The kindness of strangers: Five times travel restored our faith in humanity

You’re miles from home, you don’t speak the language and you’re lost. At precisely that point help arrives in the most unexpected form. In the spirit of the season, our writers salute Good Samaritans worldwide our immediate acquaintance. Five writers recall acts of decency they have encountered on their travels.

Marcel Theroux

The remarkable thing about random acts of kindness is not how rare they are, but how frequent. The well-advertised possibilities of human cruelty would make you think that homo homini lupus is the size of it: man is a wolf to man.

But wander the world and what do you find? Strangers going out of their way to give each other painstaking directions. People lending each other umbrellas, drivers thanking each other by flashing their hazard lights.

If humans were the rational maximisers of advantage that some economists would have us believe, rich people would never return from poor countries alive. But, in general, the human response to vulnerability is not to prey on it, but to help. And very often, it seems to me, generosity varies inversely with the wealth of the giver.

My highlight reel of unexpected kindnesses could quickly become the length of the main feature: a Fijian medical student who let me share half his berth on a train from Darjeeling to New Jalpaiguri that was so crowded I would never have been able to board it without his help. A Siberian trucker who changed a flat tyre on my car in Chukotka and waved off my offer of assistance. “It’s like drinking a cup of tea for me,” he said. A Mongolian noodle-seller who, in Ulaanbaatar, gave me a bottle of home-made yak vodka as a leaving present.

But the current prize for going beyond the call of duty I’m awarding to a Faroese lady called Laura Joensen, who invited me to lunch in her cosy, turf-roofed house in Tjornuvik. She didn’t know me from Adam, but I’d bumped into her niece during a walk on the blustery Faroese coast and expressed an interest in traditional Faroese food. I received a lunch invitation for the following day.

Over lunch, I realised that Laura is an actress and quite celebrated in her homeland. It was rather as though Helen Mirren had invited a total stranger around for pie and mash. It was an unforgettable meal – and not just because of Laura’s generosity. She served fermented lamb that smelled like blue cheese, whale meat, and a sauce of sheep guts called garnatalg that is served on wind-dried fish. She was aware that some palates might find the dishes a challenge. “It’s enough to say “like” or “not like” without saying “ugh”,” she said, with a slight steeliness. The food was an acquired taste, but the sense of conviviality was universal.

Thank you, Laura.

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Sophie Campbell

To the two Dutch women who lent me money and let me – and a flea-bitten dog I’d temporarily adopted – share their rented bed on a bitter night on Isla del Sol, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, when I truly thought my travelling companion was dead, thank you. (I did pay them back and buy them dinner).

To the Anglo-Russian couple I met at Chekhov’s house near Moscow, who insisted on inviting me to their dacha where a relative took me swimming in the green forest backwaters, thank you. To the women on the same trip who stopped me striding starkers into a banya during the men’s’ session, thank you. And likewise, to the Japanese guy who explained that the tall chimney I had mistaken for a sento (public bathhouse) in Kyushu was actually a crematorium, thank you.

In travel, as in life, 85 per cent of people you meet are very decent, 10 per cent go above and beyond, and you just hope you don’t meet the other five per cent. I’ve lost count of the times that people have gone out of their way to help: right now, for instance, I’m in New York City and last night got on a bus without validating my MetroCard first. A woman not only explained but got off the bus to help me, risking missing her ride home. Meanwhile, the driver waited for us.

That spontaneous generosity is incredibly moving and often impossible to pay back, except for a heartfelt thank you at the time. It’s frequently proffered by people who have little to give, or who are busy, or tired, and could pretend not to notice. Such acts change how you feel about a place. It happens in this country, too. On at least three occasions I’ve been moved by women coming over to commiserate and ask if they can help while I’ve been blubbing on public transport (usually about men).

Nevertheless, I’m haunted by a bloke in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, who offered us a bed for the night and then added: “So, my son can stay with you when he comes to Britain?” We didn’t stay. Thinking back, I don’t think it was fair: we didn’t know him, hadn’t asked to stay, and these things are spontaneous gestures, not deals.

Still, it made me realise how important it is to pass on the favour in your own country. Which I do. My most recent success being a man from the G K Chesterton Society of Barcelona (honestly) who was trying unsuccessfully to find the author’s flat on my road. I stopped to help. We ended up not only finding it but being shown around by its owners. He was thrilled. I was thrilled. I think we’ll both remember that, although we’ll never see each other again. Isn’t that what travel is all about?

Chris Leadbeater

There are several things you always need to hand as a travel writer. A passport, a phone and a credit card are essentials. So is a sense of direction, and an awareness of where you are on the map. As is a grasp of how much petrol you require to reach your next destination – and whether you already have this in your tank. You tend to be careful with these matters if you are on, say, the back-roads of Uruguay.

But you might be more complacent if you are exploring South Island of New Zealand. Complacency was one of my excuses at the February end of a Kiwi summer. That, and a wanderlust that meant that, after a mazy meander down from Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park to Queenstown, I was seized by an impulse to carry on – to glimpse the sunset on the shore of Lake Te Anau, 110 miles south-west.

Did I pause to think that this was a round-trip of a fair length? Longer than I had fuel for? Not really. The sunset was superb, the lake serene, and the only petrol station, shut. By now, I was driving on fumes. This presented two possibilities. A continuation that would undoubtedly see me rammed by a lorry in the darkness, after conking out on the road. Or a cold night in the seat of my car waiting outside the petrol station.

Or maybe there was a third option. Margaret. A grandmotherly figure, wrapped in a thick coat, though the evening was warm, she pulled up as I was considering my fate. Did she know when the station would reopen? Tomorrow. Did she know where the nearest alternative was. Yes, Limehills, 30 miles away. My face must have fallen here, as she mentioned the canister of fuel for her lawnmower – mine, if I would pay her for it. I opened my wallet to find nothing but euros. No New Zealand dollars.

Margaret laughed; asked what I did for a living. “Travel journalist.” She laughed again. “Dearie me,” she added, “Aren’t you having a bad day?”

She would later explain that she had a grandson travelling abroad; that she hoped someone would extend the same help if he was similarly stuck. For, when she returned after five minutes, she said I could have the petrol. For free. She wouldn’t take the euros. All she wanted was a copy of the feature I was writing. And so we stood in her garage – me a man she had just met, half her age and twice her height – pouring her petrol into my hire car. She even made me a cup of tea.

Of course, I ignored her wishes. The next morning, I posted 40 dollars (￡25) to her address, with a thank you card. The following day’s email had a mildly cross tone. A deal was a deal, she said. The petrol was a gift; she had given the cash to charity. I did at least keep to the rest of the bargain. Six months later, I posted a copy of my article. Again, word came back. “Nice piece,” it said, “but you seem to have omitted some of your difficulties on the road. Perhaps a list of gas stations would be of use to your readers?”

Peter Hughes

I was on my way to Timbuktu when I was the beneficiary of an act of empathy almost mystical in its surprise. The stranger could hardly have been more strange, nor, it turned out, could he have been kinder.

It was January 1971 and two of us were attempting to drive across the Sahara to the ancient desert city in Mali. Fabled for 700 years, Timbuktu, at the time of our journey, was known chiefly for being among the remotest places on Earth.

For four days we had driven south through Algeria across a flat gravel plain, following a track waymarked by carcasses of dead sheep tossed from trucks, battered fragments of abandoned vehicles, rock cairns and the occasional oil drum left by the French.

In Mali the road deteriorated. Broad pools of sand as fine as cement powder flooded across the track. Wheel marks swooped to either side to skirt the foot-deep ruts in the middle. We ploughed into one of these sand lakes, hoping to power our way through. Within 50 yards we were stuck.

Working in temperatures of more than 86F (30C), we set about the laborious routine to free ourselves. First one side of the car was jacked up, then the other, so sand could be dug out from under it. We had strips of chain link fencing to lay under the wheels for grip. After two hours we had moved the car six feet.

A Tuareg in blue robe and white turban appeared from the desert.

He gestured that the easiest thing would be to pick the car up and place it on firm ground. We agreed and suggested he helped. For a while he did, but we only gained another nine inches before the car sank to its axles again.

Without a word, the Tuareg stepped aside, knelt and abased his head in prayer. When he returned, again without speaking, he took a lanyard from around his neck and presented it to me. It had a small noose at one end and a tassel at the other, and seemed to have been spun from fine strands of black goat leather. I touched my right hand to my heart in thanks and placed the lanyard over my head. The Tuareg nodded and left us as mysteriously as he had appeared. Minutes later a truck arrived, the first we had seen, and its crew pushed us free.

Michelle Jana Chan

Some say Sana’a is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, founded by Shem, son of Noah, and the origin of all truly Arabic people. I entered the Old Town by the throat-like archway of Bab Al-Yaman, to wander between the towering six or seven-storey homes built a millennium ago in mud with alabaster friezes in gypsum and Koranic calligraphy embossed above arched windows.

Along the narrow alleys there were men manoeuvring wheelbarrows laden with bales of wire and bolts of cloth, children playing with spinning tops and a woman carrying a Singer sewing machine on her head. Fruit-sellers were touting pomegranates, pink mangoes and persimmons, besides traders offering up frankincense and myrrh.

Then a woman and I caught each other’s eye, down from the mosque in Harat Mansur. She spontaneously asked me to lunch and I accepted, of course. It is encounters such as these that can become the most enchanting of a trip; for me they are the greatest reason to travel. It continues to astonish me how often strangers reach out this way.

Behind the closed doors of a home, this was my first chance to see the faces of the veiled women I had heard were the most beautiful in the world. Sa’ada, my impulsive host, was lovely: a mother of four with olive eyes and a flawless complexion. Her daughters were pretty, too. But it was her servant who was the kind of woman that men go to war over: dark, polished skin, full lips, a swaying walk. She could have been a child of the Queen of Sheba, said to have ruled Yemen a thousand years ago.

We should be kind on holiday, too | The kindness of strangers

A meal almost miraculously appeared on the table. We tore apart unleavened flat bread, dipping it into saltah stew with fenugreek froth, pots of soft, broad beans and a vegetable ratatouille with peppers and tomatoes. I remember the taste of aniseed, fennel and cumin – as Sa’ada urged me to eat more, while showing me pictures of her family, touching my hair, holding my face in between her hands like a prayer, even pinching me in the ribs to say I hadn’t eaten enough. Before I left, she gave me grapes and sweet honey-cake and Yemeni coffee made from qusr, the husk, which is boiled with cinnamon and cardamom.

The kindness of Sa’ada. Above all, it was her welcome into her home; the shared meal; the snatched conversation; the reaching out of two women across cultures – that I will always remember most about Yemen.