EATING WIND
Travels with Dictators, Mercenaries and Queens
Malaysians have an evocative idiom for going on a trip: makan angin. It means "eating wind," a perfect way to describe what happens when you go on a journey- you eat wind! The phrase captured Dan Wake when he first heard it backpacking through Malaysia in 1986. Now, almost forty years later, it is the title for the memoir he is writing about extraordinary adventures, often far off the grid, before the internet changed the world of travel.
An excerpt from Eating Wind, about traveling by bus through the jungles of Sumatra, won Second Prize at the Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference 2024.
Dan’s interview on the Carpe Diem podcast
Dan met Teri Murrison at the Travel Writers & Photographers Conference in San Francisco in August. She publishes a blog and a podcast on the theme of “carpe diem”, or seizing the day. Dan’s story of quitting a cushy job at a big law firm to backpack in Asia for nine months (nearly 40 years ago!) checked the boxes for Teri. Here is the interview.
