Destinations listed-Now What?

So, what do you do now that you have a list of places you would like to visit? And how in the world can one get there when there is no money, no time, and so many obligations are taking up what time is available.

Hold on. This is part of the journey, the preparation. With the list of destinations as a work list, the next steps are to find out as much as you can about the place you want to visit, your first trip. Look over the list and put a check mark next to any of the places that seem to "jump out" at you or to cause just a little shiver of anticipation. This is the ONE. This is where to start building the foundation that will turn the travel dream into reality!

Keep the other places on the list, in fact keep the list. The rest of the desitnations are for the next voyages. Once you go and return home, keep your suitcase handy because you will be packing it again!

Find a clean page in your notebook and in large letters, use a black marker here, put the name of the destination at the top, add quotation marks around it, you want this as visible as possible. Also dog ear, put a post-it-note or a paper clip on this page so you find it as soon as you open the notebook.

Now, get a map, an encyclopedia, a web page and find the destination, this is where you will be going. Start listing questions about the place, just keep writing as fast as you can without trying to find the answers. When you run out of questions or get writer's cramp, then go back and read what it is you want to know right now about where in the world you want to travel.

Lost for questions? Here are a few to get the curious mind started?
What other countries, cities are around the destination?
Are there mountains, deserts, rivers, oceans?
Is it north or south of the equater?
Do I know anyone from that area?
Why did this place appeal to me?
What do I want to see here?
What do I already know about this place?

Your turn, fill the whole page with questions, but DO NOT answer them now. The answers will start to come to you from places you never expected. What will begin to happen is from now on, you are going to find this destination appearing quite often. You will start to hear people talking about it, you will find it in the newspapers and magazines you read and you will hear it mentioned in conversations around you. It's as if the destination has become a magnet.

When this happens listen, watch, read-your questions will start having answers, they will find you. Write them down in your notebook. By focusing on your destination, you have taken the first steps on your journey.

Destinations-Travel Genie Grants Three Wishes

Where in the world would you go if time, money, obligations were not a problem? Do you have a wish list of places you want to see "someday". If you do, get it out and look at it. If you don't, sit right down when you finish reading this blog and make a list. You can't get to those destinations on your list if you don't know where you want to go.

One more suggestion-don't write that list on a piece of paper. Instead get a spiral notebook or three ring binder and put that list on the first page. Set up the list with destinations on the left hand side of the page, then make column for date you put it on the list, another column for a target date to start traveling (remember this is a "wish list" at this time, so don't let your current world end the project now-put a target date down and not one 10 years from now).
Then a final column-date trip completed!

Travel Destinations

Destination---Date listed------Travel Date ------End of Trip

__________________________________________________________________________________

1. Silk road Uzbekistan ---6/24/00 -----9/14/01 -------10/01/01
2. Uganda, Africa------- 5/15/04 ---- 6/21/04 -------7/5/04
3. Train across USA -- 2/12/07 ----9/27/07 ---------????

Make your list as long as you want, if you don't have destinations in mind, then list places you want to see, or things you want to do-attend Chelsea flower show in London; have tea at the hotel overlooking Lake Louise in Canada; take the hydrafoil on the fjords in Norway-it's your list put it all down.

Over the next posts, I'll show you how to contact the "genie" within you so you can collect those three wishes and start traveling by your target date.

Lilac Bleeding Star and the Travel Scrapbook

In the Balkans, it is said, that if you long for faraway countries and leave your own land and home to find them, you have been born under a "lilac bleeding star". It must have been very bright the night I was born, for I have always wanted to know what was down the road, around the corner, at the next bus or train stop or on the other side of the ocean.
And so I find it hard to understand the fear some people have to cross over their thresholds and explore the world they say they want to see someday. Women, most frequently, are the ones that respond to my travel tales by saying "I could never go on my own, but I do want to travel someday." Well, unless they get moving now, that day may never come. As a nurse working in long term care and residential care facilities, I hear the regrets from those who never got around to acting on their travel dreams. In talking with them, I have learned that they have not developed the basic skills that would give them the confidence to start traveling, to move beyond their immediate community and workplace.
Those basic skills can be learned, and once mastered provide the confidence to start traveling. A course I have taught for a community adult education program, "Travel-Dream to Reality" offered information on discovering what was keeping one at home, how to find the information needed to learn the basic travel skills for that first trip and then to discover why one journey leads to another.
My question at the end of the course? When you are home alone would you rather think about the travels you never got around to for whatever reasons or would you like to open the scrapbooks holding the photographs, the maps, the postcards from all the trips you did take?
I'm reminded of a story a family member of one of the residents I have cared for told me. "My aunt was always taking trips. She told me if she ever had to live in a nursing home, forget the recliner. She wanted an airplane seat with a seatbelt and all her travel scrapbooks next to her bed. Every day, they could get her into the airliner seat, fasten the seatbelt and hand her a scrapbook and she would be content."
Travel scrapbooks and journals were the choices made by the women taking the travel course I was teaching, but one has to move beyond the comfort of their homes to gather the material to document the journey.
Future postings on this blog will offer information on how to fill those travel scrapbooks, how to overcome the fears of traveling and how to prepare for trips lasting just a few hours or for journeys lasting weeks and months.