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Bugis Nights harks back to a Golden Age of travel, and a young man’s quest for adventure. Be magically transported between the sun-drenched islands and stormy crests of the Java Sea, the high roads of the Himalayas, and the promise of love, fostered in a Tibetan sandstorm.
BUGIS NIGHTS – whilst being a standalone book – is also the first instalment in my ‘Diaries of a Western Nomad’ series, a planned three volume body of autobiographical travel adventure memoirs. This initial volume is important in setting the scene for the rest of the series, and also shines a light on how I got started as a photographer and writer, all those years ago.
I always kept a diary, and do so still, to this day. These – now over 150 handwritten notebooks – were incredibly useful as the main source material for the retelling of the voyage on the ‘Kurnia Ilahi’ made back in 1988.
In BUGIS NIGHTS I intertwined two formative adventures. The month-long voyage and time spent on idyllic Jampea Island make up the bulk of the book, but an earlier, very exciting and seminal month spent hitchhiking through Tibet, is woven in through a series of flashback chapters. This mechanism allowed me some introspection on deeper philosophical subjects, and also to introduce two characters early on, in Tibet – Charly and Claudia – who appear later on in the story, and were crucial to it.
The late 1980s were a very different era in which to be travelling. One which, in some ways, was more open and freer than today; one without the mobile phones and digital technology that restrict us as much as allow us access to all the secrets of the world. And one in which friendships were made on the run and often lasted a lifetime.
Back then it was very easy to just fall off the map and disappear, often for months at a time. Personally, I always found this to be liberating and one of the best aspects of travel. It is a feeling I know a lot of my readers share. Nostalgia – that longing for simpler times when we were younger, carefree, untied by responsibility and careers, and always ready to take a leap of faith into adventure.
The sun always seemed to shine just a little more keenly and the wind blow more true back then. Though, of course, I’d have to double check with my diaries to make sure if that were really the case …!
What the media are saying about BUGIS NIGHTS:
“This travel book reads like the mother of all backpackers’ tall tales. Photojournalist Chris Stowers returns to the raw, lived feel of those glorious days of falling off the map in Asia … the story races ahead like a high-octane road novel.”
TAIPEI TIMES
“Bugis Nights tracks a dramatic journey by photographer Chris Stowers – each risky step, ride, and voyage. You can almost say he’s seen it all. Then he survived to write this book for us.”
Ralph Jennings, SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
“…an endearing and perceptive observation of human behaviour in tough circumstances. With quiet humour, Stowers illustrates the courage, optimism and openness of the itinerant backpacker.”
Devika Misra, ASIAN BOOKS BLOG
“Many of us look back with longing to journeys made in our twenties, but few can remember all the details like Stowers has.”
ASIAN REVIEW OF BOOKS
“As the world grows smaller and adventures become harder to find, one can only envy those who set out on the ocean with some provisions, a school map and not much else … Bugis Nights is a rattling good yarn about the Spice Islands, entertaining and suspenseful.”
NEWS WEEKLY Australia
“If you thought the age of Western travelogues exploring South-east Asia’s islands was confined to the literary output of the 19th century, think again.”
STRAITS TIMES Singapore
