290 Days on the Road

It is late morning in Dambulla, Sri Lanka. We are at the local bakery trying to solve a mystery. It involves pastries, two dozen of them loaded on a plate and then served to local customers sitting around us. I can spot egg sandwiches covered up by spicy doughnuts, bread buns and cute swirly rolls with sausage inside snuggled next to plain ones covered with sugar. Everyone is being served the same amount of bread goodness. Two dozens go to the single dude on the table next to us and two dozens to the two girlfriends on the right. We are confused to say the least. Would they be able to devour all that is on their plate? No way we declare and decide to wait out and see what happens.

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It took us a while to figure out that if you hear the music of ” For Elise” on the streets of Sri Lanka it means that a tuk-tuk loaded with bread and pastries is close by. If you are a Pole who cannot live without bread or a child hungry for a treat this is one happy melody. At least in this country:)

Our subjects are washing down the treats with coffee or tea and are taking their time. We see a lot of pastry touching going on. The people behind the counter loading the plates are not having gloves on. From there the waitress takes them to a desk and touches each bread thingy while counting and writes something on a pad. Once the plates reach their final destination, pastries are shuffled, moved and distributed. I try to ask the waitress what is the deal with the bread plates but she doesn’t speak any English. Instead she offers to serve us one. We stick to our yogurt and tea and watch.

After half an hour our neighbor is ready to go. His plate is more than half full. He barely made a dent! The waitress comes over and takes it away to the cash register. There she starts counting the pieces left on it by touching each and every one again. A bill is then written down and delivered.

A-ha! My suspicions have been confirmed. You eat what you want, the rest goes back and you only pay for what is missing. Mystery solved. But there is a new question forming in my head. What exactly happens with the pastries that make it back? How many people have touched the little bread rolls we just ate?

Since we left our familiar lives the days are filled with solving mystery after mystery. Arriving in SE Asia we quickly discovered that there are some general lessons that apply to most of the countries we were to visit, like bargaining and steering clear from tourist traps, but for the most part every country presented us with unique set of challenges. We started our trip by not being able to figure out how to switch metro trains in Japan, or even knowing how to exit the metro station. There I had trouble flashing some of the high tech toilets, too many buttons, too many different models! Once I was stuck in a toilet for 20 min messing with the controls. I had to give up and call in the girl waiting in line to help. She was mortified, I was embarrassed, together we flushed the darn thing. On day one in Tokyo Kuba proudly carried a huge bread to the cash register thinking the price was $1 but it turned out that 100 gr of the bread was $1. Oops. We got three inches of it and left crestfallen.

Thailand. We bought the greenest of mangoes (used for salads and cooking) and tried to EAT them! For reals. Vietnam. Are people laughing at us or just giggling because they are shy? Tricky. Cambodia. How do you get rid of 20 tuk-tuk drivers following you on the street? India. Why is the train ticket line not moving forward? Live and learn. You have to go in the very front and push yourself or shove money in someone’s hand and shout your destination. Good luck. Nepal. Why the heck does it take two hours for lunch to arrive to the table? Literally! But of course they cook everything from scratch. You want faster service? Then don’t go to Nepal’s mountains. Or order lunch at 11 am so by the time you are starving it will be ready waiting for you.

Yes, all these details of life are totally insignificant on their own. Who strives to master the skill of flushing toilets in Japan or buying a train ticket in India? What counts though is the constant stimulation of the everyday which draws us in the preset moment with a force we cannot ignore. There is always something to observe, take in and figure out. It is usually simple things, daily rituals mundane to the locals but truly fascinating to us. Living on the road has taught me to notice and appreciate them. What was one of the most memorable moments of my trip so far? Watching Niha’s daily ritual of getting ready for school in Hampy, India. I was spell bound as her mother slowly brushed and oiled her hair and then arranged it two perfect braids tied back with white ribbons. I didn’t miss the detail that Niha climbed a chair to take two white jasmine flowers from the bush over the outside sink to tuck in her braids. My memory of that morning is still vivid and alive, like many other memories from our travels. They all contain the simple beauty of ordinary daily narratives.

Even if you are not sentimental like me you have to be fully aware while traveling if not for anything else but for the practical need of not missing your next stop or not being able to find your way back to your guest house. There is no escaping having to pay attention and observe keenly. All the time. Or someone will run you over while crossing the street. Almost happened to us twice in Vietnam as we took it for granted that drivers give way to pedestrians. No they don’t.

Bill Bryson nails it perfectly: “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” So true. At home we are living in the comfort of the familiar. We move in the same circle of friends and acquaintances, go to the same workplace day after day and shop at the same shops weekly. For some of us the daily routine becomes somewhat like living on auto pilot and being busy all the time leaves little time for reflection. The busyness on the road is different. There are pauses in it, silences and space to think and process the sensory overload. It is transformative by the sheer fact that it constantly challenges our preconceptions of what is true and what is false and in the process it alters the vision of our mind and our heart.

Is travel the only way to achieve awareness? Of course not. As a matter of fact, many travelers choose not to immerse themselves in the culture of the country they are visiting, not to try the food and not to smell the smells. It is easy to travel in comfort nowadays, not leaving the cocoon of the familiar. There is Coca Cola and burgers and WiFi pretty much everywhere. In this case travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation*.

Our kids for example would be present and curious pretty much in any environment as they have the gift of insatiable curiosity all kids possess. Also, many people live normal sedentary lives with passion and purpose. They devote themselves to their jobs, hobbies, friends and family and have perfectly meaningful lives filled with awareness and gratitude.

Travel though works for me. Back home I tended to burden myself with commitments and goals. I worked too much, not always knowing when to stop. I loaded my plate with more than I could handle. Leaving and suddenly loosing all obligations felt like a brain cleanse. It weeded out the unimportant and helped me focus on what matters. I suddenly have time to take in what I considered insignificant, unworthy of the attention of a busy working mom. Most importantly though, travel has made me slow down in ways I couldn’t imagine before. How, you might ask? After all I move all the time, right? My body does, but my mind has found a newly discovered stillness and contentment rooted in simplicity.

The best part though is that I wake up each day feeling lucky, and that is truly a gift.

~M.

*Quote by Elizabeth Drew

6 thoughts on “290 Days on the Road

  1. Beautifully said. I’m no longer as adventurous as I once was (I’m 61 now), but I still travel for at least two months out of each year. For many reasons, but they would surely include the ones you identified. My question for you is this: how will you manage when, necessarily, living in the States, you’ll have almost no time for this again? I moved from Poland to the States when I was 18. I traveled insanely much at the beginning, but then I had to curtail it. For all those American reasons: work, family, no time. Now I’m on the road again, albeit in a gentler way, with fewer risks. You can’t jump the jumps you did when you were 20, 30, 40. You learn that about yourself. But the years in between, when I was traveling minimally — they were very tough for me. I’m wondering — how do you think you’ll deal with the return?

    1. Nina, I hear you. It is something we talk about often. What is next for us? Would we able to fit into our old life with grace and excitement? There will be changes, that is inevitable. We won’t be able to have routine 9-5 jobs. We will probably devote all our passion in creating an architectural practice that is true to our beliefs and values, not business oriented but rewarding in any other aspect (hopefully we would be successful enough to make a living too:) That will probably consume all our energy for quite a while, but it will also give us some level of freedom to do short trips and recharge. We will also focus on opening our life to others and connecting, rather than enclosing our days in a rigid busy schedule.

      I spent the two years before the trip in daydreaming and planning it all. This by itself gave me passion that carried me through long days filled with routine work tasks and chores. I think the trick it to find a purpose in life, something that one is truly excited about. For me traveling is a true passion, but for others life on the road might be very scary and depleting. I guess there is no one answer that fits all. We are all different and it is our responsibility to find out what works for us. But asking those questions is the first step to finding answers:) Happy journeys ahead!

  2. Inna Dafu shared your travels, and I am mesmerized by your adventures ! thanks for sharing!!!!

    1. Eileen, thanks for reading. I am excited to be making new friends, on the road or on the net. That is another thing traveling has given us ~ a connection to people we would otherwise not have the opportunity to meet!

  3. Reading this I realize that you are not back yet. Do you know when you will be back? It is good you are giving yourself time to adjust after India.
    We are going to see 223 Parker today. I am not sure I will be allowed to go in . I have been quarantined and very ill for 3 months. Ironically I cam down with TB which they think I probably contracted when I lived in India, almost 50 years ago. Certain factors, including being on humira, an immune suppressant drug, triggered it to surface. In a different way from travel, being ill forced me to slow down completely,i can hardly ever even leave the house. I will get better, but it takes time.
    Keep writing and enjoying.
    Nicole

    1. Hi Nicole! I am so sorry to hear about you being sick for 3 months! How long would it take for you to get better? I hope not long…I wonder what little bugs we would collect on our travels and how long it will take for them to make an appearance:)
      We are not back yet. It took us longer to say our good byes with Asia. I will write you an email.
      Please get better soon <3

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