This Book Is About Travel Read online

  This Book is About Travel

  Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Hyde

  Cover by: Andrew Hyde

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author. Default legal jargon is funny, no?

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9857015-2-9

  Book Website http://thisbookisabouttravel.com

  Email: [email protected]

  Give feedback on the book at:

  [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  THE ADVENTURE STARTS

  Chapter 2

  OBSERVATIONALLY, A BLUFF

  Chapter 3

  THE LOOTED LIFE

  Chapter 4

  WEALTH, POVERTY AND KITTENS

  Chapter 5

  KASHKHAA KINDNESS

  Chapter 6

  TRUTH COPY

  Chapter 7

  GETTING LOST

  Chapter 8

  SEVEN QUESTIONS

  Chapter 9

  HOSTEL SHARKS

  Chapter 10

  INTERVIEW: LISA BESSERMAN

  Chapter 11

  A DRUNK MONGOLIAN RUSSIAN

  Chapter 12

  HOW I PLAN

  Chapter 13

  FRACTALS OF SEIZURES

  Chapter 14

  UNAVOIDABLE CIRCUMSTANCE

  Chapter 15

  CAN’T EXPENSE

  Chapter 16

  INTERVIEW: ANNIE LYONS FITZSIMMONS

  Chapter 17

  MUSEUM AS SPORT

  Chapter 18

  UNDERPASS LIVING

  Chapter 19

  THE TRAGEDY OF NEPAL 2011

  Chapter 20

  DUDE RANCH

  Chapter 21

  BLOOD. POLICE. TOGA.

  Chapter 22

  REENTRY DEPRESSION

  Chapter 23

  INTERVIEW: TAYLOR DAVIDSON

  Chapter 24

  A NOTION OF HOME

  Chapter 25

  TRIOMPHE

  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 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.

  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.

  “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.

  “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 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.

  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.

  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!”

  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.

  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 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.

  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.

  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 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. Let’s get going

  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 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 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.

  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 p
olice 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 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.

  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.

  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.”

  Silence.

  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?”