If you have been following my Ideas & Thoughts Blog (which is steadily rising from total obscurity these last couple of days), you must have already gotten the news: this proud Argentinian has a new goal.
The objective, thought no as ambituous as climbing Mt. Everest and hunting the Argentine presidency, is still pretty epic: I’ll visit 1000 different cities by December 31st, 2014.
Right now I’m a few cities shy of totallying 200, so that will leave me half of this year, and all of 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 to see the last 800+ cities. It will be pretty hard, but it will be exciting.
The reason behind this number is simple: it will be a fantastic goal to work for. It’s a challenging objective, and the kind that makes me excited and willing to give all my might and energy for. After all, what’s life without big objectives?
And anyway, I expected my city count to reach the four digits by 2015 at the latest – even before setting this up. I just rushed things a little bit.
Why Cities And Not Countries?
After all, my highly admired guru Chris Guillebeau visits every country, and it’s a reality that visiting every country in the world sounds (and is, I accept) more epic than visiting 1000 cities.
The truth is that visiting every country is not a priority for me right now. Despite I finally accepted that there’s no bad place to travel, I still believe that visiting twenty cities in Spain, Germany or Japan will be more interesting than visiting one in Chad, Suriname, Haiti and seventeen more countries that right now I still don’t find that seductive.
Also, visiting every country would also take me forever. I don’t have the money nor sleek schedule to accommodate dozens of Round the World trips as Chris and others do – and that’s not the way I would like to do it anyway. I like the more paused, sedentary way of traveling.
Once I go to Uzbekistan (as I eventually will, as part of my epic Silk Road Trip), for instance, I don’t want to stay just a couple of days in the capital Tashkent… I want to go to Samarland, visit the Fergana Valley and more. I rather see only Tashkent than nothing – but given the chance, I’ll go for more.
Not as much as visiting every country, 1000 cities will still be damn hard anyway. Traveling, especially when you move so much is exhausting – it kills me at least. After my well-documented tour through Russia, Ukraine and Romania I got to Greece more dead than alive. Thank god two sisters did everything to get me out of Zombieland and back to real life. Hence the long deadline.
As for the number 1000 – well, it’s pretty much self explanatory, isn’t it? There’s no real reason behind it beyond the coolness of the four figures themselves. It’s just more motivating to say 1000 than to say 500, 750 or something else. 1000 also is a real challenge – so far I don’t know (at least personally) not even one person who can pride him or herself of having visited 1000 different cities.
How to Do It
The trick is to visit many neighboring places. There’s always (at least in Europe and parts of Asia) cool towns and small cities around the big fish. Renting a car, hitchhiking and taking lots of trains make you do the job quite easily.
For the sake of my sanity and my enjoyment of every trip, I’ll give myself these long four and half years to do the job. I want to make this be natural – as if I could do it while continuing with my present travel rhythm. Right now, still far from the deadline, I think I’ll be able to achieve it without any freight.
The first destination, however, is quite clear. Soon after I settle in Copenhagen I plan to find a few buddies, rent a car and visit the whole country in one or two weeks. It’s really small and I bet I can get 20+ cities out of it at least. If you are around Denmark, let me know!
Photo credit: maryatexitzero
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