Areas of Unrest

30 July 2000 - Travel Preparations

QOTD: "But let's face it, I had no marketable skills - I was an English major. No one was going to pay me to deconstruct a novel or give a psychoanalytic interpretation of The Heart of Darkness." - Rebecca Kelley

Reading: Colin Thubron, In Siberia

Listening to: Enya, The Memory of Trees

As much as I love travel, I don't enjoy the preparations. Oh, the planning part is wonderful. I can happily research how one gets to Babeldaop. (One flies to Koror, since the airport for that island is actually on Babeldaop. This is the South Pacific nation of Palau, by the way. There are rumored to be giant heads, similar to those on Easter Island, which one gets to via Lan Chile from Santiago.) I can fill days plotting out train routes across South America or looking up ferry service to the Faroe Islands. Give me a stack of brochures and the Thomas Cook Timetables and maybe a website or three, and I am in ecstasy.

But eventually I reach the stage where I'm within days of leaving and it feels like I am spending all of my time running errands that must be done before I go. I suppose that if I took ten day trips like normal folks, this would be less of an issue. But it is nearly as much work to go away for a month as it is to go away for a year. I have to estimate how much to overpay my bills so I don't come home to a stack of late notices. I have to put a hold on my mail at the post office. I have to do something about all this clutter so I don't come home to total chaos.

Add in a suitably remote destination and things get even more complex. If I were traveling in Western Europe, I'd feel no need to bring things like toilet paper, tampons, and laundry soap. The odds of locating these luxury items in Kyzyl (the capital of Tuva, one of the least visited places in the known universe) are low. There are lots of home visits on this trip so one must provide for at least a few gifts - but what do you give to nomadic Buryat camel herders that would be remotely useful? (My answers include playdoh, skin cream and key chains. Although yurts don't lock, so that latter is questionable.) Let's not forget the need to make photocopies of all my documents. (I keep one copy as well as the originals with me, send additional copies to my mother and brother so that if I were robbed they could fax me the info). And what did I do with that list of internet cafes in Mongolia?

I've done this enough times in the past that I know I'll get through the frantic stage and be fine. If I really forget something, my first stop is Saint Petersburg, where shopping is feasible. Then I can worry about whether I'm taking my life in my hands by flying MIAT (rumored to be one of the worst airlines in the world) and whether the insect repellent I have will really deter the swarms of biting critters that call Lake Baikal home.

Don't worry - I'll be okay. Now, if I could only find what I did with my flashlight ...