Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Back on the Road

Yay, we're traveling again! We're off to China tonight to promote the book we just published: www.menospeak.com

It's funny how during our 13 months on the road, the act of traveling became so much a part of daily life... so normal... that it felt like second nature.

Now that we've been home for some months, the excitement and anxieties of travel have surfaced – these feelings so long forgotten – and it reminds me that one of the best things about travel is the period of time before you actually leave. From the moment the idea pops into your head, there is research and planning and dreaming about the places you'll go... It's a trip in and of itself. And I'm happy to be enjoying the romance of it all again.

Packing my bag, though, brought the daily ins-and-outs of travel back to mind quickly. It's like riding a bike: everything has a place and I automatically put things in the places they belong. Although I must say, my bag has much more exra space than the last time we left for Asia. It brings back memories of the manic packing and repacking of my bag when we first arrived in India. Oh, how I've learned...

We'll be on the road for one month this time, traveling in the Southern half of China, from Hong Kong to Chengdu, up the Yangtse to Wuhan, over to Shanghai, and then back to Hong Kong. Perhaps this trip is more organized in a way, in that we have a rough plan of where we'll go ahead of time. But true to the moniker of DestinationTBD, you never know where we'll end up.