Is your passport ready? Lately, I’ve thought much about where I have already been and more about where I would like to go next. I have taken a hard look at my soon-to-expire passport. What kind of life will my future passport lead? I have ten ideas, or so.
I am an obsessive collector. At ten, I started collecting postage stamps, fascinated by the colorful, miniature designs and illustrations. By twelve, I was also collecting stickers; Hello Kitty, Miffy, scratch ‘n’ sniff, sparkly, and those satisfyingly tactile, puffy ones.
When I moved to NYC in my early 20s, I began to collect matchbooks, which held the same fascination as those long-ago stamps. I marveled at the tiny advertisements for the restaurants they represented. I collected the annual NYC Zagat dining guides and enthusiastically ticked off the places where I had eaten. I gained weight.
A decade later, I moved to Japan, where I started to collect meishi, (business cards). The intricate kanji, katakana, and hiragana strokes were, in themselves, individual works of art. Typography that complimented the Japanese design aesthetic.
Over subsequent years of travel, I found more to collect; such as shells, ceramics, and Lonely Planet guidebooks, from the countries that we visited. Now, these collections transport me to different periods of my life and act as visual reminders of fabulous holidays.
The Passport: the ultimate collection
The one collection to which I never gave much thought, has been sitting in a drawer, untouched, unused, and unloved, for the past ten months. My passport. A collection of ink on paper, a sometimes round, rectangular, or oval mark, that designates a country ‘visited’.
Last week, I dug up my neglected passport, as we are planning a trip for the holidays. The travel industry lovingly calls it ‘Festive Season’. I’ll bet I’m not the only one who needs a season to be festive.
My passport is about to expire. I am weirdly emotional about giving up this little blue booklet that has given me such joy over the past decade. Ten years—the life of a passport.
Quotes on paper
I have carried this living, breathing, essential document through airports around the world, largely unaware of its weight in my hand. Had I really considered the access and power it provides? As I look more closely, each page holds much interest beyond the dried ink—beyond the colorful stamps.
Thirteen quotes from past presidents, poets, activists, and writers, line the top of each spread. One quote, by prominent scholar and author, Anna Julia Cooper, seemed especially fitting. “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.” As I write, the United States is on the cusp of a new presidency, and still deep in the throes of a pandemic.
Patriotic scenes and American icons live behind the mess of overlapping stamps. The Statue of Liberty, a bald eagle, and Mount Rushmore, as examples. American landscapes are reproduced in the backgrounds; cacti of the southwest, wide, open plains of the midwest, and tropical palms of the Hawaiian islands.
My travel history
What will be a surprise to nobody who has read up to this point, is that I have saved all of my old passports. I have saved my husband’s old passports, as well as my kid’s old passports (both the US and UK versions). Something about these documents, the ones that literally enable us to ‘pass’ through the ‘ports’ of the world, seem too valuable to casually discard. They unlock history—our travel history, so to speak.
No doubt, the passport system will one day be completely automated. There may be no physical record in which to refer. The stamp will be retired in the name of technology. I’ll miss those stamps and the little blue booklet. I’ll miss certain rituals of the process. I won’t miss the lines or the intimidating passport control workers.
Passport tales: India
The passport that I am about to give up has had a life of its own. I opened up to a page, at random.
The full-page visa that allowed me entry to India in 2011 stared up at me, and stories from that trip started to materialize in my mind. I remembered being ‘encouraged’ to ride a camel to our lakeside dinner near Amanbaugh, the resort where we stayed just outside of Ranthambore National Park. Afterward, I said, ‘I will never ride a camel again, not ever. Not even for a free trip anywhere in the world. Never’. I still haven’t. And I won’t.
Later that week, I was verbally assaulted and nearly arrested after taking a photo of a monkey on a leash. Sweat dripped from my forehead as I tried to prove to the monkey’s owner that I had deleted the image from my camera, as promised. Note to self: always ask permission when photographing people, or tethered primates, especially people with tethered primates.
Passport Tales: Portugal
I flipped ahead a few pages to the stamp marked ‘Portugal’, where our VRBO’s pool turned a putrid, neon, green over the course of the week. Ear infections all around! Obrigado, Portugal!
En route to a Moorish castle later that week, we headed down one of the many death-defyingly steep, narrow, roads that we had come to anticipate in hilly Sintra. Suddenly, a light on the dashboard angrily glared and flashed hot red type. Not fluent in Portuguese, I googled the phrase, assuming that it was something benign, like an overdue oil change.
“Atenção! Falha de freio!” translated to: “Warning! Brake failure!” Was this a joke? Were we being punked in Portugal? I froze in panic, closed my eyes, and prayed to the Portuguese auto gods. As is evidently clear, we lived to tell the tale. What might be less clear, is that to this day, Portugal remains one of our favorite holidays. Oftentimes, the craziest experiences make for the best stories.
Passport Tales: Africa
Turning a few more pages, I found the ‘Botswana’ stamp, and I immediately remembered the cheetah we spotted on our first game drive, just 60 seconds after leaving the lodge. I remembered falling in love with our all-knowing guide, Foster, whose soothing and calming manner made our trip even more extraordinary. I thought back to the safari nighttime chorus of sounds, and how I never wanted to fall asleep for fear of missing it.
Glimpses of other past travel resurfaced. A levitating man in magically realistic Cartagena.The Christmas market in blizzardy Budapest. The harrowing pre-dawn horseback ride in Argentina, when I thought my daughter would file for emancipation papers upon returning home.
I thought of those trips that reminded me of my friendships and relationships. We celebrated my husband’s 40th birthday in Punta Mita, Mexico, gathered six families for an ex-pat reunion in Cortona, Italy, and took a couples getaway to St Barth’s, in the Caribbean. Stories are unlocked, and retold, through the stamps.
Buckets and lists
As a travel writer, this year has presented some clear challenges. I have tried to find creative ways to bridge this less-traveled gap in time. I have dreamt up future travels. I have kept a ‘Travel Lust’ list on my phone—an ongoing and hopefully never-ending inventory of places to see, stay and go, one day.
Where did I most want to go, I thought? I referenced my trusty list—compiled from random sources, over years of reading and research. From Instagram posts and conversations overheard at restaurants. From Travel + Leisure, Condé Nast, and Afar magazines. From the currently-on-hiatus ‘Travel’ section of the Sunday New York Times. (Hear my cry, Mr. Sulzberger, please bring it back.) Gold lists, Hot Lists, bucket lists, and luxury travel blogs.
In no particular order, here are my current top ten:
Katmai National Park, Alaska
Single Thread Farm, Healdsburg, California
Six Senses Zighy Bay, Oman
The Faroe Islands
Lofoten Islands, Norway
Taylor River Lodge, Crested Butte, Colorado
The Uyuni Salt Flats, Bolivia
Amanzoe, Greece
Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile
Snowdonia, North Wales
Dolomites, Italy
Antarctica
For anyone counting, that was twelve. I’m not bad at math, I just couldn’t stop. I have more but am holding back in case I need more material for my next post.
New beginnings
Starting a new passport now might be a good omen. Another way to start fresh, wipe the slate clean, and (literally) fill up a blank canvas. What do the next ten years, the life of my next passport, have in store?
Find your passport. Give it some love, even if you aren’t yet ready to plan a trip. Be content with a trip through your stamps, for now. There are good stories in there, awful stories, and hilarious ones, too. Our passports hold so much more than the faded impressions we have amassed over the years. What kind of life has your passport led so far? Where will it take you next?
Imagine it. I know I am.
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