I got a new passport this week, all shiny and stiff
but this old one holds the story of my globetrotting twenties:
the first page of Japanese stamps, vestiges of my childhood... my first single-entry Indian visa and the 10-year multiple-entry version that eventually replaced it... Mongolian and Chinese full page visas... the many Nepal stamps... the very rare Bhutanese visa renewal stamp... the South African visa valid as long as "the holder is not or does not become a prohibited or undesirable person"... stamps from Swaziland where we spent an hour buying baskets... the Pakistani visa for earthquake relief... arrival stamps in French from Dakar and Port-au-Prince... Cambodian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Laotian visas from the epic post-masters degree SE Asia trip with Stephanie... about a dozen stamps from the UAE en route to Kabul... stamps from transiting through Amsterdam, including en route to Spain to get engaged... the surprisingly fancy Tanzanian visa with my photo scanned onto it...
Sometimes I've felt that I'm actually quite a dull person, it's just the places I've been that are interesting. What will this new passport look like by the end of my 30s? And when I renew it at 40, who will I be?
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