by HM Waugh

The thought sprang into my tired mind: this would be way better with a friend or two. After hours of not-sleeping on a stationary bus with strangers piled all around me and men with guns silhouetted against the moonlight just outside, it was finally dawn. Time to get up. Get out. Put my pack on my back and walk. I was in the middle of the Peruvian Andes in South America, stuck in one serious road blockade. And all the locals were suddenly leaving the bus. The driver explained that it would take ten minutes to walk to the other side of the village, and then it should be easy to find someone to drive me onwards.

That made sense. I’d done similar before, in previous blockades I’d been caught up in. But this one felt different.

More guns, for one thing.

And no friends. Not even any mild acquaintances.

I kept close to the people from my bus as we set out. And immediately found more differences with this blockade. Instead of just the usual rocks and acrid burning tyres, think multiple felled trees and barbed wire across the road. I was climbing up and over and squeezing through, my heavy pack constantly catching on things. It ended up taking an hour and a half to get all the way to the other side. I was sore and tired, scared and hungry.

Plus, I was busting to go to the toilet. But I didn’t want to lose the semi-safety of the people from my bus. Finally, I just had to go.

And when I got back onto the main road? Everyone. Else. Was. Gone.

The bus that had picked them up was racing off into the distance. Cue the opening scene from ‘Evacuation Road’. If only I’d known then that my fear and discomfort would inspire a novel!

I would walk another hour and half through a rugged landscape before I finally found someone willing to take me in their car. It wasn’t what I would call fun, and I didn’t feel remotely safe.

Yeah, it would’ve been better with friends.

So when the idea for ‘Evacuation Road’ started rattling around in my head so many years later, a book set in South America in a future where society is crumbling and a group of kids have to somehow make it to their evacuation flight, I decided to use my own experiences to supercharge the writing. But I definitely also made sure it had friendship in it. Because books, like travel, are best when they’re fun. Exciting. And only occasionally terrifying!

Writing ‘Evacuation Road’ involved a lot of research, including reading through the diary my much-younger self had written. I dredged through my feelings, as well as my descriptions of the food and the sights and the people. And I used that to create as authentic a world and a set of characters as I could. I drew inspiration from my experiences, good and bad. For example, in my travels I had stupidly managed to get abducted by a false policeman and his mates in Bolivia. As they drove me out into the alpine desert, I managed to hide the majority of my cash in my socks. I’m not saying anything about the hygiene level of my footwear at the time, but my assailants never found those bulging stacks of notes and I walked away feeling almost victorious. So, when I was looking for a way for Eva to get out of a sticky situation in the book, I remembered my trick.

And sure, Eva faces things so much worse than anything I faced. But in some ways I’m kinder to her than I was to myself. I made awesome friends at the start of my travels through South America, and slowly had to say goodbye to them all. Leading to me walking all alone through forbidding mountains after that blockade.

But Eva? She begins the story with a few mild acquaintances, and ends it with a group of fast friends. I think my past self would approve.

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Order your copy now: Evacuation Road

And check out the author's bio: HM Waugh