. The title alone drew me to this book. In Carl Hoffman's rogue travel memoir, Hoffman travels to countries in the third world by train, plane, boat, ferry, bus, car, truck, pedicab and taxi, taking on five continents in six months. The twist to his tale is that he travels as a local would--not as a Westerner would be expected to.

The countries he visits include Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil in South America; Tanzania and Kenya in east Africa; Mali and Senegal in west Africa; Indonesia, India and Bangladesh in south Asia; Afghanistan, China and Russia. Some countries are just a quick pass; in others he stays a longer time.

I liked this book because Hoffman brings into sharp focus values that traveling Westerners tend to take for granted: privacy and personal space; quiet; the expectation of safety; the expectation for a reasonable level of comfort. Hoffman is willing to give these up to experience separation and to live in the moment.

What nearly destroyed this book for me was the back story: Hoffman as a worldly, middle-aged man who regularly engages in "travel escapism," yet at the same time, wallows in whiny guilt and self-pity for doing so.

Of significance, Hoffman carries an omnipresent cell-phone that he uses with much frequency. So much for the genuine experience of travel separation. His cell-phone is as much an ersatz travel companion as his spouse, a child or a travel friend. On an "as-needed" basis, he makes use of first-world technology to "stay-in-touch" or to make hotel or other travel arrangements. At one point, he uses the cell phone to order Christmas presents for his family from half-way around the world.

The puppy-love affair with a young Western woman in New Delhi with whom he pals around for nearly three weeks is the one truly pathetic part of the narrative. At this juncture, it is obvious that Hoffman is depressed and lonely. During his time in New Delhi, he chooses to live in first-world digs. Unfortunately for the reader, this breaks up the adventure/angst of third-world travel. It is not that the reader wishes Hoffman to fall apart. However, Hoffman's back story is replete with fulsome hypocrisy that nearly destroys the good parts of this narrative.

And yet, I still recommend reading this book because there are compelling parts to his tale along with sparkle and keen insight into local culture and conditions. I especially enjoyed his ferry-travel journeys in Indonesia and Bangladesh. He is temporarily "adopted" by a ferry-board family as he travels to a remote outport in Indonesia. He writes..."the more I shed my American reserves, phobias, disgusts, the more they embraced me."

Hoffman experiences much kindness and outreach from total strangers in this and in other situations where there is no opportunity for him to reciprocate.

I worried that this was going to be kind of slim, like Sebastian-Junger-On-A-Risk-Tour, and kind of exploitative. But it's the opposite. It's like a really really long article from the Atlantic, or a series of articles, where you learn what life is like around the world, and how the many billions of people who do not live in the first world get around. There's plenty of fascinating risk-taking, yes (he hitchhikes through the gobi desert...in 38 degrees below zero weather; and takes a bus tour...in Afghanistan, while the war is going on!), but Hoffman is a highly empathic writer who makes you feel like you know what it is like to commute in India, or be a taxi driver in Kenya, or to ride an ancient wooden ferry in the Amazon. He has some great Harper's-type stats about risk levels, but he is most interesting when talking about what it means to be affluent (quiet and privacy, as well as safety, and liability laws, not to mention bathrooms in trains...), and showing what you only can learn about the world and what it means to be human by traveling on an Indonesian ferry, in steerage, for a week, with roughnecks on their way home from months in an oilfield.

I guess you could call this extreme tourism. Instead of rafting down rivers or exploring caves, though, the author focuses on the world's most dangerous forms of transportation. Afghan airlines, Indonesian ferries, Indian trains - they're all there. These forms of transportation also happen to be what the world's poor take everyday.

And that's the real interest in this book. Hoffman never really is in danger. But the insights he gains in how the other half lives are really invaluable. His own openness, as well as his own excellent writing skills, help make this happen.

But you've got to admit, the adventures that simply come his way couldn't really be anything but fascinating - prostitutes in Havana, peeing out the window of a train rolling through the Sahel, eating whatever they bring him in a Chinese restaurant with no English speakers, smoking hash with the guy responsible for the casualties (i.e., bodies) that are created everyday on the incredibly crowded Mumbai trains.

As long as he's simply describing what's going on, Hoffman is right on target. Unfortunately, he's also prone to musings about what it all means. Now, this could have been very effective in the right hands. Hoffman, however, is very focused on himself, almost solipsistically so, and without much real insight to boot. He actually comes off as not an especially pleasant character, which is a little ironic, as he seems to make friends very easily with the foreigners he meets.

A couple of reviewers have raised objections which I felt someone should respond to:

"He cheats (has a cell phone and a computer, occasionally stays someplace nice, etc.)." That's a quibble, though, given the other thing he puts himself through. I can't imagine myself ever going through the things he does.

"He never stays in one place long enough to get to know the country and people." That wasn't the point of the book. At the same time, he does get to know someone pretty well in almost every place he goes. And, personally, I think he was able to learn quite a bit about a place simply from riding these very unusual conveyances.

"He's really hard on the US (a Greyhound from LA to DC is the last leg of the trip)." I think there was something to the difference between the we're-all-in-this-together atmosphere of the rest of the world and the atomized individualism of the US. At the same time, though, I think he was also simply projecting a lot of his own troubles onto the people he met, plus he was no longer the star of the show as the out-of-place American.

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