32 Ways to Travel in COVID-19 Times

Asleep on a Greyhound bus when I was twelve, I awoke to see skyscrapers across Ohio cornfields. Slept too long, I thought. Now I was arriving in New York City. My first experience traveling alone, all 100 miles from my home, and excited I was. Columbus’s Leveque Tower looks a bit like the Empire State Building, but it is more than 500 miles away from NYC.

Since that scary day I have traveled to more than eighty countries, driven in more than two dozen and consider traveling as much a part of my life as work, learning, or anything else I enjoy. Willie Nelson’s On the Road Again is my mantra. Three weeks off the road and I’m ready to grab my bag and go.

Now we’re all on a different path.

Today’s path carries fewer planes, trains, buses, or even private cars in our immediate future. COVID-19 took care of that. Now we all stay inside, breathing the same air as our beloved (or not) relatives and pets. We see identical walls, ceiling, and floors every day. A big trip takes us from pillows to refrigerator, closet to bathroom, or front window to the back one. Every day and night.

We want to stop counting flowers on our ancient wallpaper, the pizza boxes stacked by the overflowing trash, or the unused cds. We’re weary of another Zoom meeting with folk we didn’t like much when we saw them face to face. Now we have to view them in their ugly, disorganized rooms, with screaming children and barking dogs beside them.

We want to travel. But we know we can’t. Or we shouldn’t if we don’t want a fine from the lockdown authorities and worse yet, COVID-19 grabs us when we weren’t washing our hands.

What do we do?

Here are some possibilities.

1. Scan historical travel photographs. Gobe Magazine is a starter but there’s National Geographic and David Attenborough’s virtual tours to name just a few.

2. Open a language app. Renew a language you once studied or start a new one, so you’ll be ready for your next physical trip.

3. Grab an electronic book from your local library. Let Melville take you not to Moby Dick but to live with the Typee nation. Cross from Missouri to California with Jane Kirkpatrick’s pioneer women. Drive camels across Australia’s outback with Robyn Davidson.

4. Acquaint yourself with older travel shows such as Ian Wright and his Globe Trekker colleagues filmed more than a dozen years ago. More fun if it is someplace you’ve been.

5. Hang on while James Bond drives Monaco’s curves or King of the Mountains characters race Mulholland Drive. Gorillas in the Mist will transport you to Rwanda and Eat, Pray, Love will whisk you to four countries without you updating your passport.

6. Check Skyscanner or another travel site, comparing airfare costs from your location to a dream destination.

7. Stage a simulation flight experience with the Australian Russell family did. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/apr/16/coronavirus-vacation-australian-family-recreate-15-hour-holiday-flight-in-living-room?fbclid=IwAR2HHCDXhedM65eRxSfqa6n8zKtleMfyzeE8qd_nBCrP8S5QofP6bmPa-as

8. Ride the Orient Express between London and Istanbul. Choose your favorite cocktail, what you’ll wear and where you’ll go when you reach your destination. All online.

9. You know YouTube. Type “travel” into the search box and away you go. No end to the islands, rivers, and resorts to visit while never leaving your chair.

10. Want a really easy trip? Hop aboard Norway’s Slow TV and travel from Oslo to Bergen. No worries about having the right currency or if you can find your hotel. Gentle train wheel clicks through the fjords will lull you to dreamland.

11. Check hotel sites, developing a budget for your next stay. Check Maps to determine distances to the museum, gallery, or historic spot you want to explore.

12. Look around you. Choose five items you see, then try discovering where they were made. Start Googling, learning about those locations. You may end up in Dhaka, Bangkok, or Los Angeles.

13. Read about Isabella Bird or other historic women explorers. Track their routes on Google Maps.

14. List all you are grateful for about not traveling. Not having to listen to boring stories someone almost missing a plane, had a rude driver, or forgot to bring swim goggles tops my list.

15. Trace a trip using a historic world map site. Compare it with current routes — was that border there in 1378 or 1921?

16. Re-read your favorite travel book. Mine? Probably Paul Theroux’s Riding the Red Rooster: By Train Through China.

17. Pretend you must speak Italian in the kitchen, French in the bedroom, and Japanese in the living room. English only in the bathroom.

18. Live vicariously through travel blogs. NomadicMatt.com or Wanderlustandlipstick.com are only two of a zillion.

19. Binge watch in one day as many travel films as you can.

20. Challenge yourself to read a US Forest Service topographic map for hiking the Pacific Coast Trail.

21. Discover what 19th century Mary Seacole, 20th century Bessie Stringfield , and 21st century Jessica Nabongo have in common.

22. Update your luggage knowledge, specific for your needs whether it is a sturdy backpack or luxury roll along.

23. Download The Best American Travel Writing. 2018 is a good year but earlier ones are good, too.

24. Prepare and eat a dish from a country from where you have not yet traveled. Yes, you can Google the recipe.

25. Choose which route you would take in walking the historic Camino de Santiago. Calculate how many days it would take.

26. Learn the latest in motion sickness or other medicine to include with your travel kit.

27. Download the latest travel apps so they are ready when you are ready. Be sure to include language, currency, and conversion apps if you are traveling outside your country.

28. Write about a memory you have of a place where you traveled.

29. Make a list of the people, any time in history, with whom you’d like to travel, why and where you’d go.

30. Listen to travel sounds. https://www.soundsnap.com/tags/travel

31. Plan an urban backpack trip using only your legs to propel you to your location.

32. Write your own travel without traveling list.

Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, keep traveling. Yes, I’m planning my next trip.