Starting in January of 2018, I embarked on a journey, not to find myself, but to find specific things. It was a trip to see friends and family and explore experiences with focus; each leg had its purpose. Sometimes non-specificity was the thing I sought, and other times the focus was almost to the level of disinterest in other things that, at times, didn’t feel necessary. Much of this was at a pace that would seem shocking to many people I know (read slow). I think it’s this other side of the travel coin that is the experience that is most precious to me. The pace of travel that became so natural, or at least not unnatural to me, seems so antithetical to the commonly held American sense of travel, and what it means to try to explore and understand a new place.
Perhaps it may come across as passive, to wait for a place to consume or grapple with you, to devour you, but in doing so, you learn how the world does this to people, in a myriad of ways, in every place. And perhaps the danger is to let it happen too much, so much that you lose your sense of agency as an actor in this unforgiving and insatiable world.
Here, in no particular order, I’ll share the other side of the journey coin. A specificity to the point of boredom, a pace borderline stagnant. And I’ll share what I found, as well as some of the images and artifacts along the way. Because even in the midst of seemingly nothing, the faith in the unlikely certainty of a small gift from the world can carry us a long way.
Itinerary: Sydney, Australia -> Singapore -> Japan -> South Korea -> Thailand -> New Zealand -> China -> Rwanda -> Uganda -> Kenya -> “home”
On an overnighter to Upper Caples Hut in Otago, New Zealand. Photo taken by my two itinerant German friends Conrad and Yalda.
Pictured at top: Sydney Harbour by night. Where one adventure ended and another began. How cliché. That is indeed how time works.