You know how it is, you get a bunch of blokes together and in no time they're comparing. Like that scene in Jaws - the main characters are reminiscing late one evening on the boat about close calls and they start to show off their scars. (It ends with Richard Dreyfuss baring his chest to prove his is the most impressive wound. The other two search for scar tissue to no avail and look questioningly. "Mary Lou", intones Dreyfuss, "she broke my heart". :-)
On our trip it's scrapes:- "Wait 'til I tell you what happened me at (insert far flung location - the more remote the better)". I realised I would never hold a candle to my fellow travellers, especially with Ben. My helicopter rescue on the Inca trail, kerosene pancakes on Kilimanjaro or leopard footprints at our camp on the Zambezi are nothing. Instead I hear about:
- deportation from South Africa (wrong comments on certain regime attitudes)
- truck breakdown in the middle of the desert (when an essential spare part turned out to be the wrong one) resulting in scavenging for water after a lengthy trek
- truck impounded at the Russian border (on the first exploratory trip overland to Russia and Mongolia) resulting in having to negotiate, through mime, train tickets at midnight
- powerboat breakdown resulting in having to stay as the first 'whiteys' in a remote New Guinea village for a week
(The most interesting stories, naturally, are unsuitable for an open blog but let the imagination take flight . . . )
Oh yes, this is the spirit of adventure. To boldly go where no one has gone before, as Trekkies might say.
And then Ben casually mentions that a good section of our Bhutan trip has never been done before - WE are the explorers.
Bring it on.
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