Misadventure Tourism Makes for Good Read
Wellington-born performer and writer Tom Doig (left) prefers travel with adversity over leisure, and as Doig says in his new travelogue Mörön to Mörön, a book about him and his best mate, Tama Pugsley (right), doing a bicycle trip between two Mongolian towns of the same name (Mörön, pronounced muh-run, means river in Mongolian): “Us morons wanted plenty of suffering to go with our scenery.”
The Australian’s Sam Cooney continues in a review of the book: “And plenty of suffering is experienced by Tom and Tama as they cycle 1500km in 23 days on bikes they assembled themselves in China. Pedalling over steppes and through gorges, sometimes forced to backtrack, and sleeping at night in tents they carry in their panniers, the two blokes meet every challenge with toothy grins and grim determination.”
“Across almost 350 pages it can feel sometimes there is too much cycling and not enough everything else. Still, by the end the repetition of hardships goes some way to bringing us into the experience – a deliberate and ultimately triumphant move.
“With glossy photographs aiding the imagination instead of dampening it, and the random interjecting of QR codes that link to video clips that are equal parts delightful and disgusting, we might well be a third participant in this audacious trip.”
Doig lives in Melbourne.
