So this post is basically how 2020 is a scam and how it should just get over. But I doubt that would change much so might as well just go with it. But it did ruin two important things for me and i'm sure this year has messed up many of your plans too.
MotoGP @ Italy
I planned on traveling to Mugello, Italy to watch the MotoGP race there. Just so that I could catch Valentino Rossi one more time live in action before he retired from MotoGP or racing for Yamaha or both.
I planned this with two other motorhead friends who I enjoy taking road trips with once in a while. We're all motorcyclists but also love cars so we decided to do a roadtrip around Italy.
It's fun to travel by road in Europe or basically any country which has beautiful landscapes and luckily EU has a lot of that!
I've been dying to revisit Italy after my last trip as I had a great time overall. I thoroughly enjoyed the food, made some new friends and wanted to go back. I wanted to check out some motoring museums as well of certain supercar and motorcycle brands.
Suffice to say, we cancelled in early Feb expecting COVID-19 to blow up and it did. Now it looks like Rossi is likely to retire from GP racing. It would've been great to see him once more at a GP track racing against his top rivals.
Having grown up watching MotoGP it sucks to miss out on a good season of motorcycle racing on TV and the chance to catch it live at one of the most popular race tracks in the world.
Kashmir and Ladakh, India
I also had a major roadtrip expedition in the works to some deeper parts of the Himalaya this year and had been working towards this for a while. Especially given the complexities of traveling in this region.
But with Chinese incursion of Indian territory coupled, our soldiers dying, political issues and ofcourse we cannot forget COVID-19- its unlikely I can pull it off this year.
Not sure even if next year will be feasible given how politically sensitive this area is and getting permissions to some key areas here that I wanted to visit this time was difficult enough when things were peaceful few years ago-so one can just forget about them now.
It's been a few years since I've visited the mountains and was planning a good month or so in this part of India. It would've been a great opportunity to explore places I've missed out the last few times I was in Kashmir and Ladakh.
I also had another trip around my birthday to South East Asia which I feel is pointless to talk about now. So I won't! 馃槀
So pretty much all travel plans are off now for the remainder of this year and focus remains on work. Honestly, the year turned out pretty shitty in so many ways that travel is now the least of my concerns.
But since this topic is close to my heart I thought I would write about it today after trying not to think about it over the last couple of months.
What about you?