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Initiation ceremony — it conjures images of torchlight processions, Masonic robes, fratboys with paddle bruises, Navy SEALs hoisting logs. Initiation ceremonies mark a transition from one place to another, and it’s often more of a psychological step than a physical one.
While settling into what I’ll call “India mode” over the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to observe the initiation rites of travel — the tiny events that accumulate into a feeling of comfort in a foreign country.
Some are things that happen to us — things beyond our control. The choices the bus driver makes. The buffalo that blocks our path. The power outage in the internet cafe. The midnight buzzsaw beneath the hotel window. The stares.
Some we bring upon ourselves. The trip to the barber. What we accidentally step in. The foray into public transportation. The first bite of street food. The first dance.
Fellow travelers also have been noting their progress — they make announcements like, “This is my first hot kathi roll in 3 years!” or, “I thought I forgot how to squat.”
What initiation rituals help you immerse yourself in a journey?
Photo “Sara likes bugs” by Michael Sarver via Flickr.
Sullivan McLeod and surfboard
One of the gifts of aiming big is that sometimes, you actually reach your goals. It’s all too easy to fall into the idea that if you’ve never done something before, well, then, you probably can’t do it at all, or at least not right away. You’ve never lived abroad? Best not to jump into it; maybe start with living in a different state. Can’t run? Stay out of triathlons.
Or, you could throw caution to the winds, and aim for the sky. Sullivan McLeod, an author, traveler, and sometime bookstore worker in the small Australian town of Margaret River (which is where I met him), is going on a rodeo tour in the southern US…despite never actually having ridden a horse until recently, and never having been trained in rodeo at all.
Similarly, the participants in the North Pole Marathon do include some longtime runners…but also include a 14-year old girl (and her dad) and a Romanian who wants to become the first to play drums at the North Pole. Some of them just woke up one morning and decided: I want to do this. And they did.
There’s that old platitude that says: If you believe you can, or you believe you can’t, you’re right. What might YOU do, if it didn’t seem impossible?
Gulf of Thailand
There are no icebergs in the Gulf of Thailand, but at any given moment there is, in this and many other seas, someone thinking about the Titanic—or at least about Leonardo Dicaprio.
I almost didn’t take this photograph. For most of three hours I had been lying on a bench on deck, seeking out that elusive position where a severely herniated disc wouldn’t make me wish there were icebergs in the Gulf of Thailand. On top of my physical pain, there was the psychological terror of knowing I still had 20 hours before I reached Bangkok – 20 hours of ship, bus, and train, some of that with 75 pounds of cargo hanging from my shoulders. Only the day before did I come out of a 17-hour gala of agony in which it felt like a herd of elephants had collapsed on my lower back. The possibility of returning to that state somewhere between here and Bangkok was all too real.
I was alone on this portion of deck except for two German university students on a three-week holiday to Thailand. Feeling eight times their age (and almost eight times my own) as I navigated my bad back on the bench, we didn’t engage each other that much. But when the girls turned giddy as they conspired in German to reenact the Titanic bow scene, I eased myself into an upright position and grabbed my camera. The bow was off limits to passengers—the girls seemed unaware of this—and I thought the expression on their faces would be priceless when the captain roared out the window from the bridge above us.
But the better picture, I think, is the one I’m posting here. Taken three seconds before the captain got the bridge window open to commence his roar, I love how it seems to capture the feeling of youth, freedom, and lightheartedness. It was a fleeting moment in time that will never be repeated.
By the end of the week they would be back in university, and the week after that I would be on an operating table in Bangkok. Two years have passed since then, and I imagine their Thailand experience, like my pain, now feels pretty distant. As the wise old narrator in Wendell Berry’s book Hannah Coulter says as she looks back on her life:
You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind.
And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence.
(Note: Wendell Berry’s novels, though not travel writing per se, are some of the best books I’ve read because of how they speak about values, community, and remembering. Concerning the idea of living in the now, many have found Ekhart Tolle’s The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment helpful.)
Two days ago, I spent all 14 hours of the New York – Delhi nonstop flight worrying that my seatmate was quietly infecting me with something nasty.
He stayed bundled in his ski parka and wool hat the enitre flight. He had a telltale IV drip bandage on the back of his hand, sat eyes closed with a grimace, and didn’t eat a bite (except for the occasional pill from the bag in his pocket).
Has anyone else ever borne the weight of travel-induced hypochondria?
Maybe it comes from the battery of shots the docs recommend for going almost anywhere these days. Get ‘em and you’re attuned more closely to the threats; skip ‘em and add a dollop of risk to that awareness.
Maybe it’s an unavoidable side effect of Western culture, obsessed as we are with hand goop and Airborne and sneeze technique.
Maybe it’s just me. But I’d like to chalk it up to travel’s tendency to push us to find the story in any given detail — to make us reach for reasons and explanations to make sense of it all (no matter how quixotic it feels).
Pursuing countless such paths per second, it’s no wonder some of them swerve into fear. Some rightly so, some as false alarms. Moving forward, the goal becomes keeping the number of alarms roughly equivalent to the number of legitimate threats — and thus eliminating that pesky brick-in-the-backpack known as travel hypochondria.
Photo by Jaako via Flickr.
The number one question I’ve ever been asked by anyone when I’m preparing to go anywhere is: Why on earth are you going alone? There is a pervasive fear that solo travelers, particularly women, will probably be raped, maimed, or at the very least, incredibly lonely within seconds of setting foot outside your apartment. Instead, I have the best times going it alone — although the hospital in Jomtien would have been nicer with someone to hold my hand — and so do loads of other people.
If you’re looking for just the right push to get you started into that trip on your own you’ve been craving…now’s your chance. Check out Mariellen Ward’s Four Tips for Solo Travel to India…as well as this little video from the Skyy John show about solo female travel. The most interesting thing about that second link are the numerous negative and anti-female comments on the youtube video…to wit, that of course it’s okay to travel alone if you’re an UGLY woman, because nobody will want to molest you. Looks like some people are letting their fear show a little bit. If you don’t want to go anywhere by yourself, and enjoy the ultimate freedom of not having to compromise all the time, being able to go where you like when you like, and wanting to hook up with new friends whenever you feel like it…then don’t. But why mock other people, especially physically, if they choose to do so?
The SoSauce Travel Geek Blog also has some interesting things to say about women traveling alone in Islamic countries; I went alone to Morocco, and while it was difficult to avoid the harassment and leering, it didn’t get any better when I was traveling with other women. It only got better traveling with a male buddy, and then, the harassment just switched from sexual-and-financial to purely financial. I wouldn’t say you’re in danger of kidnapping or violent crime in Islamic countries any more than you are in non-Islamic ones though…provided you use common sense. See this list of 10 reasons to study in Islamic countries for added sanity.
Ice sculptures by Joseph Ellis melting in the heat in Beijing. Photo: Reuters
The stereotypical Western expat in China is the investment banker in Hong Kong or the executive doing deals in Shanghai. On the other hand, the creative set has also been setting up shop in the Middle Kingdom, according to this New York Times article: For China’s Western Expats, Creative Lives of Plenty.
Five artists are profiled, all of whom have plugged into the rising dragon. There are certainly many benefits, such as the low cost of living and labor. Artists can afford to hire assistants and lease oodles of space for their studios, whereas if they operated in New York or London the expenses would be sky-high.
The article doesn’t shy away from some of the challenges of working in China, namely government interference. Confrontations with the authorities bookend the story. Freedom of expression isn’t exactly guaranteed in the People’s Republic. The movie Avatar recently got kicked off screens there, according to another NY Times article. That’s probably the main trade-off for getting those low costs.
Do you know any artists who’ve taken their lives overseas? What did they think of their experiences, the good and the bad?
You might have heard that 2010 is a Jubilee Year on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage route that filters into Spain from all over Europe. The number of walking pilgrims is expected to double to 200,000, all because St. James‘ Day falls on a Sunday. Demand won’t only be running high for beds: More hospitaleros (volunteer innkeepers) will be needed to care for pilgrims along the route.
If you’ve walked the Camino, you’re eligible to volunteer as a hospitalero. (If you haven’t, maybe you can pass this information on to a friend who has?) The Federación Española de Asociaciones de Amigos del Camino de Santiago administers the bulk of volunteer hospitalero opportunities, but requires that all volunteers train at a Federación-approved hospitalero course.
The process, simplified:
Walk Camino > Train > Apply to Federación > Get Assignment > Volunteer in Spain
Here are some upcoming training sessions:
Italy
March 12 – 14, 2010 in Monteriggioni, Siena (for Italians only). Contact: movimentolento |at| itineraria.eu. Information (in Italian).
USA
March 16 – 18, 2010 at The San Pedro Center in Winter Park, Florida. Contact: Daniel DeKay, hospitaleros |at| americanpilgrims.com. Information here. (Another training session for Fall 2010 is in the works…)
Canada
April 23 – 25, 2010 in Calgary, Alberta. Contact: Tom Friesen, tomfriesen |at| hotmail.com
Registration form: PDF or Word
Spain
April 23 – 25, 2010 in Logroño. May 7 – 9 in Pobeña (Vizcaya). May 28 – 30 in Cercedilla (Madrid). Contact: hosvol |at| caminosantiago.org. Information (in Spanish).
UK
Volunteer opportunities are also negotiable by applying directly to the owners of a refugio rather than to the Federación, such as the CSJ for postings at Gaucelmo and Miraz, above.
I volunteered in 2007 after training in the U.S. Being a hospitalero not only offers a chance to reciprocate for the aid you received as a pilgrim, but gives a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the mechanics and magic that sustain the route. (Disclosure: The folks running the U.S. and Canada courses are friends. And they rock.)
If you don’t have the time or money to train, you can go to Spain and walk the Camino until you find a hospitalero who could use a hand. This option is easier than you might think, and is my recommended method for volunteering if you haven’t walked the route before.
Lastly, I might be wrong about the demand for hospitaleros. There could be a matching rise in volunteer applications this year. Even if you don’t find a spot in 2010, remember: The Camino’s been here for 1300 years. It’s not going anywhere.
I’ll take a shot at any questions in the comments section. If you know of other training sessions, please share! And if you haven’t walked the Camino, next week I’ll post about the route’s many vagabonding options.
Unless you were born into money, your travels are probably funded like mine — by scraping together what you can and doing without many of the gadgets, luxuries and stuff that your friends are likely accumulating and, yes, enjoying.
Some people take pride in this (possibly forced) asceticism, others find it difficult. Certainly stuff can be fun, but it can also get in the way of your life, particularly if you’re looking to travel the world.
Still, there’s no denying the surface appeal of stuff. You might like to think you don’t really have much stuff, that accumulating stuff is something other people do. Or, as George Carlin says in the video below, “have you ever noticed that [other people's] stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?”
But, whether you like it or not, we all feel the pull of stuff to some degree, but we also, at the same time, tend to feel the ultimate emptiness of stuff — so how do you resist falling for the sometimes seductive allure of stuff?
How can you really convince yourself that you don’t need that new camera before you travel the world no matter how much you think you want it?
Well, one way might be to reverse the usual thinking, forget how much stuff you own — how much does your stuff own you?
Matt SF over at Steadfast Finances has post about Visualizing How the Things You Own, End Up Owning You that breaks down how many days of the month he spent working to pay the mortgage, the car payment, credit card debt and so on.
The end result? Only three days a month were spent earning money that wasn’t already accounted for by stuff he had already purchased.
That means 22 days a month were spent working to pay for stuff (and Matt’s figures are post tax, include the government’s cut and your stuff owns you for far longer).
Perhaps you don’t have huge mortgage or similar large, fixed monthly costs — how much does you stuff own you in that scenario? Matt details the process he used to chart his own stuff so you can do the same. It’s not difficult — it took me about 20 minutes to plug all the data into a spreadsheet — and the results are illuminating.
In fact, I’ve never done any exercise that so made me want to get rid of any and all the stuff I own (which isn’t much to begin with) and never buy another thing as long as I live.
If, after running the numbers on your own stuff, you should find yourself roiling the self-loathing that lives beneath all that stuff, here’s a bit of vintage George Carlin to cheer you up. Maybe. As was often the case Carlin’s humor cuts through much of nonsense we tend to take for granted (caution, the video is probably NSFW).
[photo credit: Steadfast Finances]
Sandhya Tamang, the transgender Beauty Queen of 2008, posing with Madhav Kumar Nepal, Hon'ble Prime Minister of Nepal on World AIDS Day 2009
With the Ugandan anti-gay death penalty legislation raising international ire (like Sweden cutting $50 million aid funding), and Argentinian transvestites suffering kidnapping and torture by the local police, it might feel like the whole world’s against gays these days. Even Thailand’s famed gateu-i, while widely accepted on the street, are required by law to maintain their birth gender on ID cards, leading to discrimination and humiliation. So where’s the next out-and-proud GLBTQ destination?
Nepal.
The traditionally conservative country’s Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex are natural persons irrespective of their masculine and feminine gender and they have the right to exercise their rights and live an independent life in society.” Nepali homosexuals are afforded all of the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, and Nepal has even offered a “third sex” option for its national ID cards. Gay and gay-friendly clubs now abound in Kathmandu and the Blue Diamond Society keeps the gay, lesbian, and transgendered community appraised of relevant information with a brightly-colored and cheerful website.
Sunil Babu Pant, an openly gay legislator (and Communist), has also started the travel agency Pink Mountain Travels and Tours, which is offering gay marriages atop Mt Everest, among other enthusiastically gay-friendly outings. So if you’re gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer, and looking for a friendly vacation destination…Nepal is opening its arms to you.
(Thanks to Brett for turning me on to this whole Nepal situation)
As the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region begins to shake off its wintry stranglehold, France’s epic Carnaval de Dunkerque is already underway. Dunkerque is a small city in the North of France, right along the Belgian border. The festivities are a longstanding tradition whose roots trace back hundreds of years to Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday was a day of celebration and feasting before the coastal town’s fishermen set off to sea.
Today the celebration is spread out over 6 weeks. The city comes alive with free concerts and DJs in the town square. The comprehensive list of balls, spread out over the weekends, are sure to have carnival goers boogying into the wee hours of the morning. The entire experience is capped off with a grand parade, traditionally led by a costumed giant called Reuze Papa. Many cities in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region have their own giant that marches in the procession. The streets of Dunkerque are packed, as men march wearing women’s dresses, women march in their ball gowns, and marching bands and other masked revelers make their way through the city.
The official dates of the event are January 23rd to March 6th, but pre-carnaval festivities have been going on around the city since January 10th. Scrawny Frenchmen in drag have been a regular sight for weeks! The procession and other outdoor events are free, so travellers to this area can enjoy the best of this amazing celebration at no cost. Ticket prices to the themed balls vary each weekend.
As someone who has found herself caught up in the endless revelry that depicts the local carnivals in Northern France, this is surely an event that is not to be missed. The carnival’s official website can be found (in French) here.
