Nicholas Bouvier was a 20th-century Swiss traveller and writer as well as an iconographer and photographer. Building on a report for a journal in the Aran Islands, Bouvier wrote Journal d'Aran et d'autres lieux, a tale of travel that slips at times into the supernatural, the voyager suffering from typhoid.

Not that that gets in the way of his appreciation of the air of the Irish islands, which "dilates, tonifies, intoxicates, lightens, frees up animal spirits in the head who give themselves over to unknown but amusing games. It brings together the virtues of champagne, cocaine, caffeine, amorous rapture and the tourism office makes a big mistake in forgetting it in its prospectuses."

The Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier

"We denied ourselves every luxury except one, that of being slow." So wrote Nicolas Bouvier in 1963, reconstructing from his diaries an improbable journey across Eastern Europe and Asia undertaken some 10 years earlier with his friend, the artist Thierry Vernet. Setting off from Belgrade in a convertible Fiat Topolino -- which they sometimes drove with their feet while perched on the backs of their seats -- the pair had a fanciful itinerary that would lead them to the Khyber Pass but only enough money for nine weeks.

Readers may also want to take their time with this reissued classic of 20th-century travel literature, enlivened by Mr. Vernet's drawings. Mr. Bouvier was a Swiss writer (1929-1998) whose buoyant spirits and effortless erudition must have made him the perfect chum to kill time with. To prolong the enjoyment of being in his company, I found myself laying his book on my chest for long sessions of daydreaming.

Curious about everyone he meets, from militiamen to truck drivers, he is game for any side trip, knowledgeable about local customs, and philosophical about setbacks and misfortunes. His account says as much about friendship and the importance of car repair as about exotic lands.

"The life of a nomad is surprising," he writes. "You cover nine hundred miles in two weeks: the whole of Anatolia in a cloud of dust."

Then, after a night of drinking with strangers and a deep sleep, you awake to find snow "covering roofs, smothering shouts, cutting off roads ... and thus you spend six months in Tabriz, Azerbaijan."

Possible disasters never seem to take turns for the worse. When Mr. Bouvier and Mr. Vernet become "guest-prisoners" of the Kurds in Mahabad, they find that their captors mainly want to share woeful stories with them. The countries the young men pass through -- Serbia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan -- were even then seeing their traditional way of life threatened by Doris Day records, war and revolution. (They are in Tehran during the trial of deposed prime minister Musaddeq.) Reflections on politics, though, take a back seat to the practicalities of surviving on the road and, in the style of Herodotus, collecting dubious bits of lore. (According to Mr. Bouvier, the Persians are forbidden to break wind, "even in the middle of the desert.")

"For a long time I lived without hating anything much. Today, I positively hate flies. Even thinking about them brings tears to my eyes. A life entirely devoted to wiping them out seems to me a great destiny. I mean the flies of Asia; those who have never been out of Europe are no judges of the matter. In Europe flies keep to windows, to sticky liquids, to the shade of corridors. Sometimes they even wander on to a flower. They are no more than shadows of themselves, exorcised - that is to say, innocent. In Asia they are spoilt by the abundance of the dead and the abandon of the living, and they have a sinister insouciance. Tough and relentless, smuts from some horrible material, they are up with the sun and the world is theirs. Once it is daylight, sleep is impossible. At the slightest hint of repose, they take you for a dead horse and attack their favourite morsels: the corners of the lips, around the eyes, the eardrums. You find yourself asleep? They venture forth, get in a panic, and in their inimitable manner buzz up channels of the most sensitive mucus membranes in the nose, at which point you leap to your feet, retching. But if there is a cut, an ulcer or a spot that hasn't yet healed over, you could perhaps doze off for a bit because they will make a beeline for that, and their tipsy immobility then - replacing their odious agitation - has to be seen to be believed. You can then observe one at leisure: it has no obvious appeal, is not exactly streamlined, and its broken, erratic, absurd flight, designed to get on one's nerves, is beneath contempt. The mosquito, which one would happily do without, is an artist by comparison."

From The Way of the World
by Nicolas Bouvier