A friend once told me, “You can tell that God loves Scotland, because he cut off all the tops of the best mountains, and put them there.” At the time, I was living in Michigan, decidedly devoid of anything close to mountains. Since then, I’ve lived in the Cascades, hiked in the Himalayas and Rockies, and wondered at the Alps. I can say that the Scottish Highlands can hold their own against these majestic ranges.
As I shut the door and settle into the front seat of the nearly dilapidated taxi, the customary greeting tumble out of my mouth. “Good afternoon, how are you?”
“Fine and you too?” the driver responds.
“I am also fine,” I chirp back in a friendly ritual that is repeated throughout my day.
A few beats go by and then the driver asks, “What is your country?”
“The United States”
“Ahhh, America! I wish to go there.”
“By the grace of God,” I reply. This is probably the fifth time this week that I have either heard this desire or have been asked to take someone there this week. And the truth is, my citizenship opens a lot more doors than Ghanaian citizenship does.
My first experience traveling solo came when I was 18-years-old, when I split from a program I was on and decided to go it alone in Australia for five weeks. The second time was on a weekend trip to Amsterdam during a 10-day class in Paris. Since then, I’ve added on Thailand, Laos, Bhutan, Cambodia, Nepal and Egypt to my list of international destinations which I have ventured to alone.
I love solo travel. I love the freedom it affords me for spontaneity and that I am able to enrich myself in ways that are important to me. I’ve also met way more people in the times that I’ve traveled alone than I ever have when I have traveled with other people. When I tell people about traveling solo, responses almost always fall on a continuum of “Aren’t you scared?” to “Isn’t that dangerous?”
I had a friend reach out to me for some assurance with traveling to a place that has been labeled “dangerous,” recently, and her response to the advice I gave was, “Have you written a blog post about that?” I realized that I hadn’t, and so here it is, my advice before embarking on solo travel – particularly to places that are often considered dangerous.
D Town. The Motor City. Hockeytown. Rock City. Motown.
Ah, that Motown sound. The label that created that sound, and in 1975 was producing the most 45s, was headquartered in Detroit, Mich., and has been a museum for the past 30 years. Visitors can learn about the start of the label, its rise to success, how they got those rich vocals and see the studio where it all happened, plus a bonus of Michael Jackson’s famous fedora and sparkly glove.
The sun shone down on my face from the peak of its daily ascent. I lay there, on some of the oldest rocks in the world with my feet dangling over the edge of the ridge, dozing in the mid-day heat and taking a break from my ritual of the day.
The ritual of meticulously placing my hiking pole in a spot that would support and balance me as I swung my foot up onto the rocky ridge in front of me, pushing myself forward on the stretch of trail that is routinely referred to as “the hardest trail in Michigan” only to catch myself as I picked my way down the rocks back into the boreal forest. The process would repeat itself less than a quarter mile later.
I lay there, along with the lichen, soaking up the late September sun and allowing it to turn the sweat on my brow into salt lines, giving me a faux aged look, until the call of a bull moose rang out from the wilderness below my feet spurred me up and onto my destination for the day, still a few hard miles on down the trail.
It’s no secret that Michigan is full of natural beauty. One of the places in Michigan that definitely a natural wonder is the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
My friends, and fellow Blog It Home winners, Keith and Heather over at Sponge and Slate are back in the U.S. for a month before embarking on their third year extension adventure in China, and invited me to join them relaxing at a family cabin on the gorgeous shores of Lake Michigan. Of course I jumped at the opportunity.
I’ve been back Stateside for a week now and I’m still getting used to life here. (There’s so much space everywhere! Tap water is OK to drink! Toilet paper exists and is so thick!) But, in addition to getting my bearings here (I’m constantly reminding myself to stay to the right when I’m driving), I’ve also been answering the question, “So what’s next?” about once an hour. There are a lot of things that are next but this is a list of things that I know I will do next.
Michigan is a beautiful state, with the most coastline of any state in the continental U.S., wonderful National Forests, great engineering feats, a booming food and beer scene and a lot more. I’ve been away from my home state for just shy of a decade and I’m looking forward to reacquainting myself with the bounties that are here, and these are the things that are at the top of my list.
“So what are your plans for while you’re here?”
“I don’t know. I really want to do some diving, that’s for sure.”
“Oh man, go to Dahab.”
“Dahab is my favorite place in Egypt.”
And so went the conversation that set me off on a two-week stay in Dahab on the Sinai peninsula, where there was little more than sun, surf, sand and relaxation.
Yesterday was the first day of Ramadan, and as a non-Muslim in a majority Muslim country I prepared myself and set out to try and get a sense of what this religious fasting looked like here in Egypt.
I ate leftovers and fruit in my cousin’s apartment, filling up before I left as I knew finding food outside would be difficult. I pulled up a walking tour on my iPod that visited eight mosques and Islamic structures and ended near Al Azhar Park, where I intended to watch the sunset, listen to the call to prayer and possibly people watch families picnicking the breaking of their fast.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to visit all of the sites and I never made it to the park to watch sunset. Fortunately, I got to experience Egyptian hospitality and broke fast with a family in the back streets of Cairo, truly giving me an experience of what iftar, the evening meal during Ramadan, is like.
When most people think of the African continent, one of the first things that springs to their minds are images of the fauna that inhabit the continent: lions, elephants, hippos, rhinos and monkeys. All of these animals have a home in Cameroon, including a wide variety of apes than many people refer to as “monkeys.” Perhaps most prominent among the apes that live in Cameroon are chimpanzees.
Chimps are classified as an endangered species, with population estimates ranging between 170,000 and 300,000 and some of the biggest threats to their existence are habitat destruction and poaching for the bushmeat trade, the latter of which is a particular problem in Cameroon. I had the opportunity to visit a sanctuary for chimps that have been orphaned by poachers and the experience was truly exceptional.