The Echo of Dust - J Sylvenes Augustus Wagstaffe

Setting out to walk from the UK to Singapore during 1959, Jim travels across a Europe still recovering from WW11 in places. Moving out of Italyand into Yugoslavia, he is arrested by their State Security. The third time it happens he is imprisoned and tortured by the UDBA as a suspected spy. Joining a mule train over Albanian mountains, he moves-on through Greece and into Turkey, whee, short of food, he catches and eats snakes. After twisting an ankle in the desert past Ankara, he is invited to travel by camel to Persia, where he is warned not to try walking through the desert to reach Tehran which is many hundreds of miles away, but he does to be as true as possible to his aim of walking to Singapore. Unfortunately he gets lost, has to suck blood from snakes, eat their raw flesh and drink his own urine to survive, he then accepts a lift and joins a camel train to reach West Pakistan. Monsoon floods force him to board a weekly water train from the border to Quetta near Afganistan, before crossing the surging Indus river, going on a killer Leopard hunt, helping remove a king cobra from a maize field. Then Into India he stays as a guest at the Golden Temple of Amritsar before being summoned to meet President Nehru of India and his wife Kamala at their home, who had read of his journey. After visiting the Taj Mahal and giving a talk and sing-song at a Sikh Temple, he confronts a cobra in his tent, and is caught in a tropical storm during one hectic night. Monsoon floods force him to take a colourful train journey to Calcutta, after having a tooth pulled out by a loin-cloth dressed man in a mud hut, by a pair of pliers, without anaesthetic. Into East Pakistan after circling the Bay of Bengal to reach Monsoon flooded capital Dhaka, he takes a steam ferry along the Buriganga river, passing by floating bodies of humans and animals, to the port town of Chittagong. Whilst there, where brother Fred had been born, he is able to join an elephant roundup through the jungle which is known as a "Kedah," before taking an entertaining tramp steamer trip to Rangoon, Burma, where he is presented with a Japanese bicycle, is invited to cocktails at the British Embassy, changes currency for gem stones, is attacked by a tiger in the jungle, cycles to Mandalay and the Inle lakes, then due to Burma's closed land borders, flies into Siam, stays at Buddhist Temple, crosses Laos and back into Siam, is invited as a guest of town's Governor and Police Chief at a boxing match, reports an overturned yacht in the gulf of Siam to the police, and helps to recover a body. After crossing the border into Malaya, he catches a Burmese python, is entertained at a Chinese theatre, cycles through the Capital, Kuala Lumpur, then on to Jahore Bahru where he crosses the causeway to Singapore and is able to collect a profit on the gem stones. Invited to stay at his previous army camp, where a letter from one of his sisters informs him that their mother is serious'y ill in hospital and may die. With help from both Army and Navy personal he is able to obtain a lift on the month long voyage back to the UK aboard HMS Cossack, a 2000 ton Destroyer, which is caught in a violent storm in the English channel and has to stand-off for 24 hours before docking. Obtaining a lift home, he finds that his mother is getting much better