I wanted to weep and scream with joy
The plateau stretched out across vast distances, with each horizon serrated by mountains. It was an uninhabited desert, alive with colours and strange sounds made by the wind, much more inspiring than the rather static photographs one sees in the National Geographic...
Hitching into Tibet
The road from Khasa was surfaced with gravel and clung to the gorge precariously. Soon it became clear why there was no traffic: as I walked along I could hear boulders crashing down from the forested gorge above, bouncing over the road and plunging into the abyss...
Explosions on the Tibetan border
I was full of optimism the next morning as I walked through the golden fields outside Kathmandu, enjoying the warm sunshine. It was one of those moments of such complete beauty that I momentarily forgot that I was doing something …
Trendy travellers don’t walk
Kathmandu seemed seedier than ever as I waited for my Chinese visa. I had to keep busy, I couldn’t sit around all day or I would get depressed. It was August and the weather was hot, too hot, and by mid-afternoon I would feel slimy with sweat, as if I had been...
Hustling for a Tibetan visa in Kathmandu
Kathmandu was the first Asian city I had seen that wasn’t built of concrete. This small city seemed genuinely ancient and the centre was full of Hindu temples, each one a hive of activity. Some were covered with elaborate stone statues of Hindu Gods penetrating their...
Squeezed into an Indian train
Bombay’s main railway station is vast, Victorian and teeming with people. I stood there feeling at a loss as to how to navigate through the crowd. Bombay is the biggest city in India and I didn’t have the energy to explore it. I stood in a queue, requested a ticket...
Africans in Bulgaria
I only stayed four days in Romania but it felt like months. I was glad to be sitting on the train to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, to be gradually moving on. Laurentiu and Cristina had brought me to the station, insisted I take some chunky sandwiches and waited on...
Why you go Romania?
Next on the agenda was Romania, the biggest country in that part of Europe. I had been interested in Romania since university because it never appeared in the media. All the other Communist Bloc countries got mentioned now and again, but Romania seemed forgotten. All...
Pretending to be an artist
Professor Fastl seemed like a kind man. He was tall, handsome and pre-occupied. He had renovation projects going on all over Austria and wasn’t going to look too carefully at this scruffy applicant. He had no reason to not believe …
Meeting Princess Diana in Vienna
- You want a job? Here? In Vienna! Are you mad? You don’t even speak German! My new friend Andras was most amused. He was short, athletic, handsome and spoke fluent English. His family were obviously rich; he had his own flat in the centre of town and didn’t seem to...
Cheating the system in Poland
I finally made my move and got a train ticket to Warsaw. After a few minutes the train stopped in East Berlin’s hauptbanhof (main station). There was a wild bustle of activity as hundreds rushed for the carriages, clouds of steam rose into the black metal roof arches;...
Flogging books and driving trucks
Having finished university and gone back to Edinburgh, the big challenge was to raise enough cash to get to Shanghai – my target destination. Every job I’d ever done had only paid peanuts; washing dishes, selling books and working on building sites had been useful...
Overcoming my fear of travel
Although I loved the city of Liverpool I found the university itself really boring. What helped me stick it out was mixing with ordinary people. In my first year I had hung out on a building site – there was too much drinking and fooling around to say that I actually...
Getting drunk and waking up in Bangkok
My brain stopped working. I couldn’t think, couldn’t come up with the right words and couldn’t stop the room swaying. I was pickling in a hot bath, trying to stay awake and vaguely aware of conflicting feelings: the opportunity of …
Fear of travel
We lived in a white house on the Firth of Forth, the estuary just north of Edinburgh. It was called Society House and there was a sign at the top of the road which read Private Road to Society. It was so close to the sea that in rough weather waves would crash into...
5 Reasons to Publish an eBook
There's a ton of material online about how to publish an ebook and I've been rummaging through it for ages. Some of it's quite confusing but if I can understand it, anyone can. I'll publish my first ebook (a fairy tale) soon and that, I'm sure, will be my best...
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My First Day at School
How long can I stand in the burn until my feet go numb? Too long. Better to keep throwing stones into the deep bit. Maybe I'll wake up a fish. I wonder where all this water comes from? Up that hill I suppose. I can hear Daddy shouting my name. What does he want? It's...
Bizarre Airport Experiences
I travel a lot by plane even though it's environmentally destructive and increasingly boring. Airports in places like Bucharest or Tirana used to be so different from anything we'd seen in the west – the airport terminal in Tirana, a European capital city, was no...
The Transylvanian Forest
The taxi wound through Transylvanian forest and dropped me in Brasov. I ducked through slim alleys into an underground restaurant. Over pickles, polenta and goulash, a couple described bears swaggering down streets, sniffing the air and picking any tit bits they...
The Psychology of Travel
The original name of this blog was “The Psychology of Travel”. But what does this term mean? Is it some weird form of therapy? Am I a shrink? The answer to these questions is NO but I sometimes get mistaken for a therapist as I do freelance PR for rehab clinics. The...
The train from York
A man in an anorak shuffles down the carriage. He sits heavily as if cut from a rope. A girl looks up, shifts and frowns into her book. He glances at her. His face looks shrunken, as though once bigger. The train picks up speed, sways on the tracks. Stiffly, like a...
I Love to Cycle in Kathmandu
My brother’s house in Kathmandu is old, narrow and tall. At the bottom of the house is a dark room which doubles up as an entrance hall and bicycle garage. This is where I am, getting ready to cycle across town. I’m wearing good trousers (I’m going to a meeting) and...
Train Girl
The train is heading south and I stand between carriages. My hand rests on the open window and darkness rushes past. Trees are rigid against the moonlit sky. Smoky clouds are ghost like. A man on the floor gawps into a glowing screen, the blue glare illuminates his...
Bookclub
The pub was warm and glowing with orange lamps. Big men in suits told stories at the bar, arms gesticulating in front of them. Booming voices erupted from their flushed faces, eyes excited and glazed. They tipped back on their heels and laughed enormously to the...
My Mother’s Life in 50 Photos
[featured-video-plus] This slideshow is my last tribute to my Mother, Stephanie Wolfe Murray, who died on the 24th of June at just 76 years of age. I spent months gathering hundreds of photos, sorting them into categories and selecting just 50. Many are old family...
Stephanie Wolfe Murray
I would like to draw your attention to the of the wee book I recently published about my dear departed Mother – Stephanie Wolfe Murray. Just click on the blue lines above to get a PDF copy of it. I suggest you download it, read it and keep it somewhere safe as it's an...
Captain Cutler
Captain Cutler by Tom Wigan. The long car crept slowly towards a green shed, wobbling through pot holes in the sandy track. The shed was wide and hunkered down in the ground. Behind, a forest stretched onto a hill. The trees let off a light, floating steam, damp and...
Edinburgh Book Festival Tribute to Stephanie Wolfe Murray
I would like to share with you two updates from the Edinburgh Book Festival event about my Mother, Stephanie Wolfe Murray. For one beautiful hour in August authors, publishers and my brother Kim gave a series of short talks about a wonderful woman. Alexander...
Tribute to our mother by Kim Wolfe Murray
This text was read out at the memorial event to Stephanie Wolfe Murray at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 23 August 2017 by my big brother Kim. Photo by Peggy Hughes. One of my earliest memories as a three or four year old was being given the mighty responsibility of...
Crowdfunding turned me into a nervous wreck
Crowdfunding is much harder than I had assumed although, on the face of it, what could be easier? Just fill in a form, make a video and Bob's your uncle – the money starts pouring in. The process is straightforward, at least on Kickstarter, one of the first...
Eulogy to Stephanie Wolfe Murray
This was the first address given at the funeral of Stephanie Wolfe Murray on the 5th of July 2017, at the Old Parish Kirk in Peebles. By Gavin Wolfe Murray. Stephanie, my mother, Mummy, the boss. She meant the world to me and I have been amazed to discover over the...
Remembering Stephanie Wolfe Murray
Since the loss of our darling Mother I have wanted to write about her, but the feelings are too raw and all I can say right now is that grief is a much more confusing process than I had imagined. I thought it was just sadness and gloom but...
A Day in the Life of Magnus Wolfe Murray
This portrayal of an extraordinary aid worker is included in the new travel book Himalayan Bus Plunge -- & Other Stories from Nepal 05:30 – Alarm goes off and Magnus gets up. Quick wash but no time for breakfast. Onto his Giant mountain bike and off into the...
Tibet and Nepal
I want to describe my last visit to Nepal, a fascinating little Himalayan country. Thirty years have passed since I was last in Kathmandu. My presence there was both dramatic -- I had been kicked out of Tibet -- but also depressing: I was broke, my dream of living in...
Memory is an Unreliable Witness
I recently met up with Xander Berkeley, a Hollywood actor who played in one of the greatest thrillers of all time – Terminator 2 – which was made in 1991. He has featured in over 200 films and TV shows since then and is currently working on the Walking Dead, one of...
To My Kickstarter Supporters
I feel rather guilty that I've not updated my wonderful Kickstarter supporters, from whom I got £600 to do my bike tour of the Highlands, we well as the readers of my blog. My guilty conscience says "you took their money and ran…You didn't deliver on your Kickstarter...
What was the Soviet Bloc Really Like?
Soviet Russia was a very visual place, for all the wrong reasons. The colours were dark and gloomy, the people were listless and misshapen (air hostesses and officials tended to be huge while gymnasts and the poor were stick-thin). These were the images that we were...
5 Ways to Get Good Deals Abroad
Intro by Rupert Wolfe Murray. One of the purposes of this blog is to encourage people to travel and to write. I'd like to encourage people to write for this blog. I'm always looking for personal stories about travelling, or writing, and in this instance I'd like to...
Diary of my Scottish Book Tour
Some rather ridiculous impressions from my recent bike/book tour in Scotland...in diary format. The photo above is of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, taken in 1987 by my friend Uli Zimmerman. 20 October, Edinburgh Today I will fly to Frankfurt, location of the...
How Aberdeen Helped me Live in Tibet
I have just cycled to the Scottish city of Aberdeen. It's sunny and I didn't know it was such an attractive city. Tomorrow at 2pm I will give a talk about my new memoir, 9 Months in Tibet, at a cool bookshop called Books and Beans. I will talk about how Aberdeen was...
Writing about Tibet Helped me Find my Voice
It’s bizarre. I’ve written so much about my time in Tibet – I’ve got a book about Tibet coming out next month – and yet I haven’t written an article about it since 1987. If I was a proper writer, a pro, I’d have been churning out articles to a band playing; I’d have...
I Vote for Immigration
This started out as an email to my family, who are debating furiously on email about the EU referendum, immigration ... and the Armageddon which will happen tomorrow if the wrong side wins. My big question to all you Brexiteers is this: imagine you are in court and...
Will You Cast my Vote in the EU Referendum?
I’ve screwed up: I’m registered to vote in Liverpool but am going to London on the day of the EU referendum. I know I know, I should have organised a postal vote but I didn’t. The voting card has a provision for people like me. It says something like this: “if you get...
Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 2
Imagine you're a microscopic insect who has crawled through the hole in the middle of an old vinyl record. You look around, get your bearings but all you can see is a vast open space that stretches out to the horizon in all directions. There's nothing in the...
Liverpool’s Gobi Desert — Part 1
Camping is a paradox. On the one hand it's really simple -- you sleep outside -- but on the other hand it's really complicated: before you set off you must check you have a suitable tent (is it waterproof? do you have the poles and pegs?); do you have the right...
In Defence of Foreign Aid
A newspaper is like a puzzle. Journalists write material that fits the exact requirement of particular pages – news, sports, health, arts, business. Like every puzzle, the structure of a newspaper is clear and logical when you understand it. Newspapers are...
Letter to Asylum Seekers
Dear Asylum seekers, First of all, welcome to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – the cumbersome name of my home country, a name that not many of my fellow Brits actually know. We tend to call ourselves English, Scots, Northern Irish or Welsh. I...
The Amazing Library of Liverpool
In my experience libraries are fusty places with fierce ladies telling you to be quiet, or big silent tombs where grim students bury their heads in books for hours on end. Many public libraries in Britain have been closed and others seem to be underfunded, under...
Can God Help Addicts?
I avoid conferences and seminars as they can be so boring but recently I spent two days of my life at the Recovery from Addiction Conference at Chester University and it was really interesting. And I’m not saying this because somebody paid me to be there or write this...
