Expect the Unexpected: A Travel Project and My Mother

Amid all the other writing, I’m working on a book proposal. That really doesn’t fully explain the picture of the yak, does it?

It’s about me, my equally limpy mother and occasional guest travellers striking out into the unknown. Travelling with a disability is possible for many people, and the costs and benefits need to be assessed by the individual in accordance with our own needs.

Sometimes it sounds like there’s a one-size-fits-all attitude to disability in the travel industry. The advice needs to go beyond “no wheelchair access in this hotel”. As independent travellers, we want the info so we can do our best to work through some of the obstacles.

We want to find the most adventurous things we can do safely and find out how safe things can be adventurous. Our expeditions as people with variable disabilities will, we hope, show that sometimes problems don’t always lead to roadblocks. Sometimes they just require a detour.

Then we had our first official expedition planning meeting. The first suggestion from my mother, a woman who not five minutes earlier had scoffed at the notion of boarding a train with a backpack, was Everest Base Camp. This yak is concerned about this turn of events, especially since people keep suggesting it as a transport option.

She then said we should try to find a Yeti. I feel this is a project for an entirely different book. Are all the planning meetings going to be this weird?