The Lunatic Express, Discovering the World via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes

-

Why do people put their lives at risk and pack into over crowded ferries in Bangladesh?  Why do businessmen fly on airlines with the worst safety records on the planet? Why do mothers and children ride through terrifying mountainous journeys on buses barely fit to stay on the road?

The Lunatic Express explores how the poorest people in the world are forced to make these dangerous journeys every day.  The world is growing at a rapid pace.  People need to get from one place to another and in developing nations the citizens are traveling in uncomfortable conditions and risking their lives regularly just to get from point A to point B.

Carl Hoffman has always had a curiosity about the world.

He has been paid to travel to some of the most remote destinations on earth. As a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, Wired and Popular Mechanics, Carl Hoffman has reached the pinnacle of adventure travel.  He has explored every corner of the earth writing for magazines like Outside, National Geographic Adventure and Men’s Journal.

The Lunatic Express is his second novel.

-

His life has been one  big adventure and the adventure became addictive.  As he puts it “home became ever more strange to return to.”  How can a person be in a war zone in the Sudan one minute and be shopping at the Safeway the next?

While I haven’t been in the middle of a war zone, I have been in some mind blowing situations and I can relate to his predicament. It is impossible to blend the two worlds together. Eventually one life has to give way to the other.  But when you have a wife and three children waiting for you at home like Carl does, how can you give up your stable relationships and family?

It was time to do something drastic, something to satisfy his craving to see the world and jar him back to his life at home.  A long journey seemed like the only way to finally satisfy his wanderlust.

This wasn’t going to be your average trip to explore exotic destinations or a break on a beach.  This was a journey where he was going to put his life in jeopardy every day.   He was going to circumnavigate the globe riding the most dangerous trains, planes, boats and buses of the world.

A suicide mission you ask?

His friends thought so, but the Lunatic Express is far more than a shock value book telling the tales of dangerous situations. It is a triumph of the human spirit, a love letter to the people you meet on the road and a testament to the resilience of people in the world that are not given a choice. These people welcome a stranger into their life. They treat him as a friend for the brief time that they spend together taking part in the simple act of moving from one place to another.

Hoffman puts a face to the statistics. There is a quiet dignity in people that carefully wrap their belongings in cardboard boxes and hang their hammocks on an overcrowded deck.  There is surprising strength in men that can share a drink at the end of a 14 hour day of driving and hustling for fares and there is a zest for life in people flirting, laughing and dancing with one another during a long and arduous journey.

A moving moment in The Lunatic Express comes when Carl interviews one of the few survivors of the second worst maritime disaster in history.  The MV La Joola. A Senengalese Ferry that sank 6 years earlier off the coast of Gambia killing over 1800 people.  Pierre Colly was a young student at the time and he survived by being swept out the window and into the sea.  Clinging to a floating fish trap he was eventually rescued by a fisherman.  He survived but lost his brother and continues to live in despair and with the guilt of being labeled a survivor.

These people are forced to travel on dangerous modes of transportation.   They don’t have the choice of taking a flight, traveling in a higher class or exploring other options.  The over crowding, the filth and stifling heat are the only choice available to them and millions of people face these obstacles every day.

Carl Hoffman brings this to light in The Lunatic Express. People wouldn’t travel this way if they had a choice.

Why Carl chose to put his life at risk and leave his children without a father I cannot explain. Luckily, he came out unscathed and ready to face his life with fresh eyes.

The Lunatic Express is a journey worth taking not only for the adventure but to read along with Carl as he discovers the value of deep human connections taking place in some of the most harrowing of situations.

To read more about Carl Hoffman visit his website TheLunaticExpress.com

Follow him on twitter at lunaticcarl