The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes |  | Author: Carl Hoffman
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
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Seller: BRILANTI BOOKS
Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 102064
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0767929802
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4
EAN: 9780767929806
ASIN: 0767929802
Publication Date: March 16, 2010
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Product Description
Indonesian Ferry Sinks. Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. African Train Attacked by Mobs. Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get. So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, the slowest buses, and the most rickety trains. The Lunatic Express takes us into the heart of the world, to some its most teeming cities and remotest places: from Havana to Bogotá on the perilous Cuban Airways. Lima to the Amazon on crowded night buses where the road is a washed-out track. Across Indonesia and Bangladesh by overcrowded ferries that kill 1,000 passengers a year. On commuter trains in Mumbai so crowded that dozens perish daily, across Afghanistan as the Taliban closes in, and, scariest of all, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by Greyhound.
The Lunatic Express is the story of traveling with seatmates and deckmates who have left home without American Express cards on conveyances that don't take Visa, and seldom take you anywhere you'd want to go. But it's also the story of traveling as it used to be -- a sometimes harrowing trial, of finding adventure in a modern, rapidly urbanizing world and the generosity of poor strangers, from ear cleaners to urban bus drivers to itinerant roughnecks, who make up most of the world's population. More than just an adventure story, The Lunatic Express is a funny, harrowing and insightful look at the world as it is, a planet full of hundreds of millions of people, mostly poor, on the move and seeking their fortunes.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 22
 The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman, an encouraging read for local travelites August 30, 2010
Cynthia (St. Louis, MO United States)
If local travel means putting oneself in the shoes of a local, then travel writer Carl Hoffman
has earned status as expert local travelite with a compelling story to tell. His latest book is The
Lunatic Express: Discovering the World via its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and
Planes. He relays his round-the-world journey on human conveyances that represent how the
global majority transports itself. His trip includes everything from airlines in Cuba to railways in
Africa to ferries in Indonesia and back again through the States via Greyhound buses.
Hoffman was first attracted to local transport in all its harrowing forms through the media
coverage of various disasters. Each chapter begins with a journalistic excerpt about a fateful
incident on some form of public transit. Using these anecdotes as well as statistics about
injuries and deaths, Hoffman plans a route on the world's worst transportation. This goal is not
sensationalism or stuntman bravado. Rather, he aims to contrast the luxury of tourism travel
versus the necessity of how the global poor get from point to point. "I gradually began to
realize," he writes, "that the big numbers of today's tourism industry obscured a parallel reality,
excluded a whole river of people on the move. Excluded, in fact, most of the world's travelers."
Each segment of the trip is its own story, but common threads weave it together. Dualisms
and paradoxes emerge. Hoffman begins by comparing affluent travel and public mass
transit. Transportation reflects the security, comfort, and regulation of affluent societies versus
the danger, overcrowding, and lack of controls in the less developed world. As he traverses
South America on its notorious bus system, he writes "I was starting to trust the efficiency of this
whole ad-hoc, unregulated system."
The dualism of personal space versus touch and contact also reoccurs. In the economics of
third world transport, "speed and maximum capacity are of the essence." He rides matatus, the
minibuses in Kenya that pull people aboard until they reach the absolute limit. He rides trains in
Mumbai where the crushing pressure of the crowds becomes fatal. In an interview about the
book, Hoffman reflects that the trip was a reevaluation of what affluence means. "I've always
sort of thought of it as objects, as things. Traveling as I did for five months, I decided that it really
had nothing to do with things. It was all about space. In places like Indonesia, you're with 3000
people and no personal space whatsoever." Spaces that are private and quiet and clean occurs
to him as a "luxury that is profound."
A final dualism Hoffman explores is connection versus otherness. At times the language
barriers and cultural divides between himself and his fellow passengers overwhelm him. He
spends pages in isolation, receding into himself. Yet the best moments of the book are the ones
where he breaks through the otherness and connects with locals. On a packed ferry in
Indonesia, he achieves this sort of communion. "The more I shed my American reserves,
phobias, disgusts, the more they embraced me. In the weeks ahead I would accelerate what had
started gradually over the miles. I would do whatever my fellow travelers and hosts did. If they
drank the tap-water of Mumbai and Kolkata and Bangladesh, so would I. If they bought tea from
street-corner vendors, so would I. If they ate with their fingers, even if I was given utensils, I ate
with my fingers. Doing so prompted an outpouring of generosity and curiosity that never ceased
to amaze me. It opened the door, made people take me in. That I shared their food, their
discomfort, their danger, fascinated them and validated them in a powerful way."
This passage, and the book as a whole, illustrate the ideas of the local travel
movement. Hoffman continually chooses authenticity and connection with locals over the
beckoning camaraderie of other foreigners. He plunges directly into the dense humanity along
his route and discovers what life is like for the majority of the world's people on the move. Turn
here for encouragement as a local travelite and a reality check for anyone complaining on an air-
conditioned flight.
Great book August 25, 2010
Tyler Bridges (Lima, Peru)
Hoffman grabs you from the get-go with the fabulous title. He then delivers a terrific book.
One of Hoffman's challenges was to keep the material fresh as he took the reader from one difficult form of transportation to another. He pulled it off with vivid writing, an eye for detail and compassion for those he meets along the way. He pulls you into his adventure, and you smell, feel and sense the rigors of how he traveled. I marveled at his willingness to endure back-breaking trips on buses (I for one won't do that anymore) and his willingness to put himself in danger, as he did in Afghanistan.
I loved his line where he said, at a certain point, that he just decided to hell with it, he was going to drink the water the locals drank, bathe when they bathed, eat what they ate, etc. I think anyone who has done travel out of the ordinary would identify with the choices and questions that he faces, even if they don't decide to submerge themselves as deeply into the worlds he chose to inhabit.
What ultimately sustains the book are Hoffman's ponderings about life and travel -- eternal questions for the examined life.
This is a great book for anyone who has ever stepped off the beaten path. It's also a great book for college kids, as a way to encourage them to explore before they get settled in life.
The Human Condition August 8, 2010
Flacita (Mountains of NC)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am always interested in learning about the human condition. What a world we live in. In my world travels I have found the have-nots to be FAR more generous and friendly than the haves. The United States has become a country of people feeling so entitled to things. Sooooo many people in the world have no things ....NOTHING! The author's personal insights are intense. Life is a odd journey. This book is an amazing journey.
fascinating, but ... July 9, 2010
C. P. Anderson (Charlotte, NC)
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, 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.
 Searching for Humanity July 2, 2010
Meredith Kennedy (Palo Alto, CA United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The premise of Carl Hoffman's 'Lunatic Express' is innovative and adventurous; a round-the world trip on the world's most dangerous modes of transportation. Hoffman deliberately seeks out the airlines with the very worst safety records, the ferry companies which have sunk the most boats, the overcrowded buses and trains and taxis on which most of the world has to rely on a daily basis. Hoffman wanted to shed his privileged Western wealth and status and step into the chaotic maelstrom of public transportation that keeps most of the world mobilized, albeit sometimes with tragic consequences.
Paradoxically for such a premise, nothing all that adventurous really happens, being more of a marathon ride from country to country, getting from place to place without taking time to stop and savor the countries themselves, in an often disjointed and wandering narrative. But the adventure really is Hoffman's search for humanity, which he finds and--finally--is able to articulate by the end of the book. His accounts of meeting Everyman and making friends along the way are poignant and heartwarming, and the real significance of his journey was how many people were touched by his effort, by his choice to enter their world and experience their daily grind. His accounts of young mothers guarding him while he napped and people vying for a chance to buy him lunch made me smile.
This makes the book worth the read and I felt uplifted by Hoffman's experiences and insights, while at the same time a little frustrated with the meandering writing style, and more than a little aghast at the chaos and poor choices in his personal life. While the premise of the book is admirable, the choice of a man with a wife and family to put himself at such risk is not. Hoffman's rationale for doing it is, unfortunately, unfocused and bordering on personal escape and the desire to leave behind his own problems, but even so he reveals his own vulnerable humanity.
Meredith Kennedy, Author of 'The Red Jacket'
Showing reviews 1-5 of 22
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