An end-of-the-year reflection on slowly falling onto my fifth year of being on the road. Learnings from 2024 in the travel domain; full of adventures, dancing, and smiling an excessive much in blended connections and conversations. Now I take the New Year as it comes.

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Winter is slightly tumbling over these foggy mountains of Northern Vietnam, and I have no money.

I don’t even know how to travel to Laos on the 1st of January, now that my Vietnam visa will end soon; in fact, on 31st December.

Then I didn’t know how to cross from Cambodia to Vietnam either last month; but I did. Magic happened (That ‘magic’ was a writing project that got bombed out of nowhere).

And then the fundamental base of it all; when did I have money in the first place? This year I have travelled across Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam; spending months in each country, with a zoomed-in lens of an amateur aficionado, that falls sharply with an aperture of understanding the kernel of Southeast Asia. Reflective as my reflections are about to get, I would not stuff you with my financial metaphors. Living off writing doesn’t always write a smooth script on its own and travelling full-time through that sustenance is never a straight line either.

But with a warm cup of Vietnamese Coffee in my palms, rubbing my languid eyes over these gigantic mountains and ruminating on what I would call ‘The Best Year of My Life’, happiness wins over the winter-chill that blows icy breaths on my denim-laden skin and bones. I was telling my best friend over the phone, ‘Why is it that I am so happy even though I am flat broke?’ Christmas and New Year can move all your payouts and projects to January, as it turns out.

My end-of-the-year reflections had almost never made it to this blog; somewhere eluded at the intersection of my chattering mind and the secrecy of my journal entries. This transformational and therapeutic year almost makes me want to humanize those experiences. And the way of humanization in my world continues to be writing. It has always been, ever since I was ten.

Now I don’t know how to structure it. I don’t believe in achievements, aspirations or the corporate-jargon that I never participated in by ideology. I believe in intentions, manifestations, unlayering, responsibility of happiness towards one’s self and the loved ones (necessarily trickled down); I believe in laughter, open green valleys, the philosophy of mountain goats, slow sips of Matcha held and relished, moving my body in freedom and artistry, and weaving poetry with my slow and simple belonging. Thailand really got me with Matcha; now I am obsessed with three cups a day.

I will complete four whole years of being on the road on 1st January and roll slowly into the fifth year. I just realized that!

That leaves me at the crossroads between ‘listing down’ everything that mattered and not giving it the gift of wholeness. I wonder if it would mean more or lose charm if I draw faces and expressions on these abstractions.

Rather, I would babble on, a little unstructured, the way life is, and the Himalayas know my traveling never had any structure. It looks like I don’t believe in structures either. I believe in magic though.

The Fourth Gear is No Longer A Dream

I learned how to ride a motorbike this year. I know I should have started with something more compelling, and believe me more compelling things have made their ways; like being published in print publications for the first time in 26 years of loitering around this earth. That was mind-boggling, especially two back-to-back print publications. I wrote a story on my nine days of hiking across Spiti Valley for the Himachal-based magazine The Traveller Trails, and a cultural piece on Nepal‘s Tharu Tribe for India Outbound.

Now the motorbike. On a Malaysian island called Langkawi, my first take on a ‘real’ motorbike fueled itself up in my crazy-ass screaming-in-aesthetic heart. The null hypothesis being I had zero knowledge about gears and the alternate hypothesis being always fundamentally untrue, a jungle trail was definitely not suitable for riding a motorbike for the first time ever. But rightly or wrongly, falling or hitting trees was not pre-written in my destiny (I am sure it will change), and the only reason I think my host, as narcissistic as he was, decided to sit at the back solely to protect his beloved bike from potential catastrophes. ‘I am here to destroy some properties’, I had the attitude.

Okay, I learned nothing that day. But then day two laid down a smooth surface, even uphill and downhill on Tuba Island, and I was a bull in a China shop. My host was still at the back, but this time actually teaching me about gears, the sounds to look for, tricks of uphill climbing, and sharp turnings (which I still can’t do), with fun exercises like not touching the white rectangles on the road and bending the bike through the grey gaps. Gear Four, I have looked for you all my life! I was euphoric. Chaffed.

This is the beginning of something big, wait for a couple of years. Oh, and I almost fell riding a bike with loose brakes in Cambodia. Don’t tell the traffic police, but I don’t have a driving license. I will fix that next year, I promise.

Fluidity of Connections That Are Mine, And Only Mine

The life dynamics of connections that I have clipped and pasted onto my whiteboard with permanent glue and a marker mulled over the fluidity of interpersonal relations. While I observe my love responses to ‘certain’ people, I learn where that individual fits in my spectrum, as a whole, or in fractions, both being equally viable, in their individual fondness. This year ‘as-a-whole’ friendships poured over the blessings of collective energy-symmetry more than ever, giving me a full outlook towards personal friendships that I made for this life, with people who smell of a community. 

Now I may not see them very often, but I will. Emma and I volunteered together at a wood-carving Thai Village, and after four months, we met up again in Cambodia. This time with her fiancé, Michael. My last night in Cambodia before heading to Vietnam was prioritized at their apartment in Phnom Penh. Their life schedules and my clock may or may not always sync, but as Emma said, as we danced at the ‘Spirit Awakening Drum’ at Cambodian Water Festival, ‘you have a home here’. They would be my go-tos in England anyhow.

Meeting new people doesn’t always ensure intimate connections, especially for my prototype, but then Vanellie baked a huge chocolate cake for my 27th birthday that brought tears to my eyes. We will bake banana bread and break coconuts again with kitchen knives in Paris or somewhere down the road.

Love unfurls, when you unfurl within yourself. Attraction of energies.

Dancing Connects Cultures Irrespective of Race And Ethnicity

The Khmer villagers from an in-the-middle-of-nowhere Cambodian village queued up for the Spanish dance ‘Limbo”, sliding down the horizontal straight-up pole Marta and Mikeal held uptight. Sliding down without touching the stick and keeping your face upside down is the whole point of the dance. Another cheer of local beer, then one villager’s karaoke feelings got invoked by alcohol spirit, and Kim sampled Khmer dance ‘the female version’ for us. Now we are dancing in a circle in the slow-paced traditional Khmer way.

I remember how in Sri Lanka I was teaching Indian dance moves to some Australians by popular demand. Bollywood is more popular than I imagined! You should hear my friend Yoahn, who is French, saying, ‘My mother loves Bollywood dance’, and inspired by that thought-line, Tegest, an Ethiopian-Italian, started to rehearse the ‘iconic’ Bollywood waist-and-eyes duo in unexplained combinations.

Dancing is ecstasy, an adherence to freedom where spirituality finds physical manifestations in communion and passion with a pressing awareness of the skeleton of existence. The way yoga is. When that energy joins hands, it breaks down guards and pulls everyone towards a concentrated point. I dance in every country, even though I don’t know how to dance. Unapologetic movements are an internal expression.

Collaborations with Social Projects Projects A Deeper Outlook

Actively participating in social projects and volunteering at locally-grown initiatives tells more allied anecdotes. Angkor Wat receives millions of tourists annually, being the sole tourist attraction in Cambodia; but then the country’s socio-economic dynamics is stained in war-bloods and resilient wounds that pickpocket holes on the country’s lower bed, still selling bandages under the table.

I volunteered in an HIV-affected village and got hosted by a former Buddhist monk’s family whose initiatives had given structure to three schools in these rural parts of Cambodia. Human experiences, rather human stories are the cornerstone of my travel journalism, and without active participation with the locals that in-depth introspection doesn’t fall into place. This year, fortunately, some wonderful work and volunteering opportunities knocked my door. I will mention some of them.

1. The most exciting field-work was to interview the inspiring hands of Humane Animal Society (HAS) in Coimbatore who are fighting for animal welfare. This was initially a volunteering project that got morphed into a paid collaboration.
2. Kad Sala, an artisan’s village in Thailand with the last five ‘Lanna Woodcarving Masters’ keeping the tradition alive.
3. Volunteering at a vocational college in Koh Samui Thailand, learning about hydroponics and mushroom farming.
4. I will never forget the feeling of handing out food to children in an HIV-affected village on the outskirts of Siem Reap in Cambodia.
5. Kosal and his wife Kim single-handedly built a school for children who were never meant to face the ray of education in Kong Pisay Cambodia.
6. Right now I am learning about the Tay Ethnic Minority Group of Vietnam, attending their wedding customs and roaming around hopelessly in these mountain villages.

The lot remains unsaid; the 30-40-50-hour-long cross-country land journeys, hitchhiking in pick-up trucks across Cambodia and also the things that did not make the mark. A year can hardly be compressed into a single article. But one thing I know for sure. I will be travelling for many more years; maybe with changing forms, persona and approach, but the spirit would always bubble with curiosity and adventure.

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How do you look back on your 2024? What learnings have made a difference?

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