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Hello from Beijing! We are polishing up a few details of the Great Wall portion of our Around the World in 2020: World Wonders journey. Over the course of two visits to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall earlier this week, we clocked more than 230 flights of stairs according to our phones. However, we did all that so our guests wouldn't have to!
We were scoping out the best terrain that provided the best views, along with the easiest shortcuts for our guests with creaky knees; we like to be able to customize the experience according to each of our guests' needs (and their knees' needs!)
We took every mode of transport available to test them out: the chair lift, the gondola, and even the toboggan ride, which was great fun–that was Michelle Obama's preferred method in 2014! [For some photos of our time at the Great Wall, please click here; you do not need a Facebook account to view the photos.]
You can read more about our Around the World journey in this email, along with some tips about photo editing apps, news about our other journeys, and insight as to the benefits of travel!
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In this issue:
- Scenes from Japan
- Around the World 2020 (and RTW Fact #1!)
- Galapagos Adventure 2020
- The Benefit of Travel: Self Awareness
- Heading to Ladakh!
- Snapseed, the BEST photo editing app out there
- Egypt photos & March 2020 sneak peak
- Explore your own backyard!
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Scenes from Japan
If you follow us on Facebook or Instagram you may have seen some of our photos from Japan last month. We are not currently planning any Japan tours because, quite honestly, there is SO much to see and do in Japan that we think our guests are better off planning their own adventures based on their interests—gardening, art, theater, music, religion, cinema, cuisine, or to see the sakura (cherry blossoms) or autumn colors are interests that immediately come to mind!
However, we are including Kyoto, Japan, a city of over 1600 Buddhist temples, on a yet-to-be-announced-but-we're-so-excited-we-can-hardly-stand-it itinerary.
For any of our guests looking to visit Tokyo or Japan, feel free to ask us for any tips and we'd more than happy to share! Japan might seem intimidating but it is actually very easy to navigate, from local subways and buses to cross-country bullet trains. Delicious food is never more than a few meters away, and the people are kind, gentle, and extremely helpful.
To see some highlights of our time in Japan, please visit our Facebook album here (you don't have to have a Facebook account to see them).
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Around the World in 2020: World Wonders Edition
 We've been looking forward to our 2020 Around the World journey since the minute the 2018 Around the World journey wrapped up in November last year. This trip is an opportunity to discover (or re-explore!) some of the world's most impressive, iconic sites.
From the Great Wall to Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal to Petra, the Pyramids to the Colosseum, and all the way over to Machu Picchu, explore with a tiny, engaged group (max of 12 guests) with all of the details taken care of for you. This is like a master class in Humanities: world history, comparative religion, architecture, cuisine... I can pretty much guarantee there won't be a single day on this trip when you don't say, "I learned something new today!"
I'm also happy to report that we've reached our minimum, so we're only accepting eight more people who are hungry to discover more about the planet they live on! See all the details at RetreaTours.com/RTW2020 (and remember that we can create alternative plans if you've already been to one of these sites and wish to see something new!)
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RTW Facts!
In the spirit of sharing our RTW ('Round The World) trip excitement, I want to something about one of our destinations in each newsletter until the journey.
During our stint in Rome, we'll actually take a brief trip to another country—Vatican City! And you know what... I'm just going to let this headline speak for itself: "Vatican City drinks more wine per person than anywhere else in the world." Click this link to learn more!
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 Galapagos Adventure, January 18–29, 2020
Next January, how about you skip the snow (or the snowbirds, for our Florida guests) and relax with us in the Galapagos! There are only a few spaces left (our absolute maximum is 14 guests), so take a hop over to the website and check it out!
This unique itinerary is a perfect blend of excursions and downtime on the islands. Snorkel with sea lions, stroll the beach with marine iguanas, and see those beautiful blue feet on the boobies!
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"New Imaginings": The Benefit of Travel
There are countless reasons to travel, ranging from the most basic human curiosity to a very specific goal (like, "finding the best chocolate gelato in the world.") I wanted to present one viewpoint today from our friends over at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. While this article is written from a Buddhist perspective regarding pilgrimage, it speaks to the general human experience of making the bold choice to go somewhere unknown. It's not always about what you find in your destination, it's what you discover about yourself in that new setting.
I'll leave you with two excerpts and the link to the entire article!
“I measure distance inward,” [Henry David Thoreau] pointed out, and “to travel and ‘descry new lands’ is to think new thoughts and have new imaginings.” And yet these new imaginings and thoughts sometimes come to us most powerfully when we’re surrounded by the alien, or what we cannot understand, and the very act of taking off on a journey speaks for a kind of openness and ripeness that is in fact the first step on the road to transformation. It’s a public recognition that you don’t know everything and that some of those things can come to you as readily on the road as on the mat; it’s a way of setting your senses at the level marked “ON,” slapping yourself awake and trying to join that much larger sense of self—or non-self—we sometimes lose when we’re sleepwalking through our lives.
Physical movement is not in itself important, but it can be the catalyst, as [D.H.] Lawrence pointed out, to being moved or taken out of yourself; one of the easiest ways of jolting oneself awake and free of habits and assumptions.
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Summertime in Ladakh
 Soon we will begin our summer in Ladakh, arriving on May 18th. We dive right into our "Treat, Spay, Love" street dog benefit trip and flow seamlessly into our Beyond Leh cultural tour.
One of our plans for the Treat, Spay, Love trip is to build PVC wheelchairs for the dogs that have little to no mobility in their back legs. This will allow them some time to roam and explore the Live to Rescue compound without having to drag themselves around. We expect the total for that project to cost ~$500 all in, leaving some supplies behind for Live to Rescue to build more as needed. If you'd like to donate to our street dog trip, there's still time (here's the link).
There is still time to join our other Ladakh journeys, too! Check out Tricycle's Pilgrimage to Ladakh, Lightness of Being in Ladakh, and The Ladakh Experience for more info. Heck, if you can swing it, we'd love to have you on Treat, Spay, Love or the Beyond Leh journey!
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Snapseed
The only photo editing app you need
Some places are just so gorgeous that you can snap away willy nilly and still come away with amazing photos—but have you ever noticed that the photos seem to lack the vibrancy you see with your own eyes? You're not mistaken! There's a very good reason for that and here is a relatively straightforward article explaining it. This website actually sees this discrepancy as a call to editing arms!
"Photography is a two-part process that requires the camera to do its job and for you to do yours. What is defined by the clinical term as 'post-processing' is merely finishing the job that your camera started... Your judgment and interpretation of the colors your mind saw when you captured the image can guide you as you tweak and make minor adjustments to your images."
My absolute go-to for editing photos is the mobile app "Snapseed." (Sadly, they don't have a desktop version any longer.) Snapseed is a free (FREE!) app offered by Google and it is truly an all-in-one app. Not only can you control individual aspects (brightness, saturation, etc), you can choose from pre-set filters OR build your own filter. I have started creating filters for each location we visit, as they each tend to have colors that need a little bit of love to really pop (like the blues of Chefchaouen, the earth tones of Tuscany, the stone-and-moss cool tones of Angkor Wat...) Snapseed even has a remarkably intelligent "Heal" function for little blemishes—either literal blemishes or perhaps small details you'd like to remove, like a power line here or a fire hydrant there.
I'm including three recent examples below, ranging from some subtle sunset editing (to match what my eyes really saw!) to a very dramatic black and white conversion. I even managed to salvage something cute out from a quick iPhone shot on a train going 163 mph across Japan!
Try it out, play around, and see what you like. It can also be used for basic cropping, adding text, frames, and quite frankly, some features I have yet to master (like Double Exposure).
Let me know if you have a photo editing app you just can't travel without. Next month I'll share a GREAT app that, in some places, might make your "real" camera redundant.
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Egypt photos & March 2020 preview
 We wrapped up two utterly awesome Egypt explorations in early last month! Over the course of two 11-day trips, we explored not only the iconic Pyramids at Giza and Saqqara, but our journey allowed us to spend time in Luxor & the Valley of the Kings and lesser-explored temples like Dendera. Our cruise along the Nile allowed us easy access to the temples at Edfu, Kom-Ombo, and Philae, and we capped it off with a visit to the breathtaking temples at Abu Simbel. Click through to our website for some visual highlights!
We are putting the final touches on a March 2020 Egypt trip that is fine-tuned by us and led by our amazing partners in Egypt. Stay tuned for details or reply to this email if you want to know about the March 2020 Egypt journey as soon as it is announced
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Atlas Obscura: Explore your own backyard!
Want to explore more of your own neighborhood? Perhaps there's a funky destination you don't even know about right in your own backyard! Check out Atlas Obscura, type in your town, and see what pops up around you—you might just be surprised. It can also be useful when scouting quirky activities for your trips abroad!
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Thanks for spending time with us today! I'll look forward to sharing the rest of our upcoming adventure with you, including our drive from Lhasa, Tibet to Kathmandu, Nepal! This is an exciting year for us, exploring East Asia for the first time for itinerary design ideas–Japan, China, and then on to Mongolia and Korea later this summer.
 I'll leave you with a photo from last week at the Nara Deer Park, about an hour's train ride away from Kyoto. Based on friends' photos here, I imagined a quaint temple park with 20-30 calm deer penned in. NOPE! There are 1200+ wild sika deer that want nothing more than to relieve you from the specially-formulated deer cookies you bought to feed them. I have to admit, I was running and screaming like a 3-year-old being 'terrorized' in a petting zoo for the first two minutes after I acquired said deer treats! We finally got the hang of it, though, and took this photo opportunity with a GoPro.
Until next time...
Safe travels & happy trails,
Lauren & BJ
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