I've just been over at world 66 - where they have a great tool for mapping your travels.
Well it seems that I have visited 64 countries and 22 US states. I'm not sure how (or when) that happened. But here are some of my more obscure moments and mishaps:
Eating a lunch of millet and dust with a 100 year old woman and her giant tortoise (who looked younger than she did) in Mali, before going out to check what the fortune telling foxes had to say.
Running down the Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, away from a bag of tomatoes that was about to explode. Admittedly it was originally thought to be a 'device' but when the soldiers exploded it, it looked like a jar of Dolmio had gone off.
Having a late dinner with Liza Minelli in Missouri (admittedly, she had a very strong Eastern European accent) and the octogenarian waitress asking me how 'my country' was coping since Russia pulled out. I think she thought I was from the Ukraine, not the UK.
Falling asleep during a meditation session in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Dharamsala. I fell asleep, fell sideways and crushed the big, fancy hat that the monk sat next to me was holding. The shame.
Finding the perfect beach to camp on in New Caledonia. Thinking we had the place to ourselves. Then finding a French Navy base round the corner. I was upset that our idyll wasn't as it seemed, but then, when I realised that the matelots had their playtime on the beach (and that they had a bar) I was very, very happy.
Being locked on a stationery train on the Chinese/Mongolian Border with no toilets. I needed to take a leak as soon as they locked the door. I got said leak ten hours later when they finally let us off the train. Meditation came in very handy.
Waking up on an overnight bus in Egypt to find the 'gent' next me had his hand deep in my trouser pocket. He wasn't counting my change, trust me.
Meeting my self-declared long-lost twin on the train from Delhi to Shimla. Bless him, I don't think my mother ever knew she'd had an Indian baby. It took me five days to lose him again.
And you've all heard about my body cavity search in Israel, so let's not do that again. The memory of it does not serve me well.
So, what I'm after here are your own personal travel highlights. Surely I'm not the only one that these ridiculous things happen to?
18 commentaires:
My mind is filled with "body cavity search" visions. I searched your blog and you only just mentioned it once before. I think you should tell that story.
good grief - well you definitely have enough material for that book :-)Let's see if I can get a story in Paris this weekend...
Tornwordo - I guess it'll come out sooner or later.
That's probably what the Israeli border guards were thinking too.
Conortje - I've absolute faith in your ability to travel to Paris and return with a tale to tell. Hopefully this trip is a dry run for your visits when I move there...;-)
What did the fortune telling foxes have to say?
I've had many. Far too many to comment on here. But it may, perhaps, spur a post. One that pops to mind is me with my hand deep inside the pocket of a man that I didn't know, by accident, in Venice on a gondola ride. Not pretty. Or going into and out of the former Soviet Union with CONTRABAN. Scary. But I already blogged about that.
Hey Lewis, was it you on that bus?
Do you remember a slimmer, blonder, tanner version of me in jogging bottoms? If it was you, you'd remember...
Medbh, the foxes told us very little of any use. Certainly not whether or not a certain singer called Rufus was going to be my husband.
Every night, the old girl would put out sticks on a piece of ground and the next day the foxes would have moved the sticks.
Where they were moved to told her the future.
Apparently.
We just never have adventures like yours. It takes us all our time to find the channel tunnel and navigate the M25. I'll just have to live vicariously through your blog. So do tell all.
All my travel experiences start the same way if it involves airports, and that is getting searched. I always set the bloody alarm off. Try to tell them it is my underwired bra but they will not believe me and have to have a look for themselves. Every goddam time.
sadly the most exotic place i was ever in is Oshkosh, Wisconson; the most interesting thing i can say about it is...well...nothing. :(
Breezy, the M25 is an adventure all of its own!
SM, you need to burn that bra dearest - swing 'em sister!
and Cawfeeguy - Oshkosh is very exotic for a European like meself.
It sounds like it might be the kind of place where brothers and sisters marry though...which is the wrong kind of exotic.
Hmmm- my brother and I backpacked around Mexico one winter. We decided to take a trip on the Copper Canyon Train..so had to stay in Los Mochis one night as the train left from there around 4am.
My brother - always looking for the best deal - checked us into the local brothel (where he had stayed once before).
Very interesting indeed!!
Aims, I can see it now. Hopefully you had remembered to pack your red leather bustier...
I find I have exotic experiences in very mundane places.Exotic locations just dont seem to do it for me
Behind the green houses in Cyfarthfa Park, now your talking
Vm better to have exotic experiences in mundane locations than mundane experiences in exotic locations! If you see what I mean.
Behind the green houses? Do tell....
I once woke up on a train in France to a man licking my foot. Suffice to say he got a good kick on the face. Was I too harsh?:-)
I really hope you finish your book soon!
Oh yes - eating meatballs in the Sinai desert and then having my guts fall out half an hour later - me and every single other person in the place. Only the camels were immune. And they tried to get into my sleeping bag.
Mopsa, that's not great. I had some moments in the sinai myself. But largely it was all my own fault....!
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