© 2014 Leo Logothetis
288 pages
Is
it possible to travel the world just on the kindness of strangers? Leo
Logothetis was inspired to find out after reading Che Guevara’s account of
touring South America by motorbike. Well, almost; The Kindness Diaries follows Leo from Los Angeles to New York, Spain to Turkey, and – after an airplane jump
to India – down through Southeast Asia.
Taking nothing for his journey, Leo’s every move is dependent on the
kindness of others, from his starting tank of gas in L.A, to every meal and
every night’s shelter. He does this not
because he is personally poor and wants to see the world, but because depending
on others opens his and the strangers’ lives to one another. He tells them his
story; they tell him his. Along the way he meets with both good luck and bad –
Indians adored his yellow motorbike, as one was the hero of a Bollywood film,
whereas the Vietnamese government refused to allow anyone to enter the country
with an object they could not carry. (One-ton bikes are notoriously difficult
to tote by hand.) This is a book with the impress of a TV show,
a highlight reel in text. Like modern reality shows, there’s a twist: Leo not
only throws himself on the mercy of strangers and talks about the meaning of
life with them, but he returns ordinary kindnesses with extraordinary ones. Throughout his trip, Leo changes lives by
meeting people’s needs – giving a farmer
a cow, a struggling rickshaw driver his own rent-free cab, free water
filtration systems for a village in India, and so on. It’s nice, but between that and people
exchanging their secrets of life (with aphorisms like“Live in the moment”), sometimes it felt like a saccharine gimmick. I think that's more of a jaded reader problem, though -- even with a film crew following him
Related:
The Man who Cycled the World, Mark Beaumont
Into Thick Air, Jim Mauser
Both are of the see the world, be helped by strangers, discover yourself, and be filmed doing it genre.
The Man who Cycled the World, Mark Beaumont
Into Thick Air, Jim Mauser
Both are of the see the world, be helped by strangers, discover yourself, and be filmed doing it genre.
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