

William Sutcliffe’s hilariously cynical take on backpackers and travellers, ‘Are You Experienced?’ is still inspiring globe-trotters all over the world. He instantly regretted a solo trip to Pakistan to get the train to Beijing, was horrified by the realities of life on the West Bank, ate nothing but marmalade sandwiches for days when travelling to the remote salt flats in Bolivia and yes a lot of the stories in Are You Experienced are autobiographical. And yes I do dare to ask him about that pretty graphic description of being unwell in India. William Sutcliffe is on the Big Travel Podcast.
On this episode we cover:
His new book The Gifted, the Talented and Me
How Adrian Mole and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are still great books for teens
How living with teenagers is funny
The era of sending postcards and Poste Restante
How social media is stressful
The difference between travel pre and post internet
How travel used to be a way to reinvent yourself
How you can reinvent yourself publicly every day
How people make friends fast when travelling
Lonely Planet being a guide to finding other Westerners
Receiving letters in Kathmandu
The lack of self-awareness in 18 year old travellers
Travellers being at their most pretentious
The two ways which travellers react to India
How Lonely Planet still recommends his book over 20 years later
Monish Rajesh saying it’s her favourite book about India
Lisa visiting India in luxury
How India can be hard work
Lisa’s first time ever asking a guest whether they’ve s*it themselves in a hostel
How travellers use the book to put them off India
It being easier to go to Spain than India
His life-changing solo trip to Pakistan
Saving cash for travel by working in HMV
The weird travel grant
The Karakoram Highway built by China and Pakistan
The long-standing dispute over the India China border
Wanting to shake up his happy home life
A one way ticket to Karachi and a return via Beijing to Moscow
Russian invading Afghanistan
Landing in Karachi, age 19, and being terrified
The actually very hospitable ‘dangerous’ lands of the Peshawar in Pakistan
Lisa fighting of an ear-cleaner in Bangalore
Ear drum piercing versus Hepatitis
Travelling to the Khyber Pass
The German gun fan who took him to the gun town
Not wanting to shoot a gun in the mountains the Mujahideen
Lisa being offered a gun in Phnom Penh
The incredible desert frontier town of Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uyghur in China’s far west
The oppression of Uighur muslims in China
The atmospheric Kashgar Sunday Bazaar
Those travel moments out of Kashgar
The weird awakening crossing the border from Pakistan to China
Saddam as superman ‘death to America’ on a t shirt
Feeling unwelcome in communist China
British and American politeness
A certain admiration for a total lack of any ingratiation
Cycling towards Tiananmen Square in a huge boulevard of bikes
How hardships when travelling can make you feel good about yourself
The ‘deep thoughts’ of teenagers
His book The Wall based on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict
Feeling he needed an opinion on Israel coming from a Lithuanian Jewish family
The max exodus of the Pogroms from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
His family moving from Lithuania to South Africa
His mother’s white South African guilt
Travel to Israel, Egypt Sinai Peninsula and Jordan
Staying in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian side
The world increasingly being divided into haves and have nots
Being horrified by the brutality and injustice of the occupation
‘The power of the un-fired gun’
The Israeli hilltop settlements
Green Olives tours and revelations
Lisa taking the boat from Israel to Egypt and crossing very serious borders
What the Israel/Palestinian wall really looks like up close
The Salar de Uyuni, amid the Andes in southwest Bolivia, is the world’s largest salt flat
Everything being the size of Wales
The town of Atacama where it hasn’t rained for 200 years
A remote 3 day drive through the desert
Nothing to eat but bread and marmalade
Feeling like you’re on a U2 album cover
His wife, author Maggie O’Farrell
Taking it in turns to write and look after the kids
The scene in Are You Experienced when Dave is listening to Pink Floyds Comfortably Numb
Being a massive music fan and listening to music when writing
Switching off from music when travelling
His perfect travel music moment with the amazing drumming from a wedding party in Rajasthan