Planning an adventure

My wife and I like to travel, and we are in a unique position where we have access to a lot of really amazing locations in the world. We are a few hours drive or a short plane flight away from the Mediterranean Basin area, or we can drive/fly a short distance and hit the western edge of Asia. Out our back door to the north and west is Central Europe, and our location in Eastern Europe is chock-full of Thracian, Byzantine, and Roman ruins to explore and discover. This was partially the reason we decided to transition in Bulgaria, rather than stay in the US.

This year we haven't gone anywhere on our own yet. We chose to focus this year instead on sprucing up our apartment, paying off our credit card debt, and really settling into our home, because last year was so rushed that it seems in retrospect that we hardly achieved anything, and it's not likely the houses will be ready for us to move into for another 2-3 years at the earliest.

My friend referenced me to What To Pack, which is a site dedicated to backpacking journeys. Six hours later, I finally finished reading and browsing their gear sites, and I was inspired. You see, I've been lucky enough in my writing jobs to have landed a couple that relate exactly to world travel. In particular, I had a project with around 300 articles for a UK travel agency that dealt specifically with a variety of countries, their visa policies, and common traveling tips. I'm talking remote, out-of-the-way places that most tourists wouldn't even consider, but which have pristine medieval villages, castles, ancient ruins, and historical pieces of such significance that you are left weak-in-the-knees from having come to face to face with such epic history.

Our goal is to do 2 or 3 of those types of destinations per year, or to have one "big" adventure somewhere else. We were discussing recently heading to China next year in the late spring, before it gets too hot, and before the majority of tourists head out, probably in May. The goal is to spend 3-4 weeks backpacking our way around to various destinations, which we haven't fully planned out yet, but based upon a few friends of ours who have gone over the years, we are compiling a list. Our goals are never to hit the "popular" tourist destinations, but instead head out into the unknown, where local cultures remain much the same as they have been for centuries, and see things that not very many people have seen before.

We've done some of the "popular" destinations and neither one of us felt very comfortable. The worst yet was the Vatican and Sistine Chapel in Rome. I do not ever want to subject myself to such an experience ever again. It was difficult to appreciate the magnificence of the artwork and such when you are packed like sardines into these little corridors and the temperature is 42 degrees by 9 a.m., and over 45 degrees in the afternoon. That was about 5 hours of absolute misery. We went with a group, and that was the absolute last time we go on an adventure excursion with a party of people ever again. It was...well I don't want to get into the details in this post, but it wasn't very fun, that's for sure. We went in July, prime tourist season, and Rome was just...ugh.

Don't get me wrong, we both want to go back, because we feel that we didn't get to experience Rome on our own terms. It was a free vacation (paid for by her family) so we didn't have room to complain about anything. And we did have a lot of fun despite the few setbacks, but we also learned that we never want to go on a vacation with a group again, at least not a group we know little/nothing about.

After talking to the girls over at Stile Mediterraneo, I also very much want to spend time in the Puglia region of Italy. And we both want to go on an African safari, spend a few weeks in the Outback, head to Galapagos, Tasmania, New Zealand, among more of the common destinations.

But our first is looking like it might be China. We've been talking with a friend of hers who might accompany us, at least part of the way, on our trip. After having that backpacking site handed to me, it's really started to sink in how much fun it would be, and we are both getting rather excited about the prospect of heading off into the hidden corners of beautiful Asia for a few weeks to a month.

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