A Malaysian, an Italian and an Euro-Asian journey

I have been lacking in the last year or so. My voracious appetite for reading has diminished. The works of my once-favoured Indian authors are as distant in my memory now as the authors themselves are in real life.

My reading now is rarely for pleasure. But then, on an impulse, I recently picked up a book I last read in the late 90s - Rehman Rashid's A Malaysian Journey. Although some of it is out of date now, his personal narrative and the historical landscape he paints is still very relevant. At least for me.

Never being political, in all senses of the word - I have been effectively self-employed for almost two decades for good reason - I have never been too driven to find out more about the inner workings of my homeland. I therefore found Rehman Rashid's work particularly engrossing in a number of ways. His clear descriptions of the political manoeuvering of the early and mid Mahathir years was especially enlightening while his own personal journey echoed my planned ride in certain ways. He's certainly filled some holes in my knowledge base.

Inspired, I went to Sunny Bookshop in Far East Plaza, looking for some travel books to more completely prepare me mentally and emotionally for the ride. Sunny has been around years and is well known. The people who own and run the place read their patrons well and their recommendations are usually spot on.

I asked for some recommendations and before you could say 'Paul Theroux is too heavy to take on a bike ride', I was paying for 'Vroom with a View' by Peter Moore and 'A Fortune Teller Told Me' by Tiziano Terzani. A third recommendation, 'McCarthy's Bar' by Pete McCarthy was the rare recommendation went wrong - I didn't get beyond chapter two.

'Vroom with a View', however, was hilarious, enthralling, engrossing. I finished it in 3 sittings, which, considering my current schedule is positively speedy. Peter, an Australian, fulfilled his dream of buying and riding a Vespa around Italy. Not just any Vespa, mind, but a near-original Vespa almost similar in age to his 40-odd years. Humourous, engaging and with a romance thrown in too, the book was a delight.

I have started on Terzani's book and know it will be the perfect companion for my ride so have stopped reading it for fear of finishing it too soon. He was told by a Hong Kong fortune teller in 1976 that he must not fly in 1993, or he would run a grave risk of dying (don't you just love that turn of phrase?). He eventually decided to take the prophecy seriously and the book is about his subsequent land and sea - but not air - travels between Europe and Asia. A respected journalist, Terzani's writing is engaging. And made even more gripping by the pronouncement early in the book that the journalist who took his place went down in a helicopter crash in 1993.