A stranger in a strange land

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Trip Start Sep 17, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Oct 08, 2008 Next
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  Ellicott City, Maryland, United States
Sunday, November 30, 2008

I kept waiting for it to hit me.  You know, the change.  Or perhaps The Change.  I had travelled around the world.  I had seen so many things that people will never see, had so many wonderful experiences than I could have ever imagined.  "Your life will be changed forever," they told me.  "You'll look at everything in a new way." 

So I waited.  And waited.

Some things were different.  I did look at some small things in a new light.  It's funny how it took a year of travelling to beautiful places to realize how beautiful my own neighborhood was.  After spending so much time in crowded, dirty cities, I found the huge, green, manicured lawns of my neighbors a tourist attraction in themselves.   They were an item that few people around the world could ever hope to afford.  Houses and cars that I had always taken for granted were suddenly huge and luxurious.  I looked at a modern single-family home and wondered whether one or two small Nepalese villages could live together inside it. 

But soon these feelings faded.  And life was what it had once been.  Only memories were left, and even those were faded and distorted.  Had I really done all those things?  Had it been one big, happy dream?

I chose, instead of facing the world, to dive into one really huge project: our photos.  It was a monumental task.  We had randomly dumped memory cards from four different cameras onto DVDs in several different countries.  I had to sort them out and make sure they could all be recovered.  The final tally was approximately 25,771 photos, or 72.2 GBs.  It requires 20 DVDs to hold them.  Through them I relived the trip again.  It was almost as good as the first time.

With about $300 in the bank, and living off the charity of our parents, our next task was to find a job.  And so began the depressing cover letters, resumes, and networking sessions.  We were stuck in limbo, not quite finished with our travelling lives, and not quite started with our new lives. 

But all things have an end.  On November 14th I accepted my first full-time job.  I can therefore now say without any doubt that this IS possible.  You can take time out from the rat race and follow your dreams.  The rat race will always be waiting for you when you come back.   It isn't always easy and it isn't always fun, but you won't ever regret taking the step.

So I suppose, upon further reflection, that I didn't change after the trip at all.  The change happened when I  gave up everything that I had known and stepped on that very first plane.  The change happened when I had a dream and brought that dream to life. 

When you return from a trip you want to share it with family and friends.  But an immense voyage like this couldn't be swallowed quickly.  To them it was a series of places and faces that grew tiresome fairly quickly.  But we always have each other to rehash old stories with, and that shared experience will last a lifetime.

Many people smile wistfully upon hearing about our travels.

"Wow, I'd really like to do that someday."

"But I have... [a dog, a job, kids, a house, etc, etc, etc]"

We all have so much that we want to do, but never really believe that we can accomplish it.  There is always something that gets in the way, and we let it, because deep down most of us are scared of taking that first step.  And someday never comes.

I can close my eyes and travel the world.  My mind can journey from the white expanse of the salt flats in Bolivia, to the flash of a colorful sari in India, to the majestic mountains of Nepal, to the beautiful beaches of Thailand, to the cool of a Pharoah's tomb in Egypt, to the wild expanses of the dunes in Namibia, and all the way back home.  I have many more years left to travel, and so many more places to go.  But I am now a world citizen, part of the wider scheme of things, and I wouldn't give it up for...the whole wide world.

~Travis

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