The best from myWanderlust this week

Where's the most exciting place you've spent your birthday?

4 mins

I’ll be watching the Aussies play cricket on my birthday this year. It’s become something of a tradition since I moved to the UK. If there’s an Ashes series on, my wife buys me a ticket for the Test closest to my birthday. Sadly, part of the tradition seems to be that the Aussies lose the self-same test and I end up miserable. My wife is English so I suspect that is all part of her plan.

I mention this because another July baby, one hmoat01, had set the myWanderlust forum alight with her post asking myWanderlusters where is the most amazing place they have spent their birthday. (I can attest it’s not lining up for a warm beer and a cold pie while your top order is being skittled by Jimmy Anderson.)

To get things started, hmoat01 unveils an exotic roll call of birthday destinations that reads like anyone else’s bucket list. Trishd spent her 40th birthday climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Markymark983 spent one flying over the Nazca Lines in Peru and Susiezoo is going to spend her next one at the Sydney Mardi Gras. Scheungy has turned her birthday into a celebration of the 22 hours she spent on one of them bringing her daughter into the world.

It’s certainly proving to be one of the more popular posts on myWanderlust. I suspect it has something to do with Steve48’s admission that he was almost called Valentine.  Have your say here.

Elsewhere on the Forum, Tia123 needs held with her dissertation on Switzerland as a tourist destination, bladelogan wants some tips on where to spend his three-week vacation in August, and jennidixon is after advice on watching turtles hatch in Sri Lanka. Help them out here.

Heids is just back from Chernobyl – seemingly without any extra limbs or glowing in the dark. Sharon Jenkins Carter has returned from horseriding in the Panamanian ‘Alps’ near Boquete. And Angela R has just cleared immigration after an extended jaunt along the west coast of California, Yosemite National Park and a San Fran city break. You’ll find top-notch, up-to-the-minute advice from them here. Make sure you check out wilwalkswales’ advice of wild camping on the Wales Coast Path and trishd’s tips after her visit to Campinas, Brazil.

There was another reason I mentioned the cricket at the top of this blog.  We ran a mini-travel writing competition over at Experiences last week on the theme of sport. The standard, as usual is high, and you can check them out here.

The theme was inspired – and I use that word deliberately – by a story I regaled my colleagues with about a game of street cricket I came upon in the dusty suburbs of Karachi. The kids playing tossed me the ball and after sending my first ball a mile down legside, I got my eye in and clean bowled the ‘batsman’ with my second.

I was tempted to continue bowling, but in a rare moment of wisdom, I walked off into the Karachi sunset, waving enigmatically, as the boys whispered among themselves that I must have been a professional. 

Somewhere in Karachi there’s a man, leaning against a counter in a juice bar, spinning a tale about the time he was clean bowled by Glenn McGrath.

Pretty much like I’m spinning a tale here.

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