Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152735 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

OBSERVER
'Gloriously luminescent, but always self-deprecating. Simon's
physical powers are diminishing, but his writing just gets better. The
wonderful portraits of the people he encounters, often redolent of Bruce
Chatwin, are sometimes so enticing that, were this a movie, you'd swear
they were a plant for later on'

IRISH TIMES
'A sharply-written read of incisive observations . . . this book
is as much about where the boundaries of age and ambitions collide as it is
about the 48 countries Simon travelled through'

SAGA MAGAZINE
'A compelling account of the adventures en route, including breaking a leg
in the middle of a vast plain in Ethiopia; a reunion with a camel rider
he'd met 25 years before in Egypt; and crossing India and Thailand with
Malu, 62, a former girlfriend, riding pillion'

Customer Reviews

first few chapters depressing but then full of richness
I nearly put this book down in the first 80 pages-Ted Simons finds anti-climax at every corner-people he met in the 70s have gone-the world seems full of litter and is now built up where once was paradise. However I began to realise that his honesty is part of the author's strength . He equally describes the beauty of Africa-the thrill of the high Andes , the stunning Australian outback and the kindness of strangers.We are left with an impression that it is still a wonderful world out there but it needs protecting.When I look back at Jupiter's travels he also describes misery filth and poverty amongst beauty .Why did that not affect me in the same way when I first read it? It probably did .We look back at Jupiter's travels through rose tinted glasses and I'm sure we will do the same with this book.It is a classic which took me from my hammock in the garden to the wild high places of the world and gently back again-Well worth reading

A remarkable journey by a remarkable man
Ted Simon is a very remarkable man and, in his 70's, to undertake a 59,000 mile motorcycle journey visiting 47 countries is little short of astonishing.
And he did all this without back up teams of people to support him or arrange his visas or anything else, but on his own.
However, it is a very different book to Jupiter's Travels.
I think this is possibly explained by Ted himself in chapter 27 -'It seemed to me impossible to say anything upbeat and optimistic about the changes I had seen'.
Whilst Jupiter's Travels was full of optimism - indeed Ted describes himself seeing 'in the world of the seventies a kind of innocence' - the world of the new millenium is rather less so. Vastly improved communication has destroyed the innocence. The immolation of the twin towers, and America's reaction to it, has created a very different world.
So Dreaming of Jupiter is not an optimistic book, but may well give you much food for thought.
The good news is that Ted is an optimist himself, because only an optimist could have undertaken this journey, not once, but twice.
Highly recommended.

Don't try to re-visit your youth
As a sequel to one of the seminal books of my youth I was looking forward to this hugely. I was very disappointed and eventually abandoned the quest for any deep insight, skimming the last third. Any sense of adventure in Simon's repeat journey is quashed by concerns of liaisons with film crews in Africa and trying to update a website as he goes. The whole thing becomes a compromise and totally against the spirit of going with the flow and freeing up the mind that imbued the adventures of the first book. This is unhappily summed up in Simon's closing paragraph where he's casting around for a catchy last line. He alludes, weakly I thought, to the dreams and aspirations apparently captured in his face in a photograph taken during the first journey. This fudge compares very unfavourably with the magical last line from his first book '...an enchanted land perhaps, where men can still dream of being Gods.'