The last travel chapter doesn’t seem that long ago, but the last few months have been a corner I want to escape, somewhere to step away from.  I am off on another flight, another adventure and the chance for more new countries and new stories.

I’m getting impatient to travel to new places, in the same way as a child says “are we nearly there yet’ on a long drive home in the back of the family car.  I’m finding I want to see more and I want to see more now.  The challenge of getting to 100 countries still weighs on my mind and its hard to know that it’s a life’s work.  It could be quicker if I could take a year out, but life, work, marriage and a mortgage make that not a sensible option, so, slowly, slowly inching my way there.  I tell myself that it will seem all the sweeter for having to do it the hard way.  I can see the finish line, but it is still quite a way in the distance.

Brussels and Belgium is next up.  For a long time I’ve wanted to visit Brussels, the capital of Belgium.  I’ve been to Belgium before, but Brussels brings me a step into a new chapter and a new travel trip. The remaining Soviet Republics to visit of Lithuania, Moldova and Armenia jump much into my thoughts, but they are not for this time, but some time soon.

This trip is created by my indulgence of Skyscanner, that’s not an ad for them,  or maybe it kind of is, but they are not paying me, but I could be persuaded.  Skyscanner is a travel website who have a search feature where you put in your departure city and put “Everywhere” as your destination option.  It’s an open ended book of so many possibilities.  It’s a genuine pandoras box of what opens up next.  This is addictive travel magic to someone like me.  Options jumped out on the page, much of Europe or Morocco, Albania, Saudi Arabia or Jordan, to mention just a few.  But this is just the first piece of a potential travel jigsaw as the question goes, ok where next?  Morocco sounds good, but options out of Morocco were difficult, it’s a bit of a travel rabbit hole.

Plan 14 has me headed to Amman in Jordan.  I’ve wanted to visit the lost city of Petra for some time, but it wasn’t seeming likely to be on the cards any time soon.  Skyscanner changed all that.  Where next?  Jordan links to Dubai, and not that I want to go there, but that does mean that all sorts of travel options open up linking through Dubai.  Skyscanner does all that for you and to the next exciting destination of Nepal.  

Having gone so many miles east I then had to figure out a way back as all this has to link up to a trip back home to see my family in England.  How and in which direction that would go was not clear.  The soccer World Cup in 2022 was in Qatar, and I’d read lots of interesting stories about Qatar as a country, not all of them good, but that makes it even more of an adventure to go and explore to find out.  I’m headed there, and I’m sure there will be a soccer stadium or two on my list of exciting places to visit.  Maybe there is even a World Cup Stadium Tour, wouldn’t that be a thing!

As the Skyscanner app over heated I had to get from Qatar with one more stop off, and to find a new country.  I’ve been so little to Africa, that it really appealed to find a destination going west, rather than north in Europe.  The pyramids and Egypt jumped from the page, my mind lept as the thought of from Petra to the Pyramids, that would make quite the trip.  I have a list of counties I want to visit, and I am  delighted to be chalking off some more from that list.  I smile as I think that I’ll be a little bit further down that road traveling to get o 100. countries.