Halfway Home

Half way home-

Time has mostly definitely flown by, but the beginning seems so far behind me. I don’t consider the year in Sydney as part of my traveling time. It was a home for me and I made some lifelong friends there that I’ll definitely be back to visit. I set off from Sydney the first week of February and plan on being back to the US for Christmas, making this somewhere around the half way mark on this innagural trip. It’s been all things eye opening, educational and enlightening, as I knew it would be and the amazing, amazing time I had hoped for.

With almost 6 months under my belt I now have some nice traveler street cred. I went from listening to travelers stories to telling them. From asking for advice to giving it. India is a big contributing factor, as is Nepal. They’re sort of travelers travel destinations. Many people do the Australia/New Zealand circuit, even more popular are the SE Asia big 4 (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam), but to do these combined with Nepal, India, Sri Lanka says you means business.

When I left Nepal I sent home my massive 75 liter pack with 10 liter attachment. Since India I’ve been rolling around with an ultra minimalist schoolbook size backpack that fits all my possessions. Other travelers are constantly blown away by it which also adds to my street cred a bit. It’s funny looking back at my original packing list compared to what I have now. It’s been a godsend having such a little pack as several times I would have to carry my bag around for a 10-12 hour stretch before a flight or overnight train. Also because of the size I was able to keep it with me, for a little piece of mind, instead of storing it in a luggage compartment or on the roof of a bus. The downside is that with only a few changes of clothes I am now in a perpetual state of doing laundry.

The beard has taken on a life of its own and it has, without a doubt, become my defining characteristic. At least once a week I’ll have a guy walk over just to say “sweet beard bro”, then go about his business again. I had a girl recently say “you must have been traveling a while, I can tell by your beard… Oh if the beard could talk”. When I was around the 2-3 month mark I had a decent start of a beard, but it looked like the half ass temporary travel beard that it was. Now the beard tells a different story. A tale of commitment and dedication. People I meet can’t imagine me without it and get freaked out when I show them old pictures. The immigration officers in airports went from double to triple and quadruple takes comparing my passport photo to my Grizzly Adams (In my passport photo I’m rockin’ slicked back hair and a flavor saver). I always just smile and say “much more handsome now!” They just give me a crooked, squint eyed, look and hand back my passport (immigration officers have a bad sense of humor).

In the beginning I was making a conscious effort to read more with the extra time on my hands. In the first 3 months I read 11 books, including Nelson Mandela’s 800 page autobiography. This is a remarkable feat considering I’ve read maybe 5 books in the previous 10 years before that. I was getting proud of my growing book total. For the last 2 months I’ve been sitting on the same book and making no progress on it at all (still on page 12). I like to think I adopted a story from one of my favorite books “The Alchemist”. In the book the main character, a shepherding boy, is pursuing his dream to travel to Egypt in search of treasure. Along the way he meets up with an Englishman who has been in focused study of Alchemy for several years and searching for famed Alchemist who can teach him how to turn any metal into gold. The Englishman has a trunk full of books that he studies religiously in search for the secrets of the world. After several weeks trekking through The Sahara on camels the shepherd boy has begun to unveil the secrets of the world that the Englishman was searching for. The Englishman angrily demands an explanation and (to paraphrase) the boy tells him “I’ve been watching the desert. The flow of the caravan, the hawks in the sky, the force of the wind. I tried getting you to watch, but the whole time you were too focused on your books to pay attention.”… I’ve been too busy learning about people from the people and the world from the world to worry about my book count.

I’ve never been lonely, but there are definitely times I’ve been homesick. It’s interesting the people I think about that make me miss home the most. Strangely, I really don’t crave the companionship of my closest friends that much. There’s a handful of my best friends that I know, no matter what, will always be my friends, even if I go 5-10 years without seeing them. Because of that I really don’t miss them as much, it’s weird. What makes me most nostalgic is thinking of the ones I’ve fallen out of contact with. People I’ve worked previous jobs with, friends from my first years of college, former girlfriends, old baseball teammates, kids I grew up with. They pop up in my head like the ghost of Christmas past walking me down memory lane and I have little flash moments of heart ache with the realization that I’ll never be as close with them as I had been in the past. As the weeks and months roll by, and while I’m meeting amazing people and making mew friends on the road, I know the biggest price I pay is that my list of friends-turned-acquaintances from back home continues to grow.

The social media factor definitely has it’s pros and cons. It’s great to have the tools of keeping in contact with family and friends, but it makes me more homesick than anything else. Seeing everyone I know in Vegas going to EDC together, 4th of July barbecues, birthday dinners, Wet-n-Wild waterpark reopening, even pictures of the Mt. Charleston fires. I feel like I should be there and it can be torture at times. This blog is another double edge sword. It takes up a lot of time and can be a pain in the ass, but it helps organize my thoughts, reflect on experiences, and will allow me to better remember these times several years from now. It also allows anyone reading it to keep the connection into my current life. The biggest upside though is the possibility of my stories inspiring some friends to get out and do the same at some point in their lives. I know it sounds cliche, but if even 1 person finds the inspiration to travel from it, it’s makes every minute of typing time well spent. There’s sort of a travelers mantra that keeps coming up and I’ve heard it at least 10 times- “It doesn’t matter when you do it, it just matters that you do it”.

I know the second half of this trip will fly by too fast, but I’m still taking it one destination and one day at a time with no hard plans. It’s going to be interesting seeing in which direction the wind blows me from here. I’m looking forward to looking back, but right now I’m excited for today.

Bob