ASIAN Geographic - Issue 2 2010

I dette nummeret

The first border I remember ever crossing was the one that helped me face my fears. It was the first time I had to consciously lunge head first from about a metre high, and just before hitting the ground cracking a skull or breaking a neck, I had to roll on one shoulder with my head slightly cocked to one side. It’s called a forward roll in martial arts. Since then, I’ve been crossing borders out of curiosity (to my parents’ chagrin) and the intense enthusiasm to learn and see new things. The first step going over the edge of fear 22 years ago (with a 2nd Dan black belt to date) has brought me to 124 cities in 36 countries so far. One of those cities I had the privilege to visit was Yerevan (Armenia). I was first privvy to the fact that something was amidst in this new land when I innocently blurted out, surrounded by my new Armenian friends, why we had to fly from Singapore to London to Moscow to finally land in Yerevan two whole days later. Surely, they knew how much faster it would be to fly via Turkey and then straight across the border to Yerevan. No? No. When I got no response from the Armenians, even after taking out my proud new map with carefully calculated dotted lines of faster alternative routes to their biblical city, I decided there were deeper emotions to understand before I pursued the topic. … Four days into Armenia, ...