Five Ways to Carry a Goat

Five Ways to Carry a Goat A Blogger's World Tour

Hilarious, insightful, and one hell of a wild ride, this is Bill Bryson for the new world.

Blogging: it's a vicious, anonymous world - so why does travel blogger Ben Groundwater want to go out and start putting faces to his readers' made-up names?

Armed with a backpack, a laptop and a cover story in case of emergency, Ben has a plan: to boldly travel around the world, relying purely on the kindness of his sometimes frightening but always entertaining readers. After sending out a cry for help on his blog, he has a full itinerary of supposedly kindly strangers offering up their spare beds, couches, daughters' weddings and bier cellars in the far corners of the globe. Five Ways to Carry a Goat: A Blogger's World Tour is the riotous result.

With thousands of his readers scattered across the globe, Ben wanted to explore the nature of a digital community: Who is his audience? What are their lives like? And how does one carry a goat through the middle of Ethiopia? He discovers all this and more by taking the long way round via China, South Korea, Thailand, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, France, Germany, the UK, Poland, Czech Republic, the USA, Canada, the Netherlands and Brazil.

Ben Groundwater is an Australian travel writer, blogger, journalist and former men's mag hack. A Professional writer for 10 years, Ben began his career in Brisbane before deciding to see the world, taking off to write freelance travel features for newspapers and travel magazines. He now writes the hugely popular weekly travel blog 'The Backpacker'. Ben's parents would really appreciate it if he'd find a real job and settle down.
www.bengroundwater.com

Five Ways to Carry a Goat
UQP
Author: Ben Groundwater
ISBN: 9780702237768
Price: $32.95

Interview with Ben Groundwater

Where did the idea for this journey come from? Would you suggest a journey, similar to yours?

Ben Groundwater: I'd been writing my travel blog, The Backpacker, for a few years, and I'd realised there seemed to be people all over the world reading it, and who I'd formed this weird electronic relationship with. So I figured it might be fun to see if I could turn those relationships into something real, and invite myself to go sleep on their couches! I've always been fascinated by the lives people live overseas - what they do, how they got there, what it's like to live wherever they're living - so I thought this would be a great window into that world. I'd certainly recommend people try this sort of thing for themselves - you can meet some great people and see a whole different side to a country. I maybe wouldn't do it for four months though...


How does it feel to be compared to Bill Bryson?

Ben Groundwater: Ridiculous, really! He's the king of the genre, so if I can just achieve a modicum of the success he's enjoyed I'll be a very happy little author. I suppose we do have similar humorous takes on travel life though, and we do both have beards, so...


Where you amazed at the generosity of people across the world?

Ben Groundwater: Absolutely. To get 400 invitations to stay with people was beyond anything I could have imagined, and those I actually stayed with were ridiculously nice. They'd find a complete stranger on their door, toss me the house keys, show me where the washing machine was, and set me free! It wasn't just the people I stayed with though - I was welcomed in by a whole village in Thailand, by people who had no idea who I was or what I was doing there... It was great.


Where was your overall favourite place?

Ben Groundwater: Favourite place is a tough call, because your experiences are coloured so much by the people you stay with. But my favourite hosts would have to be these two guys in Ethiopia. I knew absolutely nothing about them before I arrived, but they turned out to be great guys - an Australian and a Kiwi who were living in Ethiopia for two years looking for uranium to mine. They hadn't found much when I was there, but they did seem to have plenty of time to throw a football around the backyard and go out to the pub.


What countries and events would you like to return too?

Ben Groundwater: I'd love to return to Brazil for Carnaval, particularly to Sao Paulo. Rio de Janeiro has the most famous celebration, but apparently Sao Paulo completely changes during the festival, and I'd love to see that. Plus, they know how to party there...


Can you tell us a little bit about the wedding(s) you attended?

Ben Groundwater: One of the people that wrote in to me invited me to stay with him in Budapest, so I told him I'd love to, and that I'd be there around mid June. He replied and said unfortunately that was when his daughter was getting married in the Czech Republic, but if I wanted I could just come to that! It was an offer that was too good to refuse. So I attended a wedding at a chateau called Nove Hrady in the north-east of the country, with a few other Australians, and a whole bunch of Czechs, Hungarians and Serbs. Fortunately, the bride and groom didn't seem to mind that I'd been invited.


What did you learn from your travels?

Ben Groundwater: I think the best lesson I picked up was that it pays to put your trust in people. So many of my hosts would put their trust in me not to steal all of their stuff while they headed off to work each day, and I, of course, had to trust that they weren't axe murderers in return. But it all worked out quite well, and I had some experiences I would never have had had I not trusted the people I was staying with.


How does one carry a goat through the middle of Ethiopia?

Ben Groundwater: There seems to be five ways - I won't give them all away, but my favourite one is the 'wheelbarrow'. You pick up its back legs, then walk it along like you're pushing a wheelbarrow...