For any of you who’ve traveled to countries a little further afield than your regular Spain, France etc I’m sure you’ll be familiar with the “so where have you been?” conversation… or more to the point “well I’ve been here and I’m going to…” On my recent trip to Southeast Asia “travel competing” was the main topic of conversation!
While eating our dinner in a lovely restaurant in Kathmandu an Australian couple who’d been sitting at another table in the restaurant called by our table on their way out to tell us they’d just been to base camp. We had had no contact with this couple – not a smile or a hello but they wanted to stop and chat.. fine! Once they asked where we were from they then launched into telling us about their trip and where else they’d been and where they were going.. pretty much one way conversation.. it was quite bizarre!
The funniest incident occurred while standing in line at the security check in the tiny airport coming back from Chitwan. A couple of men (late 50’s / early 60’s at a guess) from San Francisco started taking to us, well more talking at us, and felt the need to share where they had just been (same place as us although our resort was more elephant friendly so clearly better!) and showing us photos! One of the two was particularly excited to tell us about this “Hillmans list 100 Places To See Before You Die”. We’d never heard of it so he proceeded to call it up on his phone and go through the list shouting “done it”, “done it”, “gonna do it” – it was hysterical. He had no interest where we’d been just kept going through the list and telling us about all the places he’d been and that he was on track to get through the list… the only thing that stopped him was getting to the top of the queue and having to put his phone away for the security check. We had a good giggle about it later and of course as soon as we had WiFi I googled the list.. those of you who know me know I love ticking stuff off a list and so we calculated our Hillman Number.
We had great fun with our Bhutan tour group as most of us had just been or where going to somewhere else that someone on this trip had just been to or where about to go to!! This meant we could share tips and get first hand recommendations which were insightful and invaluable. Being a very well travelled bunch we decided one night after dinner to see who had been to the most places on the Hillman list. Suzanne and I already knew our Hillman numbers (which were in the high 50’s) but we were among some very seasoned travelers! Our new friend Shanshan won the crown having visited I think 60 or over. It was a bit nerdy but with a few glasses of wine and beer in the mix it was great fun. Listing the countries visited put in a few hours traveling on the bus too. I’m happy to report that I was right up there with the best of them coming in at 51 at the time of the Bhutan trip and soon to be 52 by the time I’m home from this adventure!!
On the Sri Lanka trip we had a lot of very well traveled folks too, all very modest about their traveling expeditions I must say. We had some more fun with Hillmans list:
odohertyelaine 