Of course, it's unlikely that I would pay for one of NG's tours, even if I had 10 grand in rainy-day cash. Sure, each trip is replete with experts, avid seekers of adventure and decadent landscapes, but for 10k I would go for three months by myself. I guess I'm a loner that way...and looking to get the most bang for my buck.
Unfortunately, I'm also nomadic, which means that to truly elevate my happiness baseline I would need to be like one of the characters in one of my favorite "X-Files" episodes. In the episode, a family has a rare condition that requires them to constantly travel west (the faster the better) forever or they die. I don't want to acquire that condition, but I would love to continue moving for the rest of my life, packing all of my necessities into a napsack and traversing the country, continent, globe.
It's now, when I'm in the limbo of early adulthood, that I realize how much of what I expose myself to in terms of television, movies, books, etc, involves travel and newness. Half of the books on my shelves are memoirs of famous travelers, old NG issues and stories about imaginary characters that are just as addicted to exploration and movement as I am.
Right now, it's Bhutan that has captured my imagination. That high, only-until-recently-inaccessible kingdom that holds the title of last country in the world to get television. The mist-shrouded Buddhist stronghold. The place where temples are built like swallow nests on sheer brown cliffs. I imagine the air smells crisp, cold and like wildflowers. I imagine entire neighborhoods paying homage to monks on pilgrimage. I imagine stories and camp fires and so many stars that you may just think you've 'slipped the surly bonds of earth.'
Of course, happiness is a perspective and really depends on me being happy with what I have right now...in the present moment. My problem, though, is that I am happy, perhaps excessively so almost all the time. I'm so grateful for what I have that I look forward to what could be if I continue to seek happiness through travel. But that thought process is circular, since you're never really traveling...you're always somewhere experiencing something that can only chronologically and geographically be identified as 'travel.' The rest is just...life.
So how do I maintain my Oneness with the Present and still desire travel?
Crocodile Jumping near our boat, Daintree Rainforest, Australia
Great Barrier Reef
Greek Orthodox Monastery, Greece
Acid Lake in Crete
