In which everyone’s favorite Scotsman looks back on the journeys that shaped his life
Thundering typhoons, it’s Tintin! No wait, that’s Alan Cumming, channeling his comic-book hero in Bhutan. Photo: Geoffrey Weill/Courtesy Alan Cumming.In which everyone’s favorite Scotsman looks back on the journeys that shaped his life
Thundering typhoons, it’s Tintin! No wait, that’s Alan Cumming, channeling his comic-book hero in Bhutan. Photo: Geoffrey Weill/Courtesy Alan Cumming.As told to Peter Jon Lindberg /
September 18, 2024
Photo: JSquared Photography/Contour by Getty Images.In addition to being a Tony- and Olivier-winning actor, memoirist, activist, cabaret owner, fashion plate, and television host (smash meta-mystery series The Traitors — which recently earned him an Emmy — returns for a third season in 2025), Alan Cumming is also a devoted traveler, exploring the world with the same brand of wicked glee that he brings to stage and screen. His muse? Tintin, the Belgian cartoon adventurer, with whom he shares a certain elfin intelligence and curiosity.
With each new journey, Cumming’s “go list” grows longer. The Trans-Siberian Express, a lifelong obsession, remains at the top. He’s also eager to return to the high seas, and travel again by ship between New York and London. “I love an Atlantic crossing,” he says. “I think we’ve lost the ability to enjoy travel, believing it’s all about the destination. But taking a week to cross the ocean, luxuriating in this old-fashioned way of doing things… It reminds you how long travel should take. Long enough to ‘gain one’s experience,’ as Shakespeare put it.”
Chatting with Further, Cumming looked back on the trips that changed his life and worldview — from a wide-eyed encounter with London at age 10 to a soul-affirming visit to Bhutan in 2022. “Bhutan reminded me how important it is sometimes to feel utter culture shock,” he says. “To be in a place where you understand nothing, yet you feel so much.”
Piccadilly Circus in the 1970s, when Cumming first saw London. Photo: Angelo Hornak/Alamy.When I was 10 I went on a school trip to London. Coming from my tiny hometown in Scotland, this was a huge deal — the first trip I’d taken away from my family. We went on the sleeper train, which was exciting in itself. I remember being absolutely bombarded by the city’s hugeness, but also by the way that Londoners weren’t really as… kind to each other!
My overarching memory of that trip is realizing that where I came from was different, that we were different. People in my hometown took the time to talk to each other; people in London were always in a hurry, and slightly mean. Of course big cities can seem like that when you come from rural areas like mine. But after that trip, it was clear to me that I was probably going to spend my life in big places like that — and if so, I’d have to learn to live without that tight-knit community, where people stop and take the time with you. That was an enormous change for me.
As a boy in Scotland. I moved to Glasgow in 1982, when I was 17. I grew up on a remote country estate on the other side of Scotland, and so going to live in Glasgow was like going to another planet. Where I grew up, I was literally living in a forest. There were no streetlamps. If we heard a car, it was a huge event. So suddenly being in a bustling city and living off the main road with buses thundering up and down all night long, having to cope with the hum and the energy and the chutzpah of Glasgow, was overwhelming to little me.
But soon I fell in love. Glasgow is an amazing mixture of highbrow, elegant, and wealthy neighborhoods with an industrial working-class core. All life is here. Everybody has an opinion, and everybody is a joker. It can be a rough city, but people really look out for each other. It has a gallows humor: There is a saying in Scotland, “you have to laugh or you’d greet,” which translates as “you have to laugh or you’d cry,” and I am one of those people who would much prefer to laugh than to cry. Glasgow taught me that.
I haven’t lived there since the 1980s but it still feels like my home. It’s where I became a man — many times (arf arf!). I love the smelliness and the garrulousness and the craic. I love the river with its remnants of the shipbuilding days and the art nouveau architecture of the West End, and the quick access to Loch Lomond and the beauty of the Trossachs. Glasgow is and always will be the one for me.
Bhutan reinvigorated my desire to travel. I went almost by accident — an invitation from a friend to join him led to the most amazing week, and when I got back it felt like we’d traveled for six months.
Much has been made of Bhutan’s happiness index, and it is indeed an amazing thing. But when you analyze it, it’s really about kindness and caring, and how socialism could actually work were we not all afraid of its name. The people of Bhutan, or at least its leaders, have come to understand how much happier people are when they’re cared for, when they’re mindful of the effects they have on the environment. If people are happy, they function better, and the economy naturally improves. It’s so simple, but it took a beautiful little country like Bhutan to remind us of the basic ways to live together properly.
There are so many stunning temples and shrines to the various Buddhas, and then there are also huge phalluses everywhere — in honor of an ancient figure our lovely guide referred to as “penis guy.” Fraying flags for the dead flap from seemingly every tree; animals wander across the roads… and then suddenly you come across the opulence of an Aman hotel.
I felt like Tintin during my travels there. Every day I chanced upon something magical and unusual and spiritual. I was blessed and cleansed by monks, I bathed in hot springs, and I climbed to the world’s highest temple. Most of all Bhutan made me want to travel again, to feel the hugeness of the world and the possibility of new experiences. And it made me value and crave traveling alone. So much of my life is spent surrounded by people, and even though often they are people I love and adore, there is something nurturing about traveling by yourself, and making your own mind up about every single second of your day. It was a spiritual reawakening in many ways, and I cannot wait to return.
I fell in love with New York the second I saw it. From the plane, I looked down and thought, I’m going to live there one day. And now I do!
The first time I visited was for the premiere of a movie I was in, Emma. The after-party was at the boathouse in Central Park. It was a magical night. I was in a new city that I knew was going to be my future home — and I saw fireflies for the first time! (We don’t have fireflies in Scotland.)
I was living in London at the time, and when I returned there everything felt so dull and drab after the exuberance of New York. I couldn’t wait to get back. Luckily, plans were already afoot: The London production of Cabaret I’d done a few years earlier was going to transfer to Broadway. Little did I know that it would change my life.
New York has never bored me. I’ll never feel I’ve mastered it, nor do I wish to. When I hear people say, “Oh, New York has changed. It was so much better before,” I realize they’re actually saying, “Oh, I have changed. I was so much better before.” But the reason we love New York is that it is constantly changing. If you want it to be how it used to be, you’ve missed the whole point.
When I hear people say “Oh, New York has changed, it was so much better before,” they’re actually saying “I’ve changed — I was so much better before”
Bouncing away in New York’s Catskills.I have a place in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. It’s where I go to recharge and make sense of the rest of my life, with its crazy schedule and constant stimulation. And in the meadow below my house I have a trampoline. I’ve had it for about 20 years now. It’s the perfect thing when friends come to visit. Some rush toward it and immediately start bouncing away, utterly uninhibited and revisiting their childhood joy. Others will scoff at it at first, but by the end of the weekend I’ll catch them having a surreptitious bounce, and letting go just a little.
I have a camera on my house that looks out at the view, so wherever I am in the world I can gaze at those rolling hills. But I can also see my trampoline down in the meadow, a reminder of what’s waiting for me: not just peace and calm, but bouncy, giggly abandon.
The Caledonian Sleeper in Glasgow Central Station. Photo: Robert Mason/Alamy.I adore sleeping on trains. Being lulled to sleep by motion, while also feeling safe and secure. I was a student the first time I rode the Caledonian Sleeper, which connects Scotland with London, and in those days I could only afford a seat, so I’d sleep sitting up all night. Gradually I moved up to the sleeper bunks you’d sometimes share with a stranger. Nowadays I have a room all to myself. Sometimes I’ll go mad and book a double bed just for me.
My favorite way to return home to Scotland is to take a day flight from New York to London, drive into the city and see friends for drinks, then hop on the sleeper train at Euston. Once aboard I’ll have a snack and a wee whisky in the buffet car, then head to my cabin for a night of undulating sleep and wake up in my homeland to a cup of tea brought to me by the porter. It’s the best way to beat jet lag, and any trip home begins with magic and whimsy — as all travel ought to, don’t you think?
Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome: At Club Cumming in New York’s East Village.I think of Club Cumming as my greatest artistic achievement, because I had an idea of what I wanted it to be, told the world what that was, and then people came and manifested it. On the surface it’s a cabaret club in NYC’s East Village, but it’s really an extension of my spirit. We have different themes every night: Monday is a Broadway sing-along, Tuesday we have crafting and then jazz, Wednesday is comedy, Thursday burlesque…. We also have one-off shows and DJs and dancing and life-drawing classes and all sorts. The motto is, “All ages, all genders, all colors, all sexualities — kindness is all and anything could happen.” And let me tell you, it frequently does.
I love when people tell me what a great time they had there. How they met people or saw acts they’d have never met or seen elsewhere. Whenever I go I get to sling cocktails and satisfy my inner bartender. It seems a little extreme to buy your own place just so you can tend bar, but that’s kind of what I did!
Peter Jon Lindberg is Further’s cofounder and Editor-in-Chief. He still misses Eli Gold.
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