Adventures with a bit more mileage
There I was, halfway up a muddy hill in the jungles of northern Thailand. Twenty-something backpackers were darting past me left and right. Meanwhile I stood there, catching my breath and pretending to admire the view. To be fair, the view was gorgeous – but I couldn’t help thinking it would’ve been nice if someone had told me about the humidity, the heat, the slippery paths and the ridiculously steep climbs. Would I have skipped this trip to the (ethical, of course…) elephant sanctuary if I’d known? Absolutely not – I really wanted to go. But I would definitely not have done it in sandals and I might have brought hiking poles – or a small oxygen tank.
Now before you get the wrong idea, I’m not completely out of shape. I can walk quite a few miles at a steady pace. I’m a decent swimmer (except for that one incident in the River Kwai). I fit into one airline seat and I haven’t been airlifted off a mountain yet. But still – I’m 57, and the last time I weighed in under 70 kilograms was sometime back in the 20th century.
Fast forward six months since we got back from Thailand, and we’ve already booked our next adventure. We’re going to Indonesia for a month, hopping between Sumatra, Java and Bali. Flights and hotels? Sorted. But now comes the big question: what are we actually going to do there? Every time I find something exciting, I end up frantically googling things like “How hard is it to hike up …..?” or “How fit do I have to be to …?” And of course, everything I find is written by twenty-something backpackers who think an “easy walk” is scaling a volcano before breakfast.
So where are the stories from people like me? People who still love a good adventure but have a little more mileage on the clock and could stand to lose a few pounds? People who still love a good challenge, just with better beds and less sleeping on night buses? I couldn’t find them. So I figured, why not write them myself?
So here’s some honest stories, a few practical tips and real answers to the question “That looks amazing – I wonder if I can still do it?”