One Place I Will Never Visit

Most people can come up with a list of the places they would like to visit, but what about the Places You Never Want To Go?

     I am fairly adventurous when it comes to travel and I am generally ready for any kind of journey, especially to out-of-the-way places off the beaten path.  

     But there are a few places I have no desire to go.  For example, everybody is different, but obviously nobody in their right mind would want to visit Syria these days, or Iraq, or Pakistan for that matter.  Way too dangerous and hostile, even to their own citizens.  

     Actually, let me modify that statement.  I would love to go to Syria to see the country - someday - but certainly not right now.  

      
     So what about places you would never want to go, even if you had the time and money?  My list is pretty short, but there are some places I just don't want to go.  

     First on my list is Mount Everest.  To some people, it may sound like an exciting challenge to climb the world's tallest mountain.  But I have no interest in going there.  Sure, I would like to see it, to lay eyes on it, but I just really don't want to go there.  

     Even before the latest news about the horrible earthquakes in Nepal that ended up killing many people on Everest, the place had no appeal to me. 

     Why?  Because you have fairly good odds of dying there even without an earthquake.  At one point, one out of every four climbers who attempted to summit Everest died.  And even if you don't die, you can easily lose fingers and feet to frostbite, and beyond that, you probably won't make it to the top.  Very few people do.  (I wanted to post some archive pictures of frozen climbers on Everest, but they were just far too gruesome)
     And you can't breathe half the time, the air at the top will not sustain human life, and you can spend months just sitting around in the cold base camp trying to acclimate your body to the conditions in order to climb further.  

     That all adds up to a big "No Thanks" for going to Mt Everest. 

     What about some other spots?  Well, I am also not interested in going to Antarctica.  In fact, if you are not a scientist or geologist or some such thing, why would you want to go there?  Frankly, no good reason comes to mind. 

     I've already been sort of close (the southern tip of South America, at Tierra del Fuego) and saw Penguins and Ice.  That's good enough for me.  I don't see myself ever going to Antarctica.

     Oh, and one more.  I don't want to go to Siberia.  I mean as a traveler.  The Russians sent a lot of people there against their will, and the purpose was isolation and punishment.  I don't want to go someplace like that, unless maybe I'm passing through on a train, and even that is not terribly appealing. 

You want to come to America and go ... where?

     So I'm talking to my nephew in the UK recently on our trip and he said he was looking forward to someday going to the United States for an extended tour.  He has been a couple times, but pretty quick visits. 
     So we talked about some of the great spots that America has to offer.  And the conversation went something like this:

Me: "The Grand Canyon is pretty awesome."
Him:  "And someday I'd like to see Detroit."
Me (laughing): "Ha, Ha, ... I thought you said Detroit"
Him: "I did"
Me (incredulous):  "Hunh?  You want to go to Detroit?  Like Detroit, Michigan?"
Him: "Yeah, it sounds like a really interesting place..."
Me: "Wow, ... I can't think of anyone who wants to go to Detroit!  It's kind of a decaying post-apocalyptic vacated city in a irreversible permanent downhill slide."  
Him (excitedly): "yeah that sounds so cool!"

     Not sure I track with this travel ambition.  I certainly would not want to be walking around there at night.  
     But he wants to see how the city is re-inventing itself.  There are things like urban gardens, cornfields where there used to be large apartment buildings.  They have cleared out entire city blocks and huge neighborhoods, and they have been replaced with vegetables and wheat fields. 

     It is a compelling point of view.  But I'm still not sure I want to go see it. 
     

If you're making a list of do's and don'ts ... 

     Ultimately for me, I think it's best to focus on the positive.  Even though I might mention a few spots I don't want to visit, there are a whole lot more places on a list of things I want to see.