Famous Travellers of the World Quiz

Answer: Odysseus

The journeys of Odysseus, albeit not by choice, were so truly epic that he must have known that someday people would write songs about him. Odysseus didn't wish to get involved in the Trojan War, because it was prophesised that he would be delayed in his return home, so he feigned madness by hooking up his plough with a donkey and an ox and proceeded to sow his fields with salt.

But this was shown to be a ruse and so off he went to war, where he played a major role in the overthrow of the mighty city of Troy.

His actions included the gathering of the poison arrows from Hercules and the strategy of the wooden horse. Returning home, Odysseus and his crew were pushed off course by strong storms and were captured by Polyphemus, the Cyclops. When they escaped by blinding the giant they put his father off-side.

His father just happened to be Poseidon, who just happened to be the god of the seas. Bad move when you're trying to sail home. His adventures were so numerous that I could write a poem about them, oh, someone already has you say... "The Odyssey" by Homer. How about a film, it will inspire a movie... "Oh Brother Where Art Though" (2000). How about a song, I did say at the start there would be songs about the man... there is? "Tales of Brave Ulysses" by Cream in 1967.

Answer: Phileas Fogg

We are introduced to Phileas Fogg in the 1873 Jules Verne novel "Around the World in Eighty Days". Phileas makes a bet that he will circumnavigate the globe in eighty days, with the stuffy London Reform Club for a (trifling) £20,000, which is roughly about $4 million in today's terms and soon the race is on.

Whilst he has many adventures and rescues the lovely Aouda, it is the way that he carries himself through each disaster and success that sets this fired up adventurer apart. The man is all class, he conducts himself with dignity and walks through life with a sense of honour. Or so we are led to believe.

Whilst he is in India we manage to get a glimpse of his dark side when he (almost heartlessly) leaves his valet, Passepartout, to fend for himself after being arrested for desecrating a shrine. Almost immediately though, we are placed into conflict when he throws his wager into serious doubt by going out of his way to save the young lass, Aouda, from a ritual sacrifice. Ahh, he's eccentric and complex.

Answer: Piscine Molitor Patel

The story is "The Life of Pi" (2001) by Yann Martel. Richard Parker is a Bengal tiger and Piscine Patel is the "Pi" in the title. On a journey from India to Canada, the ship that our sixteen year old protagonist is on is sunk during a storm. Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with a wounded zebra, an orangutan and a murderous hyena.

He also rescues a tiger who would become his own rescuer. This is one story that I won't spoil for you dear reader, needless to say, do yourself a favour and obtain a copy. Given the scenario, a boy and a tiger alone on a lifeboat, you would think it would be a very short tale and that, if it were any longer it would be an aching bore. Martel manages to keep the pace and provide sufficient conflict to keep the reader entranced. Pi is able to draw you into his world as he uses all the devices of his upbringing to see him survive this mighty ordeal and lead us toward a mind-blowing conclusion.

Answer: The Baggins family

Our hairy footed friends from the "Lord of the Rings" (1954) saga, the hobbits, are well known for lacking an adventurous spirit and not wanting to stray from their beloved Shire. Even Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's faithful companion and side kick for the duration of his journey declares, as he's about to step over the Shire boundary, "if I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been". With this in mind we know from the outset that Frodo and his relative Bilbo, are not hikers or backpackers, and that they would probably be mortified that they have been included here. All this, though, makes their separate journeys all the more remarkable.

In "The Hobbit" (1937) Bilbo is dragged away from his comfortable existence by Gandalf, the wizard, and the Thirteen Dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield, to be a thief, as the team seek to reclaim Lonely Mountain and to steal away the treasures of the mighty dragon Smaug. Frodo's task is even more daunting as he has to carry the "One Ring", that he'd inherited from Bilbo, and destroy it by casting it into the fires of Mount Doom.

Answer: Sal Paradise

Jack Kerouac's semi-autobiographical novel "On the Road" (1957) introduced us to Salvatore Paradise, a lost soul who travels across America on a quest for the "ultimate fulfillment before the sun goes down". Sal is regularly in the company of Dean Moriarty, whom he sees as a friend, but comes to understand that he will leave in a heartbeat if the moment suits him.

Their travels bring to life the pulse that was America during the 1950s as images of jazz, sex and drugs flash before us and he introduces us to a generation that feels dead and is looking for something new. Kerouac's Paradise is extremely articulate and, when he describes himself as a "speck on the surface of the sad red earth", it is not difficult to understand how he came to be seen as the prophet of the Beat Generation.

Answer: Jane Porter

Jane Porter makes her first appearance in Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan of the Apes" (1912). Following her father on an expedition to Africa, their ship is wrecked, and she is forced to endure a series of trials in a strange land. However, though she isn't aware of it, she is aided by Tarzan, who is keeping a close eye on her. Jane is the first white female that he has ever seen. Entranced by her, he follows Jane when she return to America. Eventually the pair are wed, and they have a son, Korak.

So why does Jane rate a mention amongst these intrepid travellers? Initially Jane is merely a damsel in distress but, over the series of two dozen sequels she learns to defend herself and become adept at surviving in the jungle on her own. Yes, we are seeing her develop over time but the seeds of her transformation are laid down in the first book. This story is set at the phasing out of the nineteenth century, Jane is a well born woman, living in relative luxury in the United States of America. The fact that she is happy to abandon this and travel to and into Equatorial Africa should be applauded.

Answer: Pilgrims

The pilgrims in question are our travellers from Geoffrey Chaucer's magnum opus, "The Canterbury Tales" (circa 1400). If you were to do a Google search of the distance from Southwark to Canterbury it would show 57.4 miles. In terms of distance, this would not rank as an epic journey.

However, in terms of story-telling and capturing a moment in a society's history, it is a tour de force. Here is the beauty in the tale; Chaucer gathers a wide variety of travellers - a wife of Bath, a knight, a miller, a cook (and so on) - "nyne and twenty" in all and pits them against each other in a story telling competition to see who will earn a free meal at their destination.

This enables him to cross a wide variety of genres and styles, all of which serve to echo his genius as a writer. Each traveller is telling their tale and, in the process, incorporating some view of their society within their discourse. Readers need to remember that, during this period of time, there was a great deal of turmoil in Great Britain, the Peasant's Revolt had been a recent occurrence, the church was in the middle of its Western Schism and there was still fallout from the deposal of King Richard II. All of this is captured within the tale. Separate the characters and, on their own, they would be unremarkable but, as a band of travellers who have bonded their lives together, they become extraordinary.

Answer: Tintin

You only need to read the titles of Tintin's adventures to realise that he's travelled far and wide; "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" (1930), "Tintin in the Congo" (1931), "Tintin in America" (1932), "Cigars of the Pharaoh" (1934). This is rather appropriate because the man (or boy, I cannot tell), created by Belgian cartoonist Herge, was inspired by the exploits of Danish actor Palle Huld who in 1928, at the age of fifteen, circumnavigated the globe within 46 days unaccompanied, to win a newspaper competition honouring Jules Verne and his novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1873).

Tintin is curious, and that is an understatement. The curiosity, however, is an asset for his job as a reporter and his need to be an explorer, but it also gets him into all sorts of trouble. Fortunately for him he has a habit of making friends easily and is willing to help those in need. We also note that he is blessed with a fair deal of good luck, but it is this writer's belief that all of this stems from the attributes shown in the previous sentence.

Answer: James T. Kirk

"Star Trek" was, originally, a television series created by Gene Roddenberry, that aired in 1966. The first original "Star Trek" novel, which was called "Mission to Horatius", was written by Mack Reynolds and published in 1968.

To be fair to Captain Kirk's crew on the Starship Enterprise, I really should include the likes of Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Chekhov, Scotty, Uhura and the rest in this and not allow the captain to take all the glory. These guys were serious travellers/explorers, it was built into their DNA. They perfectly captured the lines of their mission, boldly going where no man has gone before, and they did it all at warp speed and in some pretty "far-out" uniforms. They spread the message "we come in peace", and promoted Earth as an altruistic member of the universe as they built bridges with alien nations across the galaxies.

Please don't write to me and tell me that Captain Kirk was not a traveller of this world but of space, I have taken the view that, as a person, he is of this world and his travels have taken him beyond it.

Answer: Lemuel Gulliver

Written by Jonathan Swift and published in 1726, we prefer to call this book "Gulliver's Travels", because its original title is a massive mouthful; "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships". Gulliver is world-wise.

He has travelled before these adventures and he speaks a number of languages, but the trek he's about to embark on in this story is like nothing he has ever encountered. Suddenly he finds himself in foreign lands, hearing languages he has no understanding of and, worse, he's sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb - he's either twelve times taller or twelve times shorter than the locals - as he ventures to Lilliput, Brobdingnag and beyond. Swift adds colour to both his story and characters as he pokes the ribs of religion, human cruelty, bureaucracy and etiquette, amongst others, along the way.