A trip/existence like this was just made for reading - definite rehearsal for eventual retirement.
Just finished re-reading The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux as a prelude to reading the sequel Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. The original which I read 32 years ago was an account of the author’s train journey from London through Asia via India, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries to Japan returning via the Trans-Siberian Express. In the sequel he retraces the journey 33 years later. This book may have been the single most influential factor in my desire to travel (and as such formative of my life thus far) - very highly recommend it to anyone for whom travel holds an attraction.
“The best of travel seems to exist outside of time, as though the years of travel are not deducted from your life. Travel also holds the magical possibility of reinvention: that you might find a place you love, to begin a new life and never go home. In a distant place no one knows you - nearly always a plus. And you can pretend, in travel, to be different from the person you are, unattached, enigmatic, younger, richer or poorer, anyone you chose to be, the rebirth that many travelers experience if they go far enough.”.
This passage from the book I am currently reading really summarizes to a great extent what I feel regarding travel. It is all about being out of ones comfort zone the sheer foreignness is a great attraction - the National Geographic Adventure channel has a slogan which also is reflective “Let’s Get Lost”.
“Life is a book - those who do not travel only read one page”.
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...you do some pretty great travel writing yourself. It was a series of intoxicating Theroux dispatches in the New Yorker, read when I was in high-school in the Ozarks, which led me ineluctably to 9 years' rich memories living in Asia. Keep up the writing please.
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