The Exotic Appeal

One of my favorite sections in the New York Times is, without a doubt, the travel section.  Sometimes I even wish that I could receive the travel section only and disavow the rest.  Whenever I open up that newspaper on the weekends, which has been occurring even more sporadically of late, I am always curious as to where the travel section will bring me.  This past weekend, at least I think it was this past weekend, brought me to the Karakoram Highway between China and Pakistan.  While most of us, upon reading the word highway, will think of a nicely paved 4 lane road, this "highway" as they call it is probably named more for the dizzying heights it reaches than anything else.  Fraught with landslides and occasional washouts, it is more of a dirt road than anything else.  The picture that drew me instantly in was one of stark beauty and covered the front page of the Travel section.  It was a picture of a pristine lake with a small town on its far shore.  Behind the lake and town, which occupied less than the bottom third of the picture, were a few sand dunes which quickly rose to bleak dark mountains.  The lighting in the picture highlighted the sand dunes and the town with clouds casting dark shadows on the mountains behind.  It was tantalizing, mesmerizing, and begged me to hop on a plane and make the trek to that picture.  I had to read the article, which was good, but the pictures are what drew me in.  In other pictures in the article, you could see that behind the bleak mountains were snow topped peaks.  It is a scene that I rarely get to see, and when I do, I want to go exploring.  Despite the dangers in that part of the world, I would love to travel there, explore the land, the people, the culture, and absorb it all.  But if I ever do get there, it won't be for a while.  But its nice to see those pictures, dream of the journey, and picture myself one day driving that rutted road (or more likely having someone else drive me).  Oh well, for now its back to reality.