Twelve Months In

When I set off on this trip, I didn't really know for how long I'd be travelling. I figured it would be about a year, but I readily conceded to myself that the length of my travels would be directly proportional to how well I managed my budget. The trip would continue as long as the money held out.

Once I started to disclose my plans to co-workers, friends and family, everybody asked me how long I'd be gone. The previous paragraph consists of altogether too many syllables, so that explanation was reserved for close friends and family – people who are used to hear me prattling on. I told all others that I'd be away for a year. It was simple and it saved time. A year is a standard unit of time, commonly used for measuring the time between birthdays, for drawing up lease agreements and for counting how long it's been since that active volcano last blew up. Thus, concept of a year is easy to understand; much more so than eleven months, eight-thousand-seven-hundred-and-eighty-nine minutes, or thirty-four fortnights. Doing this saved me a lot of time.

On August 21st, 2010, I passed the one year mark. To most people, a year is a long time. It is. It's certainly a long time to be travelling, to be away from home, to live out of a backpack. One year ago, I stepped off a plane in São Paulo, Brasil and asked, in horribly broken Portuguese, which bus to take into the city. I was tentative and anxious; a little scared and totally new to the whole long-term backpacking thing. I was alone. I felt like a stranger in a strange land.

So much has happened since then.

I don't think it's conceited to say that I've been lucky enough to do and see more than others will in their entire lifetimes. I've lived amongst the underprivileged, the friendly and hardworking, and the just plain criminal while in a Brazilian favela. I've followed in the footsteps of Himalayan explorers and Everest climbers, trekking whilst surrounded by the highest peaks in the world. I've walked in the midst of hundreds of penguins in Patagonia. I've stood on glaciers at El Chalten and Franz Josef and made valiant attempts to surf off Down Under coasts near Tatapouri and Sydney. I've jumped out of a plane at 12,000 feet and bungy-jumped in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. I've travelled into the Amazon Jungle and onto the Tibetan Plateau. I've experienced the futuristic urban environs in Tokyo and nights reading by candlelight in mountain villages in Nepal. I've ridden in endless numbers of planes, trains, automobiles, boats, ships, vans, carts, and hung on for dear life on a livestock truck.

I've met some amazing people in the last year. They've been locals showing me their own hidden gems – great places to eat and to party and to explore. They've been backpackers – my fellow companions in shared experiences, and friends whether for mere hours, days; or much, much longer. I've had some great guides and gotten to know some wonderful hostel staff. All these people have done just as much to make my trip memorable as any of the mountains, jungles, rivers, glaciers, beaches, villages, cities and other amazing locales I've visited.

I've gotten into raucous geopolitical debates fuelled by copious amounts of gin. I've regaled others with my fair share of travel horror stories and inspired others to move certain destinations up on the priority list with nothing more than a five-minute photo slide show. I've been party to deep discussions and a lot of pointless prattle.

As a traveller, you also get used to the constant, repetitive questions: "Where are you from?", "How long have you been travelling; and how much longer do you have?", and "Where have you been before this?". Occasionally though, you get the shocker or two just to keep things interesting. The weirdest question I've been asked was: "Do you have calf implants?". This was posed to me whilst I was in Argentina, where a not insignificant portion of the population is rather obsessed with cosmetic surgery, and one girl in particular couldn't believe that my apparently freakishly large calves were the result of genetics. The most insipid question I've received is whether or not I'm related to Chairman Mao.¹ I've been asked this so many times in China that I'm convinced that all mainland Chinese are under the impression that my family name is far less common than it is in actuality, or are just horrible at small talk.

I have had countless surreal experiences; from sitting in a hostel in Rio de Janeiro watching cattle auctions on TV, while a Korean kendo team practised noisily in the front courtyard, to seeing a sign in Xi'an stating "No Drugs, Guns or Nuclear Weapons Allowed". I'm so far behind in my blogging work that over half of my trip hasn't been touched yet.

Things haven't all been great. There have been a few times I've felt lonely. There have been many times I've felt frustrated. I've had to fight off illnesses whilst on the road. Seven weeks after the incident, the wounds from the moto crash in Thailand still haven't fully healed. But I'm hard-pressed to remember a year in which I've broken into more spontaneous smiles whilst doing little more than walking down the street.

I've changed. I'm no longer an apprehensive neophyte solo backpacker. I'm a seasoned explorer. I'm a full convert to the world of independent travel, of making plans on the fly, of staying in hostels and living life with no more than two or three changes of clothes. I'm more confident. I'm more open-minded. I'm more laid-back. I've learned that I can be more social, pushy and fearless than I ever thought possible.

My big problem is that the last year hasn't felt long enough. I want to keep going. My travel wishlist keeps growing longer, even as I've managed to cross more and more items off. My desire to travel is higher now than when I started. I want to continue being challenged and to learn and to experience everything out there.

So my trip continues. At least it will until mid-October. At that point, it will be time to head back to Toronto. I need reconnect with friends and family I haven't seen for bloody ages. I'll get to take a breather from all the moving around. I'll be able to run, to cycle, to eat at all the eateries I miss. I'll be back to having my own bathroom and my own kitchen. Though, as nice as all of that sounds, the main pull of home will be due to that minuscule balance in my bank account.

But home is still six or seven or eight weeks away. I still have a jaunt in Vietnam and Cambodia to get through. Then maybe one or two stops in Europe and/or the UK before jumping back across the Atlantic Ocean to complete my around-the-World loop.

I need to make the most of that time.

Related Entries:
1. Eleven Months In
2. Ten Months In
3. Nine Months In

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¹ For those who may be confused: my family name, and the Chinese character denoting it (毛), is romanized and pronounced as "Mo" in Cantonese, the predominant dialect in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong where my family originates. That same family name is "Mao" in Mandarin, the official language in China. And for anyone wondering whether I am indeed related to the last revolutionary and first President of the PRC: the answer is "no". Though, I did answer affirmatively once, but the shocked look I got prevented me from proceeding further and asking whether I could now have a PLA regiment to run or something.