Stuart Wilson has hit a button by asking ask to name five of the songs that have influenced us. Memory Lane, silly nostalgia, I'm not sure. However what it has done is make me think about the question he is asking behind the actual words and turn it round.
What I want to ask is: Is there anything you have always wanted to do that you would still like to do but any number of reasons might just prevent you from doing it? Perhaps you still want to do it and how will you set about it?
My own is to go to Tannu Tuva, failing that to Mongolia as close to Tuva as possible in a region where there are Tuvans living. For many years I have wanted to do it but the closest I have been is Kyrgyzstan for a quite short contract and, frustratingly, no opportunity to even try to get to nearby Tuva. For me it started when the Nobel physics laureate Richard Feynman died in 1988 and I read about his fascination with Tuva. He never got there although his widow received an official invitation just about a month after he died. I was captivated by Tuvan throat singing as he was and still am. Stuart's question reminded me of Frank Zappa who recorded Tuva throat singers along with Ireland's Chieftains and the bluesman Johnny Guitar Watson in 1993 and have anticipated the album 'Dance Me This' ever since seeing the session on TV. Its release has been promised regularly by his estate since Zappa died at the end of 1993.
If I ever go to Tuva, I fully intend to have that album on my MP3 or whatever I am carrying for that trip. I keep on hoping but am not sure I shall make 20 years more...
So, tell us your 'want to do'. Please let me repeat both parts of the question:
Is there anything you have always wanted to do that you would still like to do but any number of reasons might just prevent you from doing it? Perhaps you still want to do it and how will you set about it?
Here are already so many very good ideas that I can only hope for a circumnavigation arround the globe with a handy sized Swan36. Work, damn work...
Unfortunately in reality: after capitalism has itself pushed to its limits and can not generate anymore sustainable capital, I now wish that not every off-shore business of my beloved bank will not end up in visits on my account by EZB and other post communists.
Play piano like Keith Jarrett, Michel Petrucciani, Stan Tracey,Jessica Williams,Dave Brubeck, Monty Alexander,Count Basie, Duke Ellington,David Newton,Bill Evans, or even Russ Conway or Mrs Mills, but I never will 'cos I'm too darn lazy!
Hi Anne, I always wanted to swim with dolphins too, not in an aquarium/zoo type place but in the ocean. I achieved my dream a couple of years ago in New Zealand at Kaikoura on South Island. Groups of about 20 go out to sea at dawn about a couple of miles in a large launch in wet-suits with flippers and goggles. The skipper finds a large pod of dolphins then heads out in front of their course and dumps the 20 swimmers in the water in their path. The dolphins dive and gently swim around you - you don't touch, just swim with them as nature intended. Wonderful. You don't have to be a good swimmer, the wet-suits provide buoyancy and the flippers give propulsion. Afterwards a lovely hot shower followed by a high cholesterol, fat boy breakfast back at Kaikoura.
For some time I wanted to hike the Annapurna circuit in Nepal with includes one of the highest footpaths in the world Thorung La at 5400 m, along with my nephew in 2008 I started to do the walk. I managed to catch on the plane over one of the worst colds ever, which was bad enough. I then pulled something in my back picking up my socks one morning of all things. Just under half way round having gained time we rested for a few days before the climb to the pass. I could walk just but any jolt was agony, then it started to snow so I decided to get the first plane of the season back to Kathmandu. My nephew carried on with the guide and porter (I know it sounds extravagant but it's essential to give people employment). I did make the right decision, it unseasonally snowed quite hard and people were being advised not to attempt Thorung La, as our guide a sherpa was confident they could do it (his next trip was Everest) they completed the walk together. I regret absolutly not completing it. Sadly I don't think I can ever afford it again but who knows what the future holds. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world and I would love to return. They were in the process of building a road to Manang at the time only accessable by footpaths, by now I expect it is complete and tourists will be able to reach this remote place in 4x4's, thats progress I suppose but It will never be the same.
For me as a very keen UK scuba diver advanced diver and 2star instructor my dream was to dive BikiniAtol and the US Saratoga.i have dived all over the world from depths of 10 to 60 metres,always loved the south east coast having. Had a dive boat at New Haven but the Saratoga has always had a pull on me alas my buddies did the trip at a time when we were buying in France and funny since that purchase my money seems to disappear very quickly on building and household materials,still you never know there is always the Euro lottory
My list is made every new years day, I have to write 10 things I want do in my life! Many move from year to year, but some are ticked off along the way. I know it is hackneyed and boring but I would love to swim with dolphins in warm water, thank you Brian for making me thing about it, it needs doing before the arthritis gets much worse I guess. Any one been there done that can give me a steer in the right direction???
http://phoenixasso.com/?page_id=574 - the Phoenix association is mainly a dog rescue place, but they also take in horses when necessary. I know about them because of our search for another dog.
Véro - I have been to Kargil and also Leh, which is the 'capital' of Ladkh I think. Mind you, UNICEF had us on tight schedules and we had Pakistani security people accompanying us which meant that apart from going where we were allowed... Not close enough to Tuva though, bah!
I always wanted my own pony or later horse, but my father had a boat and holidays were spent on that and then he died and we had no money.
Now we have the land for the horse and my husband would like a dressage horse, but because we have a private pension that depends on the state of the stock market and when we moved to France we lost a huge anount of money because the housing market dropped along with the exchange rate, the horse is still a dream and we are getting older!
When I was 11 or 12 some missionaries who had been at my school in the 40s came back to show slides of a trip they had been on to central Asia (Bokhara, Samarkand etc).
At about the same time I was reading Robert Byron's 'Road to Oxiana' and 'First Russia, then Tibet' and Peter Fleming's 'News from Tartary' which obviously worked away in my mind - so when I was about 14, at the beginning of lower VIth when they start banging on about what you will do in later life, I decided I would ride from the Pacific coast of China through Mongolia, Ladakh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean.
I persuaded my best friend that this was a good idea and we very sensibly did a bit of forward planning: 2 years later she went to Oxford to read Chinese, I went to Cambridge and read Arabic and Persian.
Fast forward 35 years and although I have been to all but two of those countries, I still haven't done the trip as planned. Local wars and the impossibility of getting certain visas made the journey impracticable at different times. Dependent children and now parents also make it a little more complicated.
But the desire to go is still there, so I now think I shall have to go as an old woman and possibly get lifts on lorries as I probably shan't be up to riding...
I also had a thing about going from continent to continent under my own steam - I wanted to swim the Hellespont but chickened out (I was there in January & February & it was freezing) and I got 1/2 way across the Suez Canal but an Egyptian army jeep came along & the soldiers in it said they would have to shoot me if I carried on - I was 19 and thought they really might so I swam back and got a lecture. I still regret not putting them to the test though.
