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Wise words, and they had a profound effect on me a few years ago. After years of not doing much at all in terms of seeing the sights and wonders of the world things underwent a bit of a sea change (ho ho) and I developed the travel gene some time in my late 30s. My career then started
going off in strange directions and I found that there were a few occasions
when I had both the time and the financial wherewithal to soothe my by
now very itchy feet. If you've got comments or just want to set me straight on something I may have got wrong (unlikely as that may be, except for typos which I think are nature's way of reminding me not to neglect my handwriting) please email me. |
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Russia/Mongolia/Japan - September/October 2008 Having bored the pants off pretty much everyone I knew several times over with my plans for travel in 2008 (including a spectacular spreadsheet charting a possible 130 trips) I settled on this trip on the Trans-Siberian railway across Russia which also included a jaunt on the Trans-Mongolian and a ferry trip over to Japan. |
Not that long after getting back from Bhutan I was off again, this time to the south of India. Spicier and warmer than the north but no less enticing.
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Bhutan (via Nepal) - October 2007 Just over a week after coming back from Tibet I hauled my now-slimline backside back to Asia to Bhutan. It was a place that was so unlikely a destination that I had to take advantage of the opportunity to go there.
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Tibet (via Nepal) - September 2007 After a prolonged period of thinking "why the hell not?" whilst tied to a desk since coming back from Chile I took advantage of more down time to plan some trips in the autumn of 2007. This was the first. Tibet was not only a "why the hell not?" place but also a "how does someone like me end up here" place?". |
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Peru/Bolivia/Chile - Dec 2006/Jan 2007 A long three and a half years after my last trip (during which there were times when I couldn't afford to keep my central heating on, let alone travel) I at last found myself with the time and money to scratch my itch. I had intended to do this trip earlier in the year but when some decently-paid work turned up and, like the tart that I am, I don't turn work away. |
A week after returning home from India, and newly-emboldened as a backpacker, I headed off to China for a month. It was both everything like and nothing like my expectations, which possibly says more about my mind than it does about China. |
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Peru was one thing, it was a bit OTT. Europe was another, if things went tits-up I was never more than a 3-hour flight home. This was serious stuff, a schlep around the north-west of India. |
Europe - September/October 2002 After the relatively sedate trip to Peru this was far more of a road-trip - six weeks and 6.000 miles across Europe in the back of a nice, comfortable Dutch coach. I had intended to spend my time doing an MBA, but this was the first instance of my catching the travel bug. |
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My debut, as it were. This was my first overseas trip of any length, and it was also a way to be as far away as reasonably possible from home when my 40th birthday hurtled into view. Being my first such trip it was a bit over the top, more luxury than I needed. |
Not all of my trips have been multi-week long-haul efforts. I've had lesser jaunts to Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Malta and some other places as well. Coventry, for instance. |
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Where to next? My plans for the autumn of 2008 went slightly tits-up due to the credit crunch. I had planned to return home from Japan, spend a week doing the laundry and catching up on sleep. Then I was to go off to Mexico and go through Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, ending up in Costa Rica. From there I was going to fly down to Argentina and go through Torres Del Paine all the way through to Ushuaia, at the tip of South America. Sadly, because our Prime Minister is an idiot and significant numbers of the banking community have the morality of whores it was cancelled because people were too worried to spend that sort of money when all was collapsing around them. Thank you Gordon Brown. Thanks a bunch. |
Other stuff (coming soon) It would be churlish of me not to include other things that interest me or get my goat, so here's some other stuff and some links that you might want to have a look at instead of working. |
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A quick word about my photographic skills. I don't have any. Since I discovered digital cameras things have got a bit better as I can now choose the least abysmal of several photos that I have taken of whatever it is that I'm taking a photo of. Some of the pictures on this website are actually still grabs from video, taken in the days before I realised that taking up half a backpack with camcorder, batteries, films and charger was a waste of space that should have been occupied by underwear. They suffer from being low-resolution but when a boy has a toy to play with... I have now learned to whip my Fuji out when I see my more visually-inclined fellow travelers reach for their SLR's, on the basis that if you've bought some expensive kit you might have an idea of what is worth photographing and what isn't. I know nothing about cameras, I fixed a budget, bought "What Camera" magazine and bought the camera they said was the best for my budget. Actually, it's rather good. So, think of this as less of a coffee-table book and more like the free newspaper they give away at Tube stations in the morning - it gives you a flavour of where I've been without the rigorous in-depth analysis and production values. Below is a random montage of photos I've taken over the years, when the spirit moves me I'll link each teeny-tiny one to its parent but until then you'll just have to wait.
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Nobody
ever lay on their deathbed and said "I should have spent more time
in the office".