Original article at www.vagabondjourney.com
I’ve been to Kinmen before. In 2012 I visited on a trip to the south of China. It was one of the more amazing places I’ve visited on this 15+ year, 50+ country journey. Though my stay was a short one — less than a week — the impression the place left was indelible. I made one of those little promises that a traveler makes to himself when blowing through completely enthralling places: I will return.
I will return and walk these little islands of Taiwan off the coast of mainland China.
There is no better way to truly experience and understand a place than to walk through it. It’s the most direct way to learn about a place and to observe the gradual transitions. Walking offers the ability to stop anywhere you please, whenever you wish to; it allows you to go and check out little roadside intrigues or even to step off the path altogether if that’s what you wish to do.
Walking allows you to meet people, sit and rest, enjoy the view, love the journey; it gives you power over your place and time — the two dimensions of travel — as you decide exactly where you go, for how long, when, and how fast. It also gives you access places that you would otherwise just fly right through via any other means of travel. And access is primarily what travel is about.
I call this complete path travel. This is where you control all stages of your journey by taken control of your own transportation. This is opposed to point-to-point travel, where you board a bus/ train/ plane and are whisked away from one set of geographic coordinates to another, without the ability to fully observe or access the massive swaths of the planet that lie in between.
Copyright © 2014 by Vagabond Journey Travel. This article was written by Wade Shepard and originally published at www.vagabondjourney.com
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