Why we travel ... to Ecuador!

The gifted travel writer, Paul Theroux, describes the number of times he paid no attention to "do not go there" ... and writes:

the fact that a place is out of fashion, forgotten or not yet on the map doesn’t make it less interesting, just more itself, and any visit perhaps more of a challenge. But travel maps have always been provisional and penciled in, continually updated. The map of the possible world being redrawn right now — parts of it in tragic and unsettling ways — might soon mean new opportunities for the traveler who dares to try it. Travel, especially of the old laborious kind, has never seemed to me of greater importance, more essential, more enlightening.

The guy is way too good a writer for me to do any follow-up writing in this post :(

I have been thinking about travel a lot lately, after reconnecting with school-mates after 30 years.  We are in different parts of the world now, after spending all our growing up years in a teeny town in the southern part of India.
One friend notes that in his job he is "country head ...for 35 odd countries. visit all these countries 2-3 times a year."  Another, who lives in India, notes "I was in Kenya in 2009 stayed in the bush for a month doing wildlife conservation - can u beat it?"

Simply incredible how far we have come, and the terrains we have traversed!

And to think that I was 22 years old when for the first time I flew in an airplane!  It was a short one-hour trip from Madras to Coimbatore!

I now wonder if all of us classmates put together might have even covered an overwhelming majority of the countries on the planet. It is not impossible at all.

One classmate, about whom I have blogged before, probably has Europe covered all by himself--particularly the countries that most of us tourists might not have been to.  The Middle East, well, plenty of mates there.  Most of Africa, yes.  There is a small possibility that South America is yet to be "conquered" ... well, other than Venezuela, which was my first ever foreign trip after coming to the US.  I am so tempted to collect the data from my classmates :)

If everything works out well, I will take care of my travel itch when I head to Ecuador in June.

The few days in Quito and its vicinity will be a lot of fun. And educational.  Plus the additional excitement of going to a place where I know not the local language.  No habla Español!