I've been meaning to write this post for years, but I needed time for the experiences to settle. Then life got away from me. What finally got me to sit down and write it is that I'm about to go back out there.

On October 8th, my dad and I fly to Kathmandu for seven weeks in Nepal and India. We'll spend Dashain, Nepal's biggest festival, with the family of my friend Aabhash, who I met on my walkabout. We'll cross the border into India on Diwali, when both countries light their lamps. We'll spend a week in Dharamsala with Joshua and his family, and end at the Golden Temple in Amritsar for Gurpurab, the most significant date in the Sikh year. In between we'll probably hike in the Himalayas. Beyond that we have very few plans, leaving space for opportunity and adventure. Last time I came through these places alone, blown there by the wind. This time I'm going back to people, and with people. I'm curious how that changes things, and I'll be sure to post any reflections.

A lot has happened in the ten years since my last post, and I won't try to cover it all. To resolve that post's cliff-hanger: I did move to Seattle, in December 2016, and lived there until moving back to Madison in September 2023. Three months after I arrived in Seattle, I spent two months traveling overland through South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia with Nich, an old w✱nderer who was partially responsible for inspiring my travels in the first place (that's us above). And I've seen several familiar faces from the road, particularly Miguel, who I started my walkabout with and saw again on a trip to Spain in 2021, and Joshua, who I've already seen half a dozen times, in four different states.

But this post is about the trip this blog was built on. Before I go back, I want to look back: how did those 20 months change me, and what was it all for?

How my walkabout changed me

Fear

One of the biggest changes was lower fear. Fear, like anything else, is something you can work on with practice. As I challenged my fears a little more each day, they gradually shrank. I also saw the prevalence and effects of fear everywhere; it may be one of the most common, unifying human conditions — along with love. As I hitchhiked through Indonesia and Malaysia I kept having the same experience. At first it would take some time to communicate what I was doing — neither language had a real word for hitchhiking (the closest, numpang or tumpang, just means "to ride along"), and neither country had much of a hitchhiking culture. Once the people understood that I planned to continue getting rides from strangers, the same exchange usually followed. They'd tell me something along the lines of "We're safe, but the next people won't be. You can't trust the people in the next car/village/island/country". At first I took their warnings to heart, but eventually I saw the pattern. For a while I tried to explain "That's what people have been telling me for months, yet each ride is as friendly as the last." Eventually, I gave up trying to fight the fear and just smiled.

My walkabout made me less misanthropic than anything else in my life. It instilled a hope in humanity that I still haven't lost. As is so often the case, the reality was less scary than the fantasy. People everywhere are generally kind and want to be helpful. If something stops them from helping, it's usually fear.

Direct experience

A big part of what drove me out there in the first place was a lurking suspicion that the world wasn't the way I'd been shown in movies, on TV, and in other people's stories. Secondhand experience is always filtered. Stories need an arc, so the dramatic, the dangerous, and the strange get passed on, while three hours on the side of the road in the sun, or a hundred ordinary acts of kindness, don't. A story can only carry what the teller thought to notice, and it can't answer back when you have a question. And fear is the most tellable thing there is. Danger gets passed on and kindness doesn't, so the secondhand picture of the world is skewed toward threat. "You can't trust the people in the next village" is secondhand knowledge, handed from village to village.

That's the danger in Danger Travels. I did run into real danger — bees, dengue, a mountain that almost won — but rarely the kind people warned me about. That kind mostly lived in their stories. The only way to see the world unfiltered is to go look.

Perspective was another of the main gifts I got from the journey. My travels exposed me to an incredibly diverse range of experiences. So many ways of being, seeing, knowing, and understanding. And so many caring and compassionate people. You can learn a lot indirectly — from reading books and blogs (like this one!) and watching videos and listening to stories — but it's really not the same as having experiences yourself. I'm incredibly grateful that I was able to experience these things directly; not everyone is so lucky.

The same goes for grit. Reading about getting lost on a mountain isn't the same as spending a day hauling yourself up it by clumps of dry grass, refilling your water bottle from a dying glacier, and sliding down through thorn bushes as the light fades, telling yourself "I ain't going out like this." My travels made me gritty and built my resilience. I don't sweat the small stuff in life as much anymore.

Unplanned travel also brings you into the present. In everyday life I can run on autopilot: hop in the car, drive home, grab something out of the fridge, sleep in my bed. On the road there is no autopilot. When you have to figure out where every meal is going to come from, where you're going to sleep, and how you're going to get there, you can't help but be present.

Books can show you the world through someone else's eyes, but they can't show you what you're capable of, and they can't do your reps for you. Watching someone work out doesn't change your muscles. Experience changes what you measure things against, what you know you can survive, and how readily you can come back to the present.

Purpose

A surprising effect of my travels was a renewed need to find purpose. Until I left, going on that trip was my purpose. Living my life's dream meant I had nothing left to live for. That caused me to actively seek meaning and purpose and recognize their value, which, looking back, seems like the seed of the path I'm walking now. For me, that I should go on living has never been a given; it's always been a struggle, and a struggle it seems like not everyone has. That struggle has led me into some dark places, and also to some beautiful answers. The most beautiful and powerful answer, I think, is to give meaning to my past. To share whatever wisdom I may have hard-won. In a way, to write this very blog post. What was the point of that journey and all my trials if I don't do anything with the experience, if I don't pay the learning and growth forward? It's a bit self-referential… and I love that! It's a meaning I don't have to fuel with willpower. My other reasons for living — helping people, curiosity, even plain stubbornness — all take energy, and energy sometimes runs out. This one grows on its own. The more I live, the more reason I have to go on living. And what a life I've already lived! I can't wait to see what comes next.