Country 90 - Plan A!

I knew what country would become number 90, of course I did. 

Life was predictable, a bit like a cookie-cutter, where I knew the recipe to create a trip from nothing.  I had been secretly planning country number 90 for a while, I wanted this to be significant.  It isn’t every day that a girl from a small town in Scotland can say ‘this is country number 90’.

Our family holidays were to Blackpool. The five of us would spend seven days cramped in a Pontins chalet, after a less than joyful three-hour drive south into that exotic country called England. Some days I have no idea how I got to country number 89. It has been some ride.

I had planned to run my next marathon in one of the most isolated countries in the world, one of the few communist countries left in the modern age, run by a dictator who is highly suspicious of the western world.  This country had always fascinated me. The idea a country, with a population of 25 million, can be cut off from the rest of the world plays on my mind.

I have visited other communist countries along my travels including China, Vietnam, Cuba (described as socialist, but has communist traits), Laos, and Vietnam. I have also experienced the post-communist rebirth, more recently, in Albania and the other ex-Yugoslavia states, alongside their neighbours of Romania and Hungary.  Each carrying the scars and stories of those harsh times, like memories of how we must live in hope of a better tomorrow.

The country I had selected for number 90 was North Korea. 

Everything seemed lined up.  I’m not 100% sure when it was added to my future travel list, but I've known for a while that travel into North Korea is permitted on a pre-arranged and pre-approved government tour.  I remember reading a blog about canoeing down the river Taedong in the capital, Pyongyang.  My fascination grew.

I watched a BBC documentary from Aimee Fuller, an ex Team GB Snowboarding Olympian, who documented her journey from arriving in the country to running her first marathon in the capital. My mind blew up with the thought of running a marathon in North Korea.  I was hooked.  I had run two spring marathons before.  My first occurred in 2018, in the amazing city of Barcelona, followed by the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, in 2019. 

Bratislava, March 2018 and marathon #2 That smile is hiding a body of pain!

Based on my 2019 travel plans, which included eleven new countries, things started to fall into place.  I was looking to run another spring marathon. I saw on a tour website, they organised marathon tours to North Korea in April 2020. I knew it was meant to be.

Things escalated quickly. 

As I was planning the North Korea trip, it became apparent I would have to use China as my base to fly in, and out of North Korea.  There were a couple of options to fly in from Beijing or Shanghai.  I’ve visited six of the seven new wonders of the world, but never quite managed the Great Wall of China.  I did manage a twelve-hour, very chilly, stop-over in Beijing when I was flying out to Myanmar for a December trip in 2017.

An initial trip, which focussed on a marathon to North Korea, soon developed to include China - and the great wall of China, Tibet, Bhutan, and South Korea.  You could say I was out of control, or in control, depending on your outlook on life.  I had the route sketches in my notebook.  It started to feel real, and possible.  I got that feeling that I knew this was what was meant to happen, or so I thought.

Things then started to spiral out of control and it was not anything I could control. 

On January 22 North Korea closed its borders due to a deadly, and relatively unknown, virus that had started to take a grip on China.  The last time this happened was in 2014 when Ebola spread through Africa. Africa is nowhere near North Korea, but they closed the borders anyway.  Naively I thought it might be temporary. 

‘No worries’, I thought to myself, ‘Hold fire and let this virus malarkey blow over, then the North Korea marathon will be mine’.