The Found Vagabond
How to be Inspired, Driven and
Fulfilled by Travel
A few excerpts from the new book
The Found Vagabond
On reasons to
travel:
I’ve learned that the benefit of traveling goes well beyond simply
expanding your horizons and discovering new places. Travel forces you to
question your beliefs. Travel takes you out of your comfort zone and
brings you back to the basics, where you have to rely on your instincts
and can no longer trust the societal rules you believe to be true. Travel
brings a heightened sense of awareness as you abandon your everyday,
monotonous rituals. Instead of living on perpetual auto-pilot, you
actually think about what you are doing, and why you are doing it. Days
are not predictable, and though you may know where they will start, you
never know where they will end. Travel brings your senses to life – you
notice the smells in the air, the textured flavours of the foods you eat,
the sensations of the sun and wind on your face, and the tiniest details
of the sights before you. You meet people and actually look at them, in
their eyes, and listen to what they say. And they listen to you. The
conversations you have are significant, and interesting, and you rapidly
develop strong bonds with others.
No matter where you live, there are
always new and interesting places to explore not far from your home.
Often, when my family and I have a few hours to spare we will jump in
the car and go for a drive nowhere in particular to see what we find,
and we are rarely disappointed. For example, have you visited all the
museums and public spaces in your own town or city? Take a day, pretend
you are a tourist and look around for things to do to help you
understand what your town is all about. You can probably learn more
about your town and its history in a day than you have during your
entire lifetime. If you live in a larger town or city seek out a travel
guide that a typical tourist would have and check out some of the
recommendations. When we travel, we tend to try and see and do as much
as possible in a short amount of time, but when we are at home, time
seems unlimited and there is no urgency to explore, which usually means
you will never get around to doing it. Making a conscious decision to
learn more about your local surroundings can be a fascinating
experience.
On the people
of travel:
New Zealanders, or “Kiwis”, as they call themselves, love to have fun
and don’t seem to have hang-ups about anything, even being called
Australian. All Kiwis go through this seemingly mandatory rite of
passage where they leave New Zealand and go wandering around the world
for a few years before returning home and staying there. They have a
love/hate relationship with Australians that is actually quite fun and
not at all toxic like it often is between some other neighbouring
countries. Kiwis are often pudgy, love to drink beer, say “sex” when
they mean “six” and are the kindest, craziest and funniest people you
will meet when traveling.
On traveling
with children:
When it comes to food, children can be very picky if allowed to be –
just like adults. Being in another country can be an excellent learning
experience for both kids and parents as it puts you out of your comfort
zone and exposes you to new types of food. As I've always told my son,
the first time you try a new unfamiliar food you will hate it. The
second time you definitely won't like it. The third time it will be
tolerable. The fourth time it won't be too bad. The fifth time it will
taste okay. The sixth time you will like it and the seventh time you
will love it. If you don’t believe me, try toast with Marmite. I think
it actually took me ten attempts to finally develop a taste for that
particular British culinary delight, which is a black, gooey, sticky
yeast extract derived from the beer brewing process, and a standing item
on our grocery list. If you approach every new food this way, there is
no way you can go wrong.
On the
finances of travel:
I have traveled on a shoestring, I have
traveled with unlimited funds, and I’ve traveled on every budget in
between those extremes. I can honestly say that most of the best and
worst experiences I’ve had while traveling had almost nothing to do with
the sort of budget I was on, so you can never assume that an expensive
trip will be more enjoyable than a frugal one.
If we can save a hundred
bucks by taking an overnight flight we will take it. If we can buy
cheap, economy train or bus tickets we do. If we can pack into a small
rental car to save some money on rental charges and gas, we always do.
These minor discomforts can save you a lot of money, and we’ve found
that the transportation itself is rarely an integral part of the trip –
the scenery you pass looks the same when viewed from a sub compact, a
luxury sedan, a bike, or a camel.
On the
spirituality of travel:
Now imagine you are away from your
regular life and job, by yourself, on a beautiful day and you are
standing on the banks of the Amazon River, or at the edge of the Grand
Canyon, or in the Valley of the Kings or at Ayers Rock. You have three
hours to yourself to explore the area with no interruptions, no
commitments, nothing to fix, nothing to review, no phone calls, no email
and nobody else to think about besides yourself. You can bet those few
hours only reluctantly pass as you stand in awe at the wonders before
you, noticing the fine details of the objects you see, the textures of
things you touch, the smell of the air you breathe and the sensation of
the sun on your face. Nothing else in your life is more important than
that exact moment and you become truly aware of where you are, who you
are and what you are. Your normally racing mind will slow down and focus
on one thing at a time, and in the process, slowing down your perception
of the passage of time. You might decide to sit down on a rock for a
while, pick up a leaf and look at the shape of it, noticing the veins
running through in such an organized pattern and wonder how it is
possible for a leaf to be so perfect. You may wonder why you’ve never
taken the time to pick up a leaf before and really look at it.
Spirituality is something different – it is something organic that
grows, develops, is unbound by rules and dogma, and is profoundly
affected by the people you meet, the places you visit and the decisions
you make. I would define a spiritual person as one who is introspective
and thoughtful, one who naturally feels empathy for others instead of
judging them outright, and one who is able to draw meaningful insights
from simple occurrences, which many others would simply disregard. As we
all know, there are many people who claim no particular religion yet are
profoundly spiritual while others we know may be deeply religious and
dogmatic but not at all spiritual. A clear example of the latter are
religious terrorists – people who are so overpowered and controlled by
religion that they are unable to make a spiritual connection with
anybody who lives outside a rigid set of rules. Any person willing to
kill others in the name of religion is clearly not a very spiritual
person.
On the risks and
dangers of travel:
Humans have a built in tendency to fear the wrong things, mainly because
we are very bad at calculating risk. This is often driven by the way
information is presented to us, such as the daily news articles that
alarm us with grim statistics on your risk of contracting cancer,
Hepatitis B, Parkinson’s, MS, AIDS, Alzheimer’s or being swept up by a
tornado. It seems that anything we breathe, eat, drink, participate in
or fail to do, is proven to cause some sort of dreadful affliction. The
fact remains that the most dangerous activity you could ever do on a
daily basis is getting in your car and driving somewhere, as a person is
much more likely to be killed in a car crash than die of whichever rare
disease is currently making headlines.
The time we have spent
living, working and vacationing in such a wide range of countries has
drastically altered our approach to safety. Growing up in Canada means
not having to lock your door when you leave home, going out in public
wearing expensive jewellery without a second thought, leaving expensive
items clearly visible in your vehicle, opening your door to strangers
without a security lock in place and being able to forget your wallet on
the table of your local coffee shop and have it returned with nothing
missing. We grow up to be trusting, but careless and this approach
simply does not work in most countries of the world where people are
much less well off and thievery more widespread.
From the story
How to Miss Your Own Bachelor Party:
We were
talking in Spanish and because my Spanish medical vocabulary leaves much
to be desired, I didn't know exactly what organ he was talking about,
but it may have been spleen or liver perhaps. Once we left the place and
got to an empty part of the street he pulled up his shirt to show me.
What came next seemed like a hallucination, and I watched as he
displayed the previously concealed plastic bag protruding from the side
of his body, which protected a pink pulsing organ. He told me he had
been hit by a car and for some reason they had to remove the organ from
inside his body, requiring him to wear these medical plastic bags to
protect it. Before the situation slipped any further into the macabre, I
bid him adieu, returned to the seedy hotel and fell asleep in about half
a second.
From the story
The Plural of Platypus:
“Great, my name is Emma
and I’m the guide. Jump aboard and find yourselves some seats, we have to
be at the next hostel in three minutes!” Emma said. Our bums hit the
vinyl, Emma’s foot hit the accelerator, the rubber hit the road, and the
pedestrian ahead of the bus hit the dirt. Three minutes and several two
wheeled corners later we were in front of the Pirate’s Cove backpacker
hostel. I felt pity in my empathetic heart as I looked through the hostel
kitchen window to see some poor sod pour his coffee down the drain then
head out to the bus.
From the story
Mount Botox:
The green, spiny arms of the giant cacti
reached up for the hot rays of the sun while the roots somehow
feasted on the salty soil below. I could imagine a giant icebreaker ship
crashing towards us through the salt, with the sailors wearing board
shorts and shades instead of parkas and woollen hats. I could imagine
bikini-clad Inuit sawing holes in the salt looking to spear seals or
catch fish. But instead of these things I saw my wife and new friends
sweating from the heat and huffing from the high altitude as they hiked
all over the island marvelling in the beauty of this natural wonder.
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