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The traveler, if he comes from a place of comfort, travels, in part, to be stood on his head; to lose track of tenses, or at least to be back to essentials, free of the details of home. ‘Teach me,’ as Thomas Merton wrote in his journal, ‘to give to a country names and words and terms.’
-Pico Iyer
Goodbye, Seattle. Tomorrow morning at 4:30 a.m. I’m headed for Mumbai, via L.A. and Tokyo, where I’ll embark on my first overseas independent adventure in quite some time. About 45 hours from now, I’ll be in India.
My plans are open-ended, but I know I’ll visit Hyderabad and Calcutta in addition to Mumbai, and hopefully get over to Dhaka, Bangladesh at some point too.
Like a lot of places I go to, it takes a while to get there. My 11 hour flight to Tokyo leaves me with an overnight stay in Narita City, and then another 10 hour flight the next day (Tokyo-Nagasaki-Mumbai on All Nippon).
On the way back, I’ll detour to Hong Kong to start up my second Round-the-World trip. This trip will take me to a lot of destinations in South America and North Africa, but I don’t want to think about that yet.
Right now I want to think about the process of travel, something I have learned to enjoy very much. Tomorrow morning, after taking a United flight down to L.A., I’ll pick up Singapore Airlines flight #11 to Japan. I’ve already looked at their 30 movie listings for the month, and nothing interests me… so I’ll be reading, writing, and just enjoying the flight over.
And before long, I’ll start thinking about India. See you there.
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Every once in a while, I come across an article with the claim that a majority of people, usually men living in the U.S., would gladly give up a certain percentage of income in exchange for a certain amount of time. Usually, the cited figure is one day of work per week for a 20% pay cut.
Everyone lives their life by some sort of internalized list of values or moral code, but many people don’t take the time to sort out what they really believe in. Because of this disparity, they often feel conflicted when deciding how to make regular choices about time, money, and personal decisions.
I arrive at Bucharest’s Otopeni International Airport (OTP) and follow the exit signs that lead to the tourist bureau. I haven’t booked a room for my stay in advance, so I need to check on available budget hotels. Sadly, the tourist office is nowhere to be found.
When I was 20 years old and enrolled in a graduate school program that I didn’t finish, I took a third-shift job working at the FedEx package processing center in Memphis from 10pm-2am four days a week. It was tiring work, and the worst thing about it was getting home close to 3am and having to go to class at 9:00. A schedule like that can work for a few days, but not for the few months I tried to sustain it.