
Long walks alone up the valley which was cold and beautiful. Mist passing over a silvery sun. I am again feeling the pangs of restlessness, and am planning to go to Mauritania. The only country that nobody seems to have heard of. I know where it is, said Penelope [Betjeman]. It’s in Eastern Europe and we all used to see it in ‘20s films. They wear white uniforms. “You’re thinking of Ruritania” – and she was.
*
I have the most itchy feet and want to go to Niger – more nomads, the Bororo Feuls, the most beautiful people in the world, who wander alone in the savannah with long-horned white cattle and have some rather startling habits like a complete sex-reversal at certain seasons of the year. So I may be off.
Bruce Chatwin in Shakespeare/Chatwin, 1999
Leave a comment