Your travels..

riffraff · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 226 Location: Forbes

Another thread about travel got me reminiscing. So I came up with 3 questions:

1. What's one of the biggest adventure you've had travelling?
2. One place you'd love to visit?
3. One of the most moving, or emotional place you've visited?

I guess some of mine would be:

1. Jumping on a freight train carrying Fiats in Northern Italy, and riding it into Rome on my way to the Greek Isles with some Saffa mates.

2. Gallipoli. Was only a couple of hundred klms away but followed my future wife back to London instead.. (I'm sure Grandad would understand Very Happy

)

3. Anne Frank's home in Amsterdam. You could almost hear the sound of jackboots outside.

belle · Joined: 01 Oct 2006 Posts: 1016 Location: Newcastle

1) 8 weeks overland camping from Egypt to Jordan to Syria to Turkey to Greece to Italy to England. We took turns cooking and were given $20 to feed 22 people for 3 meals and then let loose into whatever town we were in.
2)Sth America (hopefully next Feb)
3) Gallipoli (Surprised me - didn't think I was into that stuff)

Devilbiss · Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Posts: 3214

1) Flying Air India to Heathrow on route to Ireland with bad turbulence.
It took 36 hours to get from Sydney to Heathrow jammed into an economy class seat.
There was condensation dripping onto my head from the ceiling and they were trying to patch it up with napkins and used masking tape.

2) I would like to visit Antarctica.
I would love to paint the landscape and the massive floating icebergs.

3) Ireland the people were so friendly I didn't want to leave.
I have been there four times and I hope I get to go again.
It's the one place in the world where I think I could live other than Oz (and the Surf's good too!).
This photo was taken on my first visit to Ireland.
It was a Celtic cemetery in Kilcullen.
Kilcullen had a brilliant pub called the Hideout which looked like a museum.
Inside was a range of memorabilia from all over the world which included the mummified right arm of Dan Donnelly the Irish boxer and a massive crocodile hanging on the wall...poor thing.

riffraff · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 226 Location: Forbes

riffraff · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 226 Location: Forbes

Nice photo Daniel. I love European pubs, there's a real community ambience to them, and again, a sense of history.

Air India sounds alot like Aeroflop, sorry Aeroflot the Russian airline. Coming home from our wedding we flew a shaky little screamer to Moscow airport, where we were rudely crammed onto one bench table with other passengers and given chicken feet soup.

Then we transferred to the 747. When I sat down my seat fell backwards (broken), so I mentioned it to a stewardess and she said "well MOVE!"

We stopped over in somewhere like Afghanistan and were escorted across a rural airstrip under machine gun guard to a rusty tin shed. There was one table with half drunk bottles of water on it and toilets ankle deep in urine and feaces.

Then back on the plane bound for India, with the passenger behind me resting their dirty bare feet on my armrest, and my wife scratching fleas on her legs from the two large dogs tied to the chair across the aisle! Talk about romantic.. Embarassed

I also recall a backpacker who'd flown a South American airline, a brawl broke out between the passengers and crew so he hid in the overhead luggage rack with the hens and piglets! Laughing

Devilbiss · Joined: 06 Jul 2007 Posts: 3214

The Pook · Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 2904 Location: Tasmania

1. I am such a boring person that the only adventures I've had travelling involve the succession of beat up old jalopies I used to drive breaking down in various interesting and inconvenient places (not to mention several near death experiences on motorcycles). NZ was great but not adventurous at all - didn't even go bungeeing. The Pookwife is the world traveller in our family, not me.
2. I would like to go to the highlands of Scotland and hang out with my ancestors. Would also like to see the Somme, Gettysburg, and the Sea of Galilee.
3. I tend to be moved more by special times than special places, or perhaps relational places like my granma's house, rather than famous locales. The most emotional times for me have been in the ordinariest places.

Sierra · Joined: 12 Apr 2007 Posts: 584 Location: Queensland

.... Scotland ... oooohhh yes, had a few beers at this place in Edinburgh.

KimO · Joined: 06 Feb 2007 Posts: 1470

1) Hard to pick Rolling Eyes

I spent a few years travelling all around the world on cruise ships & I think I packed more than enough adventure for a lifetime into about the first 6 months! I wouldn't know where to begin. So I'll pick, coming home I had a stopover in Columbo & arrived to an airport full of soldiers with machine guns. "We are presently in the middle of a very bloody war but we have very lovely beaches - I could take you on a tour if you like" said my driver. I told him no thanks, just the hotel would be fine. I got to watch all the riots on tv during the times the power was on & sat terrified in the dark the rest of the time. Going back to the airport at 4am, menacing soldiers stopped the hotel bus that only had me on it to check my papers. Due to some baggage stuffup, they weren't going to let me on the plane but I somehow talked them into letting me go look for my case, accompanied by soldiers & sniffer dogs & by some mirracle I found it. After arriving home in Sydney, my dad woke me up at 7 the next morning to tell me the Tamil tigers had bombed the airport and all the the planes on the tarmac. Shocked

KimO · Joined: 06 Feb 2007 Posts: 1470

2) I'd love to go to Alaska
3) Manhausen concentration camp

riffraff · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 226 Location: Forbes

Good one Kim, I remember landing at Columbo, heaps of palm trees as we circled for the airport. I seem to remember a fairly tidy airport but with the obligotry machine guns... Sad

We once had a 4 hour stopover in Seoul a day or so after Kim Il Sung had passed away. We thought the airport would be invaded for sure, very scary at the time but of course nothing happened.

I'd like to visit Auschwitz, but I know I'd cry..

I'd love to go to Alaska too! Also Iceland which would be cool.

Bugger it, I'll do another 3 Laughing

1. Went ballooning over the Mcdonnell Ranges, NT.
2. The Kokoda Track
3. County Wicklow, Ireland. Visited our ancestral home and cemetery there...it got me interested in geneology.

riffraff · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 226 Location: Forbes

obligatory even... Embarassed

Hey Pook, what bikes did you ride?

The Pook · Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 2904 Location: Tasmania

Hayley · Joined: 05 Feb 2007 Posts: 344 Location: Geelong

If I had not accidently become pregnant (no idea how....) my life plan was to travel and travel and never come home and be a crazy, eccentric aunt sending postcards and gifts from far-flung places. Having been medically diagnosed as unable to conceive, this event was a shock, and a change in travel plans. To say the least. Subsequent new husband says it was because Australian men are simply not strong enough( Shocked

). So... one of my adventures, not a pleasant one, involved my daughter at 9 months old (to make a very long and horrendous story short) ... went to Singapore on a visa run overnight, found myself without ANY money available until the next day, so at 9pm wandering streets in the rain, taxis refusing a too small fare to Little India (within my $10 budget), through a series of ridiculous events, I found myself having to trust a stranger to take me to a hotel, but instead ended up in the back of a car being driven by a half drunk maniac who then stopped to do a DRUG DELIVERY (yes, in SINGAPORE - death penalty) and throw $10,000 payment in a cash roll my way and revealing a pistol in the glovebox before dragging my daughter and myself to no less than 3 Indian backstreet 'clubs' despite protests and efforts to escape (clutching my very happy and sociable child who was having a ball) refusing food and drink despite being starving and a thirst like no other because I suspected the whole time that their intention was to drug me and steal my child. Finally escaped with a female friend of his who was scared of the driver by claiming to need to change a nappy - ran into the street and jumped on a bus and ended up at her house almost at the Malaysian border (she said it was close by) to sleep in her bed but requiring one eye open and door firmly barracaded and locked as 4 Sri Lankan men living at her house seemed to think I was there for their 'pleasure'. Ran out at 5am before anyone awoke (even my child) and caught fast train back to the city, visited Consulate and flew back to Bali. No exaggerations, in fact much, much more to the story...

2. Antarctica (snap Daniel) after seeing Bea Maddock's stunningly beautiful print series from her artist in residence - unfortunately daughter would not stand for a required possible 12 month seperation (me either).

3. Coming home after travelling has been the most emotional for me. But I've never been to any deeply loaded places that have hosted genocide. I doubt I would cope.

Dug · Joined: 04 Jul 2005 Posts: 4837 Location: Gippsland

1. What's one of the biggest adventure you've had travelling?

Travel in itself is an adventure always, I would be bored to tears holidaying in a resort or the like.

Having a gun stuck in my face ( a WW2 vintage US Army issue .45 ACP Pistol ) in the highlands of Irian jaya was fun but there are so many good memories like this. Anything you survive becomes fun looking back on it.

2. One place you'd love to visit?

no not really so many places I could not pick one.

3. One of the most moving, or emotional place you've visited?

Uluru, in the distance it was just a big rock.

Up close to the base and touching it there was a really weird aura /sensation / sound /feeling to it I really cannot describe.

No way I could climb on such a sacred area that would just be sacrilege to me.

( none of my photos of Uluru came close to describing it )