Despite these warnings, and despite their own fears, Barbara and Larry went anyway—and, in the process, they connected with people and had experiences otherwise unimaginable. They were looked after by communities, brought in from the cold, given food, accompanied by an armed Indian bandit who, instead of robbing them, clocked their speed and politely told them how fast they were cycling before roaring off on his motorcycle. Yes, there were tense interactions—there were rocks thrown at them in Egypt, and an encounter with one very angry Thai restaurant owner—but more often than not, humanity won out.
“The best part of travel,” says Larry Savage, “aside from seeing things, is meeting people and learning what their life is like and seeing if you can work it out together.” He insists that Barbara was the real connector. “She was better at it than I was—she was more accepting. But I am always willing to listen.” This willingness and openness are the beating heart of the book.
Larry says their uniqueness had a lot to do with how they were received. “We were a novelty,” he explains. “Where we went, they hadn’t seen many Westerners—and certainly not Westerners on bicycles. We were as entertaining to them as they were to us.”
Barbara and Larry were traveling at a time when two Caucasians appearing on bicycles in Africa and Asia was not only unexpected, but often a first for those who encountered them.
“Two foreigners—and especially a foreign woman—on bicycles with huge packs will be one of the strangest sights those people have ever seen,” they were told before venturing into rural Egypt. “As a matter of fact, in some of the settlements, this year will quite probably be referred to in the future as the year when the fair-skinned aliens appeared riding their bizarre bicycles.”
Their mode of transportation certainly softened the reception they received. On the road to Fès, for example, they met a policeman who could not believe they were Americans. “‘Americans travel only tour busses,’ he said. ‘But you no. You bicycle. That good. Come, we help.’”
The first time I read Miles from Nowhere, I realized something that has become only more evident with subsequent readings—this is a story about humanity. Though the Savages’ journey took them to stunning vistas and through stark and beautiful scenery, it was the people that ultimately made the biggest impression—both on Barbara and Larry, and on the reader as well.
When I think back on Barbara’s stories, I remember the long days of cycling, but more than that I remember the American cyclist who was sprouting his own food as he rode along, the Portuguese waiter who found a huge tank and filled it with drinking water to make sure Larry and Barbara were adequately hydrated to make it over the Spanish border, the Thai policeman who not only insisted they camp in his walled compound but also assigned an armed guard to watch over them, and the Germans who refused to let them camp in a snowstorm. Barbara’s words bring these characters to life and her compassion makes them feel real, even when some of her language is, by today’s standards, out of date.
There is a curiosity and appreciation of all who cross the Savages’ path that renders Miles from Nowhere the treasure that it is—a book that remains engaging and interesting forty years after it was first published. “Americans don’t really travel,” explains Larry Savage. “At one point only 10 percent of Americans had active passports. Because of this they don’t really think of other cultures—it’s just something we see on TV. But everyone is a person and you’re not better than anyone else; you’re just different. Putting your expectations or mores on them is a really bad idea.”
It’s almost hard to imagine the Savages’ journey today—in an era where Google has mapped the world; where hotel reservations and campsite locations are a click away; where, if you develop potentially life-changing symptoms after cycling the cobblestones of Portugal, as Larry did, you can get medical information in mere seconds. We know so much now—and maybe that is part of our problem. Barbara and Larry went into their journey without the vast stores of knowledge we have today, but also without assumptions.
The Savages set out to meet the world on bikes that look old and heavy to us now. They had no lightweight gear, no carbon fiber, and when cold they cycled in sweatpants. But in other ways they had everything they needed. In their good-natured openness, they connected with the world in a deep and genuine way that has stood the test of time. “Even more than our desire to experience adventures and see the world,” wrote Barbara at the close of their trip, “it was the people who had kept us going, giving us a home and a family away from home.”
IN PREPARATION FOR THIS REISSUE of Miles from Nowhere, I read everything I could about Barbara and Larry Savage, including a number of reader reviews. I was struck by how many people had read the book multiple times. How many mentioned having two copies (one to keep, one to loan out). How many people were inspired to take bicycle trips of their own after reading Barbara’s words (and a few who enjoyed the read but admitted they were definitely not up to the challenge). One woman told of being inspired by reading the book when it first came out, but she had small children at the time. Now, thirty years later, she is embarking on a trip across the US.
One of the reviews I read was simple: “Read this book and went straight out and bought myself a $250 Specialized bicycle and started my first bicycle tour. Changed my life.”
The name attached to this review was familiar to me: Andrew X. Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala, a book published some twenty years after Miles from Nowhere, about Pham’s own bicycle journey through Vietnam, an attempt to reconcile his adopted American homeland and the country where he was born. This book went on to win the Kiriyama Prize and the Whiting Award; it was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Sometimes a good bicycle story can change your life.
I know the spirit of Barbara and Larry has infused the cycle trips I’ve taken—up the coast of Ireland, through the mountains and rice paddies of Japan, on the same US West Coast they traveled. I’ve tried to be as open as they were in engaging the world, to have more faith in humanity than I have fear of it.
Though Barbara’s words and stories stand on their own, both intriguing, educational, and often laugh-out-loud funny, they are irrevocably connected to the fact of her death: on her bicycle, shortly before the book was published. It seems impossible to reconcile this engaging young woman and her bright spirit with an early death. It feels a little like losing a friend—or someone you would have wanted to be friends with. I’m not the only reader who has wondered how this couple, who managed to successfully survive such an arduous journey together, could ultimately be separated by fate.
I have to believe, however, that Barbara’s spirit lives on—in all the cyclists and adventurers who have been inspired by her journey, in fellow authors who have written their own travel adventures, in the women who have felt validated or activated by her travels, in the fact that this book, four decades later, is still finding readers, still being passed along from hand to hand, still changing lives.
Here, read this. I think you’ll like it.
—Tara Austen Weaver
BEWARE
NEW DELHI (AP)—An American woman cyclist was eaten alive yesterday some 200 miles southeast of this Indian capital city by a giant, wild ape.
News of my death would surely make the headlines in all the big newspapers back home in the U. S. of A. Larry, I hoped, would tell the story right, giving it a sensational and tragic ring, conjuring up a horrifying death race between an innocent woman bicycler and an ape with jaws large enough to inhale an entire human being. If he told it right, there I’d be, pedaling through the starving masses of a primitive country filled with cobras, tigers, and bands of cutthroat thieves, when suddenly a wild, semi-erect primate lunges from its treetop sanctuary and chases me down, killing me with the brutal force of its jaws and limbs.
As