Book report

Book review – Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels Four Years Around the World on a Triumph

This book was written in the late 1970’s about a trip that spanned 5 years and hit all of the Continents except Antarctica. As he states in the forward, the principal problems facing the world in 1973 were Poverty, Terrorism and Environmental Pollution. Not a lot has changed really.

Mr. Simon spins a good tale, but this is not a motorcycling book really. It’s a book about the world and the people in it. The bike, while a central character does not really take the center during much of the book. On a couple of occasions during trials or issues, but most of the book is spent talking about the people that he meets and what they are like.

He makes some very keen and insightful comments. Some, I am sure, would be considered highly controversial, but they are his opinions, he has BEEN THERE, and I have not. Who am I to argue.

For instance he speaks very highly of the Arabs that he meets on his trips and has this to say about some that he meets in a tea house in Egypt: “The sense of affinity with these men is so strong that I would tear down every building in the West if I thought it could bring us together like this. I understand why the Arab idea seems so perverse, so fanatical, so untrustworthy and self-destructive in the Western mind. It must be because the Arab puts ultimate value on something that we no longer know exists. Integrity, in its real sense of being at one with oneself and one’s God, Whoever and whatever that God may be. Without it he feels crippled.
We Europeans ( Ted Simon is British) sold our integrity for progress many years ago, and we have debased word to mean merely someone who obeys the rules. A chasm of misunderstanding yawns between us. At this moment I know which side I want to stand.” Written in the late 70’s but it certainly still seems to fit the bill even today. It should be noted that he was traveling through Egypt during the Yom Kippur war, and obviously tensions were running high. However he was never declined hospitality, or even kindness because of this.

Like I said if you are looking for an adventure riding book with lots of trials and tribulations, this is probably not the book for you. But Ted Simon made the most of his trip and really came away with the experience of a lifetime.

One little knit to pick. He starts in Europe and winds down through Africa into South America and that is where the vast majority of his trip is recorded. The last part of Asia from India to Europe hardly gets a mention and that is disappointing. Heck, he was probably tired I know I would have been.