We may not be on the road at the moment, living as we do in the great comforts of our San Francisco apartment. There are times, though, when we take a bit of time away from our busy schedules to poor over maps and travel guides, dreaming of the next trip. In anticipation of that happening, here’s a little write-up on eight places we’re currently drooling over. If you know of places that are equally awesome, do by all means let us know!

1) Romania

Allow me to casually drop one name on you: Transylvania. If you’re anything like us, that ought to evoke images of fortified castles sitting among dark and foreboding mountains; backwards villages where garlic-and-pitchfork toting locals are going about their days, always with one eye on the local lord and his late-night habits. Located in the Carpathian mountain range, this province was recently described to me as ‘what the Alps were like 100 years ago’. Apart from Transylvania, Romania also has a ton of interesting culture and sights, and it’s generally a lot cheaper than the rest of Europe. Spring in Bucharest, anyone?

Travel itch factor: 7 pants out of 10.

2) Cadiz, Spain

Researchers recently found the lost city of Atlantis here. Heard that before? Well this time it may actually be true. Using ground radar and various other technological magic, a team from the University of Hartford, Connecticut, say that they’ve found the remains of a concentric cityscape, buried underneath a sun-baked mudflat. There is various evidence that support the idea that this could be the city described by Plato 2,600 years ago. I don’t know about you, but I think it would be totally great to go there and… put a spade in the ground and see what comes up? Kick around the mudflat and dream a little bit? I don’t know about you, but I’d totally love getting my inner Indiana Jones on.

Travel itch factor: 9 pants out of 10.

3) Serbia

For many people, the very word ‘Serbia’ has taken on a pretty negative sound, one that evokes memories of wars and troubles dating back to the painful break-up of Yugoslavia in the early nineties. Things are far better there now though. The nation has opened up a fair bit to the EU and the wider world around them. This is probably the perfect time to visit – get in before everyone else does (I remain undeterred by rumors of hordes of Slovenian tourists frequenting the joint). Another reason to go there would be to discover another branch of the seatofourpants family tree – apparently wifey is a quarter Serb. I can’t help but wonder what adventures a quest to rediscover long lost family would lead us to.

Serbia gets 6 pants out of 10, with potential for an upgrade once we’ve done our homework.

4) The Aral Sea, Uzbekistan

Oh boy. A visit to this ecological disaster zone would definitely have to be filed under ‘adventure travel’ rather than sunbathing or relaxing. The lake is located in Qaraqalpakistan (one of the coolest place names in the universe), a remote region of Uzbekistan (which is a remote region of Central Asia), and it would be a bit of a hike to get to its shores. Or rather, once you reach the towns around the lake shore, there are still 8 hours of dried up sea bed to traverse before you’re actually at the lake. This because extremely shoddy irrigation work by the Soviet Union during the last century, irrigation that diverted all the water from the rivers that fed the Aral. The result? One of the world’s worst eco disasters. Personally, I want to go there to take pictures of the many ships that now sit uselessly on the sea floor, but this could probably end up being one of those destinations where the journey there is worth at least as much as the ultimate destination. Oh and the country lies on the Silk Route. Oh and Samarkand, one of the three corners of the world is there. Count me in.

Travel itch factor: 8 pants out of 10.

(Photo: Steve Evans)

5) Mexico City, Mexico

Americans (that’d be us) tend to regard the great nation south of the border with more than a bit of suspicion. The motives are no doubt colored by violent movies and an almost exclusively negative news flow (and perhaps by the odd drunken afternoon raid into the lugubrious streets of Tijuana). As someone who has managed to (occasionally) find interesting sides to Tijuana, I can’t wait to see what Mexico City has to offer. No matter what method you use to count, it is one of the absolutely biggest cities on earth, populated by far more than 20 million people. I’d love to explore what this mega city has to offer in terms of culture, food and sights – the DF has a few of those, being built upon the ruins of at least a couple of ancient empires as well as having a half millennium of colonial history to fall back on.

Travel itch factor: I’ll give it 7 pants out of 10.

6) Mustang, Nepal

We’ve stood on the very threshold of this ancient Tibetan city state once before (where the above picture was taken), and I guess we won’t be completely satisfied until we’ve cleared that Kagbeni checkpoint and ventured into the kingdom itself. At this point in time, Mustang is probably more Tibet than Tibet itself, and a road that actually would allow jeeps to enter have yet to be completed. Extreme remoteness combined with fees and the legal obligation to bring a liaison officer along keeps mass tourism at bay. And if Mustang seems to be too exploited there’s also the similarly alluring Dolpo region to explore to the west. A surrounding flock of 8000m peaks, all-world scenery and dahl bhat tarkari makes this one of my personal favorite targets.

Mustang gets 9 pants out of 10.

7) Ethiopia, Africa

Ethiopia. I can almost hear the guffaw and incredulous head-shakes over this one. Why would anyone want to go to that strife-torn, landlocked slab of hunger catastrophe waiting to happen? True, things may not be completely stable in some parts of this country, but a healthy dose of caution has to be one of the tools in any traveler’s toolbox. Lots of cons, so what about the pros? Well let’s see. The oldest human-like creatures ever found were discovered in these highlands, making it the cradle of humanity. In other words, it has a 3 million year history of human habitation. It has villages and towns that have very little connection to the outside world – a fellow traveler recently told me about a town in a far-flung corner where the men venture outside the walls of their city to feed a pack of hyenas every night. Remarkable? Yes even more so when you learn that they do it by approaching the murderous beasts with raw meat hanging from their mouths. The hyenas seem to go along with this, and for the most part they don’t eat the people feeding them. Yeah, I’d go there. No I wouldn’t participate in the feeding. I’m sure there’s a sign that says ‘don’t feed the animals’ somewhere. The cautious traveler knows that it’s best to heed all signs.

Travel itch factor: A steady 7 out of 10.

Salar de Uyni, Bolivia

Perhaps a romp upon the world’s largest salt flat doesn’t sound exciting or fun to you, but that could be because you haven’t seen the pictures. You may have heard of the ice hotel, well, here they have a hotel made out of salt – not because for gimmicky tourism, but because of a total lack of other building materials. Throw in a helping of sublime photo ops and yes, I can see myself traveling to this place. If this doesn’t sound convincing, perhaps coupling this with a visit to the nearby Atacama desert will help, because who wouldn’t want to check out a place where it has rained only once since 1570 (in 1971 to be exact).

This camera-friendly destination gets a solid 8 out of 10 on the seatofourpants travel itch scale (one extra point for the hundreds of nearby destinations we’re also drooling over).

(Photo: NASA)

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It’s not that I wasn’t curious about other places. I have memories as a child of standing in my parents garage, staring at a world map that hung there. Splayed across the pastel-colored continents were little red pins, marking my father’s travels. What would it be like to be in those far off places, I wondered, but just as quickly I would turn and run to our backyard to play. Why would I need to travel when all the joy and happiness I knew was found right there at home?

It’s that sort of mentality, combined with a fair deal of shyness, that kept me close to home for most of my life. If you’ve been following this blog, you know that I have a very different philosophy about travel today. So what gives? What happened between the Saturday morning, cartoon missing tantrums and taking a year off to travel the world?

A rash decision made my final year of college.

Checking out what I looked like as a study abroad student 11 years ago

Driven by a foolish desire to impress a worldly boy, I signed up to study abroad for a year. Sadly, the boy remained unimpressed but it was a decision that changed my life.

As a lifelong lover of old masters (that’s art-speak for guys that painted a long, long time ago), I chose to study in the ground zero of Renaissance Art: Florence, Italy. I shared an apartment with seven – that’s right – seven other girls, just five minutes from the Duomo, Florence’s central cathedral. The location was unreal, the roommates were amazing and the wine flowed like $2 magnum bottles should. Wine aside (sort of), the experience was a once in a lifetime slap in the face. Finally I understood what all the travel hype was about.

I came home alive, buzzing with the love of travel, thirsty for more. It took that initial step out the door – to Italy, in my case – to see what traveling is about. It’s not just a pin on a wall map (though you can be sure I’m going to have one of those in my future garage). It’s a glimpse of what else is out there: the amazing people, the awful people, the delicious food, the crazy there’s-no-way food stuffs, the foreign culture that feels just like home and the culture that opens your eyes.

Sharing the study abroad experience with me were seven amazing women – who ten years after our tear-filled good-byes, I was able to meet up with again recently in New York. Many of them are married. Some have children. All of them are just as great as I remembered them. Ladies, if it wasn’t for our time together 11 years ago, I wouldn’t have had the courage to see the world.

Thank you.

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Shrouded in mist we celebrated summiting with a photo session and lunch.

Lunch was followed by a short tour of the summit’s two craters. Though we’d opted out, many of the westerners who’d been there had written their names in rock on the crater floor. I’m usually up for a challenge, but I guess it just didn’t feel right. I don’t know – something about being near a volcano crater is a bit unnerving. Being next to it, yes fine, but in the crater? Not my thing.

I write this post because we just received word that Gunung Sinabung, the (theoretically docile and extinct) volcano is now erupting. Local residents are being evacuated, though it’s still too early to tell what is going on.

Photo: Jakarta post: Antara/Irsan Mulyadi

For now, our hearts go out to the people affected by the eruption. May life return to normal as soon as possible.

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Yikes.

Such utter lack of attention to our beloved website begs the question: why have I abandoned writing for this project? My simple answer is also a confession. Not posting anything is my one and only form of protest. We’re not traveling anymore and god dammit I’m bummed about it. There, I said it. Not writing was really all I had to use as a protest. I’m an adult so tantrums were out. I’m a relatively responsible person, so running back into the world with our little re-entry savings is out of the question, too. All that was left to do is go on with life. But I could stop writing for our travel blog! Yes, that’s the ticket. I’ll stop writing and that will make me feel better.

My return to these pages shows you how great a solution that was. The reality is this: I miss travel blogging. I miss the community of fellow travel bloggers. I miss our readers and their comments. Writing for this site was an important part of our life for over a year so why would stopping it suddenly make me feel better? It wouldn’t – it doesn’t – plain as that.

Sweating it out in Jaipur, India

No, I’m no longer struggling in an Indian internet café in 110 degree heat with 1,000% humidity, being swarmed by mosquitoes to get a few line post up. We’re not dealing with that caliber of travel, but the adventure hasn’t necessarily ended. We’re currently living in a trailer in a retirement-age mobile home park (seen in the photo above) an hour outside Yosemite National Park. We have most of next month booked for road trips. I’m working on an independent website project (more to come on that later…) No – I’d say the adventure is far from over.

Consider this post my cure. I’ve stopped my silly no-writing-protest.  In its place are plans for future blog posts here at SeatOfOurPants, updates on our twitter account and the occasional tantrum that (fortunately for you all) only Martin will have to deal with.

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If buying two Iphones isn’t a sign of us being back in the 21^st century, I don’t know what is. The other day, Jaime flew up to San Francisco for a bit of business and came back with not one, but two of these bad boys. Needless to say we’ve had our noses pointed into our phones for a couple of days, and I’m just barely beginning to feel that the app feeding frenzy is over. Are 30 apps enough? Am I missing that one vital app that could really change our lives?

Having problems like these is another sign that we’re no longer on the road. This will not remain the case for much longer though – in a couple of days we’ll be making a move again. This time, we’ll exchange sunny Southern California for Mariposa: an old gold mining town nested in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

So, stay tuned for some mountain adventures: hikes, climbs and possibly a Mariposa beer review.

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First of all, Bacon thinks we’re doing a lousy job at blogging these days. I concur. We’ve been busy. Busy celebrating our re-entry to the US, busy overcoming the hangovers from celebrating our re-entry into the US, dealing with immigration paperwork, smogging the car, watching True Blood on HBO, picking up work, doing laundry, joining a gym, chewing gum, making DMV appointments and so on. You know – all that stuff people have to do after a thirteen month trip around the world.

At this point, Bacon says “I want posts, not excuses!”. He also snarls like only a 5 ounce cloth pig with no mouth can snarl. I guess we have to bow to his wishes. To tell the truth, we’ve missed our blogging habits a lot – not only the practice of daily writing, but also the interaction with you guys, our readers.

Expect the blog posts to resume at regular intervals from now on. We have lots of stuff to tell you about, and we have a lot of fun adventures to look forward to in the near future.

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We’ve covered sixteen countries in thirteen months. Not a huge count, but nothing to be ashamed of either considering two are India and Indonesia. Those that have traveled there know just how long it takes to get from point to point. We’ve climbed a 6,000 meter peak (well Martin did, I got sick), developed and maintained a website that attracts thousands of readers every month, overcome a fear of flying (again, that one’s Martin’s), spotted rhinos and orangutangs in the wild, survived India without a single bout of Delhi belly, and helped each other through a thousand other things while still being in love and best friends.

Was it worth leaving the comforts of home? You bet your ass it was. One year, one month and one day later I feel like the luckiest girl alive.

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The border between Turkey and Georgia was a pretty interesting place in itself. We’ve rarely seen a slacker post. The border crossing area itself consists of a large courtyard, littered with small offices. To get through, you ping and pong back and forth between four or five sleepy officials, one more indifferent than the other. After a while, we emerged with the right stamps in our passports, chartered a rip-off priced minibus (I always get fleeced on the first transport in any new country) and arrived in Akhaltsikhe, a small, cute Georgian border town.

Our first impression: this is a very different place from Turkey. The way people dress, talk and behave are far differently. It’s also intensely beautiful. I mean get-outta-here-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding beautiful.

Unfortunately, our time here is limited – we have airline tickets and hotels booked, so an extended stay is out of the question. The alluring towers and mountains of the Svaneti region beckoned, but visiting that part of the country would mean that we’d have to spend most of our travel time on transports. Instead, we’ve opted to take a decadent holiday by the Black Sea. Things could be worse.

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Not worrying about reservations has worked out quite well for us. Every country we’ve been to has a similar tourist industry set-up. There are always at least a dozen (often more) touts waiting for tourists, like ourselves, at the bus or train stations. They were more than happy to drive us to a hotel that had rooms within our price range. That is pretty standard practice in SE Asia and India. We’d become used to such treatment, often cringing when we arrived at our destination. It’s always such a tout-driven circus.

We’re in eastern Turkey now and have left the circus behind. Tourism is handled decidedly different here. Rather than only acting on their own behalf, small guesthouses (the type we like to stay in) work on a referral basis. The proprietor of our guesthouse in Urfa referred us to our place in Hasankeyf, who then referred us to our place in Tatvan. It gives the hotel hunt a personal touch and ended up leading us to an incredibly opportunity: a night spent in a traditional Kurdish village outside Tatvan.

Mr. Mehmet, seen in the photo above, is a veteran tour guide who opens his home to travelers. His village, which is an hour drive from Tatvan, is nestled into the base of Nemrut, the region’s extinct volcano. We unfortunately never caught the name of the place, but it’s home to roughly 200 villagers, so it’s pretty sizable. No one spoke a lick of English but were quick to dispense a wave and a smile, making us feel warmly welcomed.

We arrived in late morning and had a day to kill. There was no internet. There was no television. Just acres of farmland, sheep and (randomly) a plethora of turtles. The day’s plan was to trek to the top of Nemrut, but the wind was howling. Walking at a 45 degree angle is tough on the ankles, so we spent the day walking around the hills above the village (as Martin wrote about here).

Making cheese

The evening was spent with Camile, Mehmet’s wife, who showed us how she makes cheese from sheep’s milk. Fresh sheep-milk cheese, d-lish! We ate dinner with the family, not understanding a word of what was spoken but enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. Bedtime was promptly after dinner, followed by a bright and early 5:30am wake-up when the women began banging around in the kitchen. This is life in the Turkish countryside and for a day we were apart of it.

We’ve stayed in nearly all types of accommodation on this trip. For the most part they were found without making reservations because we prefer to make decisions on the spot. Our home-stay at Mr. Mehmet’s was by far the coolest. Rather than seeing what the inside of a hotel room looks like (we’re very used to seeing that), we got to see how a traditional Kurdish family lives. It wasn’t on my to-do list for this trip, but it’s on there now and *bam* checked off, just like that!

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We were on the bus to Hasankeyf the next afternoon. It sounded exactly like the kind of place that backpackers like ourselves dream of; the perfect place to revive the traveling spirit after a year on the road.

What we found was beyond our expectations. From the 5th century onward, the people of Hasankeyf have been carving their homes out of the mountain that overlooks the Tigris river. Thirty years ago the Turkish government forced these people from these homes. Whatever their reasoning for this ousting, a second more terrible fate is in store for them – they will be under water in roughly five years.

We took a long hike along a canyon that was lined with old cave homes. And yes, we did have the place to ourselves. It was a magical moment. I’ve seen a number of other sites like this in the world. People are industrious and will make use of what resources available. If the mountain is soft, why not carve a home out of it? What I haven’t seen is such prolific use of the mountain. There are thousands of these abandoned cave-homes carved into the mountain.

I want more people to see this place. The more people that know about it, the better it’s chances are. It really should be saved. Hasankeyf deserves a long future above water.

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