#trust30 - Day 5

Travel by Chris Guillebeau

If we live truly, we shall see truly. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not everyone wants to travel the world, but most people can identify at least one place in the world they’d like to visit before they die. Where is that place for you, and what will you do to make sure you get there?

(Author: Chris Guillebeau)
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I have to narrow it down to one? I could more easily choose the one place in the world I least want to visit.

See, I've done my share of traveling, seen much of the world. I've set foot on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. I've visited Gettysburg and Normandy, walked the battlefields of Waterloo, New Orleans, the Cowpens. I've crawled through Roman ruins in Tunisia and seen the glittering new cities and incredible ancient places of China.

But there are many more places I haven't been. There are the places I want to see just for the sake of seeing them, like Spain or Prague or Rio de Janeiro. There are the places I want to see for the sake of having been there, like Sydney or Hong Kong or Cape Town. There are the wild places--not so wild anymore, and becoming less so by the year--I want to see in case they disappear one day forever, like the Serengeti or the Amazon or the Outback. There are the places I've heard about all my life, the places where people built things or accomplished things that were impossible until they made them real. The Pyramids; Macchu Picchu; Angkor Wat; Hadrian's Wall; the Taj Mahal.

And there are the places that drip with history, the places where a journey would be more a pilgrimage for me than a tour. Jerusalem is one such place. The Sutton Hoo ship-tomb would be another. Istanbul and the ruins of Constantinople might be another, as might Athens.

There are many, many more places I want to see before I die. I'd also love to dive into the ocean depths, down where the only light is what you bring with you, and travel into space. I could travel for the rest of my life and never see everything I want to see. There is simply too much of it out there.

So how do I plan to get there? I have to make it part of my passion. It's one of the beautiful things about being a writer: I can travel where I want, particularly to those places I feel drawn to write about--and call it research. It's all part of the job.

So here I am, nose to the grindstone. Another day in the salt mines. It's a rough job--but, you know, somebody's got to do it.

So--where do you want to go?

HN