Travel Essentials Games

Travel Game’s

Part of travel and adventure is a bag full of Sudoku or Crosswords which help to pass the time in a pleasant way, and occasionally games with your fellow travellers and companions, crew or just complete strangers. Language isn’t an issue - cheating and having fun, is universal.

Pass the mitten - it origins are in Inuit culture - Canadian high arctic, presumably for courtship and something to get the pulse racing in those dark huts in Polar Winter. Easily the most “erotic” game we have ever played. It involves just that passing a woollen mitten from person to person, boy to girl etc, only the mitten is tucked under your neck and you can’t use your hands to pass it. It is very up close and personal. We give it a thumbs up - which is a mitten joke by the way.

Karum / Carom - The forerunner of snooker and pool this game is thought to have originated in India, although there is some evidence that Portuguese explorers popularised it bringing it up from Timor where the word Carom originates from. it is spelt in many different ways. Carom is played in India and from Burma to Kathmandu in Nepal and all the way down to Timor In Indonesia. We whiled away a couple of evenings with companions and locals in Sri-Lanka, playing late into the night - great fun. Talc gives it that authentic feeling, (but a lot of people use silicon sprays now), oh and you have to have your own special “striker’” We have a beautiful Karum board in the museum collection.

Gambling Dice - Jacks and Poker Dice. Played for matchsticks, this is fun game to while away some time, it is the dice form of a card game, easy to take and use, and it doesn’t matter if they get wet.

Table Football This seems to be the table game of choice in Africa - the one we remember is in Debark, a small village in Ethiopia when the electric went out.

Swedish Patients - card game. With Swedish cards The ace, king, queen and jack have indices E, K, D, Kn (standing for Ess, Kung, Dam, Knek), but you can play with any regular deck. Great for those airflight delays or sitting in a cabin or tent waiting for the weather to shift or a storm to blow out. It probably has a Swedish name but we don’t know it. It involves turning a card in turn and putting next to other in line, it looks like a very random system when you are playing it, but the object is to get all the cards into one pile. It doesn’t happen very often. You move a middle card when it is rather between a pair of a different suit or between the same suit of diamonds, hearts, aces or spades. You can play it for hours. Great for confusing anyone watching - it looks like you are making it up as you go along.

S***head is a popular card game with backpackers - probably a decedent of the Swedish game Vändtia (turn ten), our version take things a step further (or too far!) in that the winner writes or draws on the losers face using makeup - borrowed from the girls, it usually descends into rude anarchy - great fun - till you realise it’s water proof makeup.

Polar Plunge - We’ve tried it in several different formats and we are not sure what is best? If we were pushed (literally) that would probably be the easiest. The dive (with a flurish) off the side of the ship platform was probably the easiest as it is pretty much fait accompli once you have hurled yourself off the edge - don’t forget to smile for the cameras! Hitting the water at -4c (and yes it gets below freezing in Antarctica due to high salinity), is another thing, I can see why they put you in a harness and life line, as the risk of a heart attack is a real possibility, but it is pretty rare. Humans are pretty resilient and you don’t just die every time you hit a bit of cold. You can survive even in a pair of swimming trunks for longer than you think, and certainly a lot longer than they tell you on telly, even in water as cold as this, and besides which it is good training if you ever accidentally fall in, so you can recover and act rationally to give yourself the best opportunity to make it at least out of the water. The rest is more of a problem. Hardest was actually getting changed on an ice burg and then walking in. If you think the sea is cold try it in the high Arctic, with air temperatures below -20c. We tried to see how long we could take it, in -2c to 0c water and after five minuets we were starting to loose motor controls, but it was more when we were out that the full extent of loss of motor controls showed itself and just the simple act of doing up a big zip, became a big deal, you were looking at the zip and hands, and you knew what you wanted to do but it was hard to put it all together. We did of course. The worse bit was the ride back on the Zodiac, and we have noticed this with scuba diving in the UK, you can be fine for 45 minuets in 4c water, but as soon as it flushes and you get air wind chill, you chill down really quickly. Top tip is to fill your boots, gloves and hood with hot water from the exhaust water from the outboard, it really helps. There is also another method to warm you up, but it might make your wetsuit a bit smelly. Still needs must, just don’t do it in a dry suit!

North Pole Swimming Club - Simple - Go to the North Pole - cut a plunge pool into the ice no deeper than 3ft - the ice is only 5ft thick and then your into 4000 meters of seawater depth, and voila you have the North Pole Swimming Club = perfect in -40c. Very kind of the Russian crew to provide a Banyan tent to warm up in! Odd fact the sea water seemed to steam when it was let in - it was probably 0 to -4c. It was quiet strange.

Line-crossing ceremony is an initiation rite that commemorates a person's first crossing of the Equator. The tradition originated with ceremonies maybe used as a boost to morale, or have been created as a test for seasoned sailors to ensure their new shipmates were capable of handling long, rough voyages. Equator-crossing ceremonies, typically featuring King Neptune. We held one crossing to the Antarctica from the Atlantic to the Southern Sea, complete with Neptune!

Some games from the Museum of Travel collection. (We have a different carom set to the one featured).