If you do get the opportunity to time travel, do checkout late 1500 to mid 1600s Portuguese and Dutch maritime expeditions. While your leave application is being scrutinized by the Ministry of Time Travel, I highly recommend you to read this book ! A race to find new routes to South Asia, spiced (!) the imperialist policies of European powers that came to be the defining characteristic of world history in latter half of the millennium. Its the zeal to convert bigots & infidels to Cristian ways and obtain spice to stop their meat from rotting in the process. Colonies were established. New routes discovered. New World in-fact. Explorers/Colonists found interesting people and killed them. Found some more people and enslaved them to grow sugar on a entirely different continent. Later cotton. Its perfectly 'normal' today to eat a pineapple, or sip some hot chocolate, and put that leftover in the refrigerator for a snack later. I would give anything to experience things yet unknown. Sip a drink I have never seen before or get puzzled over a taste I never knew existed. See a land which exists on no map and meet people who speak an unknown language. That excitement ! Wars have happened, genocides committed, generations of servitude, rise and fall of empires, over trivial things like salt, sugar, spice and not everything nice. A whole world discovered, natives enslaved, trade, commerce and exploitation of unimaginable scale .. to put that ketchup on your table and shirt on your back. Crazy! (Prakash Yadav (www.goodreads.com).