Ryu2.mind

Their routing: UK - Belgium - France - Germany - Czech Republic - Austria - Hungary - Romania - Bulgaria - Turkey - Iran - Pakistan - India - Nepal - China (Tibet and Yunan) - Laos - Thailand - Cambodia - Malaysia - Indonesia - East Timor - Australia.  The organizers of the trip are also planning to do Alaska - Brazil, and London - Cape Town run as well.

In Asia, you often come across twenty-something folks like these, perhaps between college and the real world, or just taking some time off before getting settled down.  For me though, I think it's been the opposite: the more I live life in one place, and certainly in this past year, the more I'm meeting things, people, ideas that -- given what I know -- should not be there in my middle-class professional life, and make me realize there is much more to this world then I think... 

It's not so much the actual travelling, as it is the lens that I view it in: not (merely) meeting up with family and friends, or stocking up on Japanese video games or gadgets (before college, more or less the biggest thing that excited me about travelling to Asia =) )... but a chance to experience, live, and most of all, be in good thought about peoples and cultures.

True, on one level it's escapism, but then again, I don't want to shake my head and just dismiss it... yet again, life presents itself as a continuum of choices as to how it ought to be lived out.  No answers, right or wrong, but trusting that Someone provides in all circumstances and all places, rather than us having to discern any one true path.

Wow -- fourth travel related entry in as many weeks... I wonder if this is the start of something...