By Tom Thumb, Posted Dec 10, 2006
Sections: Intro El Camino de Santiago Cape to Cairo Raft the Amazon? New York to LA Road to Kathmandu The India Rickshaw Race Trans-Siberian Train Pilgrimage to Kailash Hajj to Mecca Improvise More Travel Ideas
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The secret to a great journey lies in the imagination. You don’t have to follow some ancient trade route or make an auspicious pilgrimage, you can just create a route for yourself – like the father and son who paddled a canoe from Canada to Brazil.
Pick up a map and try to join two points together and imagine what you might have to go through to get there. Alternatively, take something fairly banal and then give it a twist like the guy who hitchhiked around the circumference of Ireland with a fridge.
It’s really up to you to create your own horizons, map out your own borders – and then cross them. You might choose to travel by camel, skateboard or else be the first person to walk the length of Italy backwards.
You might decide to make a journey in total silence, without money or dressed in drag the whole way.
Or, if the spirit if futility doesn’t enter you, you might decide to record the folk songs of every single person you meet on a little mini-disc player. You might decide to go and visit every Muslim country that there is and compare the way of life found there, or you might try to hit all the world’s biggest cities and get drunk in each.
Whatever you choose to do, it won’t be as you expect. Travel never is. Like life, travel is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
Some people like to travel light. And the idea of taking a musical instrument with them on the road just seems like too much hassle. Guitar strings break, harmonicas ...
There was a feel-good article in the Guardian the other day about laughter classes in Tehran.
God knows there’s lots to laugh about. Here’s a comic speech given by the ...
