Prabhu Ghate takes us off the beaten track on selected journeys in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Antarctica, and shows us that you don't have to be rich to travel simply, or even young for that matter — just young at heart, empathetic, and curious. The book should stimulate interest in a variety of trips in our extended neighbourhood, and in the South generally, where travelling is not only more affordable, but in countless ways more interesting.
The author takes us through his adventures and brushes with history, whether the building of the Berlin Wall, wandering into Somaliland, running smack into a civil war in Cyprus, taking a front seat in the People Power revolution in the Philippines, getting arrested during the Dirty War while trying to track down a group of Sikh settlers in a remote part of Argentina, catching a cargo boat down the Mekong from China, or riding a paddle steamer up the Nile for ten days in what is today South Sudan. By Thumb, Hoof and Wheel is entertaining, educative, and completely from a different world — a world that is rapidly changing with the forces of global homogenization. Experience a bit of it before it is lost forever.
