It's not that I don't like planes. Actually, I cannot think of much better than sitting in a window seat while a plane emerges from the clouds and glides gently above them. It is also a necessity for international travel. We do not have weeks to travel back and forth over oceans and overland to our destination. When we want to be in India, we can be there tomorrow.
But this eliminates the validity of the old cliché that purports to claim that there is more fulfillment in the journey than in the destination itself.
There have been a lot of instances in the past where I have drawn lines on maps, charting possible overland journeys that I could attempt in the future. The origin of this movement project probably lies in history almost a decade back, but the first serious logistical brainstorming came after pulling the map out of the flight magazine on my way back from Helsinki in April 2007.
As shown in red, my initial thoughts were that I would travel first south through Latin America and circumnavigate the globe to the East. I was not sure about shipping lines, so the thinking was that I would either get from Brazil to Senegal or South Africa in major ports, make my way to Europe and/or the Middle East and through Central Asia to China, Southeast Asia, and Australia before heading back home across the Pacific. I also pulled a blue pen out and made an alternate northerly route that passed through Greenland and northern Europe.
Through reasons that I will document to come,
Central Asia and
Australia became such troubling unknowns that I had to rework the route around them, and now am traveling west around the Earth to be in the best places during the seasons I want.
I feel like my ability to observe and write about the things I come across excels the most when I am on the move, on various forms of transportation, crossing borders and transitions, and trying to solve headaches involved with it all. You get a glimpse of what is best and worst of a country and its people in these situations. There is always trouble in the form of bureaucracy or hustler, but the complete stranger that is willing to help you without question is 90% of what you remember in the end. The world is an amazing place, full of amazing people with vast differences, but there is something that ties all of this together in a kindness that is very small scale. When we think about people as a faraway group, we tend to generalize and stereotype, and for many people this leads to the misguided ignorance and passive bigotry.
We can never know this world or even come close to figuring it all out, but it is only through travel and firsthand experience that we can catch a glimpse into the hearts and minds of the people on the other side. Through movement around the world, passing by so many different regions, countries, and continents, I hope to see all the beautiful differences of this human race but more importantly hope to catch these qualities that we all share.
