Travel Notes

TRAVEL NOTES

Travel? Well, it’s not easy to get to travel when you live in a 3rd world country of penury such as this. One has the freedom to travel within the country though, but this has its perils which include roads littered with pot holes, drivers high on pot and vehicles as old as your mother’s first cooking pot!

I have sought to travel out of this country, indeed it was my ultimate ambition once upon a time. Like Dick Whittington and his cat, I hoped to go and pick gold on the streets of London, or America. I didn’t mind silver or bronze in Jamaica, Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago or Fiji Islands either. To watch Michael Jordan play basketball in Chicago or to play soccer for Huddersfield Town were some of my hidden motives.
I prayed to the Almighty, attempted the exams, sought governmental assistance, wrote all the letters and showed up at 3 embassies but was rejected on all these fronts. Anyway Michael Jordan has retired and I’m 30 (which is old in football years), so maybe it’s just as well!

Watching the birds soar freely in the sky often makes me wish I have wings. This gives me an insight into the craze for bonji jumping and sky diving. The latter 2 still look crazy to me, but to pick myself up and fly like an eagle would be simply sublime.

I do get to travel sometimes, so do not think of me as an isolated man within a cell. Thanks to the internet and cable TV, I am transported to continents far and wide. Thus I can watch Manchester United games and I witnessed the turn of the century in Australia live!
Music and books, especially those etched in history trans-locate one to the Pyramids in Egypt, Columbus’s ship, the Bastille prison in Paris, inside Mozart’s head, the courts of Borgia and other far off places.
I tried to tell Romeo that Juliet was not dead, I followed King Richard to war, I merried with Robin Hood, I travelled with Gulliver, I survived the Titanic submersion, I was awed by Nostradamus and I sympathised with Job as he awaited his Redeemer.

In life there are many journeys to make and we can choose where we want to go. Sometimes we get to our destinations and sometimes we don’t even get to pack our bags. We have expectations and anticipate what awaits us at end of our travel. At every point in time, it seems we are always travelling, so maybe we need to stop and ask ourselves where we are headed. 

I did so and sorted out the confusion in my head. I am now embarking on the ultimate journey, fully kitted and running hard with everything I have. Sometimes it’s a tough road and seemingly insurmountable obstacles appear with distractions and disappointments to slow me down. However I get my strength from what awaits me at my destination. The open arms into which I’ll fall make smile as I plunder on. 

Yes, if you’ve guessed right, the major trip for me now is the one which is taking me to heaven. 

p.s
I found this in a yr 2000 diary of mine in a page titled "travel notes." I just had to write something on that page then. 
May we always get to travel and may we always get to our desired destinations.