Polarsteps handles the tracking — pins, routes, photos as they happen. This page is where I add the meaning: what each place taught me, and the writing it inspired.
12
Countries visited
10
Trips taken
23,297 km
Distance traveled
Favorite places along the way, and what each one taught me.
The hike up to ijen is quite challenging for most people, but european rush to the top and need to wait in the cold until the sun is rising. As it's an active vulcano the atmosphere is quite unique and a constante smell of sulfid is in the air. The view from the top into the vulcano is amazing and worth the long way up and down.
Padar Island's odd, hilly shape makes for one of Komodo's most photographed views — worth the hike up. Down at sea level is Pink Beach, sand tinted red by coral fragments, with snorkeling as good as the view from the summit. Some places earn the hype from two completely different angles at once.
Beppu turns more geothermal water into hot springs than anywhere else in Japan — cooled through wooden towers, piped into mud baths and steam rooms, even used to cook. Some of the equipment is visibly corroding from the minerals and still works. Impressive what people build to make a hostile piece of earth livable, let alone enjoyable.
Hirosaki's Neputa floats are giant fan-shaped lanterns that hinge up and down to duck under traffic lights, and rotate so the crowd sees both sides — warriors painted on the front, something quieter and more atmospheric on the back. The drum leading the procession was enormous, and loud enough you felt it before you heard it.
The Vatican is barely 44 hectares, half of it gardens, and you can walk from one end to the other in an afternoon — yet it's a sovereign country, walled off in the middle of Rome, before you even reach St. Peter's Basilica. Scale is relative.