Life is elsewhere
Meet the gypsetters: larney neo-nomads who wander the wilder lands, clad in understated chic. Lin Sampson talks to raiders of a lost art
CAPE Town is home to the vintage gypsetter, a base with hot and cold running water, French cheese and air-dried ham imported from Italy. The city is where gypsetters come to rest up in the winter, take on a bit of fat and shed worn feathers as they get ready for tribal gatherings in Outer Mongolia.
In Cape Town you can smell Africa but you don’t have to tread in it.
These travel divas are tanned, tattooed and tasselled. Their accessories are impeccable. They wear loose, rather negligent garb, often so revealing that naked tribesmen in lost countries think they are witches. The true gypsetter loves jewellery, often turquoise pendants, gold starfish and shells.
And nobody would be without a Misibaba bag designed by signature gypsetter Chloe Townsend, granddaughter of the intrepid Pam Barlow of Rustenberg Wine Farm, herself a bit of a gypsetter. Last year, Townsend took four plane journeys and a bus to go and help endangered leatherback turtles in Costa Rica.
Serious gypsetters like to live between a rock and a very hard place, making their way to countries where the inhabitants carry poisoned arrows and eat their rela- tives. Some gypsetters have even managed to start wars with the aid of an iPhone, a box of matches and a burning tyre.
The gypsetter’s anti-depressant is travel. A bad day at the office, failed love affair, and they are back on the highway to nowhere, with a sheaf of internet bookings and a ticket to some tribal outpost where bilharzia lurks. They eschew all luxury hotels although they are often carrying enough money in small change to buy a yacht.
They walk the Hindu Kush carrying nothing more than an inflatable mattress to sleep on, or trek to the volcano site of North Korea’s Mount Baekdu by way of Vladivostok-Pyongyang, and are all fully enrolled for the Virgin Galactic’s debut space trip.
Most are selfemployed; some take on shortterm gigs; many are multi-passionate, involved in a wide range of different things. They are deeply creative and even when they have hefty trust funds they like to design, sew, paint, dance and run things up with loving hands at home.
They are experts in travel bookings, knowing connections and cheap flights all over the world, and are disciples of jetiquette; full of tricks about how to upgrade and get a window seat. One gypsetter I
They are often carrying enough small change to buy a yacht
met always gets first class meals although she travels steerage.
Many have a questioning inner life. I catch Angeline Engelbrecht, a fearless gypsetter, a day before she sets off for Kenya.
She is the daughter of legendary Springbok rugby wing Jannie Engelbrecht and ex-Miss South Africa Ellen Liebenberg. Brought up on the wine farm Rust en Vrede, she is the sort of girl who jumps into her 4x4 and drives through Africa. Her headquarters are in Windhoek but she is roam-ready and has lived in Tunisia, Kenya and India.
“I just got into my old Land Rover one day and drove to Namibia. I find the desert very spiritual,” she says. Today she is in Stellenbosch, tomorrow she catches an early plane to Nairobi. Casting an eye across the coffee shop where two Italian Catholic priests are sipping cappuccinos, she says: “I might even go to Italy next year.”
Their mantra might be “I want to be free” but gypsetters are not without their spiritual side. Some, like Tasha Tyler, do the Camino pilgrimage in Spain, others sit at the knees (if they’ve still got knees) of starved fakirs in India, or over-bellied gurus wearing wreaths in some ashram. Next year, Tyler intends herding reindeer in Iceland. “I have just bought a pair of Berghaus walking boots and those Japanese hakama trousers that are roomy and easy to pack.”
These glamorous travellers track from sleek gyms to Bhakti yoga and bathing naked in the Ganges. They have all had hepatitis B more than once. Rumi is their favourite poet, although nobody quite un- derstands his esoteric utterings such as: What you seek is seeking you.
They are risk-takers who vie with each other for fizz and sheer foolhardiness. One gypsetter lived with a tribe where a woman cooked and ate her husband. “I could have done with a dollop of Mrs Balls,” she says.
Lizel Strydom is a gypsetter who has lived all over the world and tasted bread from 23 different cities.
Unlike the elegant English female explorer Freya Stark, gypsetters are techno savages hacking into their back accounts from the top of mountains and calling home from the bottom of the sea. They carry satellite phones, Bose wireless speakers — playing sensurround Verdi in the desert is a favourite pastime — and moleskin notebooks in honour of Bruce Chatwin, who was a leading gypsetter.
They always drive a beat-up Land Rover which often breaks down, and write diaries which are never published. As Engelbrecht says: “For some people every day is an adventure. We become better people when we see that everyone in the world is essentially the same.”
But many do not get beyond a beach in Kenya — the real citadel of gypsetting living. LS