(Mississippi, USA/Hungary)... The tourist brochures state that Robert Johnson, the King of the Delta Blues Guitarists, is “buried” in two places. After driving several kilometres west of Greenwood, Mississippi, I reached a small road that passes through the tiny town of Itta Bena. Long lines of fields ploughed in parallel lines permit the imagination to picture gangly, stooped cotton pickers; after another eight kilometres the road crosses a flat concrete bridge spanning an algae-covered pond full of snapping turtles.
A dirt track to the right leads to the Payne Baptist Chapel, behind which is a large patch of grass with 30 or so graves. After some searching, a flat tombstone marking Robert Johnson's final resting place was found beneath wind-blown straw. A simple epitaph reads: “Resting in the Blues.” Deserted, remote, poor, magical — some adjectives that could well describe Quito, Mississippi, a hamlet so small that on most maps it is not marked.
On the other side of the bridge is a run-down shack, and from this a motley family emerged, the young children wearing nothing from the waist down. This shack was formerly the Three Forks general store, where a jealous husband poisoned Johnson for supposedly cheating with his wife. That was in August 1938, when Johnson was 27 years old. Since that murderous day, the store has been physically moved to the main road — such as it is, dust and all, some three kilometres from its original spot. The original store sign is now in the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, 150 kilometres to the north, which also changed location some five years ago.
There is some dispute amongst Blues historians as to whether Quito or the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Morgan City, five kilometres farther south on the same road, is the actual burial site of Robert Johnson. This church, though in better condition than the chapel, is equally remote. Commissioned by Robert Johnson's record company — which, with other labels, must have made millions of dollars from the record sales of numerous Blues legends, without, in most cases, paying their estates much in the way of recompense — the memorial lists his complete discography, which was recorded in only three sessions. Romantics will prefer Robert Johnson buried at Quito, I feel, but both sites give a fair impression of his resting at the edge of the world. I was listening to Robert Johnson as I travelled through Hungary two years ago.
I had no Hungarian music with me, save for an album by Musikas, featuring the voice of Marta Sebestyen, performing interpretations of Béla Bartók compositions. I'd played that one several times, so I went back to Johnson as I drove along the Danube Bend, where a certain something reminded me of the Mississippi. Communities along these two great rivers almost appear as though they do not fully exist. The rivers dominate, the villages and towns beg permission daily to be there. The castle at Visegrád overlooks a broad sweep of the river, but more than that I enjoyed the huge forests behind that dwarfed this imposing edifice. Built in the 13th century, the castle reached its height during the reign of Hungary's King Matthias Corvinus, and a pleasant museum — the papier-mâché peasants were very tacky — exists in its central tower. For a hundred years in the 15th and 16th centuries, the castle was in Turkish hands, but I think I would have preferred my luck with them, rather than the spa attendants I met at the nearby Hotel Silvanus.
It is interesting to note that Visegrád lent its name to a political movement set up to foster improved relationships between Central European countries. Formed in 1991, the Visegrád Group involved the leaders of Hungary, József Antall; the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, and of Poland, Lech Walesa. The ceremony marking this friendship was conducted at the castle and mirrored a similar pact held in 1335 that was attended by Antall, Václav and Walesa's predecessors, Charles Robert, King of Hungary; John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, and Casimir III, King of Poland.

(Alaska, USA)...The most beautiful camping spot I have ever seen was 60 kilometres along the Dinali Highway in Alaska. The Denali Highway goes west-east across Alaska from the main south-north highway that also to its left (that is, east-west) and a few miles farther north leads to Denali National Park and Mount McKinley, also known as Denali, just to confuse the issue.
Along the highway I did not see another car for 12 hours, and the only traffic seen were the swans, megansers and divers that swam silently across the lake; a ptarmigan that flitted through the brush, and on the other side of the dust road, which leads for 216 kilometres etween Cantwell and Paxson, beavers, scaup and Semipalmated plovers.
Alaska in June is glorious. From the tent, I could see the sun go from east to west and back again but never disappear from view. Snowy mountains stand resplendent among the purple hills and blue lakes. Built in 1957, the road itself is full of potholes and makes for slow going — I should not have been on it with a rented car (40 kilometres per hour proved my top speed), but I had seen so many recreational vehicles heading towards the national Park, the attraction of instead taking this lonely road was too much. Halfway along is the only place to eat and sleep, the Maclaren River Lodge.
They will also tow your broken-down car or fix your puncture, but anything of that nature in Alaska proves very expensive. Someone told me that $2,000 was the minimum fee, but he probably said this to impress me. It did not scare me off. Later on, I also went up the Dalton Highway, which leads from just above Fairbanks to the Arctic Sea at Deadhorse, 663 kilometres to the north (I stopped at the Arctic Circle, which is at 204 kilometres). Another wonderful spot in Alaska is the island of Kodiak, the United States’ largest island. The ferry takes about 12 hours from Seward on the mainland, and it is really the only way to get there apart from expensive, small jets.
There is a Russian Orthodox church there, and in the town, I saw people of Russian descent who live remote lives, come to town only perhaps once a month and speak only an old Russian. The first of these people came to the island in 1784, in a group led by fur trader Gregory Shelikhov. Now, elsewhere in Alaska, there are small communities of Russian Old Believers, who escaped persecution in Russia by coming here in the 1960s. These villages, with names such as Kachemak-Selo, Nikolaevsk, Razdolna and Voznesenka, are hard to reach and do not encourage visitors. I stayed at a campsite in Fort Abercrombie State Park, about six kilometers northeast of Kodiak. It is idyllic. A carpet of soft moss grows between the tall, widely separated pine trees. A beach borders one side of a small lake, and a group of friendly people shared with me their recently caught salmon. The site does have a military history, the U.S. Army constructing fortifications and armaments in 1939 against a possible Japanese attack.
The area was silent, and at the edges of the woodland are lush meadows with orchids and chocolate lilies. Looking over the cliff in the morning, I saw sea otters bobbing on their backs and breaking open seafood. Also, Harlequin ducks; Bald eagles flew overhead. A nearby walk is to Termination Point, which begins at the end of Monashka Bay Road, one of only a few roads on the island. Here, too, is a meadow, and in the distance one can see the island of Ouzinkie, which was home to St. Herman, the first canonized Russian Orthodox saint in North America.