The Beauty and Paradox of Solo Travel
Cusco, Peru
Something that no one talks about about when it comes to solo travel, especially when traveling for long periods of time, is the undisclosed secret of just how challenging and sometimes paralyzingly lonely it can be. There are countless nights with only the sound of barking dogs fighting over trash in the street to send you off to sleep.
Most of what people share nowadays on social media are the endless highlight reels, selfies and epic locations of amazing experiences they are having. Rarely are people brave enough to confess the reality behind the scenes.
The kind of journey I first embarked on more than four years ago was something altogether different than tourism videos and much less glamorous. It has been a journey of the heart and soul that is a rich internal metaphor for all of the external places I have been, perhaps an endless search for something just outside my grasp…something elusive and unobtainable that I may never find.
When one finds themself in foreign lands and unfamiliar places, not knowing another soul and scarcely speaking the local language, one has two options….one can go inward and more deeply into the solitude. I have taken this path and done so for many months at a time, even years. It serves a necessary purpose on the journey of the soul, but there is an endpoint where one can go no further inward.
The other path of choice is that one can seek to engage others out in the world who are also on their journey. This has been the intentional path I have recently chosen as I now make my way through Peru and the rest of South America. It has led me to meet and connect with more people in one single month than I met in almost two year’s living on a quiet mountaintop in Costa Rica.
It has led me to meet and spend a beautiful day with the lovely Carmen Chan from Hong Kong.
Then there were the two beautiful women from France who sat down next to me while I was quietly enjoying my lunch one day in the San Pedro Market. The next thing I knew they had me out on the town enjoying a beautiful French dinner of Winter Racletta, often enjoyed by people in the French Alps around the holiday season.
I spent another afternoon hiking with Brett from S. Africa and Rebeca from Lima. Then there was Alejandra from Colombia, who simply asked me to take her photo. Now I suddenly have a welcome invitation to Colombia. That’s how these friendships begin in a moment, a seemingly chance encounter.
I met Diani from Ecuador by way of Canada who was here for a yoga training. She sat down next to me and we were destined to meet over a lunch of rice and vegetables. She was buying lunch for an old Peruvian man who couldn’t see and didn’t have any money or food to eat. Another beautiful soul in the world. Her flight was departing just a few hours later and that would be the end of our story.
One morning as I was wandering I noticed a Japanese woman quietly sipping her coffee in the cafe where I stopped. I couldn’t resist offering her a quiet “Konnichiwa.” Her name was Sumireko. She was an elementary school teacher in Bolivia, here for only a couple of days to visit Machu Pichu and the sacred sites of Cusco. She would then be on to Lima then back to her teaching job in Santa Cruz.
It was Christmas Eve and we were both alone in the world so I invited her to enjoy a Christmas Eve dinner of ramen at a beautiful Japanese restaurant in town. We talked about Japan and Kyoto amidst broken Spanish and Japanese. She spoke very little English but we could agree on the deliciousness of ramen.
There is a beautiful paradox to these chance meetings and momentary encounters on the nomadic journey. They are rare synchronicities of connection in this vast and often disconnected world. They fulfill that deep human longing for connection, the need to be seen and see another.
And yet, on this path, this unorthodox way of life, these connections are over in a moment, each soul onto their flight or the next country they will visit. The opportunity for the seed of friendship to be carefully watered into something more lasting and beautiful is gone. The world in constant change and motion.
There is a Buddhist practice which teaches us to imagine holding that which we most desire more than anything in the world in one hand, then with the other hand holding an open palm, completely releasing any hope or attachment to the possibility of ever having it.
It is the necessary practice and the price one must be willing to pay for the trade-off of this way of life, holding both the treasured gift in one hand and completely releasing it in the other.
It is the great metaphor of this beautiful life.
View From the Road
Quechua Woman “Mamai”, Cusco, Peru
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Zen and Ink Journals represents hundreds of hours of writing over the past decade, sometimes from a train in remote China or a coffee shop in Kyoto, a hammock in Costa Rica or a simple cabin on a mountaintop in Boquete, Panama or Ciudad Colón.
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