WHY AFRICA?  WHY ADD THE MIDDLE EAST?  AND WHY THEN THE FAR EAST?

The germination of this latest extended pilgrimage started with a desire to visit at least some of the real Africa, after a one day crossing to Morocco from Spain in 2007 left me feeling as if I’d just experienced the back alley introduction to what was supposed to be a garden party.  My trip objective in 2013 began as nothing more elevated than to get my true African stripes – the landscape of exotic game animals, colorful black tribesmen, and lush geography -- and fill in difficult to reach portions of the map with official UN Member Nations I'd not yet visited.  It was not meant at all to be another FWT epic journey.

The motivation eventually elevated a bit.  Though I would hardly call it altruistic.  My friend Frank Morris, who I’d met on Easter Island in 2011, had been to every country in the world but six.  And many additional spots that were not countries, including most designated locations on the exclusive “300 Club” list for moneyed world travelers.  The six official spots Frank had missed were mostly in Africa, and usually involved war zones, places where it was difficult to get a visa for political or religious reasons, or had significant health problems at the time.

They included Iraq, South Sudan (the newest UN Member, a largely Christian enclave carved from Africa’s largest country, a previously Muslim stronghold that is primarily Arab ethnically), Sierra Leone, The Central African Republic, Somalia, and The Congo --not to be confused with its huge neighbor, the difficult to access Democratic Republic of The Congo (DRC).

Over a vertical tasting of peaty and smoky Highland Scotches one day, I allowed as to how I’d like to get my proper introduction to Africa and help Frank finish up the “official” list of countries on the planet by accompanying him to the last of his holdouts.  I offered to serve as his documentarian, photographer, and biographer.  And maybe help run interference at border crossings.  But Frank never agrees to anything quickly. Among other reasons is that he largely cobbles together his extensive travels with the modern version of green stamps – airline frequent flyer miles.

He needed time to work out a scenario.  Or two.  No easy task, when you consider this frequent traveler has been on four complete “Around The World” trips, the latest one in 2012 negotiated purely on frequent flyer miles alone.  Frank never confines himself to a single scenario.  So you never really know if your plan will hold together until he is actually seated beside you on a plane, train, or automobile.

We waffled on which countries would be visited, and when.  Frank generally finds it imposing to have me accompany him for too long a time.  He was looking for a quick hit.  In troubled areas, that sometimes included dipping your toe across the border, getting the photo op, declaring victory, and making a tactical if not insouciant retreat.  So early calculations led to the conclusion this quick slip into the final two countries would take no more than a week to ten days.  The reason for this abbreviated schedule was that the Master Of Airline Miles had recently added between our itinerary and routing discussions the Kurdish area of Iraq, Sierra Leone, the Somaliland portion of Somalia, and The Congo (Brazziville) to his list of completed destinations.  Thus leaving only South Sudan and The Central African Republic to attend to.

As Africa tends to do, a revolving door of predictable events soon interjected.  South Sudan’s border was open.  Then closed.  There were refugees.  Then things were calm.  Then events ran rampant again. The Central African Republic was difficult to get into, without taking multiple backtracking flights.  Or, as the explanation is most likely to be understood by experienced travelers: “You can’t get there from here.”  You have to go backward to make that trip.  Regular readers know: Larry don’t play that game.  No backtracking is allowed in my modus operandi.  Soon, the Central African Republic too was imploding with tribal and ethnic unrest.  At last count to start the year, 250,000 refugees were overrunning the capitol, DRC border crossing and primary air access portal at Bangui.

Usually, on a trip of magnitude, one has to purchase airline tickets at least six months out to get reasonable rates.  I pressured Frank re: locking something – anything – in place in terms of an itinerary.  He reconsidered. Then offered two to three scaled back options. Then finally settled on meeting in South Africa, to visit the world famous Kruger National Park – one of the planet’s earliest game reserves – and allow him to finish off the list of official countries alone and on his own terms.  Then we had a spirited discussion on just what constituted an actual country, and what should be “official.”

I argued for the list of United Nations members.  (Presently that is pegged at 196 countries).  Frank poked me: “So, it means more to visit The Seychelles with a population of 90,000, but ignore Greenland (which really should be a continent in its own right, let alone a country), or Taiwan, or 15 other real locations I could name?”  I could see his point.  But objected: “Do you really want to include the territories in dispute, such as Cabinda (an oil rich extension of Angola separated from that country on its Atlantic Ocean side by the DRC and the delta of the Congo River), or the Morocco breakaway province of Western Sahara, another Muslim stronghold?  Do you want to include those as countries?”

I posited that there had to be some objective, verifiable and agreed-to list to go off when counting “country” destinations.  He countered that the 300 Club would be a better determinant.  That listing included most major islands, some really isolated ones, dependencies, territories, French Departments, and geographic units more than 200 miles from a country’s mainland (such as Hawaii and Alaska).  We agreed to disagree.  And then I lost a cash bet to him, claiming not quite factually that The Vatican was considered a UN Member Nation (I recalled later it actually has observer status).  As his travel chops allow, Frank gloated over that one for weeks.

Naturally, when one takes a 12 hour flight to Europe and then continues with another 13 hour flight shortly after to the south end of Africa, limiting travels to one country makes no sense at all.  Economic considerations alone demand getting the most out of both the duration and expense of the flight. What else should be included beyond South Africa?  At this point the usual resources are consulted: Lonely Planet, 1000 Places To See Before You Die,  501 Must-Visit Destinations, The Atlas of Legendary Places, and Secret Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Best Hidden Travel Gems. The first two particularly have detailed info about potential visitation and adventure spots.

A high initial consideration was the flight plan.  Where were the best places to land that were considered hubs, easily leading to desired destinations, or were proximate to other preferred visitation spots?  For this reason, landing in Luanda and visiting at least part of Angola was initially attractive.  Travel advisories indicated we were beyond the “Blood Diamond” stage of tourist repelling fratricide that had scuttled the country two decades previously.  It did not take long however, especially after reading Paul Theroux’s “Last Train To Zona Verde,” that there was little in the country that attracted me other than adventure itself.  The last straw came when the Angolan Tourist Board wrote me an e-mail admitting the trains did not operate regularly or at length or across borders due to lingering war damage.  And the only way to get out otherwise was lengthy bus rides.

The former German colony of Namibia came up next.  Dry, yet colorful.  Isolated, and yet possessed of many unique geographic features.  The former German West Africa had a terrible beauty to it.  It offered a landscape that might particularly call to a mystic, or a prophet. I could potentially disembark at its capitol and economic center, Windhoek.  Then see the nearby famous tidal wave sized red Namib sand dunes.  Then perhaps saunter over to the Adventure Capital of southern Africa (the coastal burgh of Swakopmund) and maybe even take in the mysterious Skeleton Coast, with its foggy dunes, unforgiving waterless terrain, and legions of ghostly ship wrecks dating back to the times of the earliest Portugese seafarers.

But the prospect of a 16 hour bus ride to reach Victoria Falls from any of these spots proved to be too off putting.  There were better ways to see Namibia.  A future cruise along its Atlantic coast was one of them.  Taking a leisurely dip through The Caprivi Strip, the Namibian panhandle in the extreme east of the country that shared a common border with Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe offered another.  As a matter of effective planning, it is not a good idea to exhaust yourself early on with what was already promising to be a lengthy trip.

Lush Zambia followed.  Fly into the capital at Lusaka, take a leisurely three hour train ride to the globally compelling Victoria Falls, and then move on through Zimbabwe to South Africa and then to Kruger National Park to join Frank.  As my research continued, however, other countries further north and east began to take on a more attractive hue.  Zambia – five times the size of England and France combined and girded with an inferior travel web – took on ever dimmer prospects.  There just was not that much I wanted to see beyond Victoria Falls, that was not going to be duplicated elsewhere somewhere further along the track.

My research and years of viewing History Channel specials had introduced me to Victoria Falls (straddling both Zambia and Zimbabwe on the Zambezi River).  To the archeological ruins and ethnic historic treasure of Great Zimbabwe (in the recently white controlled republic previously known as Rhodesia).  The pristine beaches and diving heaven archipelagos of Mozambique.  The lakeshore life and national parks of Malawi.  Also Tanzania (formerly German East Africa, or Tanganyika): with its exotic spice island of Zanzibar, its beckoning wildlife microcosm at The Ngorongoro Crater, and its famous 19,000 foot neighbor, Mt. Kilimanjaro towering over the Serengeti Plain – scene of the largest herd migration on the planet.

The recovering genocide plagued yet newly reconciled tribes of Burundi and Rwanda.  The highland gorilla redoubts of Uganda in the misty and isolated Mountains of the Moon, Rwenzori.  The Game Reserve and mud beehive hut tribal villages of the colorful cattle herding Masai people in Kenya.  The medieval stone castles and rock hewn churches of Ethiopia.  The rock paintings and carvings of Somaliland (the so-called “safe” part of Somalia). The mudpots, diving vistas, and sylvan oasis of Djibouti. The greatest collective temples and ruins known to antiquity – to say nothing of the Pyramids of Giza -- in Egypt.  The fantasy rock formations of Wadi Run, the Dead Sea, and the “Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade” made famous canyon redoubt of Jordan’s Petra, with its patiently hand-carved red sandstone buildings.  And of course, the Holy City of Jerusalem (spiritual center to three major religions), the zealot fortress of Masada, and the Biblical historic sites of Galilee in Israel.

Yes, there were many choices to make.  Starting eight months early is too late.

So then back to considering Johannesburg.  J’Berg, or “Josi,” to locals.  Made famous as the largest city in South Africa, the home of national hero and recently deceased President Nelson Mandela.  Dominant neighbor to the tragic but newly inspired black township of Soweto, national test bed and unlucky poster boy for the government policy of racial separateness (apartheid) which officially defined South Africa from 1948 to 1994.  It was proximate to Kruger National Park, and reasonably close to the imbedded independent nations of Lesotho and Swaziland.  Yet nothing around J’Berg called me in.  Except perhaps the opportunity to visit Mandela’s grave.

In the meantime, I flirted with (and greatly exasperated) my travel agent [ Cindy Brunotte at Captain’s Travel in Woodinville, WA ] with the possibility of 3 to 4 day layovers in either or both Amsterdam, and Accra (in West Africa’s former slave export center of Ghana) on the way down.  For one of the great benefits of a lengthy adventure is that the flight legs become too elongated, forcing stopovers at halfway points.  And the airlines don’t really care if you lay over for three hours, three days, or three weeks. It is the same effort to them – and usually about the same cost to you. So if one is lucky, and does not tire easily with mapping too many possibilities, the patient traveler can pick up many extra “small” travel surprises with stops in unplanned bonus locations.  And then still make their major destinations, as long as they are willing to add time to the equation.  And expense of course.  Layover hotel stops and roadside attractions are not free.

And now I am going to compress eight months of researching, planning, speculating, calculating, hoping, praying, changing plans, walking into good fortune, and changing yet again in to a few short paragraphs.  The prospect of an “Around The World Ticket” arose.  Circumnavigate the world on the way home. The rules are simple.  You don’t backtrack.  You go one direction only.  You get about 29,000 miles to play with.  And you’re limited to about 16 stops.  But you get to see just about every continent, race and culture on the way home, and for not that much extra money. 

So now, instead of finishing up Africa somewhere north of Kenya – and briefly exploring the possibility of visiting the Indian Ocean islands and African Union member nations of Madagascar, The Seychelles, The Comoros, and Mauritius (another geographic set where “you can’t get there from here,” with reasonabe pricing at least) -- the South Africa start of the trip quickly changed to begin in  European chic and culturally sophisticated Capetown (in place of J’Berg).  From there 1000 miles by rental car along The Garden Route, to Lesotho, to Zululand, Swaziland, and finally Kruger.  Then 6000 miles north to Cairo (very little of it by air).  Jordan and Israel were tacked on after Egypt and The Sinai Peninsula.  At first, that was to be the end.

This was not new territory for me.  I’d had a lifelong habit of being receptive to both new perspectives and overly ambitious objectives, routinely going over the top when simple would have often done quite nicely.  In a high school woodshop class for example, our assignment was to build either a kayak or a rowboat.  My particular construct of imagination, curiosity and youthful one-upsmanship demanded that I go well beyond and make a submarine instead.  It took a year to produce a functional one, with conning tower and periscope and ballast tanks and all.  I still don’t have an adequate term for the driving force which propelled me on that project.

I’d also chewed off quite a bit, planning and traveling along similar lines in 2011 when visiting all of South America.  That particular “bucket list” journey involved 15 countries, plus Easter Island and Antarctica in a blitzkrieg 85 days.  Eighteen months later all of Central America followed (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama), plus Mexico for the “End of Time” ceremonies related to the Mayan Calendar.  The forbidden fruit of Cuba was an added bonus.  All within 48 days.  But Africa and beyond was to be the biggest, most ambitious bite of the apple yet.   “Keep Playing Large,” was the message that repeatedly came through to me from somewhere deep within.  I had no idea it was to become my travel theme.

And then like a novel usually gets away from its author at a certain stage beyond page 35, the trip truly took on a life of its own.  It became so mathematically extended with the intoxicating, germinating possibility of an Around The World trip, that eventually I stopped resisting altogether.  My expansive love of the art of the possible simply got in the way of my head.  My heart prevailed.  An enduring passion for travel and discovery and an unquenchable curiosity about everything simply erased other possibilities. My brain briefly objected and questioned where the time and money for such a trip would come from?  My gut replied: “You may never get back. Just shoot the moon.  Stick to your theme.  Keep Playing Large.”

So in relatively short order, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and its now famous artificially created palm-shaped islands and the world’s tallest buildings were added to the mix as part of the return to Seattle -- now eastbound.  Religiously tolerant Turkey was added in, as a layover bonus on the way from Jewish Israel to the Islamic UAE.  A forty year dream to just hang around Nepal and its funky capitol of Kathmandu was added to the list.  It was, after all, just a three day stopover on the way home, it shortened the next leg considerably, and was within trip limitations. Then Mongolia fell into place -- on the theory best to visit now and not force an eventual return later -- since it is usually “so out of the way” but on the path this go round.  South Korea was added, since that is the gateway for Mongolia.  I also felt an inexplicable kinship for South Korea, since my father had served there during the Korean War.

China was in.  At first as the only other gateway to Mongolia. Then out.  Then back in again with the addition of a dumb luck opportunity.  Taiwan was added at the very end.  So was Japan (it was simply not conceivable to visit every nation in the Far East, and miss Japan).  But the real surprise addition was North Korea.  I did not think this most politically isolated and utterly indecipherable of all the world’s countries to be possible as a destination.  But when I found out how relatively easy the visa process was, and the expense within reason due to a fortuitous “budget tour” being offered just as I’d otherwise be exiting China, it seemed a pre-ordained “must see.”  The one foreseeable exception about North Korea, other than universal travel warnings coming from every direction, was the fact you do not travel alone or independently there.  At all times, you are accompanied by government trained and approved Travel Guides.  Handlers, really.  A restriction I found uncharacteristically easy to accept, given the surprise of the opportunity suddenly facing me.

The end result, now solidified in a $7000 non-cancellable and non-refundable “Around The World” airline ticket, was: four continents, 31+ countries (planned), 22 airline legs, 29,000 airline miles, 7000 ground miles, 135 days -- and the adventure of a lifetime. “Bucketis Listis Maximus.”