Discover the Ways
Bikepacking Europe. Walking the Sahara. Kayaking to Alaska. Motorcycling the Silk Road. There are almost as many ways to travel the world as there are destinations to explore. And with each way comes an opportunity to view the world through a different lens.
Where To?
When we began our bucket list over 23 years ago, we were airline employees with ready access to flights bound for destinations all over the world. Back then, we hopped about the globe sampling the beautifully diverse array of cities, cultures, and landscapes that define our planet. It was an exciting and fast-paced period in our travel history. A period where we made good use of our flight benefits to fill our free time with as much travel as possible.
In those days, our travel plans focused on a simple question - Where to? It’s a question that consumed our thoughts as we filled an ever-growing bucket list with weekend jaunts to places like Rio, Amsterdam and Bermuda and weeks-long trips to destinations ranging from Nepal to New Zealand.
Sheri and I reflect on those early days with great nostalgia. In many ways, ‘Where to?’ defined our 20’s and rooted our wanderlust. I know we’re not alone. For many who share our passion, it’s the fundamental question. The question that evokes wanderlust, inspires big ideas, and puts plans into motion.
Don’t Forget the How
Since swapping airline careers for the African bush back in 2005, we’ve explored the world by many means. And if we’ve learned anything from the diverse modes we’ve employed, it’s that the ‘how’ is as important as the ‘where’ when planning a trip.
These days, we look at it this way: If the ‘where’ defines what we’ll see on a trip, then the ‘how’ provides the lens through which we’ll see it.
To illustrate, let me provide a simple example:
Let’s say two travelers plan a trip from Seattle to Alaska via the Inside Passage. Traveler A books a 7-night cruise, while Traveler B plans to paddle 3-months in a sea kayak. Two very different ways to explore the same place.
Both trips depart Seattle, follow similar routes, make stops in Victoria, Ketchikan, and Juneau, and offer abundant wildlife viewing opportunities. Both the cruise ship and kayak are well suited to making the trip and meeting each traveler’s unique objectives. But importantly, the differences in their chosen modes guarantee different perspectives.
If you consider three of the cruise ships strengths – comfort, speed, and convenience vs. defining aspects of a kayak – slow, physically demanding, and exposed to the elements, then it’s easy to see how divergent their perspectives will be.
Say, for example, there’s a deserted beach – littered with deadwood and backed by mossy green rainforest. Viewed from the cruise ship, it’s a picture-perfect photo opp. From the kayak, it’s a potential campsite for the night.
And that car-sized brown bear strolling the beach? From the cruise ship, it’s a majestic wildlife sighting, a symbol of wild Alaska, and a highlight of the trip. From the kayak, it’s both an epic sighting and a risk to be managed. A cueto make camp elsewhere and a visceral reminder of the tense moments felt the last time a bear wandered into camp.
This difference in perspective influences how each traveler interprets their environment and what they take from the experience. A filter through which the journey is viewed. Their relationship with the environment. How they mentally process the sights they’ll see and the experiences they’ll have.
Cruising provides Traveler A with a comfortable and relaxed means of absorbing Alaska’s wild beauty. An opportunity to learn from expert guides about its flora and fauna. A chance to observe wildlife, take a day hike on a glacier, spend an afternoon kayaking a mirror-like bay, and tour Juneau. Experiences made possible in 7-nights by the ships ability to cover distances quickly. Comfortably steaming along day and night, immersed in the trips rich itinerary, Traveler A’s sense of distance and connection with the environment is muted.
Traveling by kayak strips away these advantages. In exchange, the kayak presents challenge and immersion. For Traveler A, part of the allure is the ease of booking the trip. For Traveler B, it’s the extensive planning required – skills development, procurement of specialized equipment, building physical strength and stamina. Requisites for a safe and enjoyable journey.
In a kayak, every kilometer of the 1,600 km journey is felt. Each kilometer demands physical effort. Seemingly endless hours of paddling through whatever conditions nature serves up. With no place to escape Alaska’s wet and cold, Traveler B’s environmental immersion is total.
Conditions that go unnoticed aboard the ship are of acute importance in a kayak. Currents, tides, and winds are things to be monitored and categorized as friend or foe. Ever-present factors that affect comfort, govern paddling effort, and weigh heavily on daily decisions. Decisions like when and where to make and break camp, what to wear, and how many days it will take to reach a resupply point.
These differences matter. They shape memories and decide which bits to punctuate. While Traveler A’s most vivid memories might focus on a day spent hiking a neon blue ice cave or an afternoon photographing bears catching salmon, Traveler B’s focus will likely include the time she misread the tides and her camp flooded during the night. Or when a pod of orcas joined alongside her kayak, calves in tow – an intimate, up close, encounter where she could smell their breath, hear their breathing, almost touch their skin. An encounter that buoyed her spirits during 14-hours of tough paddling through wind and chop.
Find Your Way
The example above is meant to underscore a simple point: How we choose to explore influences how we see the world. It’s a lesson Sheri and I learn again and again as we re-explore destinations by new means. Our recent bikepacking trip through France’s Loire Valley is a case-in-point. Our bike trip was our second visit to the Loire Valley, where we swapped our Land Cruiser for two Surly ECR’s. On bikes, our trip was a relaxing ramble along quiet canals and through leafy forests, picturesque vineyards, stately chateaux’s, and quaint villages. A trip far removed from the quick-moving point-to-point car trip we took years before.
Seeing the world by different means – to explore a place, for example, by living there or traveling by bike, camel, tractor, pogo stick or whatever else you dream up - presents opportunities to see it in your own unique way. It’s an opportunity to challenge yourself, develop new skills, try something new, deviate from the beaten path, interject fun into the getting there, and move from “Are we there yet?” to “The journey is the destination.”
These days, our planning is as much about the ‘how’ as the ‘where.’ Each new mode is something of a rebirth. It’s a highly coveted opportunity to feel like travel newbies. To regain that feeling of nervous excitement that accompanies setting off on a new adventure. It’s an opportunity to see the world through fresh eyes - even when returning to a place we’ve explored before.
In the example above, we are both travelers A and B. Back in 2015, Sheri and I rode motorcycles from California to the Arctic Ocean. After more than two months of hard riding in wind, rain, and cold, and countless nights camped amongst caribou, wolves, moose, and bears, we boarded a multi-day car ferry from Hanes, Alaska to Prince Rupert, BC. After riding through Wild Alaska, cruising the Inside Passage proved a comfortable and relaxed way to soak up Alaska’s coastal wilderness. For much of our cruise it was cold and raining. Onboard the ship, I recall sitting in a comfortable chair, warm coffee in hand, transfixed by the show unfolding outside. It was a vivid show slowly unveiled as our boat quietly motored through tranquil waters thick with wildlife and flanked by verdant green rainforests and snowy mountains.
Our cruise down the Inside Passage was a journey within our motorcycle journey. It was a lasting memory and highlight of our ride to Alaska that now fuels our intense desire, years in the making, to return by kayak. We were Traveler A and now look forward to becoming Traveler B. An aspiration, high on Our Bucket List, that presents a challenging opportunity to immerse ourselves in one of the world’s great wildernesses, and an opportunity to see the Inside Passage again – for the first time.
Interested in reading more about the different ways we explore? Click the links below for more: