Far East Travels
Months have passed in a bit of silence on the blog, which doesn’t mean nothing was going on rather everything and anything was taking place. Basically my travels went supernova, the action and adventure ramped up to a rocket popping crescendo to finish off my time abroad. Just thinking of it all at this moment as I pound the keys at home puts a massive grin on my face as all of the memories flood through my mind.
In mid-June it all began with a flight over the Himalayas, gaping at the sight of Mt.Everest on my left side, landing in the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, and then onward to Beijing and my first of many ice-cold Tsingtao beers to beat the heat.
Months earlier over email I had caught up with a great college friend and past travel companion from my days in Italy. Sarah was going to be out of the classroom come June and after nailing out the where and when we were set to meet up in China for my final month of travel. This was going to be a bit of a change for me. In the previous 9 months of traveling I hadn’t once buddied up to a fellow backpacker to hit the road together. Sure I had spent lots of time meeting people and hanging out, Fabiola and Blair in Vietnam, Christian, Marta, and Neils in Laos, the great Japanese habitat crew in Thailand, and many other fine people, but when I felt it was time to jet to the next destination, I departed in solitude. I was a little nervous about the next month, questions arose in my mind- had I gotten too used to solitary road life? had my social skills atrophied to mush? could I once again speak English at a normal cadence? I did receive some great words of encouragement from my friend Jeremy, who told me for him traveling with someone he knows well was incomparably better than solo. And then I started thinking back to all of the wonderful places I’ve had the fortune to visit in my life. Whenever I was at a place of inconceivable beauty or wonder a big part of me would be thinking, “I wish this or that person was here, because he/she would just love this.” And a lot of times one of those friends I was wishing was there to experience the same thing with me, was Sarah.
Come June 21st, hotel room keys in hand, flight itinerary for our next destination printed out, and bus ticket to the airport bought, I boarded the shuttle to pick up Sarah and begin the final month of this amazing trip together. I’ll stop there for now, I hope to post entries of our adventures over the next few days and weeks. Talk to you all soon.
In mid-June it all began with a flight over the Himalayas, gaping at the sight of Mt.Everest on my left side, landing in the capital of Tibet, Lhasa, and then onward to Beijing and my first of many ice-cold Tsingtao beers to beat the heat.
Months earlier over email I had caught up with a great college friend and past travel companion from my days in Italy. Sarah was going to be out of the classroom come June and after nailing out the where and when we were set to meet up in China for my final month of travel. This was going to be a bit of a change for me. In the previous 9 months of traveling I hadn’t once buddied up to a fellow backpacker to hit the road together. Sure I had spent lots of time meeting people and hanging out, Fabiola and Blair in Vietnam, Christian, Marta, and Neils in Laos, the great Japanese habitat crew in Thailand, and many other fine people, but when I felt it was time to jet to the next destination, I departed in solitude. I was a little nervous about the next month, questions arose in my mind- had I gotten too used to solitary road life? had my social skills atrophied to mush? could I once again speak English at a normal cadence? I did receive some great words of encouragement from my friend Jeremy, who told me for him traveling with someone he knows well was incomparably better than solo. And then I started thinking back to all of the wonderful places I’ve had the fortune to visit in my life. Whenever I was at a place of inconceivable beauty or wonder a big part of me would be thinking, “I wish this or that person was here, because he/she would just love this.” And a lot of times one of those friends I was wishing was there to experience the same thing with me, was Sarah.
Come June 21st, hotel room keys in hand, flight itinerary for our next destination printed out, and bus ticket to the airport bought, I boarded the shuttle to pick up Sarah and begin the final month of this amazing trip together. I’ll stop there for now, I hope to post entries of our adventures over the next few days and weeks. Talk to you all soon.
posted by Ted @ 9:23 PM
1 Comments:
At 7:38 PM,
Anonymous said…
Ted,
She is cute!!
C
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