Excerpt from

Book By Jeremiah Gilbert

“So, this is how it ends. I expected hiking on a sand dune in the heat and humidity wouldn’t be easy, so I anticipated my heart would be thumping and my breathing would be heavy. I didn’t expect the chest pain. My wife is about a minute behind me and we’re about halfway into an hour’s hike. And we’re the only ones here.

I figure that if I drop, then by the time she reaches me and heads back for help and that help arrives, I’m a goner. As we’re alone, our only chance of help is the ranger who collected our entry fee and suggested I photograph the map of the trail. Good news: I know exactly where I am on the trail. Bad news: This isn’t where I was planning on dying.

Years ago, I developed a travel rule: If it would make for an enthralling obituary, then I’d be okay going out that way. Dying after being hit by a bus while avoiding a cyclist in London would be an example of an ending I would not be okay with. Likewise, having a heart attack in the middle of Sigatoka’s sand dunes during an incline does not satisfy this rule.

So, I start breathing deeply and try to calm myself. I’m middle aged and out of shape, I tell myself, and besides, it’s probably just gas causing the pain. I’ll start taking better care of myself when we return home, but in order to do that I need to return home. I resolve that no obituaries are going to be written about this today.”

After more than two years of trip cancellations and travel credits, the world finally started to open again in 2022. Part travelogue and part photo essay, On to Plan C finds its author vaccinated, masked, and eager to get back on the road, assessing the realities of a post-COVID world. With ever-changing testing and entry requirements, is it possible to get back to normal after everything changed? Or is there now a new normal when it comes to travel? Includes nearly two hundred color and black & white photos. 250 pages.

Jeremiah Gilbert is an award-winning photographer and travel writer based out of Southern California. His travels have taken him to over a hundred countries and territories spread across six continents. His photography has been published internationally and exhibited worldwide. His hope is to inspire those who see his work to look more carefully at the world around them in order to discover beauty in unusual and unexpected places. He is the author of the collections Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel, From Tibet to Egypt: Early Travels After a Late Start, and On to Plan C: A Return to Travel. He can be found on Instagram @jg_travels