Notes from a small island.
I just wanted to say that I am often accused of seeking out lesser known remote spots around the world while failing to explore the country of my birth and the country in which, to a certain extent, I reside. In any event, the terms remote or exotic or far-flung are all geography and society dependent: the average sea-Dayak ex-headhunter up the Skrang River in Sarawak would no doubt find South Ken as pretty far-flung and possibly exotic.
With this in mind, I felt it was important to refute this accusation by confirming that my wife and I recently made a journey to West London, Ken South to be precise, in search of a first floor flat in this expensive part of the city which was flying the flag of Venice for reasons to be explained if you will be patient.
The journey itself was uneventful as we encountered neither highwaymen nor unsolicited car-screen washermen, but the purpose of the visit was to find a spot where we could wax lyrical about the remote corners of the world without risk of boring the listener or, worse, just trying to get one up on the listener by relaying our experience of, say, Outer Mongolia, because there was every chance that he had, him or herself, already been there.
To explain, this was a biannual meeting of the UK chapter of the TCC – Travelers Century Club (US-based, so one letter L in ‘traveler’ before you get picky). As the name implies, TCC members all have claimed to have visited at least 100 counties worldwide, in most cases many more. Naturally, it was always going to be unlikely that all members would be present at any point in time or they would not be world-travellers, but about twenty-five did make it from all parts of the UK together with a couple from the Czech Republic, perhaps because attending the Prague meeting would not involve travelling.
Our hosts, a gregarious couple of Canadian London residents (resident if the sense that they come back to their flat in London to occasionally change the flag hanging from the balcony before heading off to all points west (or east) again.
As you might now have guessed, Venice tops their lengthy list of best cities in the world in the view of our hosts; hence, the Venetian flag.
And so, as we enjoyed an exotic range of wines from the Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and various countries we never knew even produced wine, we indulged in conversations about Andorra to Zanzibar and all point in between, without fear of social embarrassment, because these twenty-five people had between them covered almost every country in the world in their lifetimes, including the latest one: South Sudan.
And they were not all gnarled septuagenarians like us either; our Czech friends, probably in the 40s, were up there with the rest of us, despite having two children under five (OK, and a Filipino maid and understanding parents) but on their last trip to Hong Kong, Philippines, Brunei and more, they dragged the nippers with them, so they too probably already qualify as TCC members.
The only downside was that the more you talked to these people, the more you realised there exist places you did not even know existed, never mind had never been to. The world is like one of those mountains you climb where the peak always seems to be over the next ridge, until you get to it. After all, South Sudan did not even exist when we had our last meeting, and I read that there is now a brand-new island (Quake Island) which has suddenly appeared off the Pakistani coast after a recent minor earthquake. I must book up soon. Actually, a better plan is to try and predict which country will become off limits next, due to political upheavals, and get there before the barrier comes down.