Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus (A GeoEx eBook)

Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus

An Unexpected Adventure

mailing list. The response was extremely generous and encouraging, with more than 70 people sharing their own reflections, artistic creations, travel memories, and survival strategies. As the weeks went by and the planet settled more deeply into lockdown, I wrote a second essay, and then a third, and we published these on the GeoEx blog. I continued to share my thoughts and then, on April 23, I wrote about a very-close-to-home excursion to view blossoming cherry trees in my local park, which had unexpectedly transported me in mind to a very similar scene a year earlier in Kyoto, Japan. The enthusiastic response to these pieces encouraged me to keep sharing my reflections and, as restrictions eased, to undertake and write about some day-trip adventures around the Bay Area. Over the months, these columns came to organically assume a rhythm of their own, and they became a treasured part of my sheltering-in-place routine. At a time when communication seemed more precious than ever, they also became a lifeline to the GeoEx community of travelers and to other readers who were finding the column through social media posts or friends’ recommendations. And so the contents of this book grew naturally, organically, without any overall plan, throughout the course of the year. Eventually they blossomed into the collection you are now reading, 16 pieces in all, nine essays on the effect of the pandemic on the travel impulse and the travel industry, and seven accounts of adventures close to home (including one on the Karakoram Highway of memory).

pneumonia cases that had appeared in Wuhan. One week later, the first death from the virus was reported by Chinese media. From there, events accelerated. On Jan. 13, the first case outside of China was confirmed in Thailand. Over the next week, cases were reported in Japan, South Korea, and the United States. In February, the first deaths outside China were recorded. By March 7, COVID-19 cases had been reported in more than 90 countries, more than 100,000 people had been infected, and the death toll had reached nearly 3,500. On March 11, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Two days later, President Trump declared a national emergency. On March 16, the seven San Francisco Bay Area counties, where I live, announced an immediate lockdown on all but essential activities. In ten weeks, the world had turned upside-down. Contemplating this stunning reversal and its almost incomprehensible implications, I did what I have always done when I can’t make sense of things: I wrote in my journal. What happens to my beloved travel when travel is suddenly impossible? What does it mean? How can I make sense of this? That’s when the seed for this book was planted. I ended up writing an impassioned essay called “Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus.” Initially, this was a very personal attempt to make sense of something that was striking at the very heart of my life, of my religion. But after I finished the piece, I thought it might be worth sharing with others. I showed the essay to my colleagues at Geographic Expeditions, where I have been editing the Wanderlust blog for more than a decade, and asked if they thought it would be appropriate to publish on the blog. They all enthusiastically said yes. I reworked it as a personal letter addressed to the community of GeoEx travelers, and we published it on March 18. At the same time, we emailed a note about this letter to GeoEx’s

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