By Lou Padgug
| Addicted to Travel By Lou Padgug |
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I’ll admit it. I’m addicted to travel. I know I’m addicted because while it is always nice to get home and sleep in my own bed, it doesn’t take long before I start looking forward to our next trip. In fact, sometimes Kathy and I have two or more trips planned at any given time. I guess there could be a lot of addictions worse than travel. And fortunately, Kathy shares the same love of travel as I do. Kathy and I have been to all 50 U.S. states but there is so much to see and do in the USA that we still have several U.S. trips planned. We plan to see many more foreign countries as well.
In the USA, We like to get off the interstates and see “Small Town America” as well as the big cities. One of our best trips for that was driving the old Route 66 from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California. We hope to do a similar trip someday on the even older Lincoln Highway from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. Besides seeing Art Deco and Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings, we somehow got started on touring U.S. state capitol buildings. In September 2019 I visited my 50th state capitol. Kathy has three more to see.
When we plan our fly/road trips in the U.S. we go to many states or areas that many people wouldn’t call exciting vacation destinations. We’ve found however, that after doing some research online or with AAA Tour Books, we always find interesting places to see and things to do no matter where we choose to go. In fact, we usually don’t have enough time to see or do it all on one trip and have had to go back to some places more than once.
Some people wonder why I want to see some lesser known, hard to get to place or country or why I don’t go back to the more traditional vacation spots like Hawaii more often. The answer in part is because it's more exciting to discover new and different landscapes, cultures and historic and archaeological sites. I have found that even with all the traveling I’ve done, there is always something new and different to experience.
When I travel, I can get out of my “comfort zone”. My “comfort zone” includes regular meals three times a day (including great dinners made by Kathy), reading the newspaper every morning, watching the news every day, going (or trying to go) to the gym three times a week, living in a climate-controlled house, being able to use my computer whenever I want, etc. In other words, enjoying my “routine”. When I travel, most of my usual routine is missing but I don’t really miss it because my thoughts are on the new things I am experiencing. However, I think I also appreciate all of the above more when I get back home. After doing without on many trips, I don’t take anything for granted anymore. For example, I just appreciate being able to drink water from our tap and put ice in it. I wonder how many people in the U.S. take that for granted? And after paying $8.25 / gallon for gas in Germany, it will be a long time if ever before the price of gas here in California bothers me.
I love travel for its adventure and challenges. No matter how well you plan, and we plan the smallest details, something can inevitably go wrong, i.e. lost luggage, missed flights or getting sick. I guess I like a challenge because I’ve been challenged many times on trips when things have gone awry. It gives me a sense of accomplishment when I can overcome those challenges.
In 1990, one of the greatest challenges I could not overcome was seeing the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. I went on a guided group trek/raft ride in Nepal and planned a solo extension trip to India afterwards. While there is so much to see and experience in India, my main goal was to see the fabled Taj Mahal. Well, they say timing is everything and I had bad timing. After I spent a few days seeing New Delhi, I found out that Muslims and Hindus in Agra were fighting over a holy site causing a curfew and no one was allowed to travel there. I had planned to take the train to Agra. After I found out the trains weren’t running, I booked a flight the next day (money was no object as I had come so far and didn’t know if I’d ever get back). After getting to the airport, the next day, I found that the flight was cancelled. Had I gone a day before or a day later, I would have reached my goal but it was not to be. I finally saw the Taj Mahal 28 years later on an around-the-world trip in 2018. IT WAS AWESOME!
Another time I had bad timing was in 2020. Kathy and I signed up for a two week bus tour of Italy many months before the date of the tour. We had both seen a small part of Italy but this trip included all the major cities and sights that we hadn’t seen. A few weeks before the departure day (February 29, 2020), the new coronavirus started spreading around the world and Italy had the most cases of any country in Europe. The tour company (Trafalgar) kept telling us the trip was still on as planned. About 15 minutes before we were to leave our house and drive to San Francisco to catch our flight to Rome, I decided to check the Trafalgar web site one last time and found that they canceled the tour we were on. I’m glad we purchased travel insurance. Trafalgar refunded us the cost of the tour but we had to work to get the airfare refund from the travel insurance company.
We were lucky. I had been in contact with one other person who was going to be on our group tour. She started a Facebook group for people on the tour. She left for Rome a day early as many people do on such tours to get over jet lag, etc. I informed her what happened and she replied that she just checked in to the hotel in Rome and had no word from Trafalgar. Anyway, had I not checked the Trafalgar web site one last time, we could have flown to Rome and then have to turn around and fly right back home. We were not as concerned about getting the virus at the time (we know better now), but were concerned we could get stuck in Italy due to cancelled flights or even a quarantine. This will go down as a memorable travel "war story" but it could have been a lot worse! We are both vaccinated against COVID-19 including booster shots and have booked the same trip for March 2022, but if the pandemic is not under control by then, we'll postpone again.
I have subscribed to National Geographic magazine for over 42 years (I had to donate most of my collection to the local elementary school due to lack of storage space). I remember reading and seeing photos of incredible historic and/or archaeological sites in these magazines and dreaming of one day going to these places. I’ve been so fortunate to be able to go to many places I first saw in National Geographic such as Machu Picchu in Peru, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt, etc. While I love to read about these places, nothing can compare to actually being there. And many times after I return home, I buy books on the places I’ve been to in order to learn even more about them.
I’m also a military history buff and to me, there is no better way to understand military history than to actually walk the battlefields or visit the military cemeteries of the world. I’ll never forget seeing the many U.S. Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields, forts, the beaches of Normandy, the concentration camps of Europe or Corregidor in the Philippines. While many people would rather forget what happened at these places or it would be too upsetting for them to see what actually happened there, I feel these places deserve memorials. And what good are memorials if no one goes to see them?
After people hear that I have been to 105 foreign countries and every continent, they usually ask me what my favorite place, country or trip is. It’s impossible for me to answer that as each country is so different and yet in some ways, people are the same all over the world. Like us in the USA, most people want the right of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. And in some countries happiness doesn’t necessarily include material wealth. I remember trekking though the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and some of the poorest children I have ever seen would come running up and greet us with their reverential salutation: “Namaste”. And no, they were not begging for anything – they really seemed happy just to see and interact with us.
I love to try the local foods (and beer) when I travel. I’ve had gyoza in Japan, lumpia in the Philippines and I always have to have Apple Strudel when I visit Austria. I’ve tried some exotic foods too: eel in Viet Nam, crocodile, wildebeest, oryx and zebra in Africa, and in Madrid, I had no idea what I ordered from the menu - it turned out to be lamb brains. All part of the adventure!
I’ve enjoyed seeing many animals in the wild in Australia, Antarctica, Africa and Central and South America that you just couldn’t see here at home except in zoos. And after seeing these creatures roaming or flying free, I can no longer go to zoos. For example, after seeing cheetahs, the fastest land animals running through the wide open Kenyan savannah, it’s difficult for me to see them penned up in a cage or artificial habitat. While I know zoos have their place, allowing people who don’t travel a chance to see animals they normally couldn’t see, and helping some species from going extinct, nothing beats seeing the native fauna in its natural habitat.
Like the late Anthony Bourdain, I like to “be a traveler, not a tourist”. So what’s the difference? I think a tourist is someone who is satisfied with taking a few photos of a popular site and not learning anything about that site. Travelers care more about experiencing new places firsthand with eyes and heart wide open. A traveler is someone who takes time to savor the scenery, history, culture, flora, fauna, etc. One of our favorite tour companies, Overseas Adventure Travel/Grand Circle Travel includes a “home hosted meal” on each of their trips. You have lunch or dinner at a local person’s house and you can talk with them about any topic including history, politics, medical care, education systems, etc. What a great way to learn about a country!
I don’t know how many more years Kathy and I will be able to travel as we do now. When I was in my 20s, I was poorer and a lot more adventurous and therefore didn’t mind sleeping on airport floors or staying in youth hostels. We can still pack a lot into trip but we do prefer a nice hotel room now. We’ve seen people in their 80s and 90s on some of our more adventurous trips so we hopefully have several good travel years left. And when it gets harder to get around, we can still hopefully relax at an exotic beach or on the deck of a cruise ship!