How and more Why

April 27

The big steps of this journey will naturally be by air, and arranging flights has become quite easy, via aggregate sites like kayak.com (as well as the airlines' own). A sad result of this is I've lost touch with Gretchen, my travel agent through the 1980s and 90s.

Years ago, I read a book which inspired (or even, enabled) me to make this journey. By that I mean unlike before, afterwards I felt that this was a trip I could actually undertake successfully, even though the idea of being in the developing world fills me with apprehension. As noted previously, I once attended a presentation by author Edward Hasbrouck, at a travel bookstore in downtown San Francisco. (I took him for a local, then, but he actually calls Capitol Hill home.) The travel agency he's affiliated with is airtreks.com and their specialty is arranging the daisy chain of one-way tickets necessary for a round-the-world journey. I played around with their online trip-planning software for years without following through.

I'll be using my usual methods for this trip, carrying a single piece of luggage, my trusty black max-carry-on sized Eagle Creek backpack, and staying in cheap hotels with their single rooms. When I began exploring the world I stayed in the much cheaper hostels, but getting a good night's sleep isn't possible anymore there, given strangers in the room. All local travel will be via public transportation, almost never arranged previously - the concept of moving through a foreign land in a sealed motorcoach with an organized group is anathema to me, a sentiment shared by many travelers. The comparison I heard recently was visiting a country with an organized tour was like reading a great novel's Cliff Notes (unfair, really, because sometimes those tour guides really know their material).

Actually, another book was an enabler for me, many years previously: Ed Buryn's Vagabonding. He motivated me into taking my first trip abroad, to Europe, a mysterious, foreign place at the time, not so easy to get to, or around in. His title's been co-opted by Rolf Potts, who now pays homage in his blog, with quotes from the now out-of-print original (for example, Ed Buryn on the Unexpected.) I've got a postcard from him; Buryn responded to my fan mail years ago. For more about him a local newspaperman up in the Gold Country became interested, then discovered the old but still-living author was practically a neighbor - see Ed Buryn: Our Nevada City vagabond.