I made up this game about 2 years ago but yet to have complete a full run! Let’s try again this year:
Round the World Passage
January 1, 2011 – December 31, 2011
This idea is a combination of the 7 continents / Olympic challenges and Round the World Tickets (real tickets you can purchase to travel round the world).
Read a book (or more if you’d like to) that is located in certain city / country or by an author of that city / country. You decide which city / country you’d like to ‘visit’ however the following conditions (similar to the RTW tickets) apply:
1. Maximum Mileage: 50,000 miles* (Unlimited stops – see how generous I am) with a minimum of 20,000 miles (5 stops)
2. The start and end of the journey have to be located in the same country
3. Choose a direction you’d like to take (East or West only) mainly when jumping continents, you can go north & south when you’re within a continent
4. One crossing each of the Atlantic and Pacific must be included in the itinerary (but only one crossing allowed over each)
5. Do not to backtrack within a continent – the idea is to keep that forward motion
*To help you in calculating your mileage, the below site may be useful:
http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm
Sydney, AU: Wild Lavender by Belinda Alexandra
Saigon, Vietnam: Beyond Illusions: A Novel by Thu Huong Duong
Japan: The Elephant Vanishes: Stories by Haruki Murakami
China: Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
Russia: Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Germany: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
Italy: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Egypt: Palace Walk (Cairo Trilogy #1) by Naguib Mahfouz
South Africa: Burger’s Daughter by Nadine Gordimer
Brazil: The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho
Mexico: The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel
Oregon: A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, #1) by Ursula Le Guin
Texas: The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert
Lousiana: Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke
Canada: No Man’s River by Farley Mowat
Australia: ?