The Route

The Route-

There always seems to be an invisible and magnetic backpacker route drawing people back together again. Someone you’ve met somewhere along the way in some random watering hole of a town that you see again half way up a mountain hiking trail 2 months and 800 miles later into your trip. The romantic in me wants to call it fortuitous and magical, but analytical side says the basis isn’t rocket surgery. You are going in either one direction or the other, there are limited highlights along the way and a finite amount of hostels to stay at, thereby creating a perfect recipe for a stew of chance reunions. This is the simple version; the mechanical, scientific, law of averages type explanation. How surprising and joyous these occasions are, however, would suggest there’s a backpacker God. Not an omnipresent superpower type God, more like Baseball God or Poker God type God. These chance reunions happened to me many times in Asia, particularly around Vietnam/Cambodia and Laos. In Europe it happened, but was less frequent due to the mind boggling amount of different flight, train and bus options there are zigzagging through different cities and countries. Here in South America this has happened to me more than ever before.

So you keep seeing people along the way, and it’s neat, so how can I accurately illustrate this in a way that makes sense? The best way would be a detailed multicolored spreadsheet, or grid that reads like a math matrix, or something that resembles a family tree perhaps. I couldn’t do that here though. Under the limited confines of this blog page I figured a more simple approach must do. I began to write out a list of all the places I’ve gone, in the order I was there, followed by the distance and time to the next place. After that there was a separate list. That list showed all the people I’ve met. Where they were from, what we’d experienced together and perhaps an interesting fact about them. Finally I had a list matching the place with the person, allowing you to connect the time + distance dots on your own. This was, by far, the easiest way to explain it. And would DEFINITELY show you what I mean about these seemingly impossible occurrences. (To give you an example; one reunion was 2 Israeli guys I hitchhiked with following a hike in Argentina, then ran into at a sunset lookout 9 weeks later in a little Chilean town 1100 miles away). I got half way through this mapping system before realizing how much of a ridiculous idea it was. Entirely WAY to much information. It was like trying to fit a watermelon into a salt shaker. I mean why would you even try to do that? Understanding its complexity is akin to a Mensa quiz determining genius level IQ. If you hadn’t been to those places yourself, or were looking at a map of the South America, or personally knew the person I was referring to, and preferably all 4, there is no way you could follow along or understand how completely random and cheerful these encounters turn out to be. Confusing I know. I figured if my explanation of just how confusing it was, was confusing itself, it would blow your mind just the same. In the end, this is what I decided to do and what you were just subjected to. The simple conclusion is this; If you’re you can relate perfectly to this and understand EXACTLY what I’m talking about. For everyone else you’re just going to have to take my word for it. It’s one of the little things that makes it all worth while.

Bob