01/03/09 GAME OVER... (at least on the oceans).

Where have everybody gone?
Sit on the sand I stare at the ocean, making little stones jumping on its Indian face... actually I am furiously lapidating it, because I know very well the answer to that question: boats are gone, the train of sailing globetrotters is already passed and it will not pass again till the next season.
I feel that unpleasant sensation you can experience when you know that everybody are to a beautiful party out of town, and you are here without a car.
Is there little to do by now: flying to Maldives (a mandatory stop for all the sailing boats crossing the indian ocean) is excluded. Expensive flights, no budget accommodation on land, and all the problems in meeting the owners of the boats (spread around the atolls and focused on enjoying the privacy of their yachts) make looking for a boat ride in Maldives an option not advisable. Moreover, even when I found a boat I would have jumped a peace of World big and inviting as the whole leg of a tasty roasted chicken: the Asia.
No way, instead I decided to turn this casuality into the realization of another trip that I had in mind: run along the silk and spicy routes throughout Asia, passing Nepal, India, Pakistan and Iran, to eventually reach the Mediterranean through Turkey. I will travel that places that recall oriental tales and dreams, lands which I expect as beautiful as the one thousands and one nights.
The first part of this trip will be especially a complete and unique discover: in between Thailand and India lay lands of which we don't even know the names: Myanmar, Bhutan, and all those territories broaden in the Gulf of Bengal. Many of these countries are not even officially recognized by the Line of Control, the international institution assigning the setting of national borders, and even the Cia World Factbook cannot deliver exact information about them. That are countries with pseudo independent governments linked somehow to India, forming that north-oriental peace of land sneaking from Bhutan to Bangladesh, Tibet, China and Myanmar: Mizoram, Tripura, Jharkhand, Sikkim, Meghalaya, are only some of the strange names echoing in that valleys.
If you feel like browsing around this peace of World still undefined and of which we do not have an univocal name I suggest to overfly the Gulf of Bengal with GoogleEarth, keeping along the Brahmaputra River: follow its costs from the Tibetan source all the way to the outlet in the indian ocean, and maybe you will feel one more time that warm sensation, followed by an excited shiver, acknowledging that there are still some places in the World where the borders are all to be set...