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Shrinking Horizon/Shifting Horizon

(Pandemic, demagogy and geopolitics collide)
A friend has an Uncle who, in the early 1970s, won the Pools and went and travelled the world.  Postcards sent home include one from Afghanistan, taken soon after crossing the border from Iran.  That's two countries most people wouldn't think of visiting, right now, and a border most would would rather not cross.  And postcards from Afghanistan!  Do such things still get made?
I've been to Hong Kong on three occasions.  Thanks to unrest, Hong Kong had ceased to be a tourist destination before the pandemic emergency.  Fast forward to today, and I don't know when/if I'll be going back to this favourite (and most photogenic) city.
I've been to mainland China once.  I have a friend who lives and teaches in Shanghai.  I have a multiple entry visa, valid through to August 2021.  That visa wasn't cheap, so I'd rather it didn't go to waste.  Likewise, I don't know when/if I'll be going back to China.  Once the pandemic lifts, we may well have a deteriorating geopolitical situation.  Because of what is happening in Hong Kong, a war of words between Britain and China has started.  I have no idea how this is going to develop or how welcome independent British tourists will be in six months time.  I guess much depends on what happens in Hong Kong, and also on how the border dispute between China and India develops.
Of course, in the land where a common refrain is "too many people," the dynamics of tourism, for foreign visitors, is a little unusual.  They don't need my money.  The Chinese internal market for tourism is huge.  Unlike Spain, where the Spanish by themselves would struggle to sustain their own tourism industry, China has no such problem.
It would be sad if this part of the world somehow became harder to visit in the coming years.  I regard the area from the West Coast of India to the East Coast of Japan, extending South to Australia and New Zealand as being economically, artistically and culturally the most exiting and dynamic part of the world at the moment.

Of course, in my lifetime, once easy to visit places of gone off limits (or at least not advised) for most travellers.  Other once difficult places for travel have come on limits.  South Africa is a case in point given the sanctions that were once in place.  Horizons tend to shift rather than shrink.  Yet the pandemic, BREXIT, the rise of the so called strongmen and the current overall geopolitical situation (and perhaps a little mild depression) combine to give me the sense my own horizons are shrinking rather than merely shifting. 
Cape Town! ©2011 Jason Hindle

© 2020 Jason Hindle

The photos? The Hong Kong Photos were taken with a Sony A7 mk II and 28mm f2 lens.  The Shanghai photos were taken with an Olympus OMD E-M1 mk II.  The solitary Cape Town photo was taken with an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and its 14-42 kit lens.

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