INVEST IN YOURSELF BY TRAVELING

So what's happening with COP26 in Glasgow?  Here is one accomplishment:  40 countries pledged to abandon coal power.  About time, right?  Well, no.  First of all, this is less than half of the represented countries.  Also, missing are China, the USA, India and Australia.  I'm afraid this will be the story of this gathering.  You can blame Joe Manchin and the butterfly he killed.

Travel+Leisure's November issues in the past featured Trips of a Lifetime.  Editor Jacqui Gifford indicated they switched this year to Invest in Travel, Invest in You. 

I interpreted that focus to mean travel is not an unnecessary luxury.  Every trip you take will last you a lifetime.  Throughout your life, these experiences will accumulate in  your memory.

Many of you invest in education.  A degree does a lot for job security and life enjoyment.  Some invest in stocks.  If you do well, you thus have more money for your  spending pleasure and retirement.

For example, just a tea/coffee mug can trigger memories.  I took an All Nippon Air flight from Honolulu to Tokyo four years ago.  Got to know the stewardesses well and I was given a hand-crafted mug.  Every time I use it, I recall that journey.

Similarly, every trip you take is not a once in a lifetime journey somewhere.  You form memories.  They enrich your everyday life forever.  Say you are watching Roman Holiday (Rotten Tomatoes 97/93) with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.  If you've been to Rome, you say to yourself, I've been there.  From the Colosseum to tossing three coins in Trevi Fountain, you better appreciate the film and your previous exposure to that city.  Do you recall why three coins?  Doing so means you'll return, find love and marry.  Ever wonder what happens to the money?  They are collected and provided to a local charity, Caritas Roma, which helps support Rome's poor and homeless communities.  How much?  Around $1.7 million annually.

That's it.  I wish to say no more today.  However, I'll end with the African safari in Kenya of Jacqui Gifford, with her husband and son (the following comes from her editorial):

• Tickets on Qatar Airways in Qsuite Business-class.  She didn't say what this cost the family.  Then a transfer to Nairobi.  
• QSuite is supposedly the top business class of all.
• Amazingly enough, in mid-summer the cost was a roundtrip cost of $1623 from just about any city in the USA to Doha.
• However I just checked, and the price started at $9,000, then went up from there.
• On their African safari they stayed at:
• Hemingways ($1460/night).
• Finch Hatton's ($1640/night).
• Cottar's 1920s Camp ($1930/night).
• Amgama Mara ($6950 for minimum of three nights).
• Segera ($3800/night).
• No mention of how many nights in each camp.
• As you can see from that photo of the family, they also went on another trip went to the Taj Mahal.

Yes, I've been on an African safari, to Rome a couple of times and Doha, where I experienced Qatar Airways.  Here are a few postings of my stay in Qatar:

• *QATAR
• THE WONDER OF QATAR
• QATAR CAN LEAD THE WORLD TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY FO...
• FINAL THOUGHTS FROM DOHA
• DOHA TO LONDON: MY MOST WONDERFUL AIRPORT DEPARTU...

The above led to one of my articles for the Huffington Post:  Can Qatar Lead the World Toward Sustainability?

About that safari I took, here are some postings from 2010 in reverse chronological order:

• NAIROBI TO DOHA
• OUT OF AFRICA
• SOME FINAL THOUGHTS AND PHOTOS FROM AFRICA
• THE MASAI
• THE FAIRMONT MARA SAFARI CLUB
• THE FAIRMONT MOUNT KENYA SAFARI CLUB

• *KENYA
• PHOTO SAFARI IN TANZANIA
• TANZANIA TO KENYA
• NGORONGORO TO THE SERENGETI VIA OLDUVAI GORGE
• OLDUVAI GORGE
• *NAIROBI TO MOUNT KILIMANJARO
• ZURICH TO NAIROBI

I've generally avoided Africa on my trips.  My wife and I had a bizarre stop in Cairo, later covered in one of my books, then posted  (this is in reverse chronological order, so you should read the bottom one first, and work up):

• 
  
  
• *THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD: Cairo (E)
• THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD: Cairo (D)
• THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD: Cairo (C)
• THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD: Cairo (B)
• THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD: Cairo (A)

Hint:  Cairo was in this Best Place list, but only because it was one of the worst places ever.  Worth the experience, but something I would rather have avoided.  Just by chance I happen to see this journal article from David Dolnick and his girlfriend, who visited Cairo a decade after us, so you might want to read this, for we have similar views about this city.  I ended Part E with:

It is thus safe to say that we can eliminate Cairo as the best place to live.

The Dow Jones rose 204, closing at 36,328, yet another all-time record.  

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