The Spirit of Exploration? What The Heck Is THAT?
I got an email from the Bombay Sapphire Spirit of Exploration blog thingie inviting me to describe what the Spirit of Exploration means to me.
All you travel bloggers out there, you prolly got the same email.
And as dorky as the topic may sound, it did make me think. The easy answers are: getting on a plane to somewhere, trekking the Amazon, or whichever clichés you happen to dream about.
But that’s not exploration - that’s just burning through your hard-earned cash, unless of course, you happen to be independently rich. And if you are independently rich, then why don’t I know you? Say, you wanna fund my next trip?
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, trekking the Amazon… I did that when I was 8 years old, sitting on a crapper at home.
My family was not loaded, but one thing they never skimped money on was books, ma was an avid reader, and pa… well, the only time he could read in peace was in the bathroom. Hence the stack of books by the pot.
Early on in life, I figured that faking stomach problems would keep me home from school. (What can I say? I hated school.) And the best way to fake stomach problems was to sit in the bathroom. Because sitting in the bathroom gets to be really old after a while, I started to read the books piled high by the toilet. Being only 8, I preferred pictures to text, and that’s how my love affair with the World Atlas had begun.
First, for the sake of reading practice, I learned all the countries and their capitals (at least all the countries that existed in those ancient times, a few of them are gone now, and a whole new bunch popped up, I know…). Then came the mountain ranges, rivers, and other interesting scraps of information.
Then, I moved onto the Illustrated Encyclopedia. I figured out, I could look up all the geographical bits in the fat pretty picture book and further practice my reading skills. I missed a lot of school days due to my chronic stomach problems, but dude, the stuff I learned!
I saw my first tapir. And met some guys from Amazonas. And learned about the rainforest. Took a ferry ride all the way to Manaus and watched piranhas devour a cow. I listened to jungle noises, went hunting with the Brazilian Indians, and decided I wanted to explore Peru next.
It took me a whole year to cover all of South America. Some countries were better described (had nicer pictures) than others. And my very patient ma fed my toilet traveling hobby by buying more travel books. Lots and lots of travel books. The first one I read all by myself was “200 Dias de Mato Grosso” by Tony (Antonio) Halik.
I didn’t understand half of the words in that book, and had to look them up first in a language dictionary, then in a normal dictionary, and finally in an illustrated dictionary to figure out what was going on. It took me a year to finish that book.
But when I was done, I my mind was made up. I wanted to be an explorer, just like Tony Halik, when I grew up.
And I’m still working on it.
That’s my spirit of exploration and I’m sticking to it.
This entry is also on the Spirit of Exploration Blog and now you shall click on THIS LINK and vote for me. Are we clear?
See, I even got a pretty badge for participating? Ain't that sweet?
