As you might guess from this blog I like to travel: exploring new places, unknown places. Not necessarily very far away (I'm excited about a hiking trip in the Netherlands, for example, to a part of the country I don't know) - but I have to also admit that I'm drawn to isolated and off the beaten track places.
That's why my finger was drawn to Slovakia last summer when I was looking at the East European map trying to find a nice country to explore which wouldn't be swamped with tourists. And it's why a highlight of my last holiday to Japan was Osorezan, a holy mountain far away in the north of Japan's main island Honshu.
There are many many more places I want to go to (in fact, there aren't many places I do NOT want to go to), but there is one trip which is my ultimate trip: taking a few months to travel the old Silk Road. The Silk Road spans different routes, but following this ancient trade route from West (Turkey) to East (China) through the Central Asian region would be a dream come true. But strangely, I've never really thought about it more than that: a dream.
I read a book recently which included a section on setting goals in your life (something that I've never really done before) and how to go about achieving them. And I realized: why should this trip stay a dream? So, it has become one of three big goals that I'm planning to make happen.
I'm very excited. I now have some books on the region from the library, have set up a twitter-list with people to follow so that I can get a feel for what is going on in the region, and am contemplating what language would be most useful to learn (leaning towards Russian....).
Wheeee! :-D
The bad side of this? Reading and thinking about this is much much more fun than jobhunting or finishing my paper to finalize my university course. *Sigh*
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