One of [Mark] Twain's most consequential literary friendships started in August of 1889 when a twenty-three-year-old reporter named Rudyard Kipling made a 14,000-mile pilgrimage from India to track down his hero in Elmira [New York]."
This account from Ron Chernow's biography on Twain stopped me in my tracks. What stranger-heroes do I have that I would travel 14,000 miles to meet?