Trafford Publishing: Faces 'n Places

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Faces 'n Places

by Kelly Marshall

275 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0476; ISBN 1-4120-0113-7; US$71.50, C$84.00, EUR59.00, £41.50

Fed up with life, lodgings and politicians, Kelly leaves it all behind to visit the world's people and places. Within her book experience the innocent delight on children's faces and breathe in the scenery through a collection of stunning photographs; share the candid e-mails and thought-provoking emotive poetry of one girl's adventure around the world. What a book!

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About the Book About the Author Sample Excerpts Catalogue Info

About the Book

It's October 2001, I've got no job, no car, a flat that's falling down around me and to top it all al-Qa'eda have just bombed the United States of America.
What would you do?
1. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go out and find a job
2. Get workmen in to come and put your lounge ceiling back on your lounge ceiling
3. Give whingeing all the time a miss and start using public transport or your legs for a change
4. Leave everything you own and know as normal, and trust yourself to a variety of airline companies to take you places some people couldn't pinpoint on a map
For better or worse I chose No.4.
This is my story and obviously I survived the adventure cos I'm telling you about it now. Now, by the way, is January 2003.
Faces 'n Places magically transports you on a 'round the world' backpackers' trip through a collection of intimate and candid e-mails and poetry and a variety of visually stunning photographs.
Kelly takes you with her as you become friend and confidante to her mishaps, laughter and adventures.
Feel your heart palpitate as you witness the emotions of watching your friend slip into paralysis and excruciating pain in South India, share the frustrations and restlessness of a 30 hour bus journey of never ending disasters in Indochina and consider the reality of a backpackers life as sleep is found on a cold marble floor in a closed airport terminal in Nepal. Combine this with the delights and joys of abandoned idyllic beaches, discover the safety and comfort of family life in Mumbai and La Paz, share the thrill of sunrise with dolphins in Bali and experience the open-mouthed dumbstruck awe of amazing Macchu Pichu.
Faces 'n Places is written with warmth and humour and puts you, the reader, in the position of chief voyeur of one girls' quest for truth and happiness around the world. Whether you like to travel independently or packaged or just like to share in another's ups and downs of life - Faces 'n Places is full of information and insight into our wonderful world of differences and possibilities.

About the Author

Kelly Marshall was born in Turkey in 1968 to a British Forces family. She dislikes discipline for disciplines sake, acts on impulse and has moved many times. Now, after numerous years of living in Britain, she has set up home in Belgium with her partner Guillaume. They hope to join her sister and family in Australia in the near future. This is her first book.

Sample Excerpts

The bit at the beginning

It's October 2001, I've got no job, no car, a flat that's falling down around me and to top it all al- Qa'eda have just bombed the United States of America.

What would you do?

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and go out and find a job

Get workmen to come in and put your lounge ceiling back on your lounge ceiling!

Give whingeing all the time a miss and start using public transport or your legs for a change

Leave everything you own and know as normal, and trust yourself to a variety of airline companies to take you places some people couldn't pinpoint on a map.

For better or worse I chose No.4.

This is my story and obviously I survived the adventure cos I'm telling you about it now. Now, by the way, is January 2003.

Back then though things were different. I had been made redundant from work, had my precious (and it must be said, rather lovely) company car removed from my possession and lived in what all my mates described as a 'shithole'! The world was busy asking numerous questions about life and how the hell had we got into such a bloody mess - except of course the Americans who just wanted revenge. For me, I wanted nothing to do with Americas fight on terrorism, but I didn't get to have a say, Tony Blair did. Airline companies were fast going out of business and the Stock Market was responding accordingly. Life for the world wasn't exactly rosy, so why on earth did I decide to choose this time to explore?

Well I'm not sure I chose it, more like it chose me. I love to travel and have done a fair bit over the years but never done a world trip and now I had some money to do it properly - What the hell! You have to grab those opportunities when they come your way, right?

So I started putting plans into place, organising my belongings to go into storage for a year, finding someone to look after my beautiful pussycat, and of course deciding where I wanted to go. About one month into all the planning I got a text message off my friend Charlotte saying she had just resigned from her job and could she come with me? Wow! Of course she could. I'm not that used to travelling with other people but Charlotte and I weren't the sort of friends to crowd each other and would probably find our own adventures anyway. Charlotte was quite happy as long as we followed the sun as much as possible - she wasn't much of a backpacking kind of girl usually preferring the little luxuries of room service - but she was up for something different all the same.

So we both packed up our homes, animals and lives and got on a plane. The round the world ticket cost 1,300 (a little more than usual as we'd added some extra flights so we could go exactly where we wanted) and I had put aside 5,000 for the trip. That worked out at about 100/week. Sounds quite a lot but this had to pay for accommodation, food, travel by bus, bike etc inside each country, souvenirs (most of which actually ended up on my credit card - ooops!) and of course the obligatory drink and fags! The big plus side being - British money has the best exchange rate of any currency in the world. Being a traveller we should definitely keep it, it certainly has its benefits.

So, life as I knew it - the house, car, money, pets, friends, language and boyfriend were all left behind. What had I done?
*****
Subject: Message 36 - salar de uyuni
Date: 26 September 2002 17:00

Dear All

In my last e-mail I promised you that I would fill you in on my visit to the south of Bolivia. The reason I travelled south was to see the amazing spectacle of the salt lakes there. In order to get there I took a bus to Oruro and then another one from there to Uyuni. The first part of the trip was fine and done during the afternoon - lovely warm sun streaming through the windows - bliss. However the second part of the trip was something completely different. Imagine a trip down a farmer's country road in your normal kind of car, swerving to avoid big pot holes and a dull vibration through the floor from the road surface (or lack of it!) Well take that thought and times it by 6 hours with no stops and a plummeting temperature, so much so that the inside of the bus windows turned to ice - Brrrr! I'm pleased I was sat in the aisle as the windows became a constant source of head butting. At one point though I had to get on my hands and knees in the aisle and look for the contents of my shoulder bag - the vibrations had allowed them to act like jumping beans and they were doing some sort of gig down the centre of the bus.

When we arrived at our destination it was about 5am with a temperature of -20°C - fuck it was well cold and I only had on one T-shirt, one jumper and my jeans and trainers. Hell, I said to myself, I'm British, this is nothing compared with home. This completely mad brain washing chant at least got me to a hostel and a hot cup of coffee.

After shivering myself to sleep, that afternoon I awoke to blazing warm sunshine and decided to take a walk about 2km south of town to a train cemetery. I walked on the railroad tracks as only 4 trains a week pass through this way and the land is so flat you'd see them miles off - also I thought it would prevent me from getting lost. Getting lost was going to be the least of my worries, this was the only town for miles and miles and the land was the flattest, with the fiercest wind I'd encountered for a long time. At the end of the track was a huge graveyard of trains, it was like they had just driven them straight off the tracks and dumped them to rust. There were loads of them too, 30 plus at least, and sat in the middle of a completely barren landscape doing nothing! Quite a surreal sight.
Later that afternoon I booked a trip for the next day to explore what I had come down here to do. So after a good pizza and bottle of wine I shivered to sleep again dreaming of my forthcoming adventure.

The next day was again hot as I joined my tour group. There were six of us in a large four wheel drive and as we set off we were joined by at least 5 other jeeps all doing the same thing. It looked like we were headed on an African safari as the coarse dry land threw up dust behind each jeep and you could see them in the distance. I was well excited and had been given the front seat so had a perfect view. As we approached the Salar, the reflection from it produced an effect of slicing the landscape in two horizontally. The bit above the Salar was invisible and then you got a vision of some of the mountains in the distance - cool bananas!!
The Salar was created thousands of years ago when it was a huge lake that engulfed most of the southwest of Bolivia. Since drying up it has left a few smaller ponds, but nothing of any great expanse. However, the Salar is massive; at an altitude of 3653m and covering an area of 12,000 sq km it is completely flat and of course covered in salt! It feels like you should be skiing and cold but in fact the reflection from the sun made it beautifully warm and quite confusing for the senses. One essential item required for the trip was your sunglasses and thank god I had not forgotten them as you could barely see a thing when you removed them - squint city for 6 hours, no thank you! I've got some great pictures of me sitting on the Salar with nothing around me except for white salt and nothing in the distance - wicked!

During the trip we visited an underground river, it flowed under the salt and bubbled up, gurgling for air. Quite noisy and very cold. We also visited a tourist hotel that is completely made of salt - chairs, beds, tables etc - we stopped for a nosy and a beer. Unfortunately it was too expensive to stay the night otherwise I'd have been well in there! 10km away from anything and surrounded by salt - well cool! Our last stop for the day was an island that sits in the middle of the Salar called Isla de Pescatore or Fish Island. Apparently the shape of the island from the air looks like a fish - or so we were told. This island is covered in the most enormous cacti and the view from the top is spectacular and well, very white! Our journey back to the town of Uyuni found us all lolling off to sleep - you're driving across the salt with no idea which direction you're headed, as of course whichever way you look is just white! - thank god our driver knew what he was doing and even if he had fallen off to sleep it wasn't like we were going to hit anything!

When I got back to my hostel there was something that shouted out at me and everybody else that saw me - I hadn't put any sunscreen on and now had the brightest, reddest face in town - what a stupid bugger! At least, I thought, it would keep me warm that night!

That night I was due to leave on the twice weekly train (I had decided that this might be a more comfortable alternative than the bus!) and had been joined by two English girls who had been on the same tour as me that day. We sat in a restaurant slurping back a couple of bottles of wine until our midnight departure. We chatted, drank and enjoyed ourselves so much that we nearly missed the train and I had to leg it ahead of them to keep the train from leaving. I'd left my big rucksack in La Paz and just had my small backpack with me, unlike the other two who ran the best they could with big rucksacks - they looked a bit like waddling Ninja turtles!! But don't tell them I said that!
Anyway, turns out these two great girls were both called Sarah (nice and easy for me to remember when drunk!) and hailed from various places near where my mum and dad live. One of them was even born in Turkey (just like I was) at the same hospital in Ankara. How weird is that?
Anyway once back in La Paz the Sarah's joined me at the same hostel and I was given the task of introducing them to the nightlife of La Paz. And that's another e-mail altogether!!

Luv
K

Catalogue Information