Dozen Dirty Dumplings: Travelling across Asia in the 1980s

In the early 1980s – long before smartphones, budget flights or the safety net of Google Maps – an uncertain and gloriously uninformed Chris Price set out to cross Asia the slow way. Armed with a backpack, questionable judgement and a stack of diaries, the accidental adventurer crossed 13 countries by whatever moved: rattling trains, rust-bitten ferries, overcrowded buses, the odd smuggler’s car – and frequented more dubious guesthouses and toilets than he will ever publicly admit to. For most of the journey he relied on a single Bartholomew’s map, picked up guidebooks after travelling through the regions as souvenirs, and navigated China with a map written entirely in Chinese. A Dozen Dirty Dumplings is a candid, amusing and often uncomfortable account of travel before the world became curated, convenient and constantly connected. In place of Instagram sunsets are nights in musty rooms, run-ins with border officials, strangers who offered improbable kindness, and long stretches of heat, dust and bafflement. Yet beneath the chaos runs a deeper thread: the discovery of small human moments – shared food, brief friendships, quiet landscapes – that stay long after the journey ended. Drawn directly from the diaries Price kept on the road, A Dozen Dirty Dumplings maintains the immediacy, honesty and rawness of its original notes. It captures the confusion of youth, the thrill of independence, the fear of getting truly lost, danger and the exhilaration of travel across a continent that had not yet learned to perform for tourists. Join Price as he swims in the Ganges, hitchhikes with the People’s Liberation Army, breakfasts with Tibetan nomads, and lunches with tribal elders carrying Mausers and AKs – moments that blend danger, absurdity and unexpected kindness. Part travelogue, part coming-of-age story, A Dozen Dirty Dumplings offers a vivid portrait of a vanished era: a world of paper tickets, sweaty backpacks and conversations shouted through train windows. It is a story about learning – sometimes the hard way – how to navigate the world and oneself. Chaotic, reflective and sharply funny, it reveals that the most memorable journeys often come from the moments you never planned for – and could never repeat today.