Monte Carlo For Vagabonds

When R.A. Dalkey travels cheap, he thinks bigger than hostel dorms, overnight trains and pasta with tomato sauce for every meal. He'll roll out his sleeping bag in Madrid's red light district, nap on the streets of Monaco and furtively string up his hammock on Swiss farms. He'll spontaneously teach English in Laos in exchange for rice. He'll thumb rides anywhere from West Timor to South Africa. He'll try smiling a lot, and see where it takes him. Most of the time it's somewhere good.

As this collection of stories will reveal, it doesn't always go smoothly. Indonesian bush-fires chase him from his campsite. His shoes freeze solid in Siberia. He gets head-butted by an Albanian villager. He's shaken by earthquakes and terrified by witching-hour excavations in Andorran valleys. And, incompetent as ever with ropes, his hammock has a habit of falling down in the middle of the night – with him in it.
 
Yet he wouldn't have it any other way: travelling Dalkey-style delivers the richest of experiences. And as he shares the adventures few of us would brave, you'll pick up gems about this crazy planet. Do you know which head of state was an Olympic bobsleigh competitor? Or how long your unattended bag will go untouched in Japan? Who's eating all the ice cream in Pyongyang? And how do cats jump in Swedish?
 
Like that uncle with the rose-tinted specs and a grumpy anarchist student rolled into one, Dalkey turns up his nose at travel insurance and shows that there's more than one way to see a world that always steers us to play it safe…

R.A. Dalkey was born in Cape Town. After selling hand-written newspapers to classmates in primary school, then winning awards for lucid essays whilst studying journalism at Rhodes University, it was inevitable that he would make a living out of words. Under his real name (Richard Asher) he's been published by GQ, Reader's Digest, The Sunday Times, Australian International Traveller, Reuters, Autosport and Sports Illustrated, to name just a few.

As a sport and travel journalist, he's always favoured an immersive approach. He's driven outback trucks in Australia and crashed racing cars in Europe. He once conducted a two-year experiment trying to be a professional golfer. Having visited 75+ countries, he's slept rough in Jo'burg, been arrested in Mongolia and mugged in Barcelona.

Apart from growing up in the euphoria of post-Apartheid South Africa, he lived in the USA, Australia and the UK before settling in Vienna in 2016. He relished learning German and now speaks four languages.

Dalkey also narrates his own audiobooks.

He's on Twitter @mygreenjacket and Instagram @worldsleeper.