By Lee Siew Hua, Straits Times
Active travel immerses me in a landscape or culture sublimely, whether I am kayaking near Vietnamese karst pinnacles or admiring the resilience of rural Japanese isolated by massive snow.
Kayaking immerses visitors in a landscape of limestone cliffs and secret lagoons in Lan Ha Bay. — ST PHOTO: LEE SIEW HUA/Straits Times
I embark on five adventures in Asia that vary by terrain and intensity, rolling out the trips over four months from mid-February.
While I have tried kayaking and ascended Mount Kinabalu in my younger days, I trek on snowshoes and climb the Via Ferrata rockface trail for the first time. These trips collectively shrink my comfort zone and make me sweat.
I had wondered if I will endure snow-trekking for six days in Nagano, which was being overwhelmed by record snowfall. And will I squelch my lifetime anxiety about heights on the Via Ferrata trail atop Kinabalu?
A couple of times, my inner journalist sternly intones: You know you cannot go home without a story.
Since my fitness is moderate, I step up training in and outside the gym, beginning in January. I decide on four to five training sessions each week – pilates for my core muscles, weight training and whole-body aerobics workouts. Towards the end, I sign up for high-intensity boxing lessons.
These bouts of exercise are stimulating and fun, but I do not quite relish my short season of walks up and down 21-storey flats ahead of Kinabalu.
Every good trip carries an epiphany or two. I discover that active travel fuses the ethereal and energetic in one intoxicating moment. We look at the planet afresh when we step on a mountain, traverse a luminous snowscape and encounter forgiving Filipino islanders who lived with a terrifying Japanese war straggler for 30 years.
Read the full article HERE.
