Paper Trail
RTW #1 One World Paper Ticket
Above is my paper ticket for my 1st round the world (RTW) trip that I took from Oct 2003 - April 2004.
I booked the ticket with the OneWorld airline group. It was a frequent flyer redemption for business class.
The limitation I recall was 50,000 total flight miles, but unlimited segments!
At the time, OneWorld did not have the ability to make the entire trip electronic, so I had to carry around a thick wad of paper tickets.
The time would have been longer, but I flew back for my sister's wedding in May 2004. I had a return ticket to London
and continuing segments throughout Europe for the next several months -- but I was VERY VERY tired, mentally, so I decided
not to go and just forfeit the rest of the RTW ticket. Instead, I started writing a book while my brain rested. Shortly before I returned,
I mentally could not stand to see almost anything new or "too interesting," because literally, I could not "absorb it."
It would have been pointless to continue traveling as I would have just been "walking around brain dead."
RTW #2
My second RTW trip was in 2010. That one I did by buying one way tickets as I went. A little over 4 months.
Avianca - Spanair - Binter Canarias - Easyjet - Jetairfly - Air Arabia - Iran Air - Qatar Airways - Etihad
Malaysia Airlines - Air Asia - Japan Airlines - Go! Airlines - Alaska Airlines - Continental Airlines - COPA
A mix of low cost and legacy carriers.
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No camera / photographs
Would you believe it if I told you I went on a world trip and didn't take a camera with me of any kind?
After thousands of photographs, I just got tired of taking and organizing them. I also wondered what it
would be like to travel as in days past, when cameras did not exist, would the experience be different?
I have never been a good artist, so I didn't paint any landscapes either as some travelers in the
past did.
Taking photographs can have the effect of removing ourselves from the experience itself. They are a way of
sacrificing the present for the future, rather than being in the moment. I would be relying on my mind
and not an external device to record the memory. I also realized that sometimes I ended up remembering
photographs I took, rather than the experiences in themselves. I didn't like that feeling.
I also found that sometimes, I seldom looked at some of my old photographs. As for showing photographs to other people,
that can get boring, especially in a day and age where we are saturated with media. Who was I traveling for,
other people, or myself? I still bought and sent postcards, and sometimes a few souvenirs.
It was one of the best choices I made for that trip.