Travel Stories
Hey Guys. Today is a little bit of a different post! I asked some people to share with me one of their best travel stories and got an amazing feedback Today I'll share with you my favorite 3, hope you like them as much as I do!!
I always wanted to travel to Mongolia, that Shamanic country fascinated me. I was finishing a seasonal contract in summer with my best friend when he asked me to travel from Paris to Beijing only by the road. Trains or Bus, or even cars but no plane!
I said yes immediately!
We’ve been travelling through all Mongolia during winter.
You have to know that I hate the cold like crazy. It was -40 Celsius degrees....
Even though I felt in love absolutely with this country! We saw only two tourists within a month! We crossed all Mongolia with a small 4 wheels drive car and an amazing driver.... stopping in the yurt of some farmers family during that time.
Everyone was so kind to us, offering us a bed in their tent, some food and tea.
No one was speaking in English, no courant, no water, no toilets ... but that was the most intense moments in my life. Finding pure kindness without any words.
Looking at the most beautiful landscapes with no one around... And also the most starry sky of my entire life when I woke up during the night to go to the “bathroom” outside the tent, fighting the cold after the sweet heat of my bed...
I realized my dream to met the rein deers farmers and the prince of the Taïga, this white boy!
We arrived in the family after a long day driving, most of the time off road. It was already the night and that family gave us a “rein deer milk” tea to welcome us. Asking why we were so crazy to travel during winter when the weather is so cold. But experience sometimes are prices less. After a meal we had to go to sleep to save the batteries for the light.
On the next morning we had an amazing day with our hosts, enjoying time with children and playing with the rein deers. These animals are pure kindness, letting the kids riding them! They asked me to try many times but I’m way taller than a Mongolian and I was afraid to hurt these poor guys!
On the evening time we helped the family to gather all the herd closer to the tent. Some of the males had to be attached on a leg to a tree so be they won’t go to far away during the night and make the rest of the group following them.
The biggest male was this rein deer on the picture. I walked him back to his place, he was so quiet and majestic. When I sat and took him to his tree he just looked at me in the eyes and started to lick my gloves.
I could see peacefulness in its eyes.
I remembered the Shaman I saw few days ago and who told me I was on the right way. Definitely. I was. I was feeling at the right place at the right time.
Such a priceless moment to share with the nature, a rainbow sunset, one of the most beautiful creature of the forest and myself...
I can’t wait to go back during summer time and experiment those moments in a warmer climate!
Thanks the Universe for this memory!
2. Tanzania to Zambia and the Sacrificial Cape Buffalo: A Train Ride
With Steve Tsentserensky - @finally.made.it
There are easier ways to do it. Quicker, more comfortable ones even.
But
there’s something in our nature, even when presented with all the
choices in the world, that doesn’t necessarily have us opting for the
quickest, easiest or even most comfortable way to go.
-
Dar es Salaam.
I’m sweating. This would be the title of my memoir if I were to write one about my entire trip, “Africa: I’m Sweating”.
The
tiles in the ceiling are missing. Not all of them but really anything
above zero wipes away the sheen and allure of the first-class lounge.
This
train station, bluish-green walls, spaciously vaulted and airy with
hints of a long-forgotten grandeur still in the air is something to
behold. Certainly far removed from its halcyon days a few decades back
but it’s got charm.
My
car and cabin number are handwritten on the ticket. The ticket which
had to be purchased in person or reserved by phone because internet
booking is not a thing.
I can’t tell if it’s old-world by choice or necessity.
The
alternative, easier no doubt, is just hopping on a plane from Dar to
Victoria Falls. I looked into a budget flight; Dar es
Salaam->Johannesburg->Victoria Falls. The route makes absolutely
no sense, like flying NYC to LA by way of Panama, but budget is budget
and this was out of mine. A few hundred dollars was still too rich for
my blood and coming all the way to Africa and not seeing Vic Falls was
not an option either.
Cost
issues aside, a 36-hour flight replete with a wonderfully useless
half-day layover in Joburg was not how I wanted to spend my limited time
on the continent. It’s not why I’m here. Some decisions make
themselves.
Kind of.
-
Moshi.
The
post-Kilimanjaro high still has me floating and I’m starting to realize
I have way more days left in Africa than things to do. I’d already
summited the mount, gone on safari, visited a Maasai village and little
oasis and I still had about 2 weeks. I long ago decided planning in
advance was not my thing so I had prebooked nothing. Just a flight in
and out of Tanzania. The guys from Trekking Hero, already heroic in
their efforts in getting me atop Kili, stepped into the fray to offer
another suggestion to assuage the possibility of boredom creeping in.
Take the train.
This
was mind-blowing for a number of reasons but chief among them was that I
had no idea a train even existed. The Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority
doesn’t exactly do a gangbusters job of advertising.
I
started to do a little research on my own eventually hitting the
Wikipedia page. Not a confidence builder. The Tazara page is the
equivalent of checking your aches and pains on WebMD. You fall far
enough down the rabbit hole and realize you’re either already dead or
very cancer-stricken.
Lines like “minimally operational” and “on the verge of collapse” are featured.
Sensing
my trepidation, I was informed that the ticket for the 2-day trip, in a
first-class car, was about 100,000 Tanzanian Shillings.
$45.
Sold.
Some decisions make themselves.
-
There’s
chaos. Boarding is less an orderly affair and more a soft version of a
stampede. I just took my cues from the folks in the lounge with me and
followed their lead. Worked fine and for all the perceived
disorganization, things went off without a hitch.
Now
listen, I’m not an expert on train travel. In fact, this was my first
real train trip. I’ve been on many metro systems the world over and
traveled by train in Europe but nothing of this multi-day, sleep aboard
variety. This was new.
-
The
first thing you notice is the dissonance between what you read and what
you see. Yes, this train is old but there’s definitely a sense of pride
in its maintenance; the cleanliness and care for the physical
appearance. I can’t judge the engineering but suffice it to say, we
didn’t die (one cape buffalo may have, more on that shortly), so hats
off to the Chinese who built this thing between 1970-75.
As
far as the cabins go, I was pleasantly surprised. It was first-class
but there was nothing ostentatious, just a comfortable space to store
your things, relax and catch some zzz’s when the time came.
The
main action was to be had was in the lounge car where there’s an
instant camaraderie that comes with being stuck with folks for a couple
days. It was a nice international mix in addition to those traveling
locally and there was an ease and openness to the conversations because
we knew exactly when they would end.
We
drank the nights away with no thought to who the designated driver
would be. They were more likely to run out of your beer of choice (they
didn’t) than anything else.
The
food was a simple but genuinely tasty affair, rice/potatoes with fish,
chicken or steak. I opted for fish. It came in its entirety and fried to
perfection. Solid $1 investment.
-
The second thing you notice is the pace. A bullet train this is not.
If
travel is meant to move you in both the physical and metaphorical
sense, the train is a mode with unequal weight in power in the latter
respect. The snail pace a welcome respite from the cacophony of
unrelenting noise and speed of the modern world.
The
views of the Tanzanian and Zambian countryside aren’t world-famous but
they are stunners in their own right. The beauty of the landscape was
honestly unexpected and could be found in the golden hues of the dry
land, the lush greenery giving way to scrublands and the rugged hills
passing by in the distance all disappearing into blissful, unspoiled
sunsets in the middle of nowhere.
You
pass the kids playing soccer on a dirt pitch, the vendors hawking their
wares along the way, the well-dressed man on his lonely bike, the woman
in a red, checkered dress down to the tracks she stands near looking
forlorn with bags piled at her feet.
The
pace meant there was ample opportunity to lose yourself in the scenery
and people that populate it whenever your heart desired and what made
this journey particularly special was the fact that it passed through
some of the famed game reserves of Tanzania. Makes for a pretty cheap
safari.
-
Delays
are common and from what I understand a sort of rite of passage.
Needless to say, this train is most assuredly not one you should take if
you’re a stickler for schedules or need to catch a flight on the other
end. I’m told our delay was caused by the untimely and unplanned meeting
between the front of the train and the body of a cape buffalo. It was
the middle of the night, I’d been drinking and awoke to us at a dead
stop. Pun intended. I didn’t ask or investigate, I went to the bathroom
and went back to sleep only to be told in the morning what happened.
To
add insult to injury/death, as we approached the border with Zambia,
money changers became more frequent and increasingly more hardline with
their service tax, nearing a 20% take by the time we got to the last
stop before crossing. I didn’t heed the warning that you truly can’t
spend Tanzanian Shillings once you cross into Zambia. In spite of
literally being told I’d be cut off from buying things on board without
Zambian Kwacha and that the train didn’t, in fact, operate as a closed
system even though it essentially was one (in my opinion)…I didn’t
exchange money. I thought my American charm would suffice.
It did not.
Fortunately, a now well-acquainted stranger took pity on me and we made a small exchange to get me through.
-
What
I came to love about train travel is the uniqueness of what you see
along the way. You get to see a cross-section of daily life that you'd
otherwise gloss over, finding yourself paying more attention to the
people and places you pass, all somehow imbued with more meaning.
Perhaps it's because the fleeting nature of it is so thoroughly present
on a train. That's an odd irony of life that in the course of traveling
we can ascribe this deeper meaning to things we’d ordinarily just as
quickly ignore back home. Something we often do.
This is a little story about me traveling to Russia (I must say, I'm from Mexico and I'm not even close of speak Russian haha)
.
Let's begin! So, it was June 28 in 2017, I flew by plane to Cuba in the morning to do my first stop flight, I was so excited because I was going to spend a complete month in a city near to Moscow, so I planned to do so many trips and adventures there. I spent like 5 hours in Cuba's airport and I had my first setback there because guess what!! My plane was delayed for like 2 hours, but I mean, at that moment everything looked good, I enjoyed that time looking for souvenirs to buy haha and after that I took my plane to Paris to do my second stop flight.
I flew like 10 hours to Paris, such a great flight I must say. But when I arrived in Paris, I realized I was late to get my next plane to Moscow!! (Due to the delay of the first one).
.
So, it was my first time in the Paris airport and in that moment I didn't know my flight was going to leave from another gate, in another side of the airport!! I mean I was so lost hahaha, I ran like crazy to find the gate, I even asked to the police man for help, and in that time I didn't speak French and he didn't speak English hahaha it was so funny, I was literally crying. So, after 15 minutes of running to die, I took a bus to get to the other station, I arrived just on time to board the plane (I was the last one hahah they were just waiting for me, I was so embarrassed!), and just like that I overcame my second obstacle.
.
I flew during 5 hours and finally I arrived to Moscow's airport at midday; I took a train to some subway station which name I don't really remember 'cause it was in Russian haha, and then, I found my third obstacle, like I said, I don't speak Russian, so it was so difficult for me to buy my Subway ticket hahaha, but I used my phone to translate what I wanted to say and I got it. Like it was expected I got lost many times in the subway hahaha everything there is in Russian, I didn't understand anything!!! But I really enjoyed my time there, you should know Moscow's subway is awesome!! If you ever have a chance to go there please, enjoy it like I did, it's so filled with art. So, finally I arrived to the station I wanted and then...
.
My fourth obstacle came up, it was so late!!! I spent so much time in the subway that I didn't realize I was so late to get my next train...(the last one finallyyyyyy); I lost the one I was planning to take... I was like: -what I'm going to do, is getting late and I don't know anyone here- really, it was so stressful hahaha. So I had to wait in the train station for the very next train to Ryazan (this is a city 2 hours near to Moscow by train), where I was going to stay for the next month. So, I bought the ticket train and waited for it, I was so sad and alone... Hahaha
.
But.. finally my train was there and I took it. 2 hours later I arrived to Ryazan and my friend was waiting for me at the train station, she was so worried because I didn't communicate with her since a was in Cuba hahahaha, but I was so grateful she was there, it was so late.. but finally I was there, ready to have one of the best experience of my entire life. I must say, at that moment it wasn't funny at all, but now, I remember it and I'm grateful I had the opportunity to live that amazing experience.
0 comentários