I am not rich enough to get into unknown trouble.
I should say that I'm not overly rich either. I just don't need a lot and because I don't carry multiple pairs of shoes I can afford things like cheap flip flops if mine get stolen.
My way of traveling does entail some risks and it's not for everyone. Obviously I'm not a greenhorn about it but I've been caught out on occasion. I had to sleep on the streets in Mumbai and in Zanzibar. I got a whole group of people arrested by the military by bribing the crew to sneak off a ferry when it couldn't dock because a cargo ship was in the way and I didn't feel like waiting..... I did feel bad about that but we got everyone off.... I found myself in India in a remote village without enough money to buy a train ticket out and I've been been "lost" in the Canadian Rockies even by
my reckoning to the point where I needed to apply everything I know about wilderness travel to get "found" again... and that was in the dead of winter.
I also found myself (and my ex girlfriend) 1/2 way up Mt. Kilimanjaro having lost our guide, our gear and our food and just sitting on a rock waiting for a solution. She, of course, **** a cow and was panicking. I applied what we had learned in Africa. "Hakuna Matata". I told her to be patient and a solution would present itself, which it did. By that time she nearly died of high blood pressure. I was never stressed because even if our guide had made off with our stuff (which he hadn't) then Africans would never let you just sit there and die..... Other guides had already asked me (which I never told my ex :devious:
) If I wanted help, but I said,
"not yet".
The one thing that travelling has taught me is that no matter how hard it gets, someone will always help you. In Zanzibar we went from sleeping on the streets to having breakfast a day later with a delegation of government ministers and discussing the AIDS epidemic over croissants. Stuff like this will NEVER happen to you if you never take a risk.
There was only one time that I was a bit tense while traveling. We were driving through the Kalahari and got turned around. We ended up following the tire tracks in the sand that we found, not sure if we should go north or south, with some limited amount of water and petrol. Either we would get out or our problems would become a lot worse if we ran out of gas or found an abandoned car at the end of the tire tracks.
We, obviously, got out but even before that we had encountered a few bushmen that gave me peace of mind because I knew that even if we didn't get out we wouldn't die.
Again, stuff like this never happens to you if you never take a risk.
R..
---------- Post added April 21st, 2015 at 10:08 PM ----------
Boy, I am a programmer myself. I guess we are like that, crave knowledge of the situation.
LOL... Sounds like you're in the right business.
R..
