The Road Ahead: Bulgaria, Oman

RHODES, Greece- I believe I’ve written before that my travel paths resemble the jagged mouth of a jack-o-lantern. They’re all messed up — going here, going there, going backwards, forward, backwards again, and returning back to the place that I began … for some reason.

In a week we should be leaving Rhodes, going to Athens, then on to Sofia, Bulgaria before I take a research trip to Oman a week later.

I should only be in Oman for around a week, where I will meet up with my friend Moni and then attend a launch event for the new city / special economic zone of Dumq, that a Chinese consortium is building in the south of the country.

I haven’t been to either Bulgaria or Oman before. In fact, I didn’t even need a category on this blog for Bulgaria until this post. I have no idea what I’m getting with either place. I like this.

While it always looks beautiful to open these old travel books and see that the author traveled these nice smooth paths across the world via ship, rail, and …

Cheap air travel is the great demolisher of smooth travel paths. While you can still take land-based modes of long distance transport it’s becoming more and more of a novelty, as it’s often cheaper to fly.

I don’t mind air travel. I appreciate it, actually. I like the fact that I can set up a base of operations in a good air travel hub, wake up in the morning, say “Hmm, where in this swath of the world do I want to go today?,” hop on a jet and go.

It’s a beautiful thing. It really is.