When Trips Go Wrong

I share a lot of travel stories, and so I should make it known that behind the scenes of just about every trip I’ve taken lately is something that did not go at all according to plan.

My trip to Burundi was nearly derailed because back when I went, they required a negative covid test 48 hours before arrival… but the journey there is 36 hours, and when you add sleep time, I just had to take a chance flight to New York hoping the results came in while on the first leg of my flight.

I laid out an ambitious itinerary for my Ethiopia visit. Everything happened, except in the reverse order I planned. A death in one of the sites we planned to film meant we had to do everything backwards.

I’m also more conscious now of how much energy these trips take and realize that planning a buffer day to rest and feel alive again before diving in is a necessity.

One of the skills I value, not just out of travel but out of life, is adaptability. I’ve had a number of unexpected things happen in life that derailed expectations, and I wonder if that’s why I’m drawn to things like improv or even Chopped. Looking at a basket of weird ingredients and thinking, let’s see what we can make out of this resonates at some deep level.

These days, I go into trips realizing that every plan can go awry, but in spite of that, it’s still helpful to make the plans. Valuable. Make them down to every last detail, then hold them loosely. Somehow, that’s what works best.