Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus (A GeoEx eBook)

Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus

March 18, 2020

WANDERLUST IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

I f this were a normal year, I would be in Japan right now leading a group of American travelers, exclaiming at the first cherry blossoms, savoring Kyoto kaiseki cuisine, and communing with the monks on sacred Mount Koya. But this is decidedly not a normal year, and instead, I am sheltering in my suburban San Francisco study, surrounded by books instead of blossoms and maps instead of monks. In ten short weeks, our shared planetary journey—our ordinary-extraordinary globe-girdling human adventure—has been disrupted with mind-staggering speed and scale. In the introduction to my book of travel stories, The Way of Wanderlust , I wrote, “Travel is my religion.” It really is. I have been a travel writer and editor—and more recently, also a trip leader and lecturer—all my professional life. My entire career has been founded on and fueled by travel. Over four decades of world-wandering, I have learned that travel teaches us to appreciate the global mosaic of landscape, creation, custom, and belief, and to cherish each and every distinctive piece; travel leads us to approach unfamiliar cultures and peoples with curiosity and respect, and to realize that virtually all people everywhere, whatever their differences in

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