Hi all! I was looking for something to write about different to what I have been giving lately with details of the 2025 trip, and I was talking to a good friend who I travelled with briefly in 1999, and talking about going to Japan and he mentioned that he remembers visited a couple of years ago and experiencing his first earthquake.

I lived in Japan for two years and I certainly had my share of tremors, a couple of larger ones – just one over 7 thankfully. For the first year I was there teaching/living I reckon I might have felt tremors as regularly as daily. I never totally got used to them, because once you feel it start your first thought is ‘is this a big one?’ but generally most were light and disappeared after 10-20 seconds.

However, it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve experienced earthquakes elsewhere on my travels, and even in Melbourne. We had one in Melbourne that I remember feeling in 2024 and they are becoming an infrequent thing after never experiencing one growing up at all. They are generally pretty tame I should say. There’s a funny meme that gets brought out after a little tremor with a foldable chair that’s fallen down and the words ‘We Will Rebuild’ under it.

BUT my first ever earthquake actually was in 1999 in Delhi. And it’s funny because I set out to write about my first earthquake being in Pakistan in 2004. This was a more memorable earthquake, I was in Peshawar, it was the middle of the night and I was on the fifth floor in my hotel. Boy it shook! And I came out of the room and chatted with my neighbour and we stood on the balcony waiting to see if another was coming. In fact it was over 60km in Afghanistan. The Rose Hotel.

BUT – that was not my first! My first was in 1999, I was staying at Ringo Guesthouse in a dorm at Connaught Place. I had had a terrible time in India, my first time there being punctuated by two weeks of rushing to the toilet, being scammed the previous night when I couldn’t get a rickshaw to Ringo Guesthouse and ended up in some weird hotel with a red neon light outside my window (NO not that kind of red light) being tired and concerned that maybe travel wasn’t for me.

Ringo Guesthouse was a little haven, a very cheap place at 90 Rupee a night, chilled, a large room with low beds but plenty of people to talk to and who could relate to what I had been going through. And we’d gone to bed, most of us at least. 11pm, 12am around this time, and everything start to shake and rattle.

To be honest, I was a bit excited! My first earthquake! But of course, I was pretty worried too. It was a good place to be though, because it woke everyone up and there was a courtyard open to the sky and we looked up at it for an hour or two afterwards, before returning for sleep. I know it’s not much of a story, but it is a memory that sticks in my mind. I remember the one in Peshawar more vividly though, and I can remember two in Japan – one on the day I moved into my apartment in Ichinoseki, and the one that was about 7.1 I think in the same apartment as I boiled water on the gas and ironed. Two things you probably don’t want to be doing while the earth shakes. But, c’est la vie!

Have you ever experienced an earthquake? What are your memories? If you experienced a few, do you still distinctly remember the first? Do comment! Thanks for reading today! Take care wherever you are in the world and… May the Journey Never End!