This sunday I was at the Eloor Library @ Chennai. As I was wandering through the rows of shelves I came across a book “Around the world in 80 Trades” by Conor Woodman and picked it up. It was one of my best random picks ever.

Was Conor Woodman a boyhood hero of mine? No. But he would have fit the bill – being a modern day Marco Polo.

My first boyhood hero who I desperately wanted to emulate was Amundsen. We had a english rapid reader lesson on how he dreamed of being the first man to go to the North Pole. When he was beaten to the North Pole he decided to go South instead. However this chapter was on how he trained himself as a boy to be tolerant to low temperatures – he kept his window open during winters when he slept. Try as I might – I could never simulate that wintery condition back home in Mumbai.

My next hero was Thor Heyerdahl – the author of The Kon Tiki Expedition and a few others after that. Thor is there high up in my list of mad cap adventurors. Unfortunately I have just read one of his journey’s and am dying to read about his other two expeditions. And in that light KonTiki is important. It was his first such expedition. He had a theory that the Polynesian/South Pacific Islands were populated by a race that was driven out of Peru by the Incas. Nobody bought this theory. However, it was his conviction that allowed him to sell this idea to 5 other swede/norwegian adventurors and the 6 of them braved the mighty Pacific Ocean in a 30′ X 30′ Balsa raft. While I don’t know how long this journey did take – reading his notes about this journey drove home one point – one cannot be a squemish eater if one has to undertake such journeys. I am vegetarian – well an experimentative one but still I am not sure I would have managed to survive 4 months or so in a all sea environment living on fish alone.

And to this list of people I am now adding Conor Woodman.

What is common to them? A conviction that they are onto something and the courage to see this task that is so much larger than them to its logical conclusion.

Do you have any childhood heroes? Do suggest a name and a memoir that I could read about their efforts and I will surely mention them in future posts.