Cafés y Parques

Cafés and parks. That’s all you need to make me love a city. In my humble opinion, these two types of locale represent almost unlimited human potential. Let me explain.

Cafés are meeting places. They are temporary (sometimes, permanent) workspaces. In a café, a couple could be sharing their first moment or their hundredth. A group could be plotting the next bold move in their brand-new joint venture. A lone thinker could be crafting the next chapter of the next great novel. Every café in every moment is a unique expression of its passengers; every ride is different. Beyond their bubbling movement, cafés can be a place of pause and escape. A pause on the increasingly accelerating pace of life. An escape from the cold or a bad day. Cafés can be holes in the wall or grand spaces. They can be bustling or quiet. The whole range of human experience and emotion can take place in one café. And I haven’t even mentioned the best part: this dynamic place has coffee. Coffee, the midnight oil’s partner in crime; the early bird’s jet pack. (Sorry, tea lovers: I’m a fan as well but coffee is in its own league. Coffee has over 1,500 aromatic and flavor compounds, making it an incredibly complex and rich beverage.)

Parks, too, have this interesting duality of action and pause. They are places where you can run, stroll, sit, and nap. One person trains for a marathon; the other sits down for meditation. A group of college kids sprawl lazily on the warm grass and under the giving shade of trees while a man in a crisis works through his problems (Solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking). A couple with years of experience smile generously and quietly on a bench as a curious toddler plows through a new landscape. They are all here, contributing to this changing, pulsating energy of life. They are here, thinking, laughing, learning, and loving.

Between a park and a café, I can spend hours, days. I can write, share conversations, walk and think, people watch, people listen, and breathe fresh air. Parks and cafés are like showers for my soul: I exit their embraces feeling rejuvenated and ready for what’s next.

It’s no surprise, then, that cities that have a distinct culture and emphasis on cafés and parks feel like home to me. It’s almost as if it’s an expression of a culture that says, “Hey! The things that happen in these places are important!”. San Francisco and New York City in the US come to mind. In Santiago, I felt that culture, too. This isn’t to say that the things that happen in cafés and parks can’t happen in restaurants, or bars, or in community centers. They certainly can! It’s just I think cafés and parks are unique places of energy and people.

Not surprisingly, I composed this love letter in a café and on a park bench. On that note, I have a very important cup of coffee and stroll to attend to.

When 12 Means 20

I had initially thought I would go straight from La Paz to Uyuni. Like most plans, this quickly changed after I met some people who had traveled through Bolivia and said Sucre was worth a stop.

I found myself on a bus to Sucre on Monday night and went to sleep ready to wake up to some sunshine and a new city to explore twelve hours later.

I woke up at around 4am to a stopped bus. The frozen window next to me made it hard to see what was going on, but I could make out another bus beside me. I figured we were at some sort of bus depot and tried to fight the cold back to an uneasy sleep.

I woke again close to 6am to the rustling of bags around me. A few passengers were gathering their things and leaving. I watched one father go to the front of the bus, wipe the windows clear, and puzzle at the scene before him. I couldn’t see from my seat so I was left in the dark.

I decided to do what makes sense in most situations: follow the crowd. I grabbed my pack and descended from the bus and found that we were stopped in a long fleet of other buses with people streaming past. I found someone who I knew spoke English and asked her what was going on. She told me there was some sort of blockade up ahead by miners in the area. We found the bus driver and he said the blockade could be broken in minutes or hours but he just didn’t know.

At that moment I began to take more notice of the people walking past us. They were all heading to the other side of the blockade in the hope that there were buses available to continue their trips. It was freezing, I had little hope that there would be movement with the blockade soon, and I was up for a stroll so I started walking.

Along the way I picked up a few friends and oranges. The friends were from America and Canada and had the same reasoning for walking as I did. The oranges were a gift: a man spilled his bag of fruit and I stopped to help pick them up.

At the heart of a small town that was the miners’ staging ground, I came across large rocks blocking passage and haggard men huddled around large fires. We passed to the other side of the blockade and found people walking the opposite direction; it was Mother’s Day, after all, and people had places to be. The group of gringos I was with decided our best bet was to walk past the crowds of people and convince a passing car to turn around and drive us to the nearest town.

As cars passed us, drivers made a circular motion with their hands signaling they were turning around, then passed us again stuffed with people. Our plan appeared to not be the best one. A Bolivian was almost successful in getting a pastry truck to give us all a ride, but he promised he’d pick us up on the return only to pass us full of people.

I made friends with the Bolivian man - Saol - but the other gringos decided to turn around. The haze behind us in the morning was apocalyptic with the stretch of people with their luggage, the stopped lines of buses, and the burning fires of protesters in the distance. I much preferred the open road ahead and my new friend’s ability to get somewhere after he told me he had a one year old at home - Abigail - and wanted to celebrate the day with his wife. So, we walked. And walked.

While walking, I learned that he was a mechanic from Sucre. We discussed traveling, Bolivia and my future at law school. Miles later, Saol and I stopped at the outskirts of a pueblito (a small town) to rest for a moment. Suddenly, some sort of transport truck appeared to be stopping and a chorus of voices encouraged us to hop in. I climbed up to see a horde of people stowed in the bed of the truck. Women were huddled at the floor, sitting, wrapped in blankets. Men were holding on to whatever they could.

Shouts of “¡Dentro, dentro!” filled my ears. It became clear that they wanted me to descend into the pit, but I couldn’t see anywhere to put my feet. One older man told me to put my feet on the side and shimmy to the middle of the bed using the center rail. With some dexterity I moved into position and asked for someone to take my backpack. After managing to drop down without hurting anyone, I gave thanks to all amidst a few cheers.

I spent the next three hours standing up, one hand on my jacket thrown over the center rail and the other with a tentative hold on one side. With some jolts in the road we all quickly made friends as we grabbed onto whatever was closest. It became apparent that I was the only gringo among the 50 odd people riding and everyone got a kick out of my attempts at Spanish. The landscape cast around us was beautiful and it felt like another great example of “frameless travel” that I’ve written about before on The Orange Sky.

Nearing the end of the journey, a few of the men made guesses at how close we were and then we all laughed at the bad answers as the time passed. Finally, we made it to Potosi, dropped off near the bus terminal. Saol walked with me, pointed out a good company to get to Sucre and we wished each other well.

A few hours later I made it to Sucre without incident. In the waning light I decided to walk to my hostel from the station and was rewarded with a spray painted message on a quiet street reading “Education is a right, not a commodity”. The fight lives everywhere.

Finally at my destination hours after I expected, I collapsed gratefully in my bed. A 12 hour journey had grown into 20. Still, it was an adventure worth experiencing. I felt that there was a sense of a temporary community. As bus passengers, walkers, and then hitchhikers there was a common thread woven through us all. Before, we were isolated by our separate buses and separate seats. Maybe for a few moments I wasn’t that gringo passing through Bolivia unnoticed but a part of a community surrounding a blockade 100 kilometers from Potosi. Maybe not. At the very least, it was a reminder that things don’t always go as planned and the only way to deal is to pick up your pack and make your own luck.

Surviving Death Road (Twice)

I mountain biked for the first time the other day. With a few friends from my travels in Peru, I barreled down Yungas Road outside of La Paz, Bolivia, also known as “the world’s most dangerous road” and “Death Road”. It’s a twisting mountain road that hugs a cliff with incredible views for 40 miles of downhill.

Before tempting the curves, I had never really ridden a bike for an extended period of time. Sure, I had done a bike ride with my cross country team eight years ago, but nothing like the adventure of mountain biking. Needless to say, I was nervous about the ride at the beginning.

Then, a funny thing happened. Only moments into the ride, the fear evaporated. I got the sense that the ride was a lot about confidence. Not the reckless bravado that gets you into trouble, but a quiet comfort in your ability to handle the situation. When that realization settled into my bones, I shouted with joy at the scenery and let gravity pull me down the path with unsettling speed.

The first stretch was on paved road and gave me the chance to get used to the feel of the bike and to mold my muscle memory. By the time we made it to the unpaved and infamous road, I was ready. I quickly found the best space to rocket down: just behind the leaders of the group. My friend Jo was battling to beat the tour guide the whole time and had an experienced rider right behind him. I settled in behind the third rider and in front of the rest of the group. It gave me the chance to explore different speeds, be aggressive with some parts and to completely immerse myself in the experience without worrying about he other riders.

I was awash with adrenaline from start to finish. The rush pushed me through sharp turns, land-mines of rocks, waterfalls, and streams. Before I knew it, we made it to the bottom to enjoy a cold beer.

The adventure wasn’t over yet, though. About an hour into the three hour trip back to La Paz - back up the road we had descended - there was a problem with the bus. The headlights were causing some issues with the engine. The obvious solution? Tape a flashlight to the front of the bus, leave the headlights off and continue on slowly but surely. The bus driver took his time and often had the help of other cars’ lights, but to say the ride was nerve wracking would be an understatement. Nervous chatter occasionally punctured the silence as we successfully navigated back to La Paz.

In both directions on the road, fear was in the mix. However, the fear on the return trip was a different. It was fear without control. Unlike the ride down, my fate was in the hands of a (very capable) driver. The presence - or absence - of control makes all the difference.

I think a lot about what we take back with us from traveling. Recently, I’ve noticed a little more courage within myself, whether in hiking for days, repelling down buildings, or mountain biking. I think I’ll always be unsettled by the fear in moments where I don’t have control, but I think I’m beginning to handle the fear where I can change the situation. A lot of the fear of travel is unsettling but fixable: you only have to be bold. Unfortunately, I think some of the confidence we earn through travel dissipates on the way home. Something about the familiarity of home pushes us back to normal. Maybe through putting that realization into words, I can bottle some of that boldness and release it like those shouts of euphoria as I raced down the road. I know I will end it when I get back home.

Trails as Story

I completed a five day trek to Machu Picchu via the Salkantay Pass. I walked around 50 miles and seemingly reached the top of the world. I could share lots of details about the trip: the long miles and tired feet, the meals shared over dim light, the uncooperative tents, or the constant assault of impressive views. In truth, these are neither new nor particularly interesting stories. Instead, I thought I’d share a few thoughts that stayed with me along the way.

In many ways, I approached the long slog to Machu Picchu as a pilgrimage. I don’t mean in the traditional sense: I am not, after all, a professed member of any faith nor do I have some connection to the people who walked the trails centuries ago (admittedly, by the final climb of Huayna Picchu, I had gained a healthy respect for religions of old that saw the mountains as gods). Despite my lack of membership in the religions of pilgrimages, something about the act devotion and the sense of purpose appealed to me as I thought about how I wanted to travel a few months ago. The intentionality inherent in pilgrimages lends a weight of importance to every step and the trek was a great chance to immerse myself in that mindset.

Unlike established pilgrimages, my journey to Machu Picchu lacked a real focus of devotion. On reflection, I didn’t think it was a moment for spontaneous conversion to faith or a good time for self-absorption. As a result, I began walking with an idea of open meditation. The basic idea? Embrace mindfulness throughout the day in all its forms. I tried to eat a little slower. I tried to observe the challenge or ease of each step. I tried to pause at vistas and bear witness to their beauty before taking a picture. I tried, when appropriate, to find some solitude on the trail. I opted to walk whenever the option was available, forgoing ziplines and shuttle buses in favor of humbly putting one foot in front of the other.

Out of this open meditation came one pervasive thought: trails are a fantastic way of framing the collective storytelling that is life. I’ve been enamored with this idea of the power of storytelling for a while now - even using it as the framework of my personal statement for law school - and it popped up again as I adventured to Machu Picchu.

Trails are a living embodiment of collective storytelling that reaches through time. In the past, trailblazers are the initial discoverers, some by accident and others through purpose. They forge a path that we all generally follow. In the present, we trod upon the footsteps of our forbearers, fine-tuning the worn trail with every footstep. Occasionally we find new, better, and more interesting pathways to the same destination. Finally, just as the past communicates with the present, in the current moment we communicate with the future, showing the way we took in the hope that those wiser than us can amend our missteps.

In each dimension of time - the past, the present, and the future - there is a constantly changing understanding of the story in the eyes of the individual. Every person, despite having many examples to follow in the established trail and fellow hikers, will travel along the trail in a unique way. It is only when we add up the sum of parts that we get something greater: a collective understanding of the road we have traveled to be shared with others preparing for the same journey.

For me, this sophomoric revelation made me think even more about what story I’m telling and how it will fit into the larger whole. What footprints am I leaving behind in my actions and writing? What would be the impact of someone following those footprints? Who am I following? Where are all these trails taking us?

Although none of these questions will be resolved through an act of thinking, it’s good to pause and think about where our feet have been, where they are and where they are taking us. Ultimately, however, I keep returning to a brilliant phrase I read years ago: “we make the road by walking”.

Why I Travel

In a truly wonderful letter, Kurt Vonnegut advised a group of students to “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

I write to make my soul grow. It’s also why I travel.

When I move through the world with open eyes, I gain a few inches. I earn a little valuable perspective. The dullness of everyday life is swapped out with an intense curiosity that wipes clean my mind’s carefully constructed sensory adaptation. That to which I was once blind is temporarily laid bare in plain sight. Like a good night’s sleep restoring the well of willpower, travel rejuvenates my dwindling childlike wonder. Music, food, nature and people are furiously alive with rich detail and flavor.

When I travel, I am reminded of our fundamental goodness as I my see comfort zones, slide past them ungracefully and get by with the help of strangers and newfound friends. Because everything seems so different, the bonds between people get a fresh take and deep look as I see mothers caring for children, brothers jostling each other out of childhood, or friends soaking up the familiar rhythm of their rapport.

When it’s all over, travel remains with me. My self-imposed demands to be less blind and see more of what I call home. The new imperatives to be less passive and act more. The stories I relate to friends and family among the soft early mornings and the hazy late nights. The hopeful wanderlust and sense that adventure is just over the horizon.

Most of all, what remains from travel is the becoming and the growth of my soul. If nothing else, that’s why you’ll find me hunting the world for the unknown. To become. To grow my soul.

4 Months of Story

When I landed in San Francisco on May 16th, it had been over four months since my feet had touched American soil.  I was grateful for my journey, but looked forward to being back and seeing my family and friends.  The next morning, I woke up tired and sore but happy; the good memories had been descending upon me in waves in my sleep. A deep sleep is earned by a full life.

I never thought I would embark on such a wild journey, but decided to pack light in order to leave room for memories, which I committed myself to pursuing aggressively with curiosity as the driving force.

I reflected on how we can never give enough, what it means to me to travel and how I wanted to do it.  I proposed a way of looking at the good we do and tried to apply it to our work in Wardha.

I explored the art of listening (with a little success) and the importance of dissent in bringing about good ideas.  I met some amazing women changing their lives together.

I battled stomach pain for over a month, confirmed that life is about people and talked about the ones on my team.

I looked back on my peaceful time at the ashram and recommitted to staying curious after my bout with sickness.

On the academic front, I began the work on my undergraduate thesis on the idea of a universal Millennial activist identity.

After returning to the US, I doled out some gifts to family and thought about my experiences not just packing, but traveling light.

I set out months ago in search of new orange skies in my life.  Over the journey, I added many new ones to my memories.  I cannot wait for the next one.

Before I left, I watched a video that has since become one of my favorites:

I met the future.  He asked me his questions:

Is it possible to be happy with this life?

Did you enjoy your story?

I answered with a resounding yes to both.

Traveling Light

When I set out in January, I packed light as a means to traveling light.  While these might appear to be the same thing, there is a noticeable difference.  Packing light is the physical embodiment of minimalism, but it is simply a game of kilograms and a little ingenuity.  It enables you to move fast and without hassle, but it’s only a component of traveling light. To travel light is to live the philosophy of minimalism in each waking moment.

Make no mistake: you can still travel heavy with light bags.  You can weigh the mind down with the need to see some attraction or pressure yourself to “make the most” of some location with a breakneck itinerary.  You take pictures to prove you were there.  The result is a tenuous sense of satisfaction and a beaten down body.

To travel light is to abandon the belief that you will have a firm grasp on the road ahead.  Physical minimalism challenges us to abandon our attachments to objects; the minimalism of travel pushes us to do the same with experience.  Instead of the determined yet unfulfilling future, you opt for buoyancy: you let yourself ride the top of the adventure like a wave.  If you sink too far into it, you can be thrown into darkness and drown.  In practice, traveling light is somewhat of a paradox. To be buoyant, a traveler embraces a degree of structured chaos and wandering.  There is a distinct location - a city, a village, the wilderness - and a blurry sense of the surroundings, but traveling light is a little like feeling around the dark.  Instead of just seeing what’s in front of you, you feel your way through obstacles.  Seeing might be believing, but in the case of travel, sometimes it’s not really living.

While there were many moments in my adventures after India that give hints at how I tried to travel light, I always come back to an afternoon in Saigon, Vietnam.  Marcy was determined to visit the Reunification Palace; Asha and I were ambivalent but came along for the ride.  Along the way, we got a little misdirected, but eventually found our way only to find out we had come a few hours before it opened.  We decided to kill time at a coffee shop and then get lunch before visiting the palace.

On our way to get some pho, it began to pour.  Not just a few drops falling lazily, but a steady torrent that meant business.  By the time we reached the pho place, we were drenched to the bone.  While we chowed down, the ceiling in one corner began to leak like a running faucet.  Amused, the three of us and the other patrons looked on as the restaurant staff tried to minimize the damage.  Outside, the rain pounded even more aggressively as if God had found a higher setting.  It was in this moment that I decided that I wasn’t really interested in the palace anymore: it was evident that the adventure was in the present, in the rain, not in the past that the Reunification Palace strove to preserve.  

Asha and I began our walk back to the hostel and then spontaneously broke out into a jog.  Only moments into our unsuccessful dodging of the falling rain, Asha’s contacts began to revolt: she could no longer see more than a few feet in front of her as the lenses slid under her eyelids.  I began to lead Asha, her hand in mine, through the empty streets. Onlookers gaped underneath small overhangs and in crowded coffee shops.  Some puddles we avoided, others felt the impact of our feet as we pushed the water aside.  Along the way, we garnered some curious looks, finger points, laughter and smiles.

If I had actually gone inside the Reunification Palace, I would not have remembered it.  The pure bliss of running through the rain is what would have stuck with me long after my clothes dried.  Perhaps by deciding to walk away from the palace, I was choosing to let my memory fill up with more of moments like running through the streets of Saigon.  While my clothes were heavy from the pounding of the rain, I had traveled through the storm with a light heart.  I was buoyant, invincible, infinite.

the new kids on the block

By the end of the camp, my hands were raw from secret handshakes and my body worn down from dancing at the “Global Party”, but it was all worth it.

Watching these kids transform a classroom from one of chaos - with miscommunication, nervous behavior and intermittent attention - to a hub of productive and pointed organization churning out events and good ideas was inspiring.  Most of the time, I just did my best to get out of the way of their unstoppable energy.  Sometimes all an individual needs is a little space to realize their own potential and I truly believe that the Visions camp was exactly that.

As someone who is interested in the way that a new generation of young people can become a positive force in changing the changing world, you can often find me extolling the virtues of my own generation - the Millennials - and the possibilities of a different world as we come into our own.  It is trite but true that investing in kids is an investment in our collective future.  It was an incredibly rewarding experience to play a small part in shaping a few in the next wave.

More often than not, the kids were the teachers and us the students.  One of the most vivid moments came when one of the groups performed a five minute drama (“skit” would be too light of a word) on the need to be in harmony with nature.  The story - thought up, molded and performed by the students independently - centered around a tree and its role in children’s play, the community and the  pursuit of profit.  More than a few of the adults in the room were moved to tears.

The week was also about fun.  I will never forget watching the kids put on their “Global Party”, an hour of candy, decorations, profuse sweating and dancing.  To call what these kids were doing “dancing” might not cut it.  With bursting smiles and a touch of nervousness, the students were throwing their bodies at the universe with the full force of their hopes and dreams. 

The week at the Visions camp showed me that these future generations will keep the positive energy coming that I believe is a big part of how we Millennials define ourselves.  There are some new kids on the block and they’re sharp, driven and ready to take the world by storm irrespective of their group’s gender, race, or background.  Watch out.

the things i carried

I explored markets in four different countries over a period of four months.  I perused stone carvings, handwoven tapestries and shining jewelry.  Labeling me a opportunity, crafty children, affable men and convincing women hawked their wares as I wandered past.  Despite the tenacity of the sellers, nothing made it into the backpack and carry-on that returned with me on the flight from Saigon to San Francisco.

I did, however, gather a ton of immeasurable memories.  Sorting through the memories of people and places that I carried with me, many of them make me think of people in my life.  I didn’t bring back any tangible gifts as I found very few things that I felt worthy to give, but I’d like to share a few memories in honor of some important people in my life.

When I first met Kalpana, I thought of my mother.

Mahendra was the get-things-done-guy, reminiscent of my father.

Prashant’s skill at public speaking was like seeing my brother in action.

Joining in on a Hindu ritual reminded me of my sister and her faith.

Akash and Suraj became my brothers, just like Garrett did over last summer.

In a bookstore in Delhi, I appreciated what Nana, my grandmother, had done for me all these years with books.

Recommending a Book

Books are a promise of who we want to be.  We crack open a book because we want something from it and reading is both an act of aspiration and an acquisition of knowledge. Fantasy and science fiction makes us want to be heroes in our own epic story.  History books equip us with an understanding of the past in order to responsibly shape the future.  Science and psychology books help us better understand the present moment while philosophy challenges us to use that moment ethically and wisely.  To recommend a book to someone is to give the gift of knowledge in some form and to push them to make promises to themselves.

I didn’t fully understand the power of recommending a book until I walked around a bookstore in Delhi.  Delhi is known for being a widely-read city and has some great bookstores.  A few people in our group stopped into a beautiful store with a great selection.  I came across one of my favorites, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, and told Asha that she must read it.  It’s a book written from a unique perspective - Death - and Zusak has a talent for using words in new and exciting ways.

Asha signed on to read it and watching her journey through it over the next few weeks helped me understand what Nana, my grandmother, had been doing all these years.  Asha always had her nose in the book and would stop to point out a good turn of phrase to me or ponder the power of the story. Nana had a small bookstore in West Virginia for most of my life and would always bring books for us when she came to visit.  I grew up reading books she had given me and she got to know my taste very well.  She searched high and low for books that I would not only like, but ones that would challenge me.  As a matter of fact, most of my favorite books (e.g. The Book Thief, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) were ones given to me by her.  Books were a way for my grandmother and I to bond, talk about my interests and share excitement over something, often the next book in a series.

I believe that growing up as a ravenous reader was one of the most influential building blocks of who I am today.  It made me curious, it made me dream and it made me think.  It gave me a number of characters to grow up with, like the ones in Harry Potter or the Pendragon Adventure.  That’s the power of books and passing it on to others is a wonderful feeling.