The Blog I Started to Avoid “Unsubscribe” Responses to My Mass E-mails

After a bus ride from Hong Kong to mainland China, I hopped a teeming two night/three day train through some astoundingly beautiful countryside – steep valleys sloping down to river beds and yawning wet fields, sheer cliffs pierced with the glowing caves of workers camped down for the evening. The trip was like a rolling tour of every village featured in “the hero returns scene!” of every epic Chinese movie filmed in the past ten years.

It was a long quiet ride in a sea of Mandarin and I arrived at Chengdu — a pretty little town and the hopping off point for journeys to Tibet – ready for camaraderie.

VISIT WWW.TREKFEET.COM to continue the story!

We watched “Out of Africa” again the other evening.  And I, being a certain kind of woman, obviously heaved and sighed throughout with devout admiration of the indomitable Karen Blixen. 

From a perch on the roof of the all but deserted Sammo Guest House in Cape Coast, Ghana, I knew I probably wasn’t where I was supposed to be. 

Meaning, I guess, that I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere on the road to the quaint beach villages bragged up by guidebooks and travel blogs. Instead, I sat in a slowly bustling African port town where the ocean was used for sustenance and bathing and the concept of sunbathing was laughable…

            (FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, COME ON OVER TO www.trekfeet.com !)

Pack your bag folks:  We’re moving!

No longer will you have to remember the rambling, absurdly long (if clever) title of my travel blog (presumptuously assuming you lie awake at night trying to recall such things). We’re moving on up to a short and simple, perfectly named new site in the sky procured by my charming and crafty travel companion Michael Kraabel.

http://www.trekfeet.com/

Isn’t that great?  Doesn’t it make you want to fling off your dress shoes and take on the world?

Me too.

Even better news, I’ve contrived a reason for you to continue visiting my blathering blog though you’re no longer obligated to check on the status of my international injuries and poor choices.

In an aim to entertain you and to prevent myself from going mad while grounded, I’m going to begin posting some of my favorite photos along with a brief story about the moment in time that framed the snapshot.

I’ve been thinking that too often, in an effort to synopsize a two week trip from Nairobi to Amman, little details inevitably get lost along the way.  The little exchanges that made you smile or marvel at the time, the quiet afternoon wanderings where you finally stopped planning and just started noticing, the random mishap that had half the country laughing at you - well, sometimes these are the things that end up on the cutting room floor. And at least in my mind, that is a little tragic. Because, while the major tourist attractions and life threatening adventures were grand and vital in their time, eventually, it’s the humble memories that best maintain their vibrancy.

Cold, stressed, been far too long without a vacation? Let me whisper to you about the decibel of quiet you find lying in opaque darkness on the uninhabited bank of an African river.  Let’s remember the game show-like process of choosing street food in Luang Prabang - the giddiness of walking back to your teak guest house with a bag full of steaming treats, completely disguised by language barriers and the intricate shell of palm leaves. Let’s analyze the cunning or folly of Chinese engineers who stack sleeping train passengers three bunks high without the dignity of a ladder, forcing you to impale two levels of polite locals every time your bladder cries out.

I’ll be here, happily spinning yarns.

If the discontent of our winter gets you down, I hope you’ll join me for a story hour or two. And hey, you’ve each got your own dusty tales to air. Want to contribute, want to sustain me through my long winter? Send over your stories and we’ll gather around their glow too.

http://www.trekfeet.com/ - I’m looking forward to the trip.

It’s a snowy New Year’s eve afternoon back home. Distracted halfway into or out of an outfit, I am clad in a bizarre sundress/sweater combo, cupping a mug of sweet warm jasmine tea and have tunneled deep into the fever of my good friend’s travel blog.

Having picked up his ordinary engineer-working, Ultimate-Frisbee playing, rock-climbing existence and transferred it to enchantingly alien Chennai, India, he is by all accounts having the time of his life.

A man of my own priorities, he has taken to describing each day’s meals with the thoroughness of an Audubon field manual. Categorized by genus and species, each exotic dish is described in vivid, Technicolor detail and is flanked by annoyingly casual explanations of its place in his lovely new daily routine. In my cold kitchen, even the names roll around my mouth delightfully and generate salivation – the Masalas and Chutneys, the Dhals and Sambars, the Curries and Dosas.

I can almost smell the traffic choked streets clogged with jostling, un-EPA approved taxis and motorcycles. I can almost feel the heavy wind on my face in the back of a rickshaw, stuck next to a bull drawn cart in rush hour. Even worse, I find myself desperately wanting to mimic his charming Indi/Brit colloquialisms which somehow just sound awkward and Madonna-ish back stateside.

Suffice it to say, I am deep in the bell jar of travel-envy.

Frankly folks, I am greedy.

I want the world.

I want to feel the juxtaposition of strolling in silk saris next to the world’s most frenetic streets. I want to know if the green waters of Zanzibar are as balmy as I have been promised. I want to sleep in the open air of the Namibian desert and see if I missed a single star in Mali. I want to see for myself if peace is bestowed upon you like a lei in Bali. I want to see the worst we are capable of, soak in Bosnia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone as a warning or a spring of perspective. I want to wander like a local in Dubrovnik, Praia and Cartagena, Tehran, Vienna and Havana, collecting history, proverbs and second hand goods.

I want to lose myself in the Mekong Delta, on the Silk Road, through the Bhutanese Himalayas and gather a veritable hope chest of unfathomable experiences in return.

For every slightest mention of a friend (or stranger’s) next foreign destination, I am sent scurrying back to my laptop in a state of jealous euphoria to begin investigating the feasibility of my own visit.

I am aware that a timely resolution to be content with my past travels and patient with imminent journeys is in order. I also imagine that resolution is less likely to be fulfilled at next year’s end then is my vow to stop interrupting and eating candy in the bathtub.

Ces’t la vie. There are worse obsessions.

For today, I’ve plum worn myself out with the fervor of fantasizing and am ready to go celebrate the here and now with some of my favorite people. At least for this one day, I will be happy for my friend and his Indian endeavors, I will be satisfied to sop up his brilliant recounts and I will try to wait my turn for life’s next unreal adventure.

It is one of those sternly cold mountain nights, where the air seems frozen to the stars which seem frozen to the steely blue, hovering clouds that promise morning snow.