Advertisement
Heart of Darkness?
Massive storms during the Sahelian rainy season Last night I spent tossing and turning in a twisted dream-world where all of the places I'll be going were mixed up in my head.
I woke up sometime around 4am, thinking of a story that Elisa (of the travel clinic) told me. It was about a man who traveled to India. While he was there, the bus he was riding on ran another bus off the road. While it was fortunate that he was not in the other bus, he then had to help carry the bodies up from the ravine where it crashed. He was so traumatized by the experience that he immediately came back to Texas, probably never to set foot in India again.
Now I've heard stories like this before, many of them centering on India and parts of South America, but in the dead of night thoughts like that tend to grip you a bit harder.
I started by worrying about all of the buses I will taking, and all of the boats, and all of the rickety little SE-Asian-budget airline planes. Then I worried about Asian drivers and their supposed disregard for life, both pedestrian and bicycle-riding. Then I worried about traveling
Bcharre
One of the places in Lebanon that I would not have been able to visit without hitchhiking alone as a woman, and horny Buddhist monks that lure you off to rape you (well, what do you expect when you're not even allowed to
touch a woman?), scam artists, typhoons, and Japanese Encephalitis. I have so much to look forward to when I get back from this trip, that the prospect of something happening to me is not at all pleasant.
But it didn't take long to realize that, aside from the monks, all of these dangers exist anywhere that you go. They might take the form of swine flu instead of J.E., or tornados in lieu of typhoons. But bad drivers and bad people exist everywhere - many of them right here in the U.S.
And I am a pretty savvy traveler; I have faced worse. I've hitchhiked through Syria and Lebanon pretending to be German; gotten lost in the Sahara at night; driven through the muddy streets of Bamako, where I saw what I'm certain was blond human hair for sale in the market; submitted to a shot in the cheek (not my face) for anti-malarial-drug-related nausea; and traveled with an armed escort through both Algeria and the Gaza Strip.
I guess my
Algiers
I couldn't go anywhere here without a large armed escort final point is that you can't let paranoia - or even good, healthy, reasonable fear - put you off from doing things. Otherwise you might never leave your own home.
**If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe by clicking on the "subscribe" button at the top left of the page! Tell others!
**New readers: Get the quick and dirty at
. You can start at the beginning or pick anywhere you like to start living vicariously (or laughing vicariously, as it will most likely turn out)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.215s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.069s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Neomi
non-member comment
Isn't it strange how the worry monsters always come at night, and seem so much scarier than in daylight? I think you're going to have an amazing time. (Just steer clear of Romanian pedophile pageants). You're such a savvy, unflappable traveler. Your gut instincts will help guide you away from the bad people and as for the other stuff, well, like you said, those things can happen anywhere. I bet your mom would be happy if you wore a helmet on all motorized conveyances though, buses included :) And I don't believe for one second that you'll be traveling all alone for long - you'll meet up with some cool world travelers in no time. I'm excited to see how your adventure turns out! I'm learning so much from your travels already - like the dangers of horny monk rapists. Who knew?