"I stare at the sky and it leaves me blind" - Manic Street Preachers.
Backpacking Centurion was supposed to be a hat-trick, a trilogy. But Jonny Blair's 100-country journey had too many stories for that. These are the uncut ones, or should I say the "cut ones". They were left out for a reason and then stuck back in as a last minute supersub.
They were too gruesome, gory, crazy, insane, wacky, zany, ridiculous and mad for inclusion in the hat-trick. There were the horrors of death camps, overflowing toilets, innocent drug smuggling, border confusion, cider sinking on night buses and mates having intercourse with inflatables in the author's living room.
This Volume, The Black Volume, completes the Backpacking Centurion era and will leave us with a splendid 147 break. 147 chapters about 100 countries before the darkness fell over Malaga on that night down the pub when a new era was about to unfold.
Out of the darkness and into the next century went Jonny Blair and his backpack.
"Everywhere death row; everyone's a victim" - Manic Street Preachers.
