Around the World in 80 Days

I have just finished reading Michael Palin's book "Around the World in 80 Days". Before you stop me and protest, I know Jules Verne wrote this book back in 1873, roughly 115 years before Michael Palin's recreation of the journey in 1988, but it's his trip that I've just been on.
Due primarily to the fact that I left the book at the van to read only on weekends, it has taken me rather longer than 80 days to complete. But his circumnavigation of the globe ended on December 12th, so I did at least manage to catch him up.

Some of you will remember the BBC tv series aired during October/November of the following year, and note as reflected upon in the book's preface that 'this was just the beginning' for Michael Palin's Travels. In the introduction he says "The compulsive urge to travel is a recognised physical condition. It has its own word, dromomania, and I'm glad to say I suffer from it."
I realised of course I have the same problem, known to me as 'wanderlust'. And I'm glad too. Though it's odd to think the desire to escape the world by actually travelling around it, is an interesting contradiction.
The book of the series of the journey is full of typical Michael Palin observations and humour. Here's s few extracts: 
Day 1   "In a shoulder bag I carry my diary, a small dictaphone recorder for on-the-spot notes, a camera, the BBC's Get By In Arabic, a Kingsley Amis novel, some extra-strong mints, a packet of 'Family Wipes', an address book and an inflatable globe to enable me to check on our progress. Phileas Fogg would doubtless have regarded all this as clutter, but it's still less than I would take on a two-week holiday."
Nearing the end   "I lie in bed this morning and seriously consider what it will be like to be back home. Up till now I've not allowed my thoughts to take such morale-threatening direction for very long, and the thought of a return to city life is not, this morning, as tempting as I expected it to be. In fact I could easily go round again."
Day 78   "Forty-eight hours to go before the deadline. Fogg at this same stage was literally burning his boat in an attempt to get the Henrietta to Liverpool….

A last few deep breaths of sea air and back to my cabin to pack my bag and deflate my world for the last time."

The whole book is on-line at http://palinstravels.co.uk/book-4  if you want to read it. 

I'll leave you with one final thought from the book's Afterword, which feels as relevant now as it seemed back then. "Travel of this kind, travel when the hands get dirty, when contact is made, brought home to me how much we all see of the world on television and in the newspapers, and how little we know of it."