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One Foot Out the Door

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One Foot Out the Door

Tag Archives: travel

Mementos, Boxes, and Some Advice

05 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by lexklein in Travel - General

≈ 57 Comments

Tags

clutter, mementos, minimalism, moving, souvenirs, travel

They were so cute and innocuous at the beginning. When I first started traveling, I collected little knick-knacks from all around the world – miniature Greek vases, blown-glass penguins, and way too many little plates with Fox Glacier, the New York City skyline, or Dutch windmills etched and painted and stamped all over them. I was even on an animal kick for a few years; I bought a felt camel in Abu Dhabi, a carved wood llama from Peru, a leather giraffe in Tanzania, and a wooly sheep figure from Patagonia. My shelves and other furniture were soon housing a menagerie, and I felt like I was living in a trinket shop.

I’m not a clutter fan; I like my rooms (mostly) spare and my surfaces (mostly) bare. When I got tired of all the little tchotchkes, I cleared many of them away (into boxes … mistake!) and began buying fewer, but bigger and nicer, things: a rug, a wall-mounted kudu head made out of paper, an Alpine cowbell, a chief’s basket, larger pieces of art and, my favorite, a Buddha head from Tibet. I carefully selected only one thing on each trip, and it either had a function or added some artistic value to my home, reminding me every day of some of the fascinating places I’d been.

But if there is ever a time to reassess one’s acquisitiveness, it is before and after a whole residence has to be stuffed into boxes. The prayer wheel made the cut (good karma), but the Delft dishes did not. The Mongolian yak rope is just too cool to ditch, but the Ghanaian coasters had to go. Some of the bigger things are making my new house feel like home, but I remain overwhelmed by the smaller stuff emerging from boxes, some packed months or even years ago. I wince every time I encounter another little “gift” of packing paper wrapped around some small, unknown object.

When we prepared to leave Chicago, we rented a dumpster and pitched pound after pound of household junk inside, and we took anything clean, attractive, or usable to Goodwill. So how did I arrive here in Houston with more boxes of paperweights and tapestries, jeweled trays and woven hats that I hadn’t seen in years? I start the assessments again: OK, the boomerang can stay, but where am I supposed to put this leather drum and that teak bowl? Let’s just say I’ve already found a donation spot here, and they know my face and car well after two weeks in town.

Whether you’re a traveler or not, or a shopper or not, may I suggest you start cleaning your house or apartment out now? It’s really not a fun job, and it’s even less amusing when you’re under the gun and/or your significant other has trouble parting with things (see: Maasai spear). Luckily, in recent years, all I have really wanted to take home with me from my travels are memories and experiences. In many ways, this blog is now my travel memento, a repository for recollections, feelings, and affection for the places I’ve been. Best of all, it will not ever need to be put into or taken out of a box. I don’t ever want to see another box.

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Out with the Old, In with the New!

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by lexklein in Mind Travels, Travel - General

≈ 56 Comments

Tags

change, moving, new horizon, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge

Is it the nature of things (or simply me and my itchy feet?) that just as I have (semi-happily) settled into my newest environment that I should suddenly find ahead of me a tantalizing new horizon? Its confirmation awaits the final details … stay tuned until after the holidays on this one!

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Meanwhile, 2016 – an annus horribilis for me in many ways – is nearing an end. The year started in a fine way, with a trip to Bogota and Cartagena, Colombia, followed soon after by a much-needed solo trip to Nicaragua. Things were looking good – back-to-back Latino-flavored trips in my favorite kind of weather – warm!

Unfortunately, the latter getaway was bookended by (much) less relaxing journeys to take care of my ailing mother. February/March followed up with a relocation from long-time home Chicago to less-than-eagerly-anticipated Washington, DC., and the beginning of multiple back-and-forth drives between those two cities, usually with elderly dog in tow, for the next few months.

I did get a few kicks out of hoodwinking many of you for April Fool’s Day, and I also escaped to Aspen, Colorado, for a glorious string of days in the mountains, even as I struggled with sleeplessness (so not me!) in a bad bed, myriad frustrations in a tiny apartment with non-functional appliances, and a decline in health and fitness in my new urban lifestyle.

Summer brought another series of trips to and from the new DC residence, the old house in Illinois, and the parents’ house in Pennsylvania, but again, the stress of this peripatetic lifestyle, and worries about aging parents and dog, were salved by one of the most amazing trips of my lifetime – to Mongolia – chronicled in an embarrassment of posts in August. Two little side trips to Seoul rounded out that month quite nicely!

I bitched about DC more than I should have (in spite of landing a great new job at American University), lived vicariously through my daughter and her stint in Ghana this fall, and then finally came to terms with Washington by late autumn, just in time to contemplate leaving for greener pastures!

I plan to enjoy my family and our soon-to-be-listed home in Chicago over the holidays and just afterward, I will pop into Cuba for a week before facing head-on the next wave of changes about to wash over me. It’s all good – this time I’m up for the ride! Can’t wait to tell you more about it!

 

 

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Not for the Squeamish

24 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by lexklein in Himalayas, Tibet, Travel - General

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Everest North Base Camp, Tibet, toilets, travel

We all discover when we travel that there is some luxury or convenience that we really miss. For some, it is gourmet food, fine wine, and upscale shopping; for others, it is simply a comfortable bed and a hot shower. In Tibet, we realized it was even more basic: the availability of toilets and any form of paper product.

(CLICK ON PHOTOS if you want to see them full-size)

Tibet 2011 - Lex 290Other than the mother of all mountains herself and the wonderful coziness of our tent in the whipping Himalayan winds, the only other big stories from Mount Everest’s north base camp revolved around basic human needs. Starting with the less graphic, I would like to expound for a moment on the extreme preciousness of all forms of paper on this trip! Toilet paper and Kleenex were totally unavailable outside of major cities and even sometimes in them; throughout the trip, we found ourselves scavenging for napkins, hoarding toilet paper from hotels, rationing our limited supply of soft, luxurious Kleenex, and laughing at the ridiculousness of our paper product obsession.

Tibet 2011 - Lex 254One night at base camp, we found we had used up the last bits of toilet paper I had wound up from our hotel roll in Shigatse a day earlier, and I now wanted nothing more than to blow my itchy, runny nose and have some toilet paper to use in the outhouse. I foraged in my backpack and purse, finding any little scrap to use, even going so far as to re-use a scrunched-up ball of Kleenex from my bag when I went to the “toilet” facility (more on that later). At one point, we saw our tent owner, Lobsang, pull some tissue out of his shelf area for his stove fire and we hungrily watched where he put the roll in case we could steal some later. Alas, the opportunity never arose, but I did suddenly remember an American Airlines kit with a small tissue pack we had gotten on the plane … never have I been so excited to find a paper product! We parceled out that Kleenex over the next few days, allowing ourselves mere scraps for each necessary usage.

Tibet & China June 2011 660Now, speaking of that toilet facility … well, nothing in our many world travels could compare to this (literal) sh–hole. The shanty had two holes in the floor, with about a 10-foot drop to the ground below. Of course, there was no side-to-side privacy between the two holes; one had to go right next to someone else. (Squeamish readers may want to skip the next few sentences … ) In these 10-foot-deep holes, the waste (human and paper) had gotten piled up so high that a small mountain of disgustingness had risen ABOVE the level of the hole in the floor! Avoiding the conical heap of waste was no easy feat, but I’ll leave the details out of this story for fear of losing my audience! I do have to add that on our last morning at Base Camp, my daughter and I went to this horrid building together and were waiting in line while two Chinese ladies used it. Suddenly a young Tibetan girl ran up, pounded on the door, began untying a rope belt around her rough wool pants, audibly passed wind while hopping up and down, then flew into the building once the first lady had merely cracked open the door. Needless to say, we were none too pleased to have to follow this gal into the outhouse. But we did have paper!

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One Foot Out the Door

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by lexklein in Travel - General

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

restless, travel

I am a restless soul. I’ve always had a problem with geographic permanence. Even when I was young, I always wanted to be somewhere else. I was the kid who loved camp, vacations, sleepovers, and all forms of transportation. I loved my home and was very close to my family as a child, and I love my family and my home now, but I’ve had this restlessness for as long as I can remember. Did it spring from a love of languages and other cultures? From a fiction fixation and all the places I’ve visited on the pages of a globeful of authors? I think it’s more primordial, though, an innate itch that demands scratching at regular intervals. The novels and the linguistics add fuel to the fire, but they didn’t spark the flame.

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I’m pretty sure it’s a character flaw somehow, and I’ve tried to “fix” it; I’ve even spent the last 23 years in the same city and the last 18 in the same house. But I get antsy, really antsy, and there are times when I feel I just have to go. Ideally, I go far and I go exotic – Tibet, Patagonia, Abu Dhabi, Iceland, Nepal – but if I don’t have time or money, I can settle for Houston, Denver, and Pittsburgh. I love any destination, but I also just want to pull out the bags, go to REI for gadgets and organizers, assemble my toiletries, stockpile reading material and music for a long flight, or ease into my 200,000-mile + SUV and hit the road. I often travel alone and I hate to admit it, but that’s the way I like it best sometimes. To get up early in a mountain hut on the trail to Everest and sit silently with my coffee at an icy window is a pleasure that I quite selfishly don’t want to share.

I’m sure I won’t have a travel story every time I add to this blog, but I’ve got a lot! I’m a pretty happy camper (literally), but there is some angst as well as excitement in always having one foot out the door. Come along for the trip as I take the second step …

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I’m a restless, world-wandering, language-loving, book-devouring traveler trying to straddle the threshold between a traditional, stable family life and a free-spirited, irresistible urge to roam. I’m sure I won’t have a travel story every time I add to this blog, but I’ve got a lot! I’m a pretty happy camper (literally), but there is some angst as well as excitement in always having one foot out the door. Come along for the trip as I take the second step …

WHERE I’M GOING

ARIZONA/COLORADO – Winter 2019

SOUTHEAST ASIA – February 2020

Follow me on Instagram, too!

Little did I suspect that this summer’s warm-up hike on Bald Mountain in Sun Valley would become next summer’s main event! @jesseitzler @colinobrady @marchodulich #29029everesting #idaho #sunvalley #hiking #oopsididitagain #onlyplaceilookgoodinred
49/50! Happy to finally visit beautiful Idaho and to be back out west seeing another state on foot. #idaho #visitall50states #hiking #getoutside #sunvalley
There’s so much beauty in Bhutan, and the people are no small part of that. One of my favorites agreed to a quick snap at the doorway to the temple he guards. #sweetestmanever #bhutan #thimphu #temples #buddhist #hiking
Good news, bad news: our small trekking group was crushed to find our high-altitude trek in the Haa Valley totally cancelled due to snow and ice. 😢 The consolation prize was a few days in the verdant and lovely Punakha Valley, where we managed one full day of hiking above the valley before we were stymied by rain there as well. #punakha #bhutan #weatherwoes #hiking #trekking
Not only vacationing tourists visit the Tiger’s Nest. Here, a monk from eastern Bhutan pays his respects (iPhone in hand!). #taktsang #tigersnest #bhutan #monastery #monk #hiking
Although our major trek is yet to come - into the snowy and remote Haa Valley - today’s hike up to the Tiger’s Nest near Paro is the main reason I wanted to come to Bhutan. It did not disappoint! The photos I’d seen are not a cliche, I know now; no matter how many you’ve seen, including this “standard” shot, it’s hard to imagine actually being here and walking (bootless) into this temple and monastery after the tough climb up. Thrill of a lifetime for me. #taktsang #tigersnest #monastery #bhutan #hiking #buddhism #dreamcometrue

Recent Posts

  • Battling a Mountain
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  • A Little More Bhutan
  • The Weather and I: Bhutan Edition
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