Where Are You Going Next?

By Lee | September 28th, 2007 | 8 Comments »

This is a question that I get every single day. It is clearly a viable question because I do travel a lot but I don’t know where my next major trip will be. There is so much that goes into planning a trip. There are so many factors like: which countries to visit; which regions; weather; time of year; how long you can go for; who are you going with; how will you travel; visas; costs; ease of travel; and which type of trip you will take such as a backpacking trip or a higher end trip. Unless you have unlimited time, planning a big trip takes weeks of careful research and planning and I take this very seriously.

The major regions I want to visit in the foreseeable future are Borneo and some of the surrounding islands and countries; West and West Central Africa; Central Saharan Africa; Central Asia including the Himalaya region and the old silk route; Areas of the Middle east; the Caribbean and the South Pacific Islands. That is a lot of places to choose from and of course there are many others as well that are just individual detsinations.

I have written before about choosing travel partners wisely and that certainly has to be taken into account into where you go. All of the other factors as well should be taken into account and then you can arrive at the best destinations for your trips. For the purposes of my goal of achieving this record, sometimes traveling alone in certain areas is the best way because a lot of people don’t want to go to certain places. Traveling can get expensive and to ask or expect people to spend a lot of money to go somewhere they don’t really desire to go is unfair, plus it’s easier to make decisions alone on where to go and how long to stay in certain unsavory areas-especially in certain areas of the third world.

So the bottom line is I don’t know where my next big trip will be. I will be in the UK for the International TCC meeting in October which I am speaking at and in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for a friends birthday party in November but I know I will be doing something big and fun early next year for sure. I will certainly fill in the blanks in the weeks and months to come before that. It’s almost more fun not knowing whats coming up but something always does.