Having just checked my United Mileage Plus Frequent Flyer account, I was happy to see my balance of 145,000 miles. I have no idea which foreign country will be the next to see my feet on its soil. I have two trips to Southern California planned for later this month, but I am honestly not projecting any passport required journeys. Well, I don’t even have a passport now as I am waiting for my new one in the mail.

I am traveling within myself. In December, I started to read Un altro giro di giostra (Another Ride on the Merry-Go Round) by one of my favorite authors, Tiziano Terzani. As the hardbound 550 page book is in Italian, I am reading it slowly. After many years as an Asian correspondent, Terzani found out that he had cancer. Instead of traveling the world to understand the political and social events of other countries, he went to different places to research how mainstream and traditional medicine treated cancers. He traveled within himself to see who he was and how he may have caused his own maladie.

Luckily, I am quite healthy so my current inner musings are not neccesitated by medical therapy, but rather my own desire for calm. Back in October, I was on a train in Germany and I couldn’t feel if the train was traveling backwards or forewards. I was at the end of almost two months of travel that started in Buenos Aires, Argentina and then took me to North Eastern Brazil, back to California, to Ukraine, France and ended in Germany. My body was so disoriented that it didn’t recognize the direction of motion. My brain was also confused. When I arrived in Ukraine and I tried speaking to a very flirtatious Italian, words of Portuguese came out of my mouth.

During my recent seven month adventure in Asia, I was super exhausted by the end. I went to an acupuncturist who told me to stop traveling.

Me, stop traveling? That’s impossible.

I did notice my fatigue both mentally and physically and realized that I did need to slow down. So, my future blog posts will be about my personal growth and adventures at home, how to still discover the world without traveling, and my tips for other people who want to travel.

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