I like the humour in the book [Following the Equator], and the roominess. He [Mark Twain] is open to a lot of new experiences, whether it’s in Hawaii or India or South Africa. He’s open to anything, and it’s that receptive mood of the book that I liked. It’s also a book which I discovered myself. I found an old copy, I read it and I asked English professors about it, who dismissed it. But it influenced me deeply, because I thought: I’d like to take a long trip, leaving London, going to Paris, taking the Orient Express, going through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan – which became The Great Railway Bazaar. That all came from this book [Following the Equator].
The book, according to the author