The Adventure of A Lifetime Begins

Tomorrow morning when I awake, walk out of my flat and head to the bus station I will begin the adventure of a lifetime. I will get on a bus and head off towards Malaysia and the famed spice trading city of Malacca.. After that I do not know where I will go, nor do I care. And neither do I know how long I will be gone. Six months? A year? Longer? Does it matter? The world awaits.

All I know is that the road is before me and it calls. It calls me from a deep place in my soul, a place I thought I could control, a place I thought I had pushed it down into where it would never come out again.

After returning from Istanbul this time last year--has it been that long?--I set myself a task: to rejoin society, clean up my act, recover from the mess my marriage had become, get a real job and try and live a 'normal' life. I achieved this task. I found a great job. Worked hard, made decent money. Earned the respect of peers in a totally new industry. And I re-learned, most importantly to myself, that with hard-work and determination I could achieve anything. And yet, as the course of the year progressed the yearning for the road grew deeper and deeper. A powerful need to see, to witness and experience all that this glorious world has to offer grew and grew and grew until finally I surrendered.

<i>More after the jump</i>

But it is more than just the road that calls. There is a propulsion behind this need as well. The need to escape from the consumerism, the expectations of society, the small indignities we all endure on a daily basis just to survive, all those things we call 'normality'. Well, I just don't fit. Never will. I accept that. And that acceptance is what I choose to call freedom. The choice to be who I am, make of myself what I am and what I can become unfettered by all the restraints that society, friends, work and family impose. (Not that I don't love my family deeply or miss my friends sorely. Both, more than anyone can imagine, for the road is a glorious place, but it is a lonely one too. Very lonely.

And yet I go out into the anxious light of the unknown, seeking the god's only know, if but to live and breathe free for a day, a week, a month or more.

There are only two rules: no flying and I must see Penguins.

As for the practicalities of the journey--and there are always practicalities to deal with, after all, they are unavoidable--well, those have been taken care of. I have left my job, the vast majority of my possessions and am only encumbered by a 35 pound backpack I carry with me. To some that may sound like the height of foolishness. Perhaps. But as I put my backpack on last night, looked around my empty apartment here in Singapore and realized that everything I possessed was strapped on tight I felt a wave of freedom and excitement wash over me. There is nothing holding me back from the world. I have an American passport, which allows me the freedom to travel anywhere in the world and I have a list of places to see: a little black book entitled, "Things Yet Seen." It's filled with all kinds of oddities, from the old Spice Trail in Yemen and the Island of Socotra, to Patna, if but to sit for a moment under the Bodhi tree where the Buddha attained enlightenment, the Taj Mahal, to a small Roman inscription in Syria purported to be the only Roman to ever travel from the West to China, during its glory days under the Han. "Things Yet Seen." It has a nice ring to it. And so, I go out into the world to honor the words of the great Polish travel writer Ryszard Kapuscinski  who wrote in his last book:

<i>"Is not our first thought to go on the road? The road is our source, our vault of treasures, our wealth. Only on the road does the 'traveller' feel like himself, at home."</i>

To some this may seem like good-bye, but if I have learned anything in my travels thus far, there are no good-byes. We always seem to meet again.

True wealth lies out there somewhere in the great experience of the world. And so I go out at this very moment to live my dream.