Category Archives: travel philosophy

I am…

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Hi friends, sorry for the absence. I’ve, typically, be overloaded with both social and work engagements and now am equally busy back in India again. As my plane rides to India are ever loaded with writing content, I’ve yet only to compose. In the meantime, please accept the following which was in response to the writing prompt: When did you “grow up”?

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At age 22, I was doing a lot of “grown-up” things; putting in 60-hour work weeks, making timely payments on my student loans, securing health insurance benefits, upholding loyal and loving relationships with friends, family and a partner, managing a stock portfolio where I was investing substantial savings, filing my taxes, early, without the help of parents or accountants, and managing the overall and on-time upkeep of a healthy household, body and life. But there were more question marks than periods in my life; not multiple-choice questions, but opened-ended statements reduced to the common denominator of:

I am…

It was a relentless self-inquiry; the blank drawing longer and the question only spinning more furiously with each book I pulled off the metaphysics shelf. Finally I put the books down. Put everything down. Realizing that I would find none of my answers in their conclusions and that these were chapters only I could write.

My parents cringed as I put their interpretation of “growing up” on hold: deferring my student loans, quitting my job, losing my insurances, saying open-ended goodbyes to all those with whom I’d formed attachments, and liquefying all my assets and savings into one chunk of an easy-access cash account. What was left fit easily into my backpack.

As the reader might, I too thought I knew where this was going: six months, a year at the most, following my every whim and fancy, at the end of which I would have found the answer to my question.

Yes. Yes, there were many wooden docks off of lakes and leading into oceans, on which I sat beneath midnight skies and pondered a philosophy that paralleled the blanket of night to my surface experiences, through which only my most minuscule of life understandings had yet penetrated the depths of my unknowns as stars.

No. A year of pondering the darkness was not enough. It’s taken me many years to come to peace with, and self respect, the fact that I am a slow learner. And I may have left my grown-up tasks behind, but I did not leave my sense of responsibility for being thorough. Had I been quicker, perhaps my quest could have been confined to a year or less, but as that was not my nature, my earthbound pilgrimage found itself extending, re-tracing, doubling over, making multiple evolutions around the earth, past a cumulative total of seven years.

I did, however, find and scribble into pages upon pages of my journal, possible conclusions to that open-ended sentence with which I had set forth.

In Latin America – in Guatemala, Spain, Colombia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil and Peru – countries and cultures for which I admire specifically for their heart and heat for passions of the human spirit and connection to pacha mama, or mother earth, I felt confidence and pride in my completion of that sentence with: Seeker. Woman. Dancer. American. Student. Scuba diver. Volunteer. Lover. Writer. Human. Spiritualist. Photographer. Pilgrim. Dreamer. Foreigner. Alchemist. Explorer. Magician.

Yet then I carried that same journal to South Asia – to India, Nepal, Tibet and India (again and again) – countries and cultures whose affinity for cyclical existence and non-attachment, to a merely earthly existence, brought enormous peace in their rational arguments for that which I had always intuitively suspected, but could not lineate into logical sense. And thus I returned to my question, reviewed all that I had contrived to fit under my umbrella of ego, and erased it. And with a huge sigh of relief, I drafted a new conclusion to that sentence: Nothing. Emptiness. Silence. Service to others. One life of many. One cell of a much greater organism. One tiny drop of evolution’s sweat. One miniscule being with the same opportunities, as any other, of taking delight in the chances of witnessing moments of beauty and light, afforded us each, in a mysterious blessing of life.

While these conclusions matured me, I still didn’t feel “grown-up.” Quite the contrary; I felt smaller than ever! But I was content enough with my vague answers to begin the search for my life vocation. “Vocation,” not so much as it is defined as an occupation or profession, but as the term was refined by Frederick Buechner as, “the place where your great gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Of course, my intentions at the time were hardly so eloquently realized, and I believe it was only by divinely-orchestrated chance that I stumbled right upon exactly such a thing. That “thing” was the field of Experiential Education. For those new, as I was, to the term, it means structuring education so as to engage the learner into taking the initiative in the investigation, experimentation, digestion and reflection of direct experiences with the aim of learning natural consequences, mistakes and successes with ownership and authenticity. Logistically, this meant that my new job was taking small groups of teenagers for three-month learning adventures in the developing world: Fiji, Guatemala, Nepal and India.

It was one day, on exactly one of these assignments that something shifted.

We had just arrived, after 27-hours in transit, at the airport in New Delhi, and the disheveled looks of my student group accurately reflected the distance around the world traveled: A girl, who had inadvertently fasted from food for two days in anxiousness, was still white from fainting in the aisle of the plane on the way to the toilet. A boy was slurring run-on sentences in residue of the miscalculation of the timing of sleeping medications prescribed to him for the plane. Still another student had a stack of vomit bags tucked under her arm, of which she’d already used two. The quivering, perspiring, group of overstuffed backpacks, like a line of awkward ducklings, followed my step, too closely and without any awareness outside of the feet in front of them, through the airport. As we filed through the air-conditioned and last reservoir of the First-World familiarity of the international airport, past the heavily armed guards, and out the double doors of the airport’s first line of security, the group was smacked simultaneously with the full force of India’s chocking humidity, shouting taxi driver mob, and dizzyingly dark swarms of mosquitoes.

With a soft and straight pace, I led the group through the crowd and to a clearing in the parking lot. There I directed them each to drop their heavy bags and cinch the circle in until it was safely airtight of the foreign chaos around us. Intentionally modeling a moment of unhurried presence, I slowly made my eye-contact way around the circle, riding the highs and lows of their roller coaster of emotions:

Shock. Elation. Curiosity. Fear. Excitement. Regret. Trepidation. Courage. Confidence. Illness. Disbelief. Awe.

And it was at this moment that I, for the first time, realized that I was elated by their excitement, aghast in their shock, knew their fear intimately, and admired their courage – more than my own.  I also saw their questions; many variations of the same open-ended one that had morphed intp so many continental directions for me. But it was no longer about the answers; theirs or mine. I only saw in each student a unique path that was just as in need of mentorship, as it was well-timed moments of silence.

And something shifted.

It was no longer about my search for meaning and identity. My joy in life and the world’s need met.

I felt I had suddenly stumbled upon a very important clue as to why human beings procreate: for exactly this reality-shifting realization – (and enormous relief!) – that it is simply no longer about me.

Somewhere along that rollercoaster of faces and emotions, I had traversed to the other side and got off my own life’s ride – as  much of an adult as I think I’ll ever grow up to be.

And the, “I am…” trailed from a heavy sigh off into silence:

Content, simply, in its empathetic open-endedness.

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re-defining home

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(The following question was posed to me by the editor of TravelBlogs.com)

What does home mean to you after traveling for so long?

When I first left the country, I was an angry girl; ashamed of my country, annoyed with American tradition & culture, disregarding of my family history, disappointed with my education, and I was no longer on speaking terms with religion.

It was the story of the young shepherd, Santiago, in The Alchemist that filled my spirit with an insatiable fire to move, and specifically to buy my first open-ended ticket to what would eventually accumulate into seven years of adventures abroad. But I still vividly remember the moment when I closed that little book and said, with noted disappointment, to myself, “Wait. The boy ends up where he began?” It was foreshadowing on my life that I was just barely smart enough to note with a squinted and suspicious eye.

Of course, I ignored the winking omen. And picked up the challenge of the chase. Home? I don’t need one. House? On my back. Family? They can live without me. Country? Never belonged there. Religion? I’ve got big skies and starry nights to answer those questions now.

Over time, my notion of home as an outward place harboring social detest, devolved into something much softer and closer. For somewhere along the path, I picked up meditating. And I remember, for a few years, telling people that “home” was that warm little nook in which I centered myself every morning, with my eyes closed, about ten minutes deep into sitting.

But this version of home is lonely. And, as every long term traveler eventually learns, the charms of a transient life are, mockingly, transient. I began to feel myself scrapping; the surfaces of cities, the shallowness of temporary friends, the stereotypes of a culture, the Lonely Planet highlights of a country. Feeling my travels weighted too heavily on the side of quantity, I added a few stones to the quality side, by slowing down my itinerary and stationing myself in small communities for 3-6 months at a time, usually working with this or that NGO with the goal of fostering the connection between local and international circles. In this way, I did finally learn full names, foreign languages, local bus routes, and the best street food stand in town. But still, I found myself in the strange position of never asking a person his or her name before finding an above-par answer to the question, “How long will you be staying?”

And that is perhaps when the big “C” word entered my mind and vocabulary. I decided that I did not care WHERE in the world I lived, so long as I was surrounded by people with whom I shared like values, trust, mission, curiosity and intentions; Community. One in which I could foster my new understanding of the concepts of interconnectedness and interdependence. A place and people in whom I could invest and connect. For just as I, in my perpetual pilgrimage had learned that my travels were less about the goal than the journey. SO had I learned that my relationships were less about the people, than my interactions with them. And I needed a circle. Of brothers and sisters and parents and lovers and extended family and community with whom I could exchange: trust, teachings, experience, dependence, beliefs, challenges, support and, of course, love.

But before I continue, I must also include the most noble, impacting, profound and beautiful lesson that my travels have BEATEN into me – and that is of Humility. The thought of the arrogance and ignorance with which I set upon my world “stomp,” today, changes my cheeks to shades of shame. That I left my country on the spit and snarl of these two charges, just emphasizes the depth of my personal projection. Such self-righteousness we assume in the task and name of seeking change! The world IS change; it’s the predominant characteristic of nature and the Earth and nothing but comical to presume that we need seek it out. We human beings, both individually and cumulatively, will constantly be presented with the challenges and opportunities to evolve to our higher selves regardless of the continent upon which we happen to find ourselves born or standing. I need not cross the world on a jet engine to either solve the puzzles of the planet or recognize the mystery of life. But perhaps, like Santiago, we just have to make the physical journey to come to that same, mocking-with-good-humor-at-our-humbling-expense, conclusion.

A few months ago, I drank yak butter tea in an underground stone house at 15,000 feet, on a shelf of the Tibetan plateau. And as I watched the children playing with puppies, and the women chatting happily over the meal cooking on the fire, and the father spinning yak wool while checking in with the teenagers coming in from the fields, I realized that every community is precious, none more or less than another. Be it a tiny village high in the Himalayas or the park of a busy urban city street, the challenges, lessons and connections are the same. We don’t need to cross borders, but only to venture into the unknown. For only by leaving all that we know, do we discover exactly who and where we already are. And there, sipping tea in one of the most remote corners on the world, I concluded that the joy of travel, is not where it takes us, but the new awareness of where and who we already are. Very little does it actually matter where we go and, thus, where we began is the only place in the world in which we can end.

In the end of The Alchemist, Santiago returns to the sheep, fields, trees and family of his upbringing with a smile. Santiago’s community did not change. But his awareness and appreciation of his interwoven role within it, did. Home, to me, is defined as the circle of people and places in which we choose to foster kindness and love. It’s a community: of friends, teachers, lovers, mentors, family, students and every messenger met along the path. Home is the web of our interconnectedness. And once we realize the degree to which we are interdependent, the rest, I believe becomes irrelevant. Home is left, and returned to, as being nothing more than a new awareness of what’s been there all along.


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leave your expectations; bring your patience

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(I have a new group of Dragons students arriving soon and this was from a note I wrote to them, related to the previous post, that I think continues to provide insight on life in India…)

Tourists always show up in Varanasi and notice I know my way around and ask me the following…

“Please tell us what to do here! We see it’s “sacred” but it’s dirty, polluted, loud, full of trash, we’re constantly bothered by beggars, and there are cows everywhere!”

And I sigh heavily and tell them, “Varanasi isn’t an infatuation, it’s an arranged marriage. And it takes a lot of patience, compromise, time, respect, and humility for your understanding of her to emerge. But once your relationship comes through the fire, the bond is unbreakable and lasts a lifetime.”

Having worked in Dragon’s Administration as the Admissions Director for two years, it is one of my primary jobs to make sure students understand what, “rugged” means.

Rugged does not (just) mean sleeping in a tent in the Himalayas. Rugged means bathing out of bucket with cold water for three months. Rugged means living in a city where there is no electricity for most of the day (still true in Banaras). Rugged means navigating city streets that are FULL of trash and relentless traffic. Rugged is learning how to (emotionally and logistically) respond to the dozen small children who don’t have shoes and pull on your legs and grab your hands asking for food. Rugged is sleeping on hard beds under mosquito nets, but still waking up with bites. Rugged is battling the foreign bacteria of another country and constantly playing your defensive and offensive moves to stay healthy. Rugged is trying to sleep through a city that stays awake through the night – with its thousand temples all ringing and singing through all midnight and sunrise hours. Rugged is learning which bulls are dangerous and need a lot of clearance and finding the right pace to outwalk the water buffalo as the herd walks home. Rugged is sleeping on a dirt floor in your rural homestay and using the bathroom in the appropriate field behind the house. Rugged is coughing constantly on the pollution of a rapidly developing nation. Rugged is staying calm in the middle of a hundred worshipers chanting at a temple. Rugged is helping your rural homestay mother cook over a clay open fire. Rugged is helping your rural homestay sister draw water from a well or plant potatoes in the field. Rugged is coming to acceptance of the fact that EVERYONE will stare and watch every move you (the white foreigner) will make. Rugged is learning how to use a squat toilet the way the locals do. Rugged is about learning what you really need, and can live without, and testing your patience and dedication on the path of what you’re out to understand.

I’m not trying to scare you. But these are all the daily realities of living in India. And I’ll tell you the good news nows: while it starts off tough, every student on my last semester, completely and totally, fell head over heels in love with Varanasi. They each swore up and down that they’d be back, and they each cried as they left their homestays and Varanasi lives. So your patience, your compassion, and your willingness to compromise – they will all pay off; they will open up the secret world of India to you, and in the end you’ll remember that first week with tremendous fondness and a lot of laughter.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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a few questions & answers

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Visions of India Dec 2007, originally uploaded by seekingsol.

I recently answered the following questions from a Portuguese journalist and figured to recycle the content. The answers are short because the last time I had something published, the editor, having no mercy with the scissors, cut my tresses of words to something of an ugly bob. So my answers are trimmed in anticipation of another hack job. :)

Q: Tell me about your life before the trip?

My life before “the trip” was spent checking off a list of the acquisitions that people around me (family, culture, society) told me I needed to have in order to be happy. I think of that period of my life (ages 14-21) as years of blindness: I just felt around in the dark and let the people and objects I bumped into direct my path. I certainly wasn’t unhappy. I just had no goals or passions or interests of my own and so I was fine with putting my faith in the path that American society prescribed for me. I’ve since realized that I sort out a lot of my life by walking down paths that lead to dead ends; it’s just my slow process of learning. So when I had everything I was told would make me happy, but still felt empty, I realized that the path prescribed me was a dead end. I was simply done with that path and ready for a new one.

Q: Why did you decide to go?

I wanted to know what would remain if I left everything behind. I was numb and wanted to feel things again – coldness, warmth, pain, rain, surprise, bliss, confusion; it didn’t matter to me so much what I felt, but just that I could FEEL again, something that could confirm that I was alive. I started to contemplate the idea of traveling for a year in Central America, and only at the first contemplation of the idea, I began, for the first time in a long time, to feel something. I felt nervous and I felt wicked and I felt brave and I felt afraid. But I was feeling! And that’s how I knew I was doing something that I needed to do. So I bought a ticket. I had a job at the time and I didn’t even tell my boss. I just bought a one-year-return ticket and let all the details sort themselves out on their own.

Q: What is the message you want to pass to your generation?

That your life is unique and a mystery to be explored. I’m not sure how we can live with sunrises and sunsets and stars and not wonder the big questions that such visions inspire. But I really think these questions should be pondered, individually and with each other. Because they are the most important questions in life and I have a hunch that anyone who asks them, will come, via their own unique path, to the same conclusion. And this conclusion is the answer to most of our (humanity’s) problems. So I guess my message is to engage your sense of wonder and think creatively with your life path; it’s your own to create and color.

Q: What did you learn travelling for so many countries?

I learned that borders mean little and that an open mind and heart means a lot. I learned that despite the thousands of dialects, we (humans) all speak the same universal languages: of laughter, music, dance, art, and play, of love for family and of needs for safety, community, health and peace. I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter where you start, go or end; but that life, like little kids in the mud, will teach you everything you need to know utilizing whatever resources are available, providing an open heart, creative mind and will to learn are present. And I’ve learned that the truth is easy to find; you just have to ask, respectfully, for it and be ready to listen.

Q: What is the experience, the place or the person that marked you the most?

An American woman named Hanley Denning donated her entire life to providing education, safety and health care to children living in the slum community of the Guatemala City dump. She was a friend and mentor. She died, tragically, in a car accident this year. But she is still my guide by her example of total selflessness and the power of a single human to better the lives of thousands. You can learn more about her and/or the project at: www.safepassage.org.

Q: What is your next trip?

Currently, I’m living in Varanasi, India but in May of 2008, I, along with a best friend, will begin a 40-day pilgrimage into the Dolpo Region of remote Nepal. Logistically, we hope to explore the kingdom of Mustang and visit what is considered one of the last enclaves of pure Tibetan culture left on earth. Intuitively, we are most interested in the nomadic nature of the pilgrimage itself, and the messengers, messages, questions and answers, we are bound to encounter and ponder along the way. For those interested, I’ll be documenting the pilgrimage on my blog: www.solbeam.com.

Q: Is it possible for a normal person to do the same? Leave a job, family and country and travel the world?

I’m a normal person. I’m actually abnormally clumsy, slow on many subjects, and I bite my lip over the same questions that everyone else does. If anything, that’s my charm: that I’m a single, solo, and normal girl, and I did it. It doesn’t take great courage, but it does take a first leap of faith. My advice to everyone is the same: don’t think about it – just make the decision and start acting like you own it. Make a physical commitment if you can – buy the plane ticket, go the school registrar and ask to defer your next year of university, get the second job you need to save the money. Once the commitment is made, the rest of the details (obligations, logistics, etc.) will sort themselves out on their own. All you have to do is make the decision and take the first step. At least “try on” the decision and see how it feels. If it makes you feel lighter or sparks something on the inside, you’re probably on the right path.

Q: And what about the money? How much does it cost?

Mostly likely, it’ll cost you less than it does for you to live at home. My costs of living abroad are a fraction of what I spend when I’m living in the States. My best tip is to be aware that there’s a two-tiered cost structure when traveling in foreign countries: prices for tourists and prices for locals. Do you hang out at the places in your town where tourists hang out? Of course not. Those places are unauthentic and overpriced. So try to avoid the package tours and tourist hot spots. Pick a random place that fancies you and instead of sticking to the guide books, study the local language, make friends with locals, and let them be your guides. If you are authentically interested in understanding another culture and country, people will feel it and open their hearts, houses and lives to you. An amazing resource for finding friends in foreign countries is the online community of travelers congregated at www.couchsurfing.com. Those are my best tips.

What do you know about Portugal?

I walked along the Camino Portuguese from Santiago, Spain to Porto, Portugal. The route has very few pilgrims on it and no organized accommodation for those on pilgrimage, but I was greeted and treated with enormous warmth by the people of Portugal. Shopkeepers let me sleep in their attics, bartenders served me free hot meals, priests let me set up my tent in the courtyards of their churches and I reme
mber even spending one night at the fire station. I found the people and landscapes of Portugal to be exceptionally lovely and have put the country high on my list of places, should I ever slow down enough, to retire. I was unable to finish the pilgrimage due to heat and forest fires, so someday I plan to return and complete the route, walking from Porto to Fatima.

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mental experience

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Left over Art Project on the Lawns of Tagore’s Visva Bharati University

I don’t actually remember how to compose without a keyboard, so now you get my journal short-sentence scribbles. Welcome inside my head…

On my own again; I find my intuition welcoming back my company like childhood friends latching arms and holding hands. Renewed and heightened awareness, skipping by my side, I feel again the space between bodies and mine and the currents that run in between. And it feels like breathing. Navigating the sea of India, I swim again. I remember now, why I love travelling alone so much.

A Buddhist monk recently linked two words together in a new order that pushed the first domino on a chain of thoughts. He said, “mental experience,” and I realized that I had found the answer to a hundred questions.

How do you know which path to take? Why aren’t you afraid? How do you explain your relationship to the divine?

Mental experience.

I walk past tens of thousands of stares along my way to my platform at the Kolkota train station. I break a few of those stares to help me with directions. When I find my seat, I warm off the stares of those sitting in my berth and spend two hours in discussion on India’s current battle with a tidal wave of marketing and materialism at the stakes of India’s spirituality and heart. (But the fact that I’m (even) having this conversation with three 18-year olds proves to me that India’s heart still holds the advantage. I wonder if I’ve ever heard any reference to any heart of America not attached to the head of a blond Hollywood celebrity?) Eyes peer around corners at me and passerbys linger. Few ever bother me. But this time there is one. I wait patiently and finally turn around and look him in the eye, raise a hand, wag a finger and tell him to, “Stop. Go away.” He jumps at his recognition, tosses his cigarette out the window, turns around and disappears. A woman in the cabin nods her head in approval of the code of discernment I have learned. The same of which a foreigner would question and I would have replied: mental experience.

My two months of daily Hindi classes are starting to bob apples to the top. Precious communications like, “you are telling me lies” and, “I really like this country, of all, it’s my favorite” have been especially effective in bringing down haggles and warming up smiles. Still, my skills failed me yesterday when I tried to tell my taxi driver, “No, your ‘brother’ is not allowed to come in the taxi too.” Yet somewhere in the efforts of failed communications with the brother, mental experience told me that, this time, it was okay. As it turned out, it was only the brother who knew how to get me where I was going.

Oh, you’re seeing where I’m going with this? Yes. Mental experience is a blend of trust, intuition and faith that the universe is working in my favor, but it is not blind and it is not uneducated and it is not momentary; it is a confidence based in evidence that I have witnessed and earned through the thousand tried experiences of following my heart. It is a hundred at-the-moment unsolved mysteries, that upon exploration and reflection and the passing of time, were understood all to be for my greater good. It is a million mental steps off unknown edges upon which my feet found solid ground. It is the bookless and wordless education that musicians and artists earn in their midnight manic hours. And I imagine that, when it is perfected, it is what allows beings like Jesus to walk on water and the Buddha to chose his incarnations.

But I would have to sit the rest of my life under a tree to walk that far. I guess I would put myself at about 7 years old in mental experience, where the world is my jungle gym from which I’m not afraid to hang upside down, but when I investigate the grass and find the decrepit wings of an aged butterfly losing the fight to muster a last flight, I still cry. I think, a few years ago, I posted an entry about wanting to get back to age 7. Well it took me a lot of world wandering, but I think I’m almost there. :)

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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divine chaos

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Why India?

I find the inquiry funny for the fact that the question is, for others, as obscurely obvious as the answer, for me.

But I was asked this question three times this week and, only just, woke to the idea that perhaps it was not a rhetorical question; nor a bluff or joke to which my response of laughing made any sense or left the question less hanging.

So now I muster my grin and giggle and tap my lips with my fingers and wonder how to answer the question.

My first response is defensive: That’s like answering, “Describe that upon which you base your faith.” or “How do you commune with God?”; the answer is so personal and intuitively understood that it is actually a shame, and certainly poetic insult, to even try to nail of box of words around it.

My second response is personal: I’m not a particularly courageous or brave or strong person. Perhaps exactly the opposite. For when an idea or intuition enters my head, as soon as it exists, and I know on all subconscious levels that it’s right – then everything in my being that is not in alignment with that idea, begins to die. A seed of anti-dream cancer is sown and slowly begins to spread through my body, and I, being a particularly sensitive creature to anti-dream cancer and finely attuned to the slow wilt of my soul, am left with no other option. So that’s one of my secrets: that I am less brave than I am afraid of my own slow suicide. Making such a huge life decision (such as to stay in India) was a simple act of self-preservation.

My third response will appeal to the practical people as much as a person like me can. It’s a two-fold answer with an accordion of like unknowns that I imagine will be revealed as we stretch out the intestine of time and see what lies hidden within my future. But right now, on my fifth trip to India in a three-year span, the two words that sum up my awe of this country are, “divine chaos.” Yes. It’s the same two words that I worked into a quote that somehow found its way onto a greeting card. And everyone should know that I found those words, and understood those words, and borrowed those words, from no where else in the world, but India. I can promise you that any person who has been to India, be they a detester or lover (usually the two predominant categories) will smile at the charm and recognize exactly those features, in the face of India.

And what is divine chaos? It’s an arranged marriage. It’s a train ride in a sleeper car. It’s the colors of a sari. It’s a haggle in the market. It’s a Bollywood movie. It’s the most polluted and sacred river in the world; Ganga-ji, and the fresh-water dolphins and flesh-eating turtles that swim within it. Divine chaos is the interaction between beggers and givers in the streets. It’s the making of a samosa. It’s Kali; the goddess of both destruction and birth. It’s the mantra chanting of a fire puja. It’s the construction of a road. It’s a sacred cow chewing up plastic bags. It’s a yogi standing on his head. It’s a Muslim and Hindu living next door to each other. It’s the process of silencing the mind. Divine chaos is both the flavor of a steaming chai and the swirls that are left in the cup at the bottom of it.

Divine chaos is not the choice between right and wrong, black and white, as some have wrongly interpreted the greeting card quote. Divine chaos is exactly the opposite. It’s the non-dualistic notion that opposites do not oppose, but complement, and by simply refocusing perspectives to either micro or macro or stepping into the shoes of the other, it will be shown that there is always a pattern, always an order, always an organization of such intricate conception that it could only be divinely inspired. But divine chaos is not the process of constantly refocusing the lens and testing those formulas and outcomes of science, but the bliss of bearing witness to, and having faith in, the pattern itself and marveling the magic and enchantment from which such experiments always befall.

I choose India because I saw a thousand of these experiments in my sunrise walk down the market street this morning. And I choose India because she fosters the diversity, respect for faith, and undefended love that are the necessary elements for such experiments to ripen with exponential abundance.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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Footprints in Peru, Day 5: a healthy humbling

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In my defense, I have to point out that it really should have been the responsibility of Javier and Jairo to inquire as to my personal definition of “favorable weather” before asking me to make the offering to the Apus. In consideration of their logistical roles as mountain guides, I suppose, for them, “favorable” meant something more to the effect of, “sunny and fair.” But as they quickly found out the next morning, upon hearing the unzipping of my tent and sequential shrieks of joy, was that the wish for weather that I had subconsciously raised to and requested of the Apus, had successfully been answered in the form of a snowstorm.

Javier begins to use the word, “blizzard” which I think is a bit of an exaggeration. Nonetheless, an earth- and heat-hugging layer of ice that formed overnight allows a lacy blanket of white to be thrown over every vista. The weather suits the mountains and mood well as not just me, but the whole group, is as giddy as if Santa himself were about to ride into our valley on a sleigh of a dozen llamas.

Our morning trek is delayed by the, “blizzard” and being well aware of which is the warmest tent in our party, I flap open the door of the kitchen tent, feign distress with bitter coldness and accept Enir’s insistence to sit on the stool next to him by the fire.

I adore Enir; there in nothing not to love about this man. And his smile and presence always warm me as much as the fire. I have already learned a little of his story: that he lives in a mountain village outside of Ollantaytambo, that he has three children but that his wife died years ago, that he speaks Quechua (the language of the Peruvian indigenous majority) and that he’s the best head chef in the Andes. I feel quite comfortable with him and finally ask him the question that is really on my mind…

“Enir. No one else is here. So now tell me the truth. What do you really think of tourists and the people that come to your country on these trips? Aren’t they arrogant with presumed superiority of their culture? And ignorant of the complexity of yours? And they come in these terrible hordes and leave messes and take millions of pictures and truly understand so little of what they are seeing and hearing! And then they invade your natural resources and are such ungracious guests. Don’t you think that we’re terrible? Tell me the truth.”

But Enir hardly flinches. He just casually stirs a pot of boiling vegetables and says, “Yes. They take a lot of pictures, but what harm is that? I enjoy my work very much. I love to be able to travel our country, and make people happy with our food, and share some of the most beautiful parts of my land, history and culture with others. In the off-season, when the foreigners do not come, that is when it’s hard and I work in the fields and find odd jobs to support my family. But this is very nice. I love living in these mountains and I am very happy to host those that visit my country.”

It makes so much sense that I’m bothered by the reply. I squint my eyes and try to discern if he’s telling me a story that he thinks will make me happy. But I look through him and find only transparency to uncluttered honesty. And so I turn the eye on myself instead and wonder how, why and when I became such a cynic.

But just in case, I decide to ask Jairo the same question. Nonchalantly, he responds in like, “Oh no. It’s not like that at all. We really appreciate that tourism is our main industry. I’ve learned English and soon I’ll be studying Chinese and it’s wonderful to be able to learn about other peoples’ countries and share with them what I love about mine. Machu Picchu was just named one of the seven wonders of the natural world, so we are very excited for all the people and business it will bring. What’s wrong with a photograph if someone takes it back to their country and shows it to their friends and family and tells them how beautiful our country, history and people are? Tourism is hardly the worst of occupations to dedicate yourself to.”

And isn’t he just exactly right? Are not his reasons the same as mine for why I work as a guide in the same industry? Do I not love opening doors to new worlds and escorting people through? And sharing in their enlightenment of the mysteries suddenly unlocked by the clash of foreign and home cultures? Is it not an equal exchange? Who is the ignorant and arrogant one to point her finger and claim exploitation when she knows nothing of it?

The lesson is a healthy humbling.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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Footprints in PeruDay 1: puncturing peruvian skin & yachcay

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Plaza de Armas, Cusco, Peru

“Where are you from?”

It’s the same first question every shoe shining boy in the Plaza de Armas has been trained to ask.

“The heavens,” I reply in Spanish.

He shakes his head strongly in disagreement and, with confidence, states, “No, you’re not. You’re from the United States.”

Curiosity piqued by how he distinguished an American from the hordes of equally white German, French and Dutch visitors in Cusco, I challenge, “How do you know that?”

He doesn’t even glance down at the evidence, but holds my gaze steady and references, “From the brand of your sandals.”

I laugh out loud, as Chacos, indeed, are predominately worn by persons, and of a company, North American.

He continues, “The capital of United States is Washington, DC. President Clinton had a dog named Buddy and a girlfriend name Monica. Now there is President Bush. He has a dog named Barney.”

I had this same conversation, regarding presidential pets, in this same plaza in Peru, eight years ago. And I’m caught off balance for only a second, startled by the circles life has a fondness for spinning us in. Peru was my first backpacking adventure abroad, and now, some 40-something traversed countries and six years later, I marvel at how many times I orbited the Earth in order to find myself on the exact same bench where I opened up the first of (what would become) a bookcase of travel journals and scribbled the opening chapter chronicling the turning of an insider, out.

I presume that the point of these little life pirouettes, is to 1. realize that no matter how fast or far we spin, we end up in the same spot and 2. recognize, if lucky, either in our environment or selves, some change.

Well, today, the stars have aligned in my favor because I sigh in relief of the observation that although my bench has proven itself quite static, for all the rotations around the sun, neither Cusco nor I remain the same. Cusco is brighter, cleaner, prettier and while I can’t claim the same, I will give myself credit for a, since, acquired proficiency in Spanish and the six years of experience that age and separate me from my first memory of this bench.

I note an example of this difference when a boy selling postcards approaches me. Eight years ago, this same encounter ended abruptly with a wagging finger. This time I ask the boy where he’s from, what he does in school, and who painted the picture on the postcard. He takes a seat on the bench next to me and explains: He goes to school in the mornings and takes painting classes in the afternoons. He shows me, in order of difficulty, the layers of watercolor that he himself has impressed upon the paper. He explains that the lama faces are the most challenging of strokes and he shows me the places where his teacher assisted by using her own brush, and then proudly indicates to his own signature and name on the bottom of the card. Eight years ago, I relented to persistency and bought the postcard to keep the picture captured on its front. Today, I buy the card to capture the memory of the conversation and pat the pride of accomplishment displayed upon the boy’s face.

Perhaps I am a petty travel snob, but I hate being grouped as a “tourist” and love to think that if I can only penetrate those shallow layers of first impressions and interactions, then even in this district that reportedly relies on tourism for over 60% of its income and employment, I will be able to find unique and authentic exchanges with the people and country of Peru.

That is my question, goal and hope.

The reason I have come to Peru is to participate in a community service project in a tiny and remote village called, Quelqanqa that is hidden, without road access, within the glaciated peaks of the Urubamba mountain range. I hope this mission will provide me a path that will penetrate through Peru’s sun and time-toughened skin. I have only two weeks, so I don’t have any expectations of reaching the heart of a country that through years of strife, struggle, myth and mystery is most certainly escondido (hidden) to even those who are born within its borders. No. If anything, my global travels have only convinced and resigned me to the eternity of being an outsider. The heart I dare not hope to touch. But just under the skin. That’s my modest aspiration.

In my pre-trip online investigation of the area, I have learned a Quechua word and principle of Andean life: yachcay. It means, “to learn, to know and to remember” with the understanding that all true knowledge comes from direct personal experience guided by insight and intuition. Perhaps it’s a easy mission. Perhaps it’s intricate. Sitting on this bench in the Plaza de Armas, surrounded by tourist busses, trinket hawkers and a hundred different lines each rehearsed a thousand times, it does not seem a simple task.

And so with an appropriate challenge of yachcay, I venture forth…

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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jousting

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With belly clinching for food, feet demanding the day be done, and my skin, insisting in accord, that it was not of the humor or mood for getting drenched, I cinched in my backpack’s waist belt and shoulder straps tight against my body and broke into a jog.

Trot. Trot. Trot. Trotting heavily down the hill, squeaky with twelve kilos of clothing, camera and commodities, I ran directly into the front line of storm that had begun to grind its teeth with thunder and hunger for an appetizing little pilgrim hors d’oeuvre.

Picking up momentum with downhill gravity on my side, I felt myself shift into full-speed; jousting aggressively with the bullets of water riding the winds against me. Trees whip-lashing and winds howling, the shouts of the elements in my natural coliseum pumped pain-numbing adrenaline through my body till I felt it slam against the walls of my skin. At that moment, my stride suddenly widened and I recognized the feeling as the same as that instant — while riding a horse –- when the beast beneath pivotally breaks from a canter into a full gallop.

Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh. With the added weight pushing me down even faster, there were no more options for foot-breaking; my end options were only wall, fall or the eventual incline assumed to naturally follow the foot of every valley.

Now perhaps only because I fear speed, this plight was particularly liberating for me. So I threw in a few yelps, hoots and hops and in this manner ran swooshing and screaming head-on into the storm.

So a traditional happy ending would have me arriving into the town and stepping foot under shelter the moment the lightning cracked and clouds dumped. And although my pilgrimage was quite the fairy tale, no such convenient pumpkin morphed or prince appeared.

My speed and screams slowed with the gradual incline which, as correctly anticipated, existed at the bottom of the hill, and when I finally did stall I found myself, despite the distance gained, still a quarter dozen kilometers away from my destination.

Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked. And an aggravated wave of rain sounded alarm by way of the leaves and crashed towards me. I actually watched the cement turn black as the footstep of the storm shadowed the street

…and overcame me.

While normally under such circumstances I might have run for the cover of a tree and dug frantically through my pack for my rain pants, poncho, umbrella and waterproof stuff sacks – this time – no such rational urges moved me.

Perhaps the adrenaline was still discretely pumping. Or maybe I just had no idea how close to the cliff of crazy I had been standing. For instead of cursing or worrying or defending or retreating – I unbuckled my backpack, threw it into the middle of the small creek collecting itself in the street, took a heavy seat on my bag, and began to chuckle. The chuckle evolved to a laugh and the laughing to hysterics. I laughed like a maniac. And only when I had finished wiping the tears of surrender-inspired bliss from my eyes did the sweetest idea, like a gift left anonymously on my doorstep, come upon me.

I unzipped the bottom of my pack and stuck a blind and scavenging hand inside – unsure and also curious as to if perhaps my imagination, too, had taken the opportunity to play prank on a girl with ego drenched and guard down.

But there it was. My hand clamped down on that little plastic sack hidden almost a month ago, for exactly this just-in-case moment for which I’d forgotten I had prepared.

The rain, having saturated my hair, formed small rivers down the creases in my face and my eyelashes did the windshield-wiping work for which they were originally designed. But not even these little waterfalls could have drowned my delight with the discovery of my forgotten backpack-buried treasure…

…a single squeeze-packet of Justin’s sinfully cinnamon nut butter.

Now I could conclude this tale with a chapter telling about how when I finally showed up in town, I found that all the pilgrim hostels had closed for the season. And I could share the story of how I wandered around, wet, hungry and exhausted, until the owner of one of the extravagant hotels took me in and let me sleep in the attic solidifying into my memory one of the purest and sweetest acts of kindness I encountered on my pilgrimage.

But there’s no peanut butter in that conclusion.

So instead, I close not with a traditional happy ending, but with an alternative happy ending; with the picture of a sopping wet girl, cheeks streaked with the tears of peaceful surrender mixed with the sweat of her captor, humbly subjugated by an element of the divine, sucking on a squeeze packet in the middle of the street in the middle of a storm, with not a single urge to seek retreat or shelter — from one of the most powerful drenches of Presence — she has ever experienced in her life.

(But the point of this peanut-theme is still to get to Senegal, and — thanks for your patience — we’re almost there…)

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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un-tethered time

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You know that sometimes my only clues to an ongoing holiday are the icons that dance around the Yahoo and Google front pages? The funny thing about holidays, which I think is only taken into account in their absence, is that they act as anchors and effectively pin down a year into some semblance of cyclical time that would otherwise wander un-tethered.

So here I am, in a Hindu nation, where the concept of reincarnation is a matter of fact, and a single birth of a human god, fiction. Ah. These twists in the perspectives plot bring me much joy. As they throw black and white, wrong and right, out the door, and humble my definition of “reality” to a tiny place in my brain, essentially linked between the hands of individual experience and personality. I cannot possibly define what’s real and what’s not. And I am happy to be relieved of this self-imposed and unnecessary duty.

On Christmas Eve, I wandered down the streets of Pondicherry. As I watched this cherished elephant outside a Hindu temple distribute blessings to an adoring crowd, I wondered if, without seeing, I could ever have preconceived of it. I decided not. And took a quick video clip to share with any of those wondering, how some of the rest of the world is experiencing your same eve…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFmCQIwFco]

I think the soundtrack is my favorite part of this clip. Because it resonates surprisingly in tune to what I heard going on in the background when I called home this morning and the phone was passed around a boisterous room of near and extended family.

So I suppose I can always draw a line here, and connect one place to another with the shared term, “spirited community.” And by this definition of “holiday,” I’d like to put my wish for you on record: I hope that to-day, among many, you feel yourself encircled by the presence of spirited company and wish that your holiday cheer extends beyond this date to encompass all seasons and in recognition of an even greater shared sibling-hood with those that experience and express your same joy, through different means, on all sides of the world.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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