If you want to prepare for the immense challenges of traveling around the world you should talk to someone who hasn't done it. Because anyone who has done it knows how ridiculously easy it is once you take the leap and go. That doesn't mean there aren't challenges to overcome, times when things go wrong, and things to prepare before you go.

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More than three years after I began my around-the-world trip I'm still in contact with many of the people I met on the road and featured in "A Map for Saturday," here's what some of them are up to...

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On the frigid, filthy bathroom floor there was a steaming bucket of scalding water. It was boiled up in a Nepalese guesthouse because my two-dollar room included a helping of hot water that I was instructed to mix with the naturally freezing tap water to wash off the sweat of an all day Himalayan hike. We were at 12,500 feet and I was doubled over with altitude sickness; the nausea, diarrhea, and shoot-me headache dulling the splendor of one of the world's great panoramas. 

 Such was the reality of my around-the-world trip that this set of facts also meant I was obliged to pull out my camera, tripod, and microphone to capture both the beauty and misery of the moment. When I set out to make a documentary about traveling around the world it meant I'd have to hit 'Record' during the most joyful and agonizing moments of an emotional year.

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