I am just beginning to realise how close I am getting to going around the planet. A bit of a shock for someone who doesn't even like getting into cars unless it seems absolutely necessary.

Planes! Several planes - through a war zone!

Perhaps this is really the last fling, before settling down to going no further than I can walk...like a good peasant, and timeless human.
One last extravagant gesture. Of course, the average worker in the UK expects a couple of weeks every year in a sunny place nowadays...so I am actually the old stick-in -the mud. Yet I work with people who remember going to Greece in 1971 and not liking all that foreign language and changing of money. And I thought 1986 was a long time ago for travelling off the island.

But then again, when I went to The USA [between 1969 -71, and again, briefly, in 1986] I suddenly realised that being a big country, with travelling an essential part of the culture, and plenty of wealth, doesn't mean that people ever leave their own culture. So many Americans who don't even have a passport. Amazing.