Hope You Enjoyed the Sample - This Book is About Travel

CHAPTER 1

THE ADVENTURE STARTS I really like what you’re doing. I didn’t understand it before, but getting off your butt and actually doing something for yourself is important for all of us. And although I can’t say I won’t miss you like hell, and won’t worry about you often, I can say that what you’re doing is great and I love you for it. It’s important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it’s hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we’ve learnt even if what we do changes us and we risk not recognizing each other when we return. ―Robyn Davidson

A START

“People sure like spinning that globe,” the shopkeeper said to me. “I can’t get them to buy a damn thing in this place, but they go to that globe and spin putting their finger on a random place to stop it.  They dream about traveling to that place. It happens every day. We lust after the dream, but here we are.”

I was in the store, spinning the globe. “It would be nice to travel.” I spun the globe and found a place I’d never been on the map just like the thousands of others before me. I thought travel was for the lucky. The rich. The elite. For those that had more time, connections and resources than little old me. It was for the outrageously brave that dove off cliffs, the extroverted few who stood on bars to dance or those rare people whose lust for adventure is never satiated. I had read the books and browsed the photos, painting a picture of who could be a traveler and none of those felt anything like me. I spun the globe again and stopped it with my finger, which landed in the same place I was in.  

I wanted to get on a plane and away from life as usual more than anyone I knew, but travel was for the elite, right? Not for me or for you. 

After years on the road, I look back and laugh. I was dead wrong. It doesn’t take family money, a ridiculous salary or luck of any means. It needs you. Travel needs you. It needs you to decide to go someplace in the world and stand with a proud intention that perhaps there is a different way to look at the world — that

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everything you know could be just as wrong as the thinking that travel isn’t for you.

Modern travel, at its core, is opening your heart to possibility. Possibility that can be both dreamed and lived. 

worked my ass off to make sure that I was able to do it. I got my first passport in 2003 and it took until 2008 to take my first international trip. Travel — and those that seek to enjoy it — isn’t a get rich quick scheme or an overnight cleanse of the soul. It’s a goal you work toward. You are going to act on your own and do something remarkable, for you. 

It is not an adventure of extravagance or wealth. It is an adventure of constraints and character. If you have been thinking of taking a trip and are just looking for permission, take this sentence (and book) as the needed kick in the ass. You have permission to look at the American dream (or the equivalent in your country) as a suggestion that now includes swimming in waterfalls in three continents, learning to dance on a beach under a full moon with someone that doesn’t speak your language and scaling a peak so high and beautiful it takes your breath away (twice). There has never been a better time to travel and the only thing stopping you may just be the looks you get from your family and neighbors when you say you want to.

Airfare is the cheapest it has ever been and perhaps ever will be. You can get on a flight around the world for as low as $14.31 per hour of travel time (NYC to JNB, $780 for 54.5 hours of travel). One hundred years ago that same journey would have placed you you amidst the top travelers in the world. Today, you can save up for that trip washing dishes.

“How do you afford it?” is the most common question I am asked when I tell people that I travel every day of the year. 

Technology has never been so supportive of finding friends, opportunities and itineraries. You can research every street you will walk down, price check every hotel, and book every portion of a trip in your living room. Hell, you can book an entire island from an iPhone app. It has never been easier to research a trip.

“I decided it was important to me,” is generally the answer I offer back. And it really is that simple. Notice I didn’t say “family money” as there is none, nor did I say I worked an amazingly high paying job as I’ve never earned more than a modest salary. I made it a goal and I

I met hundreds of waiters in the world’s most interesting places, but didn’t run into too many doctors or lawyers.  It feels like the world painted a picture of what success looks like and there is a massive movement now saying “nope!”

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You could rent a nice cozy apartment or rent the world.  Don’t limit your imagination on where you can go and what you can do. Perhaps the best part of the modern travel opportunity: you don’t have to ask anyone permission, well, besides yourself.

I share these stories out of a desire for you to dream and travel and less for me to boast. I don’t see myself as an iconic traveler (or writer, for that matter). This book is written as a friend sharing a story at a

coffee shop or bar and far from a formal declaration. Ultimately, the goal is to get you to think a little bit differently about this world we share.

This Book Is About Travel is a collection of essays and experiences from 20 months of living on the road with only a backpack to my name. At times, this leads to very difficult experiences. Other times, it is an amazing mental escape. It was written on the road from a hut

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in the high Himalayas, and a balcony with a view of the Alps.  From a backyard fort in Nairobi, and a beach on both sides of the Atlantic. From a loft in NYC, and a coffee-shop in Melbourne. As a result, this is a travel book written while traveling. It is my own attempt to explore some of the stresses, joys and complexity that make up modern movement.

Just as our cultural assumptions around travel being all leisure and luxury are off base, so too are our assumptions that travel is only this blissful adventure where you step out of the world’s problems and into a process of self discovery. For me, the two have been inseparable. The world is a very complex and confusing place, and traveling through it can also be a difficult and complicated journey. Maybe what I am saying is that it should be a complicated journey.

travel get out of the way it makes space for even more incredible, personal experiences. 

You can do a lot with your time and money — the possibilities are almost endless. I would love if you would consider taking up the mind of a traveler after reading this. But I would also love it if, after reflecting, you have a passionate reason for why travel is not for you. That is okay, too. That is part of the conversation. A conversation I hope we will keep having as a global community. I hope we can focus on less of what we own and more on what we can build together. It’s a conversation, I feel, that is so much richer once we stop feeding our own excuses and get on the roads that take us to the places we have for so long dreamed about.

Spin the globe and go to where it stops.  Part of the modern dilemma is that the issues and problems that plague one part of the world are connected to problems that another part of the world faces, in both resonant and contradictory ways.  Following our dreams of travel helps to assuage the isolation, dullness and emptiness so often felt in the Western world, but in so doing, it also changes landscapes, displaces people, and creates new sets of possibilities and problems.

Let’s get going

Travel is deeply personal. I can’t stress this enough. Your experience, by design, will be drastically different than mine or anyone else’s. Your lessons, activities, destinations, insights and goals will have their own unique color and flavor. When the cost and logistics of

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CHAPTER 2

OBSERVATIONALLY, A BLUFF I do not think that the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are, but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and to each other. ―Sun Bear

Lose your dreams and you’ll lose your mind. ―Mick Jagger

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

I love high rise buildings. It gives you the feeling that you are not only a step above, but a step ahead: somehow, it feels like you see the sun rise a little earlier. The higher the floor, the more grounded I feel — a kind of spatial experience that only proper engineering can grant me.

I wandered down to the streets early, as I usually do while traveling, just to wander. My life on the road often provides the luxury of turning advertising into atmosphere, protecting me from the messaging. Here, though, I felt as though just being there made me part of an advertisement. Vegas is always trying to sell you something: a dream, some freedom, a fake Rolex. No ad can take you where you want to go, but it certainly can trap you where you are.

I’ve spent 14 months traveling around the world. My early morning walks are some of my favorite memories. A beach in Thailand. A suspension bridge in Nepal. A shopping center in Colombia.  A trail in Kenya. A fish market in Tokyo.

Las Vegas at 4:30 that morning provided one of the more interesting walks. They are still, remarkably, dealing cards at this hour — a mix of drunks, addicts and people looking to experience something different from what they have programmed their lives to be. You know, buck the norm. A smoke-filled room smelling of Red Bull and perfume was almost refreshing, oddly. I feel like I am inside some kind of participatory train wreck engineered for the sport of it. The

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lights sparkled outside waiting for the sun to rise on a desert town known for making your designed experience feel independent and fresh. In one direction, the strip: an amazing pollution of light and faux dreams. In the other direction lays an economically depressed sprawl of homes purchased by those that enable — but don’t necessarily live — the hopes and dreams that flicker as apparitions in the distance.

The commonality of a dream warms the soul. “What can we do, together?” is like the battle cry of humanity. Indifference kills that cry. Economic inequality feeds that indifference, keeps it alive and keeps us separate. Mush that all up, put it in your high-tech blender and you get the craps table at an off-strip casino, pre-sunrise, on a Wednesday.

Whatever your past, whatever your observations, let’s gamble together. This is what the space screams to me. But this wasn’t the high life we were promised. We’re dreaming for luck, here, dreaming for chance. For a chance, perhaps. This isn’t really connecting with life, right? This is a dream cycling on an unexpected turn, fueled on prayers for the contingent, the miraculous — rather than a clear goal that you work diligently towards. For some, it appears to be cycling out of control. The ATM isn’t working, an obvious disaster, and neither are the four other ATMs this elderly woman — with tired eyes, exasperated sighs and sparkling, oversized earrings — has tried.

It can’t be the lack of funding.  The machine is broken.

I share a moment with this lady. We lock eyes, expressionless, but we make a character summation. We both look down on each other and seem content with that. I feel her gaze, the kind that says “what is he doing here, anyway?” Yes, I was there, and she saw me, looking at her: judging, observing, aloof. I was a solo kid not participating in the environment I shared. A passerby. A kid without a dream or team. As drunk and broke as she was, she had a goal. She had a purpose and someone — a whole room, a whole city — to share that with, which, in one sense of reality, is far from failure.

I have plenty of money in the bank, a beautiful place to stay and an extended friend network that far exceeds what I ever dreamed possible growing up. At the end of the day, these achievements are part of what makes me feel like I can be breeze into places, while at the same time keeping a safe distance: that I can somehow watch and not be. But this lady sized up my observations of her and mirrored them right back to me.

She had gambled at many things that had allowed us to be put in that space together and it was with that energy that she called out my bluff. I’m not just there to see, those tired brown eyes let me know, I’m part of the cycle. Something exchanged in this moment made my individually oriented dreams of the past, now achieved, seem trite and childish. What we work on together is what the books

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remember. And working together means that before we dream as one, we must first understand that we dream the same, differently.

We have a lot of work to do. The achievement of a stable and modern society is like a processed food: We take something so beautiful and full of potential, like a perfect strawberry, and we freeze it, mash it up, mix it with other things, and come out with something vaguely tasting of the original contents. In the same way, our dreams for ourselves, our innate desire for community and joy, become distorted, hidden, and difficult to even identify.

It can’t be the lack of dreaming.  This machine is broken.

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CHAPTER 3

THE LOOTED LIFE I learned early that the richness of life is adventure. Adventure calls on all faculties of mind and spirit. It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. But we are not ready for adventure unless we are rid of fear. For fear confines us and limits our scope. We stay tethered by strings of doubt and indecision and have only a small narrow world to explore. ―William O. Douglas

BOULDER, COLORADO

The further I am from my destination the happier I am. An extended stay in a hostel on the outskirts of Barcelona taught me two things: you do need a “passport” of five euros to prove to the Spanish cops that you are not a drug dealer, and that a home-cooked meal can bridge cultural differences better than anything else.  I was given the correct directions by the nice (read: bribed) police officer to a wonderful grocery store that sold shrink-wrapped broccoli and one euro bottles of wine.  It was enough food to feed a hostel and enough wine to have the nice police officer show up one more time, you know, just to “check in.”

It was a good story for the dinner table back home.  When I travel, I travel deliberately. I live life by seeing the sights, doing long, obstacle runs in foreign neighborhoods, and making friends with people simply because I like their jacket. But back home, in the mountains of Colorado, life was pretty boring. Or normal. Or even worse, predictable.  

“How is life?”     “Fine.”     Small steps to fix this.  When I travel, I would have the best dinner parties with a crew from around the world. Back home I would piece together rice, beans and guacamole to be “festive.”  Fine. Something had to change and the change had to happen at my home, at the

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table where I drink alone.  A dinner party.  I would bring the food, and the party would be so wild that the attendees would think they could die.  An armageddon of dinner.  Peppers so hot and whiskey so strong that the designated drivers would chop down a tree and homestead a house in the driveway before thinking of volunteering again.

There was a singular glass raised in the air: mine.  There was a choked, awkward vibe hanging in the room until my good friend Jeremy broke the quiet, “Soooo, do you have a plane ticket?”

What type of question is that?  A plane ticket?  I’m going on the trip of a lifetime and all you ask me about is my ticket? The simplest, most mundane aspect of all travel starts?

It would be a Dinnergeddon.  

The invites were sent out and the party did indeed come.  A tradition was born.  A once monthly throw-down of breaking bread and sharing wine.  My 600 square foot apartment was much too small for the 50 guests but with all (yes, all) of the neighbors’ help we were able to seat everyone.  It became a place in the community to tell a memorable story.

“Look, if you are saying goodbye to all your friends and giving away all your stuff without a plane ticket,” Jeremy continued, “we are going to have to treat this as a call for help.”   This move was so random and so bold to my friends that there was a genuine level of concern that I was actually hosting my own suicide party. Seriously? Seriously. My glass still in the air, I assured them that there was nothing to worry about. I was traveling, not dying.   

The Dinnergeddons continued for a year until one summer night in a rather Bilboish manner I announced the following:    

“Goodbye, good friends. I am going to travel for a while.  Feel free to take anything in this apartment.  I don’t have a need for it, so if you want it, please enjoy it.”

As it happened, I did not have a plane ticket on that day, but after pulling out a rough itinerary of six continents, 41 countries and 16 months of general plans, I was put off suicide watch and spent the rest of the evening playing the fun game of “no, really, take everything I own.”  Years of shirts, jackets, shoes, lighting fixtures, tables, chairs, records and books were claimed and put into piles.

Silence.  

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I had presided over the looting my life, and it was joyous. Not only did I reduce my belongings to just 15 things, but I broke up with the person I thought I was to marry, I quit my amazing job and I stopped my long term, committed, athletic training. Just a few days before, I had spoken in front of 1,800 people and finished an Ironman 70.3. Those events had rapidly become part of a distant past. Those that say you can’t completely change your life overnight have probably not seen it in action. You can.

In retrospect, perhaps I had not so much allowed the looting of my life, as thrown it into a full on street fight.  

Now I had a hangover. A quick look towards the sunrise brought me to make a promise to myself: to never be predictable. Also to never drink that much again.

At least one of the two, I figured, had a shot of being kept.

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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

How you look at yourself is more important than how others look at you. You can never be too kind to yourself, especially while learning. Some of the toughest lessons of my trip were also the first.

The fog was lifting on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco just as the sun was peaking at midday.  I was in the Bay Area finishing up the planning for my trip: meeting with some veteran travelers, squaring up my visas, getting shots. Lots of them.  The medical vaccinations required for all the places I was heading cost me a total of $760 and 21 pricks of a needle. The whole experience left me with an arm full of track marks and the acute feeling that I was like a junkie walking with purpose for my much needed fix: namely, tacos in The Mission. It certainly did not help that the midpoint of these two activities — from the clinic to lunch — routed me straight through the junkie haven of the Tenderloin neighborhood. “Nothing to see, here” I kept telling myself under my breath, just a jittery guy with a backpack for a home, rocking emotionally back and forth until he gets his fix of avocado.

“Nothing to see, here. Nothing to see…”

I was making a lot of mistakes. The Brazilian visa I was supposed to get didn’t happen because I showed up too late to the embassy. Let’s rephrase that and be a little bit more honest: I saw too many people walking out of their office pissed off because something had gone wrong with their visa. When I was faced with the choice of waiting in the line for over an hour to see if my fate would be different, I

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chose to not even try. I walked away telling friends I showed up too late or that they had closed early.

friends within his comfort zone, he immediately posted the photo to Facebook with the caption: “epic party.”

This feeling that I was making mistakes was a very real emotion. With respect to Brazil, I could have toughed it out. I could have double-checked my paper work, camped out, or kept trying until I received my stamp. Instead, for the cost of what would have been the Brazilian visa application fee, I chose to stay in Colombia for an extra two weeks. This fate, mistake or not, was all decided within a few moments at La Taqueria — my favorite restaurant in The Mission. By not going, I decided that I was consciously missing an experience I thought I would have. Is something missing if it is replaced?

This whole scene struck a deep chord in me. He had spent less than 20 seconds with that group; and yet, it was as if the night would be defined, promoted and forever remembered by this brief interaction. Why he did not start the night off with them, or continue to spend time with them, is of course unknown (he didn’t want to? lack confidence? too many nerves?); but the habit of carefully crafting and framing an experience through images or soundbites is all too true and familiar. Climb a mountain: take a picture. Watch a sunset at the beach: post on Facebook. Gaze at an infamous monument: update Twitter.

Later that night, still swimming in the events of the day with a heaviness that I had just messed up my whole trip, I attended a party that had one of those curious guest lists that couldn’t quite mix. The females were generally of the model and socialite persuasion while the males were all entrepreneurs and geeks of the non model and socialite persuasion. The night danced away — or at least the girls did — until the awkward tension hit a critical mass and the party was clearly split apart. It was fun, no question, but perhaps not exactly in the ways that had been intended.

At some point I watched as one friend ran across the divide to the women on the dance floor and asked for a picture. The women agreed and the gentlemen gleefully had his picture snapped amidst four beautiful and happy young women. Returning to his niche of

Models and bottles — geek — models and bottles.

We all have this reel of highlighted moments that we try to live. Or, perhaps more honestly, we all have this highlighted reel that we tell others we are living. But why? If we take out all the high points — and the low ones, too, for that matter — we are simply left with life. Left with a trip. A story: a chance to grow and a chance to share. If we plan, judge and calibrate our actions based on the highlights that others present to us, we are destined to fail. “Epic party.” The party was not epic. But the brashness, dishonesty and cultivation of an imaginary scenario — which presumably extends beyond a photograph — very much were.

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Sitting there that night at the party, I began to reflect on my own guilt that I had made some kind of a mistake by forgoing Brazil — as if it were nothing but another highlight for my reel. I decided right then and there that I was going to be nice to myself as I learned to travel. I would take days off and treat myself along the way. I decided that the pictures and stories I was going to take and tell, were not just going to be of the high and glamorous moments that others seems so eager to see — they were going to reflect each and every step of my journey.

I decided to try to embrace each moment of my trip — even my mistakes and my failures. There is no gauge, I told myself, on just where my lessons will actually come from — they could come from a captain, a fellow traveler, a banker, a bustling city, or a quiet mountain stream. I wanted to be open to the entirety of my traveling experience in all its fun and adventure; but also in its awkwardness, lulls and disappointments.

Let’s keep the self portraits to a minimum, I told myself. Life isn’t looking at you with the perfect angle. In fact, it more often looks away from you with the perfect angle — you know, cutting out the models and bottles.

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HARDWICK, VERMONT

“Alright, you are going on a big trip, what are you packing?” This is what wakes me up most nights. “Will I be prepared? What if I forget something?”

It’s hard to say if anyone is ever really right or wrong with reference to what they plan or prepare for travel — but what is clear is that everybody certainly has their own opinions. What I find is that it is less about being right and more about how different people are attached in various ways to what it is that they have. I keep my pack as light as possible — and because I gave away all my worldly possessions — everything I own fits into one bag.

When I finally set off for my trip, and for a year thereafter, I owned just 15 things. Fifteen. Three high fives worth of items would pass to my next of kin were I never to return from my adventures. My bag weighed just 13 pounds. It was an orange bag, one I still have. I call her “Maggie.” I still cannot help but laugh when I see anyone traveling with a backpack larger than a carry-on, as it seems outlandishly big to me. And yet others see my small pack and almost mock me for my lack of “real” travel knowledge. Not right or wrong, per se, but certainly different opinions — opinions that manifest themselves materially. Opinions which ultimately inflect whole different means and modes of travel. In many ways, what you bring, what you own, what you are attached to, will help shape your experience. That may seem like a lot of pressure, but it’s really not. Again, it’s not about right or wrong; better or worse; but about making thoughtful choices knowing that less is often more.

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Everyone has his and her nervous ticks with respect to their possessions. Mine just so happens to be being overly concerned that everything I own will be taken from me in one foul swoop. It would only take an adept toddler about a minute to loot my entire collection of goods — which makes me all the more paranoid and cautious around my things. One must always watch out for the small ones.

Perhaps list form would be better: 1. Backpack 2. iPhone 3. Small camera 4. iPad 5. Long sleeve shirt

In this way, the only thing more valuable to me than my wallet is my fake wallet — my invaluable decoy that will be given to any thief looking to rob me. Given the minimalist nature of my belongings, the loss of my passport and credit card — without an embassy, of course — would make my life look like some kind of survivalist reality TV show. With it, however, I am a jet—setting tourist with a hankering for lunch.

6. Short sleeve shirt 7. Long pants 8. Board shorts 9. Underwear 10. Sandals 11. Sunglasses

I have less and do more. Because I have less, people talk about me more. Because I do more, I talk less about the things I have.

12. Wallet 13. Towel 14. Jacket

My life’s possessions can be expressed in a single sentence:

My towel and toiletry kit help me start the day before I dress in a shirt, shorts, sunglasses, sandals, and jacket while researching where to go on my phone and computer, that fit together with my long sleeve shirt, long pants, board shorts, camera, and underwear in my backpack.

15. Toiletry kit

Not listed, of course, is the irritating sense of superiority I joke that I have for being able to list out everything I own in a single breath. I can up pack everything I own in under a minute. All of my clothing can fit into one load of laundry with plenty of room to spare. Everything I possess was carefully picked and what I consider to be 18 / 51

the greatest piece of gear with respect to its specific purpose. All have been created in a sustainable fashion and are meant to last hundreds of wears and adventures. I can take off at a full sprint with everything I own on my back.

I gave away everything to simplify life but it hasn’t totally done that. Instead, life got exciting. Life got challenging. But life also got to be talking about my bag — a lot. It is amazing that simplicity itself can be such story. But in a culture of excess, it seems to be just that: a story, something “someone else” does. CNN covered the project which resulted in a wash of email from aspiring vagabonds, bloggers and adventures. I felt like a traveler even though I was still in the country.

The less I have, the more people want to talk about it. I gave up consumerism and I’m now the cover-model for those that love minimalism. A logo—less backpack is now a centerpiece of discussion for lifestyle design. I rejected material things. And with that rejection, I accepted that life could be more than a picket fence and nuclear family.

One bag. One life.

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CHAPTER 4

WEALTH, POVERTY AND KITTENS Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. ―Henry David Thoreau Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won’t all be poor. ―John Steinbeck

PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

A long, winding, unplanned walk teaches you a lot about an area. The sounds, structures, smells and people always speak if you are willing to listen. Sometimes, in fact, a bit more than you’re comfortable with.

A recent walk in Panama City, Panama really got to me: daunting poverty next to unrivaled wealth, fine dining next to slums, pleasant nature budding to blown out speakers.

The walk started out simple enough. First, tour the Panamá Viejo (Old Panama). It was founded in 1519, has some amazing historic structures and is home to several celebrities. Despite its age, it struck me as still in the rough-and-tumble moment of settlement.

And rough-and-tumble it is. This is a wild west of cities: a vibrant clash of culture and economies. We walked around looking at the buildings — mostly restored mansions that are selling for around $15,000,000. A block over, a street vendor displayed hubcaps stolen from their parking lot. The watcher of this street, an unofficial guard and sometimes lackey, is named Dulce de Mango. Every time we pass, he yells out his name. He is “a good one,” my friend tells me. If you need a beer, carwash, or anything you can think of — Mango is your man. Noted.

We passed a German restaurant we had dined at the night before. For $50 we were served a 6-pound lobster and all the fixings. The

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chef had seen my friend on the street that day and had boasted about their catch. Really good lobster, a chef’s welcome, and a fine meal to match. Afterwards, we had drinks at a city-provided artist’s loft — one of many large older buildings that are now being utilized by the creative class. This place is what all cities need, I thought: accessible space for a thriving and worldwide community.

Further into the walk, a four-year-old asked me for something to drink. I hold the opinion that kids are universally fun to interact with. Playing soccer in the streets is pure joy. I was near the end of the walk and already doing a run to the grocery store for beer, snacks and now, also juice.

Well, the kid didn’t want the juice, he wanted the beer. Not a mistake, the kid confirms. He gets juice. Shortly thereafter, some kids rigged together a potato-gun-like-contraption to fire small rocks around the streets. They launched a travel-sized bottle of shampoo hitting me in square in the foot. I limped away, a bit rattled in my universalism that “kids are a wonderful, innocent group the whole world over” I had had been musing about just moments before. The message was clear: give us a beer or we will hit you with projectiles. Kids in Panama City.

The markets bustle with fish, veggies and stolen goods. Open-air, minor surgeries were being performed on the sidewalk around the corner. A razor blade cutting something from a temple, causing a rush of dripping blood, can be tough to stomach before noon. Simple

fences separated these markets from the high-rise buildings. The Spanish name for this market literally translates as “get out as fast as you can” and the make shift fencing exists to protect you from what are truly some dark, damp and downright foul places to be. Other fences cordon off a yet-to-be-opened waterfront park. They are built in middle of sidewalks and streets that are out of legal jurisdiction, or so it seems.

We started to walk into a fish market that makes me gag. I choke and experience a “never, ever want to smell again” feeling that will halt my appetite for days. I stop. I won’t go on.

“It takes a while,” my friend said. He couldn’t go in, it turns out, the first few times he tried.

I wanted to run away from the crowds and overstimulation of what was behind us. We walked down a pier and suddenly everything is picturesque again. A white sandy beach with gentle crashing waves is fewer than 100 meters away, and it’s a whole world apart. I don’t want to leave here. Take me anywhere but those markets.

The tap water in the city is safe to drink; the people are fine. “Keep calm and carry on,” I thought.

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We were being eyed by a security guard. We are not the types of people he usually sees coming from the market. I notice how comfortable I am with guns around me all the time. You can’t go more than two blocks without someone armed noticing you, or, more accurately, you noticing someone with a gun.

The next day, lost on our way to lunch, a Panamanian Public Forces member we flagged down salutes us, smiles, asks where we want to go, and happily escorts us all the way to the restaurant. We walk in with a warm “Buenos!” to the owner. We eat chicken and veggies while watching a Saturday football match on the TV.

More smells. Which, as you can probably already deduce, are hard to describe in a civil way. Abandoned buildings are being sold to foreigners to build their vacation villas. Romantic. What my friend describes as “crack babies that have grown up” stumble down the street. We passed some AK-47s. We passed some drunks. We passed a convenience store selling one-dollar fish fired up. I have no gauge to determine if there is corruption in any part of this trade.

Later in the day, I decide to break off from the group of new friends to head south. Taking buses and traveling around the area can be just as much an experience as any actual destination. I admired the amazing, colorful, symphony of honking horns on my bus ride to the south. The seats are not made for people as tall as I, and the one hour trip feels a lot like 10.

We had a ceviche and drinks on a patio overlooking the ocean. Skyscrapers are in the distance. The Panama Canal is just 10 minutes away. This used to be Colombian territory until the USA helped secure Panamanian independence. Of course, if you watch the somewhat official “History of the Canal” video, you’ll learn that the USA only helped with the canal, and not until a year after independence. Right. I remember other history lessons and wonder just wherein lies the truth.

I walk back to the converted mansion overlooking the fish market where I am staying ($13 a night) wondering how you can relate to mass wealth and intense poverty existing in such close quarters. Is there a way to make sense of that?

The roads are nicely paved and it’s smooth sailing save for the Public Forces checkpoints, where a group of six police officers will sternly pull over your vehicle just by pointing. When this happens they search your entire vehicle. Every pocket of every bag. They are looking for drugs or who knows what, exactly. I’ve gotten used to smiling. “Yes, that is my dirty underwear. No, you won’t find drugs in there.”

On another four hour bus ride to the San Blas Islands, there was a stop at a small military fueling station. We showed up right as a group of Public Forces members were doing their usual impressive display: march, turn around, march, awkwardly-handle-semiautomatic-rifle-dance, march. They saluted the Chief inside the building who saluted back after a long pause. Our group was told to

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exit the vehicle and come inside to present our passports to the Chief.

It was an intense place to be. Your passport is your life on the road and if this Public Forces member wanted to take it away I would be at the complete mercy of what they may — or may not — want me to do. They have the guns and your passports, while you just want to see a beach. Such is life here, residues of the drug trade not yet washed away.

Passports returned, and we were off down the road.

Such is the unpredictable and varied life that makes up Panama: the rich and the poor; the beautiful and the rancid; AK-47s and sweet little kittens — which I use as protectors.

We walked into the command center and a very small, older man with a small kitten in hand said “Welcome! and Gato?”

“Welcome!” Yes! We are not in trouble. “Gato?” What is that?

He motioned the group to meet the kitten. Who wants to hold him? I do, that is who. There are seven men with very powerful guns outside, and I now have a kitten — one that the Chief likes, and if shit goes down I’m using it as a shield.

Gato! Gato! Gato!

The show of brute force was interrupted — in my mind, entirely alleviated — by the showing of kittens.

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TOCUMEN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, PANAMA

“He isn’t a real traveler,” said a Canadian backpacker with two bandanas and two water bottles dangling from his worn bag that proudly displayed four flags. He was referring to a loud, elitist man checking into a flight in Panama City, Panama. “A cruise ship is to travel as a McDonalds is to cooking” pretty much sums up the common travel ethos this backpacker was channeling.

International flight check-in areas are stressful places to be and they often bring out the strongest of personalities in people. Indeed, they are ripe zones for clichés to flare. Nervous energy buzzes throughout the whole space where, though there are 10 different languages being spoken, everyone is trying to conform to rules set forth by the aviation industry. I’m always a bit like an excited kid in airports, because taking a nap in an aluminum tube still pretty much feels like teleportation. The act of flying never ceases to amaze me. For pennies I get transported thousands of miles! Whoa! This usual excitement, however, is getting drowned out by this “fake traveler” who is yelling at and berating the airline staff member — warning her not to break into his suitcase.

To be fair, I wouldn’t really want to hang out with this guy, either. His Hawaiian shirt matched his equally oversized luggage. They were loud, rude and seemed to think nothing of their surroundings — pulling out all the tricks to ensure they got their way. His tone made it appear as if everyone was against him, wrong, and plotting to steal. If he were deported I don’t think I would have spoken up, but to say he’s not a real traveler? Well now, that’s just harsh.

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If you have seriously thought of a trip, you are a traveler. If you have crossed a state line, you are a traveler. If you went through the process of getting a passport, you are a traveler. If you have one stamp on that passport, you are a traveler. If you have 90 stamps on that passport, you are a traveler.

There is a lot of infighting in the travel community over what travelers are and what they are not. “A backpacker watching a movie at a hostel? What a waste,” they say. Watching a traveler spending their time ignoring their surroundings (especially if they are in the “it’s expensive” trap, which I’ll get to later) is hard — but perhaps they are out of their comfort zone, sick, or just have never had access to horrible, cheesy 90s films (a favorite of hostels in Central America). They are just as unique as you, living their trip in a way that makes sense to them. Labeling someone else, I think, more accurately labels you.

The funny thing about someone calling a traveler “not real” is that travel is really anything that puts you out of your comfort zone. By belittling someone else, you are doing the exact opposite of that for yourself. By claiming what the other is “not” you are attempting to secure what you “are” — a security that protects your particular comfort zone. There are stories you will never hear that are directly playing a role in why people place themselves where they do.

Location is identity. Where you are right now reading this book says a whole chapter about yourself. It is just as important of a social

indicator as how you dress or who you choose to be friends with. Location shows preference, comfort, desire, relationship status, and about 80 other things. This includes a particular coffee shop, for instance, as well as the neighborhood, city and country that it is in.

So what is a real traveler? I met a pair in Panama City who had taken a bus as far southeast as they possibly could — all the way to the Darién Gap — where they then continued on foot, hiking, until they happened upon a village. Without knowing a word of Spanish, they befriended a family and had spent a week and a half harvesting bananas. When I met them, they had just snuck into the hostel I was staying at for a few hours of sleep before they returned to their jobs in New York City. To them, I was probably not a “real” traveler. To me, they were reckless and putting a burden on a community that didn’t expect or necessarily want them. If they got injured or kidnapped (Darién Gap is often cited as one of the most dangerous places in the world) it would have taken a small army of dignitaries and lots of cash to get them back alive.

They clearly didn’t share these sentiments and, as a result, they perhaps have far better stories than I do. At least they have the kind of stories we, in the modern world, are so unbelievably hungry to hear. Why is that, I wonder?

Is there a lesson there? Should travelers push the social boundaries of what communities can handle? Many “real” travelers talk about this mode of backcountry befriending as the way to meet the “real”

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people of the country you are visiting. You know, real people meeting other real people. I mean, what does that even mean? Such a travel mode is considered to be a far more authentic experience than a tour. I can understand why this sentiment exists. My days traveling where I knew someone that lived in the city I was in were far more interesting, socially, than those where I was free wheeling around. But is that really about varying gradations of “authenticity”? And anyway, at what cost does this come? At what point, as this practice continues to gain in popularity, will various communities see travelers as mindless beggars coming to poach their food and culture? Is it already there? Is it the responsibility of a traveler to leave a community alone, both financially and culturally? Should the art be appreciated but not purchased?

Look at the thriving art community in Haiti and compare it to the upscale blandness of Barbados. One country has kept their cultural core through poverty that in turn stifled tourism while the other has had their culture put on par with a Disney ship (that they board to experience). Modern culture pirates as part of a tourism and traveler ransom manifesto. And what is culture anyway? Is it worth fighting for if it can be destroyed by an upward economic push? By an exchange rate?

What is travel now? What should it be? Can we be content with a forever evolving definition? Should we be? This, more or less, is the basis of this book.

I brought this question up to the other travelers over a bowl of rice and chicken stock in the San Blas Islands, Panama. I’m told I’m destroying the culture of travelers by being so intense in my theology about our common actions. I’m told to drink some rum and to enjoy the sunset. I can appreciate this beautiful place, no question about it, but because the conversation has died, I am set to ponder alone just what it means to try to travel with cultural ethics. I can’t think of a problem that solved itself by being ignored, and my mind wanders to wonder if the core of the problem is caused by the idea of nations. Is nationalistic identification really indifference caused by a constant stream of wealth looking to justify the existing context?

On the same island, a young Israeli traveler is using his year following military service to get as high and drunk as possible as a means of unwinding from — and trying to forget — his past year. He is fully celebrating this and I am interested in his stories about the army and the stress he still has from his service. He has spent the last 60 days on an island smaller than a Olympic swimming pool: swimming, laying in the sun, getting high and playing basketball. Is that travel? For him, it really was. And maybe even more than that, it was — if only temporarily — his whole world. Nothing about the movement of travel seemed to matter much to him; He wanted a steady rhythm and he really didn’t want to worry about anything else that was happening in the world. A country, his country, could go to war tomorrow and his reaction would probably be the same as if you told him dinner was going to be served early. He achieved a state of self-centric-travel-zen, defined exactly as he wanted.

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Is that how travel should be?

“Take only pictures, leave only footprints” goes the traveling mantra. Modern travel is so much more complex than this, however. Rather than just striving and searching for the “real” and the “authentic,” how you encounter and negotiate these complexities — in whatever capacity that may be — is a very real part of travel today. The act of spending a dollar in a region is a message of disruption to a local economy and culture that you have come a great distance to see. You may aspire to see the pristine, the “primitive,” the untouched — but the fact remains that this is an impossibility: your very presence in such a space is inevitably “a touch.”

Your presence has effects. Are you responsible for those? If so, in what ways? What does it mean to try to just “check out of the world?” And which world might you be checking out of, anyway? To assume that other cultures are not necessarily of the world, is actually quite a limited and even violent assumption: a gesture that re-inscribes centuries of colonialism and oppression. Indeed, modern movement is endlessly complex when it comes to ethics.

I keep talking to the Israeli about his plans for the year. He plans on getting a work visa in a country — perhaps teaching English in Colombia. Does a real traveler work on the road? Does a real traveler ever come home? Is traveling a personal experience or is it meant to be shared? If so, how do you tell your story on the road and why

should others care? What kind of stories are people eager to hear, anyway?

The last time I can find an infatuation with a single traveler by the general public is in the mid 1920’s with Colonel Fawcett, a British traveler and explorer who was in search of rumored cities nestled deep in the Amazon. No other subject features as many books in the stores of Panama as they do about him. In this part of the world, no man was ever such a celebrity for traveling and exploring as he and his crew.

In 1928 the New York Times printed a story with the headline “DENIES JUNGLE INDIANS MURDERED FAWCETT; Brazil Press Rejects Accusations of Leader of Search Party for Lost British Explorer.” This was three years after his actual death. It took another four years of rumors, sightings, and rescue missions until 1932 when “THE FAWCETT MYSTERY” was finally printed, noting:

“Interest in the fate of Colonel FAWCETT, who disappeared in the Matto Grosso jungle in May, 1925, and is now reported to be alive by a jungle trapper, on the authority of British Consul General ABBOTT of Sao Paulo, is naturally acute.”

There are quite a few books on Fawcett that show the outright lunacy around the need to find out information on his travels, and then, his disappearance. His travels were front page news. And he died (after

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being resurrected by fame seekers many times) on the front page as well. The public was strung along with story after story about sightings from hearsay adventures trying to draw fame from the popularity of this legend. Was this the last time the tone of travel writing connected with the general feeling of the public? Fawcett — as rich and connected as he may have been — sent a message of the toughness and grit of travel, but also a message of how this was accessible. In so doing, he inspired a world. It is Fawcett’s shadow that countless adventurers and travelers still aspire to today — whether they know it directly or not. It is this dream of the “pure,” “the dangerous,” and “the undiscovered” that still haunts the trope of the “real traveler.”

And yet the tone of travel, of course, has since changed. As has the world. Travel stories now can only be told after a justification of the ethics and style of the traveler. I can only name a few writers on the road that I read right now, even with millions of people traveling. Why, exactly, is that? Isn’t there a need to read about travel, today? Or is that need met, already, with the grand dreams of Hollywood that conjure up mirages of “real travel” that have long since died out?

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CHAPTER 5

KASHKHAA KINDNESS Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. ―Mark Twain

The sun sets an hour early when there is a sandstorm in Doha. The red haze covers the towns’ skyscrapers and quickly turns the light blue sky a murky grey. The diversity of color all but vanishes once the dust rolls in, rendering everything in its field the same shade of haze. Even the massive and intricately engineered buildings lose their texture and personality — leaving only blurred edges barely perceptible to the human eye. Doha is a place quite unlike any other. The entire city has been built, rebuilt, or imagined within the brief pulse of the last 20 years, made possible by an absurd amount of money that has been poured into the economy. The city’s growth is almost incomprehensibly rapid: any view on any given day within the city is different: different than it has ever been, different than it will ever be.

DOHA, QATAR

It’s an explosion of growth in the most incomprehensible of habitable places — rich only in the resources that lie beneath the soil. I’m not talking about water, there isn’t much of that around. No matter, Qatar has figured out a way to turn natural gas into water (saltwater to clean water through desalination). It currently has a two-day, reserve water supply for the entire country and imports over 98% of the food for a population of about 2,000,000. The earth is so arid that they are importing soil from Sweden to try to grow crops (paid for, of course, by the gas under the current soil). Photo by Kevin M Gong

The vast majority of women wear simple long flowing all covering black qatari. Some wear a traditional head covering. Some women feature thick, bright eye makeup that peaks out from the slit in their hijab. I try not to stare, of course it is considered rude, but seeing an

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ounce of identity in a woman on an unnamed street in Doha is just something that seems important to me. I wanted to see an eye sparkle but instead was met with mostly scatters. They are generally ambivalent, it seems, to the public around them. After 8pm, they all seem to disappear. The Souq is dominated by men wearing long white robes and kashkha (a clean and bold hat and scarf combination).

I feel as if there are thousands of eyes upon my group as we drift through the streets. I see at least 100 men staring in my direction only to realize that they are not staring at me, but my two dinner dates. I am with two extraordinarily beautiful women from Melbourne and Zürich, with platinum blonde and fire red hair, respectively. The men don’t seem to care about my company’s western dress. They take a puff of their shisha, exhale the smoke and make comments in the general direction of another onlooker. Life in a relaxed state.

We sit down for dinner and enjoy a spread of the most strikingly flavorful Middle Eastern food I’ve ever had. Babaganoush with pomegranate, hummus (with an emphasis on the start czhuu uummmuuussss) and a braised fish. A lazy dinner passing food and smoking shisha; talking about where we have been and where we want to go. About who we are and who we want to be. We wonder about the history of the restaurant before it hits us: this is all brand new. The restaurant looks old, but it is about to celebrate its first birthday. This experience is all designed. This is Doha.

In the morning we wake up early to go diving on the Al-Sharqi wreck site. Grabbing coffee and lunch for everyone at a shop not far from downtown, the boat captain and I run into a snag: my credit card isn’t working with their machine, and we don’t have enough cash. I don’t want to delay the boat by an hour getting a ride into the city to access my backup cash. The boat captain tries to barter his ID for promise of a later payment. A man in a kashkha that was ahead of us in line asks the clerk how much we owe and promptly pays the bill outright in cash. It was about $100, and he just set it down on a kind whim. “No worries. Welcome to Doha,” the man said. The captain and I fumble through our surprise, thank him and watch in awe as he floats out the door and into his Rolls Royce Phantom sports car — speeding off. His license plate had three digits, a cachet only attainable by spending $200,000 or more. It was the first time I had ever seen wealth displayed quite so gratuitously. We drive to the boat and share with the group just what has happened.

The haze on the water looks like pollution over Doha, and still lingers out on the open ocean. We are equally about 50 miles from Qatar, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates — on top of the wreck site. “International waters, we can do what we want,” the captain informs us showing a stash of beer in the coolers. We can see the top of the ship through the turquoise water and drop anchor. We spend two dives going along and through the deserted ship now inhabited by thousands and thousands of fish swimming in unison around each corner of the new coral. The propeller is double the size of the other divers. The main hull is cracked open and we swim through it at 18 meters below the surface. A shadow is cast by the slowly crumbling boat as we swim through to a suddenly much warmer current. I float

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weightlessly on my back looking up at the light, my air bubbles slowly ascending to the surface. Why would I want to be anywhere else in the world?

mere three days after he arrived in Doha, and in his down time he is working on befriending any person that looks like they might have another job that might need someone just like him.

The boat makes the 50 mile return to the dock and we walk a while to find a cab back to the city. The tranquility of the dive is quickly lost as we negotiate for a cab for seven people. The cab driver wants to charge us a fare for each person, and I seem to be the only one negotiating. I play the “I’m really mad at the cab driver for ripping tourists off” game: getting in the cab, then stepping out of the cab and throwing my hands dramatically in the air. We get the fare down to a reasonable level and cram seven people in a cab with three seat belts. As we get out I have a few extra words for the cab driver about ripping people off. There is a couple trying to hail that same cab. They find another driver. As much bliss you will find in travel, you will find tension. Not being a regular makes you a target. As much as you can relax, you have to be paying attention to who you are interacting with and their intentions, “Friend.”

There is a staggering amount of money in the government. Staggering. The city is quickly developing to be larger than Manhattan with even more sky scrapers in a 20 year period. I try to walk to dinner a few buildings away, but fail after the sidewalk ends in fields of dust. A car is covered in a pile of sand after being parked for just one day. The dust covers everything and a storm is on the horizon. We head back inside grateful for the day we had. In the morning I head to the airport.

Qatar has an army of workers imported from nearby regions building everything you see. The work conditions are not something very many people seem to want to talk about, as they have been featured in many articles by the Human Rights Watch. The ordained rule of “no construction if it is 50 degrees Celsius outside,” is mitigated by controlling the media company that reports the weather. It seems to usually lingers at a convenient 49 degrees Celsius. Or so the rumor goes, anyway. The workers we befriend are all incredibly friendly and happy to talk about life and sport. A Nepalese man is on the job a

I look out the window as the plane flies off, and I am amazed, again, at the dust storms that cover the region. It doesn’t matter how much money this city may have, the dust still comes — a reminder that money still can’t quite buy everything; that an experience can be perfectly designed and simulated…but only within limits. The buildings grow distant (I think they are buildings), peaking out from the thick clouds of grey and red. I’m tired and in awe of the thinness of the line between reality and dreaming. I blink, then again, slowly — pondering if what I just saw was lucid.

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CHAPTER 6

TRUTH COPY A melody of all my life; to seat out anger, to concentrate on the tasks of life, to feel the pleasure and delight of loneliness and freedom, to be all of a human being. ―Fritz Scheiber

HIROSHIMA, JAPAN

Can you casually observe a problem in someone else’s life? How about a culture? When you walk down the street, can you point out a flaw in a community? Or does such a critical gesture merely help to point out the flaws in you?

Sometimes I fall into travel slumps and I don’t snap out of them until I find something that I want to do. This isn’t the “I want ice cream” grade of desire, it’s more “I had a dream as a kid and have always wanted to _____.” Then I jump on it, do it and I’m out of the slump. These desires, for me, usually present themselves as a challenge and not as a guide. A challenge to invent your own course with the limitations you may have at that moment.

I was in Tokyo doing my usual long, meandering walk. The stoic guards outside the emperor’s palace mirrored the cool mood of the winter day. The fashionistas of the Ginza district added a little color to the scene — parading the streets as if it were a red carpet before dozens of street photographers who eagerly snapped photos of the especially well put together outfits for the fashion magazines. Somehow, my blue shirt and Maggie — my orange backpack — weren’t quite making the cut. No matter how many times I walked past the photographers they still wouldn’t take my picture. I found the whole scene quite tiresome, and I was having a hard time getting enthused or feeling inspired. A slump. I had a strong urge to go to Hiroshima. When a history class shows up on the map you’re looking at, you grab at the chance and just go. Lucky for me, a 300 kilometer per hour train was doing just that, every 10 minutes. Two hundred and twenty dollars (and three hours) later and I was in one

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of the most infamous places on earth: the very site where the atomic bomb was first deployed in war.

would be hard pressed to know that this was, in fact, the very place that holds the memories of one of humanity’s darkest hours.

Hiroshima has every marking of a modern, international city. There are bike lanes, parks, crosswalks and skyscrapers. Weekend markets and warm winter coats. Hotels that have doormen and churches whose bells echo through the streets. Walking malls with electronic shops, international coffee brands and cinemas. The city is still intact, or at least as intact as you can be after being directly in the path of an atomic bomb — appearing far better off than I ever would have imagined. There is one building, however, that has managed to remain in the city without touchup, rebuilding or restoration. Sitting untouched and representing just what happened is the Genbaku Dome. It is, to me, the most iconic image of World War II. Once a center for the arts in a developing city is now a skeleton with a shattered heart. I sit on the river adjacent to the building in awe. It is quiet. It is cold. The wind bites into my cheeks as I imagine just what that day looked like years ago…

If you visit the peace park in the city center you are invited to ring a bell that symbolizes the call for the destruction of all nuclear weapons. I ring it. There is a battering ram that you pull all the way back and then release: the ring is haunting, lingering. The point where the wooden ram meets the steel of the bell — that moment of contact — is considered to be the symbol for nuclear weapons. We have fought; now let us learn the lesson and not ever see what happened here again.

What horribly violent people we are. Thought one. What amazingly forgiving people we are. Thought two. How quickly we forget how hard peace is. Thought three.

I’m moved by what Hiroshima is today. Very proud that this city, a place of mass destruction beyond imagination, has persisted and is now an advocate for peace. If you didn’t visit the city center you

I go looking for the museum and get a little lost. A map in hand and a pack on your back is enough to clearly mark you as a tourist. I ask for directions and two older women help me out. They seem to be competing to see who can be the most helpful, the most polite. Bow. Bow. This way. This way. Bow. Bow. Their eager and shy smiles seem to reveal a humble pride and excited accomplishment. The hotel doorman is the same way. The barista? Equally hospitable. Everyone I meet is was warm. Every feeling I have is full of acceptance. A reminder, a dozen reminders, to be kind.

My friend had just emailed me a research paper they did on post-war Japanese photography. It had this gem in it: “[t]he literal translation of shashin, the Japanese word for photography, is truth copy.” I spend the rest of the day looking at photographs from the war era, “truth copies.” When you are exposed to that type of bomb, even

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kilometers away, your skin can just fall off. A painful death. A painful life if you survive. Some survivors are still active in the museum answering questions, showing compassion to complete strangers. My country did this. I walk into a chilling, brisk wind looking for my next planned destination.

A train ride away there is a World Heritage Site overlooking Hiroshima from across the bay. I’m learning the language like I usually do: by repeating, albeit quietly, everything that is said to me. This makes the connection between what I’m hearing with sounds I can actually make. You can’t learn any part of a language unless you know how to interpret what is being communicated to you. You listen to the sounds while stumbling over the rolling of your “R’s” in Spanish, your elongated vowels in Japanese. “Arigato gozaimasu (thank you)” is greeted with “Domo arigato gozaimasu (a formal thank you.)” “Have a great day,” is always repeated back: “Haaaave ah grrrrreat daaay.”

It generally works out well, but when it goes bad, it goes really bad. Today I proudly welcome a boat captain to his boat. The usual stoic character of a Japanese service industry worker completely gives way to a fit of laughter, erupting in front of a group of visitors who are paying their somber respect to lessons from lost generations past. Awkward. I laugh nervously along, promising myself I will stop repeating things.

There is a tram that carries visitors up a mountain with the sole purpose of offering views of a city that is famous for an almost unthinkable reason. The mountain is sprinkled with streams and waterfalls, even the occasional deer that will gladly eat a tourist’s gift bag if given the opportunity. After the bomb was dropped, the mountainside experienced a flash flood that was followed by a landslide — taking out all the vegetation. You wouldn’t know that now. The trees have returned and a tranquil forest now covers the whole island. A hike up to the top brings you to an overlook. I break out my sushi lunch and look to the horizon in search of answers, the way most people probably do when sitting in this very spot. But I don’t find any answers, I find mostly questions. Years later, their actions point to more compassion and leadership than we have ever provided to them; or to anyone, really, for that matter.

Getting back to the tram is a seven minute walk, but the sign points out that it’s actually “only 5 if you run a little.” The humor is refreshing, a welcomed lightness to an otherwise heavy mood. The day is closing; the winter moon rising.

When I get back to Tokyo I keep asking myself how I plan to make this trip unique to me. When you travel continuously, it’s easy to grow weary of simply “seeing the sights” — easy to miss and yearn for a little structure in your life. Always changing locations makes me lust after all the basic rituals of life I don’t have on the road (a commute, a continuous group of friends, a kitchen). It is out of this mood — this set of feelings and sentiments — that I began playing “Mark, Sue.”

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It is partly due to this absence of your own everyday routines, I think, that implants in the traveler the desire to feel like a local. Of course, it’s not just that simple. Feeling like a local has long since presented itself as the highest form of travel: you know the sights, the culture, the language, the feel of a place. You are privy to the best restaurants and most vibrant bars, you know both the town characters and the secret lookout spots with the best views — none of which can be found from a peek in a guidebook. You experience town like no tourist can; you experience town just like, well, a local. Gold star for you.

To get to this feeling, I can spend a year in a place, or, I can play a game. Enter “Mark, Sue.” It’s easy. Get up and walk out of wherever you are. Find someone that looks interesting for some reason, any reason. The more you play, the more creative you can get. You might like their scarf, their glasses, or the bounce they have when they walk. Follow them. Yes, really. Just follow them.

Get as close as you are comfortable with, and keep following them toward wherever they are going. It’s kind of like a “choose your own” travel guide, a “jack in the box” tour — you never quite know what or when something is going to pop up. So you are following “Mark” or “Sue.” Now, pay attention to everything. What is their pace like? This is how a local walks. Note their route. This is how a local commutes. They stop at a coffee shop? You know a locals spot. Grab an espresso. When you finish, find another “Mark.” If they go into a store or direction you don’t want to, turn around.

I’ve been playing the game for years, and at this point, I have probably tracked hundreds of people. Although it may seem kind of creepy, it’s really not. And anyway, not a single person has ever confronted me. I named the game “Mark, Sue” because I was so afraid of this confrontation. If they turn around I can say, “are you Mark? No? Oh, you look like my old friend from here that I lost contact with — we met in NYC a few years back. What is your name?” Never happened, but it’s good for the nerves to be prepared.

Following all the “Marks” and “Sues” has spiraled me into many random, local routines that I otherwise never would have experienced. I’ve gone to the tops of office buildings in Athens; caught subway transfers to crosstown busses in NYC; joined in beach volleyball games in Sydney; changed nightclubs in Barcelona at 4 am; and found some of the most amazing food I’ve ever had in Thailand. All for free. All at the grace of the people that make the city you are in really what it is.

“Mark, Sue” is by far my favorite thing to do while traveling. It’s so simple. And what you can get out of it is far from a walk. I find it is the shortest way for me to get off the tourist track and find the local energy of an area.

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CHAPTER 7

GETTING LOST Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges— Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go

―Rudyard Kipling

SANTA MARTA, COLOMBIA

There is a lane. A simple lane with two sidewalks and a rush of compact cars and motorbikes. There is the place you are, the place you want to be, and the world of Colombia spinning, swerving and honking in between. It is a literal and figurative starting point for many Colombians’ workday. It cuts through the University with an ancient age to its angles. Cobblestones with a patchwork of concrete and dust. A pothole has a young man standing idly by, pretending to fix it in exchange for coins thrown from passing vehicles. If he fixes it quickly, the tips wouldn’t come in. It is a slow game of looking like you are working, getting helped by strangers, actually working and figuring out just how long you can play the game. So is, in a nutshell, travel.

A cab driver asks me for payment in Spanish, which I don’t quite understand. A somewhat tense situation — especially because the only bills I have to pay have “50 Mil” on it. I have no idea if I am paying a fair price for the ride or if I just gave the driver a down payment on a house. I study what each bill looks like once outside the cab, vowing to not make that mistake again.

I have dreamed about visiting Colombia for years, despite having been cautioned about it hundreds of times. The advice I receive from online communities swings between the dramatic poles of “it’s a dream” or “be extremely careful.” It’s never in the middle.

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A week in Colombia already tells me that it’s a dream, and the statistic of 308,776 Americans visiting Colombia for one reason or another this month tell me that this is no secret.

Rather appropriately after a week of museums, tram rides, churches, dancing and the street meats of Bogotá, I happen to be staying at the Dreamer Hostel in Santa Marta. At roughly nine dollars a night, the air-conditioned room and open-air pool and bar is proving to be the steal of the trip. There are 40 or so backpackers here — most staying a few more days than originally planned — relaxing, making new friends and planning trips, treks and random adventures.

I had only planned on spending one night here — but as is typical of most travelers when they find a gem of a hostel with a good vibe — that “plan” quickly went out the window. I am already on my eighth day. The Dreamer Hostel is filled with open and nice people from around the world — gathering together every night to share travel stories over cold, Colombian beers. We typically swap out the television (this place has satellite!) with our iPods and share our various tastes in music; which, more often than not, tends to be some Israeli hit mixed with mid 90s movie soundtracks. There is a pool table just a few steps from the swimming pool (pronounced “Paul” if you are talking to a Brit) and with all these comforts and good personalities, the Dreamer feels just as much like a destination onto itself as it is a place where plans are made.

Although Colombia was very dangerous to travel in 2004, it is to me one of the safest feeling places to visit in 2010. A political shift in power matched with smart infrastructure planning has mitigated much of the violence and relegated the drug trade and rebels to obscure corners.

At 6’5,” I am virtually a giant here. Add with my light blond hair and strong accent and I am like a circus figure on a bit of a trip. Such an appearance seems to make me particularly vulnerable to large groups of curious children. I was mobbed by a pack of kids at a salt mine just North of Bogotá, for example, where many of the girls wanted to pet my hair. Such gestures prove to be some of our only means of effective communication with each other, though there is an occasional utterance of “beautiful”— pet, pet, pet — one of the only English words they appear to have down pat. Shakira would be so proud. The focus on beauty is staggering, I hear rumors that 70% of women in Colombia have had plastic surgery.

Aside from these interactions with the locals, most of my interactions are with other travelers. These, too, tend to follow certain formulas. The usual, tired old questions when you meet a fellow backpacker tend to be: “Where are you from? What place are you coming from? How long of a trip are you on?” If you are new to travel, this is an exciting set of questions. The more you travel; however, the more you try to avoid such repetitive questions that demand the same answers over and over again. Of course, this set of questions is just a general skeleton — and the types of questions one traveler asks a fellow

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traveler is also influenced by country of origin, the type of day you are having and your general disposition.

I have learned to adopt a certain rule: I am not going to tell you where I am from if you don’t also want to know my name. So it goes:

“Andrew. From the States. Just came from Barranquilla. On a trip for over a year. Nice to meet you.”

Generalizations, it seems, tend to rule the road. A Canadian might not like a certain traveler they meet from Spain, for instance, and as a result try to avoid other Spaniards until their generalizations are overturned. Such generalizations, of course, can also vary country to country, and even city by city. I have seen Israelis banned from hotels outright (as most backpacking Israeli’s are just out of the military and not the most well behaved — looking for girls to hire and drugs to indulge in), and I have personally been scoffed at on more than one occasion simply by being from the States. Sometimes, as in the above examples, these generalizations are blunt and obvious. More often than not; however, they come across very subtly. Such generalizations sneakily appear through such avenues as taste, friendliness, or openness. Too often, I find, we don’t even tend to really “hear” one another as we speak, choosing instead to animate someone’s stories with our own radical assumptions about where that person is from — as if the one or two things any of us know about Tasmania, for example, has anything to really do with the Tasmanian traveler you happen to meet over lunch some random

afternoon. They have platypuses down there don’t they? You must love them. At the end of the day, there is something about traveling — about consistently meeting new people from around the world — that strikes in me a feeling of being just like a toddler in a big playground searching for new friends. Searching, ultimately, for acceptance. Can I be your friend?

These generalizations with which we approach the world could very well go unnoticed. And indeed, perhaps they should. However, noticing how and when you deploy such assumptions seems to play a crucial role in the puzzle of discovery that travel so often affords. “Is this what travel is all about?” It’s a question I find I ask myself often. “Is it all about unraveling what you think you know about others? About the world? Even about yourself?”

In some ways, this seems to be a radically different approach to travel than the often deep and almost unconscious desire to justify our actions as an accumulation of “high points” that we can present to the world, to our communities, in order to make it appear as if we are “living a good life.” In these instances, so much energy is poured into making it seem as if we are in perfect alignment with our own cultures’ programmed generalizations about what it means to achieve “human happiness.” Indeed, if the world were to end tomorrow, we will probably not all be gathering in the afterlife to compare points on who saw what waterfall: no, the world will simply be over. So if you are not traveling in order to accumulate momentary high points, what are you traveling for? How do you

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decide what to do while traveling? It’s a big question! And one that can be answered in any number of ways.

The way I see it, there are three modes of travel that will frame the question in different ways:

Option 1: Plan every action ahead of time. Get every guidebook. Research each place online, search out reviews, book everything in advance, know the warnings, the best way to exchange money and have all the major tours picked out.

Option 2: Simply show up. Perhaps, if you are feeling like you need extra credit, check out a review of a place to start, book a hostel, then listen to other travelers to see what tours and activities are great. Go with other backpackers to other cities. Repeat and repeat.

Option 3: Disown currency. Travel only to places where nobody has ever heard of and then, once you are there, walk even further away from anything you know. Eat meals with people who invite you in; get your water from where others get theirs.

I’m trying my best shot at Option 2. I figure I can do the first option when I am older, and as for the third option, well, I am much too scared to throw myself into a situation where I have to rely solely upon the kindness and hospitality of perfect strangers.

Traveling in rhythm with the second option, however, has led me on some great adventures. I am loving each little taste of what can happen once you just show up and begin meeting people.

I didn’t know anyone when I arrived to Santa Marta and I knew very little about the town and the surrounding area, and yet it was only a matter of days before I found myself within a group that was spontaneously traveling to a mysterious place known as the Lost City — nestled deep in the Sierra Nevada jungle that surrounds the town. I was with an exciting blend of characters that appeared bonded in way that defied all sense-making, given the fact that we had only known each other for a matter of double digit hours.

As it turns out, Santa Marta, located in the far north of the country, is something like a Holy Grail for travelers — offering access to beautiful beaches, a vibrant city life, low governmental and military regulation and amazing climates. Amongst seasoned travelers, Santa Marta is known for its uniqueness, beauty and strong sense of community. As such, it attracts and keeps in its orbit an interesting mix of people. A very good place for new friend making.

Although the guidebooks have done their best at all but destroying nearby areas with their grand claims that create impossible expectations, Santa Marta has survived. Of the backpackers I know that have traveled for over a year, for instance, it is usually Santa Marta that emerges as the place they would choose to return to, grow some roots and start a hostel; a family. A special place, indeed.

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Our new friendships found themselves in a 1980’s model Land Rover with oversized tires hurling us up the muddy, clay road — pausing on the accelerator only for the occasional technical maneuver. We tilt to the side so far that it is only your seat belt that holds you in. You can reach out and touch the hillside while the 4x4 is seemingly on two wheels. The humid air hangs with the smell of mint and mud. Near Santa Marta, up this impossible hill, is a tiny village that starts the five to six day hike to the Lost City. A city so “lost” I hadn’t ever even heard of it before, it was one of those places that circulated as a whisper from local and seasoned travelers lips — bouncing off the walls of the hostel, and inspiring a few of us to check out just what all the fuss was about. The Lost City, in this way, epitomizes what Option 2 is all about: show up with a smile and an open mind and see where it takes you.

through the jungle remarkably happened to stumble upon this Colombian equivalent of Machu Picchu.

Let it be known that this hike was by far one of the more challenging experiences I have ever encountered. Both jungle heat and jungle creatures are constant companions along your trek over countless mountain ridges. Although we were fully armed with pure DEET and mosquito nets, we were virtually eaten alive by the bugs. Which, in addition to being highly uncomfortable, is always a little scary in malaria-ridden areas. Only ten visitors a day are trekking along the rugged slope in order to get a view of this amazing city of civilizations past. The Lost city gets its namesake because it was only just “discovered” in 1974. Before that, the city was, quite literally, lost — overgrown and hidden by the fierce jungle in which it makes its home. Intense networks of trees, shrubs, vines and moss covered every surface making the once great city just a part of the hillside. It was found by a pair of grave robbers, who after wandering for days

But the experience is not all about imagining some lost culture. At the top of the final terrace we are greeted by some young Colombian Army members, who, after taking long looks at all the girls, invited us to sit and talk. They all had machine guns, protecting this city from drug cartels attempting to hold tourists hostage as they have done in the past. Our group utilized our very basic Spanish and nervousness to arrange something for us to do together — a pushup competition.

It is truly a breathtaking site to behold. Millions of rocks had been carefully placed to build flat land on top of a ridge. An amazing staircase reaches down to the river: 1,200 steps of hand placed rocks that jet straight up a steep cliff. It is striking to contemplate how this was the work of thousands of now nameless people. Looking across the valley, it was easy to feel transported to some other era, imagining other cities nearby — other cities still lost to the work of time. Other cities with families, economies, royalty and religion. Other cities yet to be discovered or that will remain forever covered by the jungles that have claimed their history.

A word to the wise: if you are competing with someone with a machine gun — let them win. If it is rummy or baseball or anything not named “actual war,” just let them have their field day. I tapped out at 42 pushups, just before the 19 year old completed his 45th. A

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girl in our group almost beat one of their older members, much to the groans and cheers of the Colombians. My Australian friend Gabe gave away little kangaroo key chains; the girls all hiked down their shirts a little bit.

The attention of the Army members was a welcome mix to our hiking routine. We had just hiked in for four long days uphill, and now it was time to return to that small village. We were hiking 6 hours a day in the hot and humid jungle heat and each had at least sixty bug bites. Life thrived deep beyond the motors and smog of the city. The guide had provided us with only a few purification pills for water, which ran out a few days ago. After many groans and finger pointing, everyone was risking sickness by drinking water directly from the streams in an effort to stay hydrated and battle the jungle heat.

It was an out and back hike, which afforded us the ability to see on our way “in,” those who were coming “out.” We passed three groups, all with certain members showing major signs of sickness. “Don’t eat the salad, don’t drink the water” became a mantra. I was scared of anything going into my body.

Often in my travels I have to plan ahead and be super cautions of my dietary requirements. Gluten free or celiac are the best descriptors. The pastas and sandwiches the guide packed (even though I was assured there were gluten free options during booking) were not something I could eat. My first lesson in “ask seven times, experience once.” If you ask a yes or no question, you get a yes or no answer,

which, unfortunately, often lack the viscera of crucial details. The five day hike thus became a five day fast. A hike, but also a spiritual journey, a peaceful expression of rage.

Of all the things I have ever done, whether despite or because of all of these challenges, my fast and trek to the Lost City in Santa Marta is amongst the most rewarding. I could have gotten irate with the guide (and would have had every reason to), but slipped into a travel zen that left me overly excited to see around every bend in the trail, every tree-filled vista, and every river to dive in. I learned that everything I thought I knew about myself was up for debate. I have to have water. Wrong. I need three meals a day or else I’m grumpy. Couldn’t be further from the truth. I came to be a traveler, dammit, not a dictator.

The rope swing into the crisp, jungle creek is a needed break from the heat. We celebrate, as a group of new friends, the days we have spent in the Colombian jungles. The grandmother in charge of cooking dinner near this swimming hole asks why so many of us are single. “To experience this, I guess.” was more or less our collective answer. I feel singled out in many ways from that question. Why the hell was I single after all these years of being perfectly fine with the person I am?

So where to next? Diving certification? Bus to a beach town? Venezuela?

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We will see what the feeling is when I wake up. We will see what my travel partners think. The danger of all of this is that I may pass up something that would be beneficial or a great lesson just because someone else thought it was lame.

Such is life, now.

Random, always changing, but always full of opportunity and questions of meaning, purpose and acceptance.

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PANAMA CANAL, PANAMA “How am I going to eat alone?” This was a huge fear for me, as I assume it is for many. The act of saying “table for one” was like admitting defeat to me. It was lonely. It was a statement about my ability to make and keep friends. Only a pariah of society eats or drinks alone. Or, so the sentiment goes. The very act of even saying the word “alone” makes you feel, well, alone. All those cavernous vowels that seem to hog the whole word? Aaaaloooone. Miserable. Food and life are meant to be shared, dammit.

“Table for one.” It is a tough phrase. It conjures up all kinds of associated images: being stood up by a date or not being able to get a date in the first place, or being rejected by friends or left by a spouse. Table-for-ones are for old ladies with lots of cats. Table-forones are dates for one. An Irish pub at 11am on a weekday is filled with dates for one. That was not me, I cannot be in that group.

Alas: “I’ll have a table for [a somber] one, please.”

There are some people that fill a room with their presence with enough charisma to impress a Hollywood scout. They end their night with ten new friends begging them to “just come to one more bar.” I am, unapologetically, not one of them. I don’t have the ability to

befriend a stranger with my looks. I’ve never really been flirted with out of the blue (a catch-22 for most solo female travelers you talk to). If there is one seat left in a bus, it most likely will be next to me. I’m big, a little awkward, enjoy being quiet and thinking to myself. The friends I have are from working relationships, community sports and friends of friends. The chance happening of someone new just approaching me, asking my name and trying to be friends with me just because doesn’t really make up a big part of my reality. Unless, of course, they were trying to sell me something.

Without work, sports, or friends, all my usual ways of making friends vanished once I hit on the road. A table for one was the start, middle and end of my meal (and that goes for drinks, walks and all kinds of gathering places). With an in, I had no problem making friends, but on my own I could have been more friendly looking.

Sometimes you look back on stories like this and think “you idiot, you should have transferred one of your usual behaviors, like playing a sport, to your trip.” Seeing that solution would have staved off my depression from feeling lonely — which is among one of my biggest fears. Speaking in front of 2000 people was less frightening to me than spending this gift of a trip alone.

After thinking about this for a while, and feeling horrible, I got up, did what ever I felt like doing for three months without anyone changing my plans, and I felt incredible. You might feel odd about it 49 / 51

before you experience it, but traveling solo is one of the best parts of a trip. You meet your fear head on. Alone becomes less about the lacking of a partner when you find your understanding of the originator of the question benefits from the solitude. Just who the hell are you anyway? And if you don’t totally know, just how, exactly, can you compromise not knowing? Or at least beginning to know, beginning to understand?

When you are stripped of things to hide behind, like in a security clearance white room in Barriquilla, Columbia, for instance, with no shared language and AK47’s outnumbering you 6-1, what do you find? When you are in a room filled with a community so different than you that you must watch, think and enjoy the notion of walking in their shoes, of adopting their life, their realities, do you find what makes a person happy? Unique? More importantly, do you find what makes you happy and unique?

Are you honest with yourself if you are not with others? Can you take a look back at your last year of life and be more empathetic to the stories you shared? Does what really matter to you change when you notice the range in which other cultures derive meaning, value and purpose?

Cartagena taught me more about the Colombian culture than a week in museums. How do the teenagers in love flirt when their parents flirt (who are still seemingly, remarkably, madly in love in love with each other)? A family of five rides by on a motorbike with a cultural order to who sits where (father driving, youngest children in front, wife behind with the eldest on the far back) tells me just as much about the area as a long conversation with a hotel owner. Your focus solo is fully on the culture you are in. What are the shared values, traditions, cultural norms and ways of moving in space?

You may never know who you are until you have a long conversation with yourself, and that is done most brilliantly at a table for one.

I found out that I hate being in the way. A bit of the social anxiety I have around crowds is just simply not wanting to stand out in a negative way. I don’t want to have my name announced on a stage as I feel awkward when they announce a drink I order at a coffee-shop. I don’t want to have to barter over my meal, a hotel, or a bus. I want to be invisible, but participatory. Helpful, yet obscure to the central story. With that in mind, I slipped on a flight to find myself a mile away from the Panama Canal.

Sit and ask yourself just how you really are. Are you working toward the dreams you find genuine value in? What place do you find yourself in right now and what does that say about the community that shares the space? Spending a night analyzing a night market in

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Hope You Enjoyed the Sample

THAT IS THE SAMPLE

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Get on the road!

Andrew Hyde http://andrewhy.de [email protected]

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