Travel - the seductive siren that will lead to my swift death

I've been bitten by the travel bug lately and there's significant swelling. Perhaps it's because I'm in a new environment right now so my travel pumps have been primed, so to speak. I am spending more and more time online looking up places I can visit, what times of year to go, how much it's going to cost, what kinds of exotic diseases I'm eligible to get etc. etc.

So where should I go? I should note that at this point, I am leaving the cost consideration for later because that's just going to kill my drive too early on in the process. My next job after I finish up here in Bombay in September is going to be in Hamburg so I expect I will be making lots of small trips within Europe just to see friends (other cities in Germany are a no-brainer but also on the cards are Austria, Belgium, Holland and the UK). Besides all the small trips I plan to make within Europe, I do want to make a couple of bigger trips further out.

Awfully colourful for a

continent that just

discovered ink

6 years ago

First up: Latin America. It's hard to believe that I've never set foot there at all. And it's almost inexcusable now that I have several close friends from the MBA programme who could show me the local flavours in several countries on that continent. The only downside would be that once I actually step foot in their countries, I'll have to stop making jokes about their lack of electricity and sanitation and civilization.

That's a high price to pay.

I've also long been considering a serious hiking trek - Kilimanjaro comes to mind. Not to ascend the peak, mind you, but something more manageable like a base camp trek. At some point in my life I'd like to do an Everest base camp trek (and pop over to Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan while I'm at it) and I think something lower key like Kilimanjaro will let me figure out if I would ever make it back alive. But even a Kilimanjaro trip will require me to get back into shape, which would actually be great motivation for me to do exactly that. Also, it would be a safe, comfortable environment to help me find out if I'm the type of person that would kill and eat his companions if he got stranded with no foreseeable hope of rescue.

My mockup of the kidney
chastity belt (patent pending)

I also would love to traverse the Silk Route by train some day but I imagine that will be a 3 to 4 month trip to fully appreciate all the stops along the way. Also, I was talking about a trip like this to a friend today and she mentioned she had heard of 2 people having their kidneys stolen while on the trans-Siberian railway. So I'm hoping that by the time I'm ready to make this trip, Science has invented a "chastity belt" of sorts to keep my kidneys firmly inside me (new business idea?).

And then there are a hundred other things that I'd love to do that are kind of rattling around in the back of my engorged skull such as an Outback trek through Australia, a visit to New Zealand's famous sheep sex farms, a journey through some of Africa's less murdery lands, a stay in a Mongolian village and a cruise over Arctic waters. 

All these plans assume, of course, that I become a hojillionaire in the next few years to be able to afford all these journeys while I'm young, able-bodied and family-less. In my next post, I'll detail my fool-proof plan for winning the lottery.