The Seven Year Hitch: A Family Odyssey [Paperback]

This is a 'tranquil' read into one British family's journey by horse drawn caravan around the world. It's a pleasant read, without too many surpises or revelations about people, culture or lands. Neither is it a tourist guide.
The reasons for the journey, are never fully explored. The descriptions of the journey are useful, but never engrossing.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed this acocunt, becasue it showed that a family, or for that matter a group of people, with no real expecations, travel experiences or resources can ultimately achieve. Hurray! I wonder where they are now?

David Grant and his family were living up in the Orkney islands (near Scotland) when they got this idea of traveling about in a caravan. The plan started off small and began to grow. They as a family had opportunity to do unusual things, their children were still quite young, and they took a chance. This story could fall under different genres (travelogue, experiences in home-schooling, general adventure) and it goes many places. (literally and figuratively)

The Grant family starts off in Europe and travels through a number of countries and then finds themselves taken with what was Yugoslavia. They spent a year living with a couple of families and getting to know the countryside and the people very well. They saw the beginngs of civil war and then chose to leave to work their way across Asia. Through-out the story you are introduced to the personal every day moments of their life; the daily routines that help them keep going. While the book is a quick and fun read it also is a bit exhausting. (in a clever way) The family trekked across Kazakhstan and it proved to be one of the more trying times. It was slow, often cold (lots of slush, ice and snow) and there wasn't much variety or quantity to the food. Due to health problems (which become an important part of the story) the Mother wasn't with them. I read this section of the story one afternoon and by the evening I felt as if I had made my way across the steppes. There were times when their spirits were obviously a bit low and I felt low with them. Making it to Mongolia seemed like arriving at a wild birthday party in comparison. The author really conveys a lot of the emotion in this journey. Another intriguing aspect of the story is watching the three children grow up. You see them become these independent people who manage the caravan and the journey and forge their own place and identity. It is something to kind of marvel over when reflecting upon who everyone was in the beginning and what they became (parents and kids together) in the end. You aren't offered a huge insight to different cultures but then it isn't exactly the story of other people. It is the story of one family (their animals too) and their exposure to the kind hearts of many strangers and a few less then kind hearts and experiences as well. I think that the culture differences seems secondary in the story because of the similarities with many humans around the world to welcome travelers is the significant experience for the Grant family.

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