290 Days on the Road

It is late morning in Dambulla, Sri Lanka. We are at the local bakery trying to solve a mystery. It involves pastries, two dozen of them loaded on a plate and then served to local customers sitting around us. I can spot egg sandwiches covered up by spicy doughnuts, bread buns and cute swirly rolls with sausage inside snuggled next to plain ones covered with sugar. Everyone is being served the same amount of bread goodness. Two dozens go to the single dude on the table next to us and two dozens to the two girlfriends on the right. We are confused to say the least. Would they be able to devour all that is on their plate? No way we declare and decide to wait out and see what happens.

Our subjects are washing down the treats with coffee or tea and are taking their time. We see a lot of pastry touching going on. The people behind the counter loading the plates are not having gloves on. From there the waitress takes them to a desk and touches each bread thingy while counting and writes something on a pad. Once the plates reach their final destination, pastries are shuffled, moved and distributed. I try to ask the waitress what is the deal with the bread plates but she doesn’t speak any English. Instead she offers to serve us one. We stick to our yogurt and tea and watch.

After half an hour our neighbor is ready to go. His plate is more than half full. He barely made a dent! The waitress comes over and takes it away to the cash register. There she starts counting the pieces left on it by touching each and every one again. A bill is then written down and delivered.

A-ha! My suspicions have been confirmed. You eat what you want, the rest goes back and you only pay for what is missing. Mystery solved. But there is a new question forming in my head. What exactly happens with the pastries that make it back? How many people have touched the little bread rolls we just ate?

Since we left our familiar lives the days are filled with solving mystery after mystery. Arriving in SE Asia we quickly discovered that there are some general lessons that apply to most of the countries we were to visit, like bargaining and steering clear from tourist traps, but for the most part every country presented us with unique set of challenges. We started our trip by not being able to figure out how to switch metro trains in Japan, or even knowing how to exit the metro station. There I had trouble flashing some of the high tech toilets, too many buttons, too many different models! Once I was stuck in a toilet for 20 min messing with the controls. I had to give up and call in the girl waiting in line to help. She was mortified, I was embarrassed, together we flushed the darn thing. On day one in Tokyo Kuba proudly carried a huge bread to the cash register thinking the price was $1 but it turned out that 100 gr of the bread was $1. Oops. We got three inches of it and left crestfallen.

Thailand. We bought the greenest of mangoes (used for salads and cooking) and tried to EAT them! For reals. Vietnam. Are people laughing at us or just giggling because they are shy? Tricky. Cambodia. How do you get rid of 20 tuk-tuk drivers following you on the street? India. Why is the train ticket line not moving forward? Live and learn. You have to go in the very front and push yourself or shove money in someone’s hand and shout your destination. Good luck. Nepal. Why the heck does it take two hours for lunch to arrive to the table? Literally! But of course they cook everything from scratch. You want faster service? Then don’t go to Nepal’s mountains. Or order lunch at 11 am so by the time you are starving it will be ready waiting for you.

Yes, all these details of life are totally insignificant on their own. Who strives to master the skill of flushing toilets in Japan or buying a train ticket in India? What counts though is the constant stimulation of the everyday which draws us in the preset moment with a force we cannot ignore. There is always something to observe, take in and figure out. It is usually simple things, daily rituals mundane to the locals but truly fascinating to us. Living on the road has taught me to notice and appreciate them. What was one of the most memorable moments of my trip so far? Watching Niha’s daily ritual of getting ready for school in Hampy, India. I was spell bound as her mother slowly brushed and oiled her hair and then arranged it two perfect braids tied back with white ribbons. I didn’t miss the detail that Niha climbed a chair to take two white jasmine flowers from the bush over the outside sink to tuck in her braids. My memory of that morning is still vivid and alive, like many other memories from our travels. They all contain the simple beauty of ordinary daily narratives.

Even if you are not sentimental like me you have to be fully aware while traveling if not for anything else but for the practical need of not missing your next stop or not being able to find your way back to your guest house. There is no escaping having to pay attention and observe keenly. All the time. Or someone will run you over while crossing the street. Almost happened to us twice in Vietnam as we took it for granted that drivers give way to pedestrians. No they don’t.

Bill Bryson nails it perfectly: “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” So true. At home we are living in the comfort of the familiar. We move in the same circle of friends and acquaintances, go to the same workplace day after day and shop at the same shops weekly. For some of us the daily routine becomes somewhat like living on auto pilot and being busy all the time leaves little time for reflection. The busyness on the road is different. There are pauses in it, silences and space to think and process the sensory overload. It is transformative by the sheer fact that it constantly challenges our preconceptions of what is true and what is false and in the process it alters the vision of our mind and our heart.

Is travel the only way to achieve awareness? Of course not. As a matter of fact, many travelers choose not to immerse themselves in the culture of the country they are visiting, not to try the food and not to smell the smells. It is easy to travel in comfort nowadays, not leaving the cocoon of the familiar. There is Coca Cola and burgers and WiFi pretty much everywhere. In this case travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation*.

Our kids for example would be present and curious pretty much in any environment as they have the gift of insatiable curiosity all kids possess. Also, many people live normal sedentary lives with passion and purpose. They devote themselves to their jobs, hobbies, friends and family and have perfectly meaningful lives filled with awareness and gratitude.

Travel though works for me. Back home I tended to burden myself with commitments and goals. I worked too much, not always knowing when to stop. I loaded my plate with more than I could handle. Leaving and suddenly loosing all obligations felt like a brain cleanse. It weeded out the unimportant and helped me focus on what matters. I suddenly have time to take in what I considered insignificant, unworthy of the attention of a busy working mom. Most importantly though, travel has made me slow down in ways I couldn’t imagine before. How, you might ask? After all I move all the time, right? My body does, but my mind has found a newly discovered stillness and contentment rooted in simplicity.

The best part though is that I wake up each day feeling lucky, and that is truly a gift.

~M.

*Quote by Elizabeth Drew