Getting the Travel Bug

In 2008, my then-girlfriend Lisa and I took a massive trip around the world.  It went something like this: Ireland, Scotland, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, and Fiji.  Discounting a trip to Niagara Falls, I had never before traveled outside of my home country (no offense, Canada; it was lovely, but not so very foreign).  Sixty-some days and 3 continents later, I returned home to Maryland with the experience of a lifetime.  More traveling and a plan to leave the US for a longer period ensued, and by 2010 I was living in Ecuador.  My traveling has become less intense and more localized to South America of late, but a recent three week trip to Hong Kong made me reflect once again on the highs and lows of large-scale international travel.  And, because it is never too early to rehash old material, I would like to share a few of my thoughts on traveling from 2008, as I stand by them now, almost six years later:

Hey Barcelona, see you again soon!

You know how sometimes you wake up in the morning and are incredibly confused? You don't know where you are, how you got there, or what time of day it is? This is what happened to me the very first morning that I had returned from my trip around the world. For 2 months of traveling, I was fine; it took coming home and sleeping in my own bed to feel lost. This may have been because I didn't go to sleep until 3 AM and woke up at 7 AM to go to work. Or, it could have been because I was on Fiji time, and therefore the sun had inexplicably risen through the window at what was 11 PM on my body and mind. But I think the real reason was that for the first time all summer, I was able to let my guard down completely and not worry about my surroundings. That is one of the many true comforts of home. As a result, I awoke from the deepest sleep in months...to go directly to work. Oh well.

My sister, Ethel, met us along the way!

Traveling is equal parts motion and waiting. Whether we were waiting at the train station, airport, or hotel lobby, we found plenty of time on our hands, but only when we didn't need it and couldn't use it. Sometimes we were in motion and still waiting, such as waiting for the train to finally reach its destination. The point is that all of this idle time on my hands allowed for a wandering mind, and I would like to share some of these inner ramblings with you now. 

Anonymous train ride to somewhere

Apparently, the peaches in Rome are the best things on earth.

At any given point in time, the entire human race is mere hours away from starvation. Not deadly starvation, mind you, but certainly severe and crippling hanger. Food consumes a traveler's thoughts far more frequently a traveler actually gets to consume food. Because food can be expensive and because it is not always conveniently available, this at times becomes a very limiting nuisance. We were working inside of 5-6 hour windows to explore a city before having to worry about food again. In the course of 7-9 foodless hours, Lisa and I were reduced, on several occasions, to single-minded, zombie-like scavengers who stopped caring about cost, taste, and/or personal hygiene until we had something in our stomachs. Due to budgetary constraints and the ridiculous cost of living in Europe, we tried several tactics to combat our impulses. First, we tried to drink a lot of water to trick our stomachs into feeling full, but that only delayed things for an hour, tops. We then tried to gorge ourselves and eat as much as we possibly could in one sitting whenever we found a cheap restaurant or grocery store. The idea here was that we could store up on energy for a prolonged period of time, but the reality was more urgent and violent trips to the bathroom. Our final strategy before giving in to nature was to try to sleep late, miss breakfast, and eat only 2 meals a day. This was an act of pure desperation and resulted in really big, accidentally expensive lunches, not to mention the lost time. The only realistic thing that we could do was to ransack convenience stores for unsatisfying little snacks and buy spaghetti as often as we could because we got 2 meals out of one box. But even when we found food and were pleasantly full, there was still a little bug in the back of my head telling me, "Okay, you just bought yourself some time, but don't get cocky; in a few hours you'll be nothing more than a walking digestive system again." As a result, Lisa and I spent some of our airport waiting time assembling a detailed grocery list for when we got home. Aside from family and friends, the most exciting part of being back has been the refrigerator.

Datoga men in Tanzania

A self-reinforcing cycle of smiles in Tanzania

Comfort is a seductress. This was especially true in Cairo, Egypt when Lisa and I enjoyed the lovely home of our friends Jill and Terry after our hobo-like existence through Europe's hostels and train stations. After a month of longing for a hot shower and clean bed and often finding neither, we were flung into the unequaled luxury of a huge, fully stocked apartment. All of a sudden, we had our very own bedroom, kitchen, computer, laundry room, and living room complete with a big-screen TV and broad selection of DVDs. Our plans for all the places we wanted to see during our five-day stint in Cairo eroded into the 3 basics of the pyramids, the museum, and the Khan al Khalili marketplace. Even for the wonders of the world, it was a struggle to bring ourselves to leave the air-conditioned bliss for the smothering heat of Cairo's July sun. Every morning we stayed in bed just a little longer than planned. We hit the snooze button three, four, five times before giving up and resetting it for an hour later, letting the warm arms of sleep pull us back down under the covers. Every movie we started was a little too good to turn off or pause before the end, and the afternoons dissolved away. Every evening while eating our dinner delivered to our door by Chili's (don't judge us), we discussed how the next day we would get an early start and actually leave the apartment. We knew we were in Egypt and we knew that it would be a long time if we ever got back there, but after over a month of traveling, our most compelling desire was for a small dose of normalcy while it was for the taking. Just a little bit of comfort. We didn't know when we'd have it again, as we still had a month before returning home. Comfort can certainly be a trap if allowed to consistently decide one's actions, but sometimes it's as necessary as food (see previous paragraph).

Coast of Simonstown, South Africa

Traveling gives the peculiar sense of slipping through parallel universes. People and the basic rules that govern life are the same everywhere you go, but all of the little things change, as if the fabled butterfly had flapped its wings just a little differently. This is compounded by the fact that when traveling nowadays, people don't experience this shift gradually; they get into some kind of moving, mechanical apparatus, lock themselves in for a few hours, and when they get out, things are different. You get into an airplane and five hours later, people have accents (or perhaps more accurately you have one). You board a train and four hours later there's a different face on the money and some ludicrous number like 10,000 next to it that buys you a tube of toothpaste. Another airplane and a few hours and men wear skirts and women shave their heads. But in each place, the people remain essentially the same. A laugh is a laugh. People congregate around food, whether it's a restaurant, a marketplace, or a barbecue. They flirt.  They wheel, deal, and hustle. The differences are mainly in the how, not the what. What people do, say, want, and need, all remain the fundamentally the same.

Sunrise over False Bay, South Africa

Life is all about routine, even while traveling to places you've never been before. Our routine was to settle ourselves into our new surroundings and learn the new ways of saying hello, thank you, and goodbye. I must know that series of salutations in 8 languages now. We would check into our room, lock up our valuables, and consult either our map or the locals to get ourselves a good meal. We would then explore the town, city, or wilderness for what was left of the day and then return to our dwelling at nightfall. We would sleep. We would wake up, repack our bags that we had tried our best to keep intact, and then say goodbye to the place we had just met in whatever dialect we had just learned. Even as we moved on to the excitement of the next place, there was always a pang of sorrow as we took a last look around us, wondering if we would ever make it back. Some places we felt certain we would. Others became that much more beautiful in our last moments because we suspected we wouldn't. Routine. Done and on to the next one. We are back in the US and almost settled into our home routines, so for now we must say hello, thank you, and goodbye. Or in Tanzania, jambo, asanti sana, and kwaheri.