Is there a place in the world you never want to visit? Where, and why not?
I love to travel.
If money were no object I would travel to more countries across the world. From my experience, more can be learnt about different cultures by getting off the usual tourist path—we have traveled recently to regional China and Canada in winter. Learning about a country through its history joins the dots on why things developed and are the way they are.
When my husband and I are considering traveling to a new destination, I ask myself the following questions to discover if it is a place we can visit now. Even if the answer is no, it doesn’t mean it is a place I never want to visit. Everywhere has something new to offer.
- Will we be safe? This is particularly important as we like to get ourselves around places not go on tours where you may have a built-in safeguard.
- Will we be able to stay healthy? Is the food and water safe?
- What , how and where will we eat? What is it advisable not to eat?
- How will we get around the city? Will this be possible? In Nanjing we thought we would catch a train however when we arrived at the train station it was literally packed with people. There no signs were in English, we felt claustrophobic so we quickly left and made other plans.
- Where do we plan to stay?
- What local rules or customs do we need to follow? Can we live with them for a couple of days?
- What is the reason we want to visit the country or area? If this is strong enough it can change some of the other answers.
- How do we get from the airport to our accommodation? Once we needed to pre-book a private car for a two-hour trip across provinces in China.
- Are injections required to protect us from disease?
- All things considered is the risk too great for us to travel to this part if the world at this time? YES or NO.
If the answer is yes, we reconsider visiting if the situation changes. In the meantime we will go somewhere else. We will never stop traveling—meeting new people and learning new things as it takes us out of our comfort zone and allows us to grow in ways we couldn’t imagine. Bring on our next adventure.