A cut above an ordinary summer trip.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

Editor's note: This is the eighth in a 10-part series on the summer travel adventures of Welch and others.

When Kevin Bryan, 25, begins his doctoral program at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in a couple of weeks, it's not likely that the Churchill High graduate will be asked to write a "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" paper.

Too bad. Could anybody top his?

Bryan could write: "Just returned from a yearlong, off-the-beaten-track tour of the world in which I visited 48 countries; traveled nearly 100,000 miles; flew mainly first-class (for the same price as coach), but also traveled by camel, rickshaw and, of course, by foot for 30 miles across Croatia; was arrested by the Chinese army in Tibet; saw a restaurant in Japan called `Oregon'; gazed at the Milky Way from the wilds of Australia; and was left in a cab for an hour in Kirkuk, Iraq - one of the world's most dangerous cities in the world - while my driver stopped for dinner."

Kind of makes a weekend in Yachats seem tame.

But, figures Bryan, why not visit all these places now, when he's young and single - and when such places haven't become something else?

"You can go to the Grand Canyon anytime," says Bryan, who hasn't been there but hopes to go when he's old. "But the world is always changing. I was born too late to see Soviet-style totalitarian societies; that's why I went to Kashgar, China. If you want to see the dominant story of the 20th century, you have to go now. You can never travel back in time."

So you get the idea: Bryan isn't a Gray Line Tour sort of guy. He's an extremely smart young man who, even before this trip, knew his way around the world; who meticulously planned his route; and who, after bachelor's and master's degrees at Boston University, worked two years for the Federal Reserve in Richmond, Va., and found incredible free-airline-miles deals to afford the trip.

In the end, it still cost him $27,852. And, he says, was worth every penny.

Check out a few of his blog entries (ina strangetown.com/about.htm), which are a definite cut above the usual "then-we-went-here" stuff:

"Everest doesn't look as massive as you might imagine; its vertical prominence from base to peak is about 11,000 feet, significantly less than solitary mountains like Denali and McKinley. And nearby mountains like Lhotse, itself a 26,000-foot monster, lessen Everest's visual impact."

"We exited the plane, Jet Air from Kathmandu, on a staircase attached to the rear door. A stream of heat from the engine roared past as we began to descend. Incredibly, the heat from the engine was cooler than the air down on the tarmac. The temperature read 48 Celsius - nearly 120 (degrees) Fahrenheit."

"Hanoi itself is perfectly pleasant, with leafy boulevards, temple-strewn lakes, and many French restaurants serving proper coffee and creme caramel. The largest lake - West - features an Intercontinental and a Sheraton, as well as stores selling Scandinavian design, imported wines and flat-screen televisions."

"Burma is a proper totalitarian state. Freedom of speech does not exist. Assembling in large groups can lead to arrest. Staying overnight in another house requires registering with the police."

"Yeah, we were worried at times," says Bryan's father, John Jaworski. "He didn't tell us about some places until after he'd been there."

Bryan left in August 2008 and returned last month. He experienced civil wars, dozens of languages - he speaks Spanish, Chinese and "a hundred words" of lots of others - and an odd way of learning Michael Jackson had died:

"While hiking in Nepal, I was in this tiny village and a kid came out of a hut and said, `Are you from America? Michael Jackson is dead.' Then he left."

The broad lessons he learned from the trip?

"That the world is anti-American is totally not the case," he says. "You can go to Syria and people invite you over for dinner. Western Europe was the only place I was hassled and even that's rare. A lot of people in Europe think they know a lot about the U.S. but it's not accurate. They think cowboy hats, country music and swilling beer. I don't know anyone like that."

His advice for those considering such a trip?

Don't bring much stuff. "You need way less stuff for a one-year trip than for a one-week trip. All my stuff fit in a big school backpack."

"If you're young, go to places you won't want to go to when you're old."

Finally, "Learn some of the language. `Thank you, pretty girl' works wonders in just about any restaurant in the world."

Next week: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, S.D. Bob Welch is at 338-2354 or [e-mail].