Rolf Potts's Blog, page 80

Travelling the Danger Zones

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

There are some places in the world where we, as travelers, or as humans, are discouraged from going. First of all there is Afghanistan, the mother of all evil. Then comes Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Iran, and a few more monsters on the list. I did not expect that Turkey was on it, too. But as I crossed the border from Iran and got off a car in the small town of Yuksekova, that smell of burnt chemical in the air made me think otherwise. Lacerating for my eyes and throat, it just did not seem right; nevertheless, we kept walking as we needed to get out of the main road to hitch another ride.

photo credit: Flickr/D’Oh Boy

It was then that I understood something was going wrong: normally, they do not welcome tourists burning tires in the middle of a traffic light’s junction. And normally, they do not do so holding metal crowbars and hiding their faces behind black scarves and sunglasses. This was not a normal Turkish welcome. I am not completely sure, but this way of Eurasian greeting may relate more to the PKK, better known as the Kurdish Liberation Front.

The whole scenario looked like unreal, like it was being played in slow-motion. Seconds later, police tanks rolled up the street without any sort of grace. The sound of tear gas’ explosions lacerated the air with a slow fatigue, as it was forced out of a thinner cannon’s mouth. People gathered around us, asking where we wanted to go. I tried to indicate the riot just one hundred meters in front of us, but nobody seemed to take it too seriously. “Go to the bus terminal”, someone said. Another one could see my discomfort and show his own,  without speaking a language I can understand. Seconds later, a truck pulled in and swerved to the curb at my thumb’s command. We got quickly in and out, riding away from a junction that was getting more and more crowded with tanks as I looked in the rearview mirror. At last, even such enormous machines became tiny dots on a reversed horizon line.

This time it ended up well, luckily. But what may happen the next? It is extremely tricky and unpredictable to forecast what may happen travelling across a Danger Zone, a conflict area, a hellhole, as some may call it. As a matter of fact, we should not go, although at times we are geographically forced to. I confess, I did not check the security situation of the Hakkari border region before setting out of Iran – a perfectly lovely, safe country, If I may say -.

At times, we just do not know why we get there. Or, more dangerously, sometimes we want to visit these places because we believe that the ultimate travel thrill is there, where the unknown, the risk, and the dangerous all lurk together holding long knives and shotguns in their scary claws. I reckon that a few meters more may have been a lethal, if not deadly, introduction to Turkey for me and my partner. And I more shockingly reckon that by thinking backwards, that moment was sort of thrilling. A GOOD thrill, I mean. Something unexpected, something wrong that made me understand why many jaded travelers try to push the limits further, looking for adventure thrills that resemble a Ballardian vision of travel.

If this post may seem pointless, please understand that I just felt it was right and worth to share this story and my reflections with the Vagabonding readers…

And it is not because I crave danger or I am so jaded that stupidity has eaten my brains… it is just because that moment will keep on flashing back to my memory for years to come as the moment I really understood what being there, in the Danger Zone, feels like.

Original article can be found here: Travelling the Danger Zones

Don’t wait for luck; make the decision and change your life

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

I recently got an email from Jen and Ted, a pair of Canadian Vagabonding readers who perfectly sum up how, sometimes, the most important thing one must do in order to travel the world long-term is to simply realize that it is possible. Here’s their story, in Jen’s words:

I have been unsure for the past few months how to word this, as this is basically the biggest thank you of my life. Our story is as follows: My husband & I have been married just over 2 years and were (unknowingly) stuck going about the typical life pattern of going to university, working away our young years at professional jobs, and making good money to go on expensive, rushed 2-week vacations a couple of times per year. We both were happy in our positions with good pay, benefits, and pleasant coworkers that made work enjoyable. I am a Emergency Room nurse at a well-reknowned paediatric hospital in Toronto; it is a stressful but rewarding job and I love it immensely. My husband has a great job in programming & software development working on cutting-edge projects and he too enjoys his role. Both are well-paying jobs in the fields we studied in university & we are grateful for these positions.

However…each time we travelled on vacation, it opened up that incredible thirst to see new cultures, to experience life in a different part of the world. It was such a tease. We would jealously meet people in our travels around the world who would be backpacking for a few months or indefinitely. We never considered ourselves capable of being in that category – we assumed those people were special, they had no-strings-attached & we had plenty of strings. They must have had different jobs, different circumstances than us. We thought they were “lucky”. Reading your book opened an entire way of thinking for my husband and I, one that we were both too afraid to even fully believe/feel. It made us realize that luck did not find these people and transport them around the globe. A conscious decision was made to change the course of their life, and they went out and achieved it. They were not just dreamers, but passionate achievers.

So we began to toy with the idea of dropping everything & exploring all of the places we so desperately want to see. Not just see on a crammed, over-priced vacation – see in a way that we experience and live in different places, something more long-term. Initially there was a lot of fear. What will happen if we leave? What about our jobs, our families, our friends? In the end the realization was that the answer was this: nothing. Nothing will happen. Our jobs will carry on without us – we will be swiftly replaced and our absence will soon be forgotten about by the presence of the next employee. The opportunity to return will likely be there and if not we will seek other jobs if need be. Our families? They will continue their day-to-day activities, jobs, and responsibilities. We will miss them immensely but we will continue to keep in touch like we currently do living out of town from them. Our friends? They will also continue with their routines of work, social activities, some maybe commenting that they wish they could do what we were doing. But I know when we return nothing will have changed. But we will have changed. And that is the motivating factor behind all this.

Your book put us in a position where we realized that our life could have passed us by. We could have continued, under societal pressures, working indefinitely, banking in money, saving up for things like a house and a baby – things that would just ground us even more here. I feel like I almost missed the most important thing that could have ever happened to me. And truly, as ridiculous as it may sound, I may have missed that opportunity had I not read your book.

So thanks so much, for giving us the push that we need to seek out our dreams. It’s honestly changed our mentality and way of living. As of today, we have literally sold everything we own. We are moving into a furnished place in 4 days to pay literally half the rent we currently pay for the next 3 months. We are quitting our jobs and have a non-cancellable one-way flight booked for Cartagena, Colombia on January 3, 2013. We are travelling for 6 months, possibly more/indefinitely.

Thank you for writing your book and giving people the courage to live their life in a meaningful way & to pursue their dreams of seeing the big and beautiful world that is at our fingertips.

Sincerely,

Jen & Ted

Toronto

Original article can be found here: Don’t wait for luck; make the decision and change your life

Making your dream come true

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

Our family worked hard to make our bike trip from Alaska to Argentina happen. You can make your dream happen too.

How does one make the decision to buck the traditional demands of society to live their dreams?  How do you go about throwing away everything you’ve been raised to want in order to make your own way through life?

In the end, the answer comes down to priorities.

We will make time and money for the things that are highest on our priority list.  I love to read and can curl up in bed and read until the wee hours of the night, but I haven’t hardly read at all lately.  I could make excuses and say I’m too busy or my boys demand all my time, but the reality is that it isn’t high enough on my list.  In my free time, I choose to play with my beads or surf the internet rather than reading a good book.

The same is true about traveling the world.  We will find a way to do what’s important to us.  If new floors in our house is more important than a family vacation, we get new floors.  If a new couch is higher on the priority list than bicycles, we get the couch.  And if heading out for extended family travel is of the utmost importance, that’s exactly what we’ll get.

Our bike ride from Alaska to Argentina didn’t just fall in our laps one day – we made it happen.  We looked at our lives and at the limited amount of time we had on Planet Earth.  We looked at our sons and realized they were growing fast and we only had one chance at this parenthood thing.  In short, if we didn’t do it now, we would lose the opportunity.

So we made it happen.

We quit our jobs.  We packed up our house.  We bought new bicycles.  We headed out to see the world with our sons.

Traveling with our boys had become our number one priority and we made it happen.  Yes, there were a million reasons not to take the trip – we didn’t have enough money, our house needed work, our careers would suffer, a trip like this wasn’t what society expected us to do…  But all we really needed was one good reason to do it – and time with our sons was that reason.

How can you live your dreams?  Make it your highest priority.  Make the decision to do it and let people know what you’ll do.  Then take steps to get there.  It’ll happen – if you make it happen.

Original article can be found here: Making your dream come true

Erik Cohen on how travel skews our photographic sensibilities

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

“Strangers entering a new environment as temporary visitors find themselves, whatever their specific motives and purposes, in an ambiguous predicament. They are typically marked by a heightened awareness and attention to life, coupled with considerable cognitive and emotional disorientation. This predicament necessarily has an impact on their motivation and conduct. It induces them to seek to capture in their photos those features of life by which they are momentarily most strongly impressed (i.e., what appear to them to be the most “authentic,” “typical,” or “exotic” subjects). However, their limited acquaintance with the environment and consequent inability to grasp anything but the most obvious and easily recognizable features of it, necessarily induce them to stereotyping. In general, the briefer the time span of their sojourn in the new environment, the stronger the tendency to stereotype becomes. Hence, this tendency is common among the most fleeting type of strangers, the tourists, and particularly among organized mass tourists. One can frequently see busloads of tourists brought to touristic sights, all of them taking pictures of the same objects, be it a landscape, a building, or a local person, often under the guidance of a tourist guide. Among more individualized, nonconventional tourists, the choice of subjects is more differentiated and discerning, and the aspiration to catch the “authentic” more pronounced. Thus, participants in jungle trekking tours in Thailand, going beyond the boundaries of conventional tourism, usually disperse in the hill tribe villages in which their party stayed, each roaming the village to take individualized pictures. They eagerly “hunt” for objects, situations, and scenes that appear to them to be “authentic,” in the sense that they are part of the flow of “primitive” life, undisturbed and uninfluenced by the presence of strangers. Still, their brief stays in the village necessarily restrict their photos to a few daily scenes.”

–Erik Cohen, “Stranger-Local Interaction in Photography,” Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 19 No. 2 (1992)

Original article can be found here: Erik Cohen on how travel skews our photographic sensibilities

Packing for a Round the World Trip

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

Packing.  Just that one little two syllable word can cause angst and frustration in so many people.  When flights are involved in your travels, there are so many decisions to make, especially with all the rules, restrictions, and fees the airlines have put in place over the past decade.

When it comes to packing and air travel, decisions have to be made.  One of the biggest questions I have received since we went on our round the world trip was, “How do you pack for something like that?”

I remember back to when we first started planning for our round the world trip, and packing was a major source of stress and anxiety.  We weren’t going to be anywhere during winter, but we did plan on spending time in the mountains in South America, and we would be in several places during autumn, so some warm-weather clothing was necessary, which just adds bulk and weight to your luggage.

So if you don’t want to lug an 85-liter, 50 pound pack around, you’re going to have to get organized and really think this out.

 



 

Tips

Everyone is different and has to make their own decisions when it comes to clothing. Some will go out and spend hundreds on new, lightweight, travel specific clothing. Some will just go with what they have. There is no right or wrong way, but I’d like to offer some tips and my opinion based on my round the world travel experience:

Go lightweight: Not every single item of clothing has to be synthetic, lightweight, and expensive, but it is nice to have. Obviously the weight is a big factor, but the quick-dry is also really nice, and it is typically more durable than the regular cotton that we wear on a daily basis at home.
Bring clothing you’ll be comfortable in: That being said, I don’t think your entire wardrobe should be travel, outdoor specific clothing. If you wear jeans all the time at home and are going to a climate where it will be cool enough for pants, bring a pair. I struggled with this decision before we left and ultimately decided to bring one pair, and I wore them all the time in South America and New Zealand before ditching them when we arrived in SE Asia. Same with things like cotton t’s. If you love them and wear them all the time at home, bring one or two (or wait and buy a few on the road – they make great souvenirs as well).
Matching: I really think this is the most important thing to take time with when it comes to packing for a long-term trip. Make sure everything is interchangeable. All tops (shirts, fleeces, jackets, etc.) should match with all bottoms (shorts, pants, skirts). It will make your limited wardrobe so much more interchangeable, so take some time to think about this when buying/sorting clothes for your trip.
Shoes: I am a little unusual when it comes to the male sex. I LOVE shoes. While I don’t have quite as many as my wife, I am often ashamed at the number of shoes I have in my closet. So choosing how many pairs to bring was a very difficult to decision for me. It was painful to do so, but I only brought one pair of shoes and one pair of flip-flops (thongs) with me. The shoes had to be versatile because we planned on doing quite a bit of hiking, so I splurged on a nice pair of hiking shoes that at least looked decent with a pair of pants walking around a city. We were a tad old for the clubbing scene, so we were okay with not having a really nice pair of shoes for that type of entertainment. My wife only brought two pairs of shoes and a pair of flip-flops.

 

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to packing for long-term travel. We have lots of resources over at BootnsAll that go much more in depth than this, so check out the following articles/pages for more information:

The Ultimate Guide to Packing for an RTW Trip
Packing: How to Choose Clothes for your RTW Trip
Packing: Cameras, iPods, and Other Gadgets
Laptop vs. iPad vs. Smart Phone vs. Au Natural

 

Photo credit:  Adam Baker

Original article can be found here: Packing for a Round the World Trip

Can travel be too much?

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

photo credit: Flickr/amalthya

I recently stumbled across a list of signs you travel too much compiled by Nomadic Matt a while ago. After reading it, I started thinking and comparing the funny points to my real life experiences. If I definitely do not recognize airports by their codes – as I generally take the harder, more rewarding overland routes – or only watch or read travel oriented media, I can agree with the bottom line: travel can be too much.

I may compare travel with a fix: there may be many different kinds of alcohol and drugs, but after you have done most – if not all of them – what is left? And what have you gained?

Standing in front of the umpteenth monument or enjoying the hospitality of a new culture for another day during a very long time on the road can still be uplifting, if we still find a sense in it. However, travel can become a jaded experience if we do not take it very seriously. And even traveling slowly, we may end up with the same fullness of experiences clogging up our senses as a lethal mix of substances: the perception gets altered.

We are not all so lucky to be rockstars the caliber of Keith Richards, going to Swiss private clinics here and now to drain his blood from the substance abuse before a new feast. Our luck may be breaking a journey between periods of working a day job, or just returning home and lie in bed staring at the walls. However, in some cases, this luxury is not permitted to long term travelers.

As long as the experiences have been great, and you have seen many beautiful places and met amazing people, there is a burnout feeling arising and we have to be careful with it, as it may grind our experience to a halt, making life on the road miserable. Whatever the budget we may have, and wherever we may be, sometimes travel can be too much. Too many experiences, too many images, faces, colors and foods. And the more amazing things we have seen or done, it may be more difficult to appreciate the next.

In these cases, we may have to consider taking a break, or invent something new to give a sense to our traveling. For example, I recently met an Austrian man who, after repeated trips to Pakistan, helped funding the construction of a school in the Northern Tribal Areas.  What I did was far simpler: as I got totally burnt out from using public transportation, I decided to “downgrade” myself to hitching. Not only I had a hell of a great time meeting awesome truck drivers and local folks, but I ultimately spiced up my travel experience by doing something I had not done extensively before.

Differently from what Nomadic Matt says, it is not about what you can fit in a bag or how many travel blogs you read every day. To me, it is about reinventing the experience to avoid getting bored and stressed. And of course, the rougher, lower budget you travel, the more you may think to allow for some much deserved rest, whenever your schedule, routing or budget make it possible.

Original article can be found here: Can travel be too much?

Are “they” to be feared? Who are “they” anyway?

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

“I was driving down the road the other day and saw some cyclists ahead.  I braked and waited until I could get by safely, but I’m concerned about them – the other motorists who won’t do that.”

“I saw a cyclist riding through my town last week, so I invited him over to my house for the night.  I took care of him, but they won’t.”

“I stopped and gave some cyclists Gatorade on a hot day, but they wouldn’t even consider doing something like that.”

I hear stuff like this all the time – isn’t it dangerous to bike around the world with all those bad people out there?  All those people who would never help a cyclist or go out of their way to avoid hitting them – they’re everywhere.

What I want to know is this:  who are they?  Who are those people?  They certainly aren’t the people we’ve met.

In our 45 months of full-time bicycle touring as a family, we never encountered them.  Instead, we met countless people who invited us to their homes, shared a meal with us, filled our panniers with oranges, and hauled stuff halfway around the world for us.  The people we met were of the kind, generous variety of human rather than the ones we see on the nightly news.

Traveling on bicycle made us vulnerable – to both the good and the bad.  People could have taken advantage of our vulnerability to rob us or run us off the road – there wasn’t a gosh darn thing we could do if someone wanted to do that.  But our experience showed that our vulnerability on the bikes made people want to help us, to take care of us, to reach out and make our journey just a little bit better.

The people we encountered stopped on the side of the road to hand over Coke and chocolate in the middle of a long stretch of nothing.  They pulled out a bag of fresh pineapple after we had gone too many days without fresh fruit. They leaned out their car window and shouted, “Would you like to spend the night in my house tonight?”

People handed us the keys to their houses, spent hours helping us solve one problem or another, and sent us emails to cheer us up when we were down. They sent packages of goodies through the mail and brought other packages to us when they went on vacation.  They hid Gatorade alongside the road, and rescued us from pouring rain.

In short, the people we met were just ordinary people who were willing to lend a helping hand when they saw the need.  The people we met were just like you and me.  And still – after 45 months and 27,000 miles – we haven’t met them.

Why are we all so afraid of them anyway?

Nancy Sathre-Vogel is a long-time schoolteacher  and world wandering mother of twins. She and her husband taught in international schools in various countries for 12 years, and then – together with their sons – they spent four years traveling on bicycles, including a 17,000-mile jaunt  from Alaska to Argentina. She blogs at familyonbikes.org

Original article can be found here: Are “they” to be feared? Who are “they” anyway?

The trap of being “busy”

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

An exhausted designer in a studio. Photo: John Lambert Pearson / Flickr.

“I’m busy.”  When your friends and family say that, what’s the impression you get?  Do they sound stressed out?  Or is it almost a kind of bragging?  A sign of being important and sought after.

The New York Times had an opinion article titled The Busy Trap.  Maybe not consciously, but do people use the excuse of “being busy” to avoid looking at the big picture?  For example, trying to stay on top of work when the bigger problem of whether they’re in the right career?  Thinking about what to buy, instead of what kind of life do they want to live?

We want to believe that we matter so much that things could not get along with us.  Truth or self-delusion?  Check out this excerpt:

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.

One of the best benefits of vagabonding is that it encourages you to slow down and think.  When I’m back home in the States, sometimes it feels like society and work conspire to prevent me from doing either.  “Busy” can be a noise that crowds out your inner voice.  Travel strips away the familiar people and routine, forcing you to look at the world (and yourself) in a much more direct way.  Seeing alternatives will trigger you to consider possibilities you hadn’t known existed.

Do you know people stuck in the “busy trap”?  Share your stories in the comments.

Original article can be found here: The trap of being “busy”

Vagabonding Field Report: Hiking to the Lost City, Colombia

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

Cost/day: $50

What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen lately?

The reverse side of the aptly named, Butterly 89

As we were standing around pondering the fate of the inhabitants of the Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City) in Sierra Nevada, Colombia, a butterfly caught our group’s attention. The butterfly is nicknamed “Butterfly 89″. From the photo, you can see why.

Describe a typical day:

Hiking to the Lost City takes 6 days typically. Our group would usually have a small breakfast of either fruit or eggs with a shot of coffee. Then we would hit the trails around 7 or 8am. The path through the forest is either constantly climbing or constantly descending but rarely flat. It’s an exhausting, sweat drenching, sun scorching, bug biting affair. Some days, we’ll pull up to a natural swimming pool at the base of a waterfall and take a swim, often before noon or so.

By 2pm, we have usually arrived at our next camp which is great since it always rains in the afternoons. And I mean always. Although by the time you arrive, you are already soaking wet and so hot from the hike that a rainfall is a welcome change to the humidity and heat.

The reward

Afternoons are spent lounging at camp, playing cards, reading or just snapping photos of the incredible surroundings. Dinner can involve a soup, chicken and rice or lentils and plantains with some pasta. After dinner, without power of any sort, you either chat for a few hours with your fellow hiking mates by candle light or hit the sack early, around 9pm at the latest. The accommodations are usually a simple bed with mosquito netting or a hammock. Often you’ll fall asleep to the pitter patter of rain falling on the shelter’s metal roofing.

Describe an interesting conversation you had with a local:

I met a fellow back in Bogotá who was travelling all over South America, teaching creative writing to disadvantaged kids. He explained how the power of controlling something as simple as the creation of a story can help kids who have very little control over their daily lives. He recounted some of his experiences while strumming a guitar and interrupting our conversation to sing a few stanzas.

What do you like about where you are? Dislike?

There’s so much to love about Colombia. You can visit a tropical climate like the coasts and get the ocean experience, go diving for a song and then escape the heat up into the mountains to visit coffee plantations. The natural beauty of Colombia is breath taking and because of it’s long history, all of this can be yours with barely a hint of other backpackers.

Don't try this at home

It’s difficult to find fault really with Colombia. There is, of course, still a lot of security concerns in parts of the country but the risks have decreased significantly over the past decade. Non Spanish speakers may feel isolated as English is very sparsely spoken but for me, that’s part of the attraction.

Describe a challenge you faced:

On the hike to the Lost City, a destroyed my pants and almost got washed down the river I was crossing. The reason? I had torn a seam in my left pant leg along my knee. While crossing a fast flowing river, the water was able to fill my pant leg, grabbing me violently and filling my pant leg like a parachute in the wind. I ended up barely getting out of that one but not before I completely tore my pant to shreds.

What new lesson did you learn?

Don’t cross a fast flowing river with a major tear in your pants where water can enter.

Where next?

Heading south to see the Galapagos.

Original article can be found here: Vagabonding Field Report: Hiking to the Lost City, Colombia

Travel budget after a long time on the road

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

photo credit: Flickr/mynameisharsha

I have been on the road for nine months straight as I write, and I have slowly noticed how I changed my budget habits overtime. Initially, I had a big plan, quite a small budget, and an indicative daily expense limit that would make most people laugh – or faint. I was mostly successful in keeping expenses  between 5 and 10 $ a day by travelling in a very cheap region – the Indian subcontinent -, using Couchsurfing or seeking local hospitality as much as I could, sticking only to public transportation and local meals. By strictly adhering to my own rules, I managed to spend 5 and a half months across India, Nepal and Bangladesh and spending about 1000$ for me and my girlfriend together. But I also have to say that the very low price came with another kind of expense: some sort of travel burnout.

After three more months and almost at the end of an Asia to Europe overland trip along the Silk Road, by trying to adhere to the same rules that made my Indian vagabonding highly rewarding, I must admit: I feel that sticking to the planned budget is working less. And it is not because of the different prices of accommodation, food and transportation in different countries, as all of the above can be overcome by the more resourceful on a tight budget. I feel it is because, as I see myself nearer to the end of one year of travel bliss, I am pushed to abandon my strict budget plan, and enjoy things in a more economically relaxed way.

At the beginning, I would never have chosen to have a sporadic breakfast in a café, opting instead for the street food at the market’s stalls. But now, as I stretch the last dollars and I still try to make it within the limits of a tight sum, the whole budget idea is not that important anymore. It may be the prospective of returning, and settling into some new sort of job that is giving more security and allows spending more leisurely. Or it may just be that, after a long time trying to make everything fit into the lowest possible expenditure in order to stay on the road the longest, a traveler just needs to forget about budgeting to feel like there is a change in a daily travel routine. Did you ever have similar feelings?

Original article can be found here: Travel budget after a long time on the road