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Aktau, Kazakhstan
43° 39' N 51° 12' E
Jul 28, 2007 07:57
Distance 379km

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A Toast to One Year of the Life Trip

Text written in: English

It is an artificial life that I am living. Wherever I am at, well it happens to be home. Its full of joy and triumph and at least a few absurd tragedies. Its always time for a sad goodbye or a pleasant hello. I am always leaving somewhere or arriving at a new destination, and in the middle of all that I have logged a thousand hours of transport.

There has been every variety of bus from rickety soviet hulks to ultra modern gleaming Turkish buses, sleeping buses, half buses, microbuses, city buses in all their different glories. There were slow and fast trains (which are still slow), sleeping trains, and sleeping on train seats. I spent 12 hours on brand new sleeping train headed towards Lhasa, Tibet complete with oxygen ports for anyone suffering from altitude sickness.

There have been Airplanes large and small (which were still large). Rickshaws (bicycle and motorcycle), sanglathieu, marshrutka vans, Mongolian Ponies, an elephant. Taxi rides short and long, official and gyspy, kind hearted and manipulative, lost and found.

There were Bicycles in all varieties from falling apart to sheik and elite mountain bikes. I put on the ice skates and was outdistanced and circled by small children. I have found the great heart of tourist exploration, endless amounts of walking. My feet have elephantine skin and they always want to know what is lurking behind the next bend in the road even when the rest of me is begging for a rest.

And all the boats, from rowboats to canoes, a river raft, a bamboo raft , the Lake Baikal ferry, Baltic ferries, Greek ferries, the Red Sea ferry. Ferry across the Mekong or the Nile river.

And with all those combinations of transport you begin to wonder what kind of transient person you have become. You begin to wonder what you are searching for, and then as time goes on it starts to become clear. You don’t have to wonder what it is. The wonder comes naturally, its part of you. It’s the curious spirit resting deep inside you. Its something you have been actively cultivating over a period of 12 months. It is something you had as a child that you thought had been lost in adulthood. It makes you want to sing, it is the image of living something you thought you could only dream about.

From the very beginning I knew that this trip was larger than I am. I am just one person and for someone who dreamt of traveling from the time I read about the pirates of the Barbary Coast or Magellan’s Expedition around the world, the last year for me has been something in the realm of a dream. Sometimes it is much easier to dream about something than to make it an active living reality.

To put things in more practical terms I started to realize that more than anything my best experiences have been the ones where I was able to learn about culture and meet as many people as possible. From the beginning of this trip I wanted to discover how the people of the world live and take the best of these cultures for my personal self. In some destinations I was very successful with those experiences and in other destinations I found myself cut off from those types of experiences often by an over developed and overly convenient tourist industry.

I have learned how to travel far and wide and for the most part very well, while on a strict budget. I have also learned the real cost of so many things. I begin to understand the environmental cost of plastics factories in China that bring cheap plastic products into your large chain stores, or the cost of the transition of a starter house into a real house, or from used car to new car. Its the cost of convenience.

The financial cost of this trip is probably equivalent to a brand new mid level Toyota sedan. And this trip for all practical purposes is only half over. I have lot of traveling spirit and many kilometers to cover. I expect that traveling across the heart of Central Asia in search of a Kyrg horse, trekking in Nepal, discovering the multitude of the cultural heartlands in India and volunteer teaching at a school to take the better part of 10 months. The frosting on that cake could be leaving the Indian Subcontinent via Tibet and exploring more of china on my way home, or the possibility of hitting a few more places in South East Asia on my way home. Whatever the wallet permits and the traveler desires.

Even when I do arrive in North America, I still have to make a whirlwind of visits to my friends and family and then fulfill my dream of hopping on a long distance trail and hiking myself to oblivion. Maybe I will even make my goal of 1000 miles. Hopefully it will take months. So even though I am finishing one year of this crazy and seemingly impossible life, it is fast becoming clear that I am only reaching the half way point of my adventures. And I tell you, it makes me feel like singing.