Ambling Rambling

It has been roughly a year since I left my home, Australia, and therefore time to review my travel budget.

I departed Australia with a hard-earned $25,000 in my bank account. More than 12 months later, I am now left with a bit over $9,500. I have not earned a speck of money since I’ve been travelling, so you can imagine if I were working while country hopping, I would have a lot more. However, this is a demonstration as to how much you can stretch your money without having to worry about an income. And, I could easily stretch this remaining $9,500 to six more months of no work.

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I’m standing in front of the Forbidden City looking at its splendour, and feeling the most awkward I’ve felt in years. It has nothing to do with my surroundings, and everything to do with my head. A niggling worry in the back of my mind- a psychological, hypothetical tumult- has turned into my worst fear: a physical, true, before-my-eyes-and-it-is-definitely-happening tumult. The reality of my situation makes me squirm, involuntarily wretch and my nerves react adversely to the news my brain is concentrically digesting. Over and over and over.

Why I am feeling this way does not matter- though to sate reader curiousity I will say it was caused by crude words and actions from another human. It is the outcome- the sensation created by my feeling of disgust and discomfort- I am most interested in. Have others felt this before? Has anyone experienced this violent intertwining of emotional and visceral discomfort? A barrier has broken down somewhere and I want to know what happened.

Like a venomous vine creeping over a garden wall, as do our minds permeate and internally dictate our physical health and pain reception.

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         The architecture of Rome doth not soothe my homesick head

I learnt two new words today; Topophilia and Psychogeography. Both of these words have a little something to do with homesickness. The definition of Topophilia tells me I’ve been down and missing home lately because my level of ‘rigidity’- or desire to grasp onto anything I can identify with home- is high at this time. What has triggered my reversal from embracing to resisting Mongolian culture so far into my arrival I don’t quite understand, though I expect it has something to do with my anticipation towards the looming departure date.

ARE WE THERE YET? SYNDROME

I’ve made up a new disorder. It is exactly like homesickness, but includes the feelings invoked by the Return Flight Date Ghoul.

I don’t miss Australia at all. I don’t know when I am returning, so I cannot expect to mourn or weep or anticipate anything to do with going back there. However, I am returning to England, my home away from home. The date is set, and I find this makes me homesick. For this reason, I particularly hate organised travel. Return flight dates are a surefire way to make you start preparing to see your friends again, turn your back on the country you are experiencing, and generally act like a lousy sad sucker.

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“What is your mother’s name?” Cherry asks me in Mongolian. “Do you look like her? Is her hair the same as yours? Does she love you?” Another little girl next to her cries as I answer. She doesn’t know what her mother’s hair looks like. She doesn’t know her mother’s name. She doesn’t even know her own name. Cherry does have a name, but that’s because the people who brought her here gave her one.

THEY FOUND HER IN A CHERRY RED JUMPER

It’s Mother’s Day today in Australia, and here I am in Mongolia thinking about the jolt I felt from filming street kids last week. There is obviously a strong connection in my train of thought. I have a mum, they don’t. Though, only when confronted by these homeless children face to face have I considered how a day dedicated to a family member would be distressing for one who does not have any relations. How ignorant of me. The thought never crossed my mind because I have always had a father and a mother.

Last week I stood in the middle of a classroom of orphans, being instructed by my boss to teach the kids how to sing “All you need is love” while the camera rolled. I found this extremely ironic. When we asked the kids what is love to them, they didn’t get it, or looked at us with the expression of a cynic. Try telling “all you need is love” to abandoned children, products of drunken parents, who seem to laugh at the idea that love exists, let alone it being all you need. And to make things worse, these pearls of wisdom are coming from the spoon-fed, well-fed, orthodonticised mouth of a First World Westerner. Yes, it is pretty rich coming from me.

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GO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE OR SOMETHING

I have come to the realisation that I am odd. Insanity is inflicted upon me and, equally, I inflict insanity upon the situation, or at least encourage it to happen. I like the bonkers, Mad Hatters of society. They are the antithesis of banal, normal people, and I covet my friendships with the Tim Burtons of the world.

Non-crazy people are unsettling. I find it odd that The Normal- as I shall call them from hereon- are unconscious of the part of their brain that makes them do and say peculiar, extraordinary and outlandish things. Or maybe they are not installed with this faculty to begin with? Maybe there is an anatomical difference between The Normal and The Bizarre? If this is the case, then I guess it cannot be helped. But, if indeed there is a choice between insanity and utter mundaneness; how can someone be normal when it is much more fun to be completely, downright eccentric?

Regularly I will test an acquaintance’s level of insanity by posing a ridiculous question, or suggesting an activity that would normally need copious levels of alcohol for a not-quite-crazy-enough person to attempt. For example, singing and dancing in the middle of a supermarket without pretence, reciting a monologue in your front garden to passers-by, or talking nonsense to a stranger at a party. Mostly these moments of my own ridiculousness positively correlate with my level of boredom. When extremely bored, I find my levels of enthusiasm for the strange and mysterious are increased exponentially than if I actually had something to do, like a job. Perhaps working makes people boring, because they don’t have time to make toy robots out of discarded car CD players, or create new levels of music genius via remarkable tracheal manipulation. The most eccentric, and interesting, people are those with a living room cluttered with weird artefacts from foreign countries, an old lady with a stuffed bird on her head from her days with the tribes in New Guinea, a distinguished man with a beret and funny moustache who dresses up as a mime because he wants to, a child in a Spiderman suit casting his web on strangers because he wants to, a 30-something girl in a bear suit because she wants to- in other words, people with time on their hands to have a tea party.

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Be more comfortable in rural India than sleeping on your mate’s smelly couch!

Alright, so crashing on your friend’s broken sofa for the night is not very comfortable at all. This was a bad analogy. But that’s beside the point I’m trying to make, which is a very important point indeed. Thus-just so you hear loud and clear- I’m going to enlist the help of some authors to better articulate my beef with society’s common conception of comfort. Comfort, comfort, comfort, what is it oh great writers of the past?

LISTEN, I BESEECH YOU, TO MARK AND ALBERT

Mark Twain and Albert Camus are two of the best damn authors out there. They also have some very memorable quotes about travel. Here are two that stuck in my mind the most (take note of my bolding of a few key words):

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”                                                       Mark Twain

“What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear, and the instinctive desire to go back to the protection of our old habits. This is the most obvious benefit of travel. At that moment we are feverish but also porous, so that the slightest touch makes us quiver to the depths of our being. Travel, which is like a greater and graver science, brings us back to ourselves.”                                                                             Albert Camus (some phrases omitted)

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danielawastaken-deactivated2011 asked: I was so inspired by your first post. I live in a city where people think that my travelling dreams are a joke just because they can't get out of here themselves. It was so refreshing to read about your travels that I just signed up to couchsurfing.org and I have so much hope for my future now.

Have you ever had any bad experiences in your travels?

Hello,

I’m so glad you got something out of my post. There is more where that came from. My next post will be on feeling comfortable wherever you are headed. 

Couchsurfing is truly my saviour. Give the site a good chance. It is hard to navigate at first, but I attribute it to the reason why I could travel for so long. Think about it. Forty euro a night in a hostel, or free stay with a local, and possibly free dinner, and instant friends in an alien country. There are so many moments I obtained through couchsurfing that couldn’t be replicated in hostels. I truly saw the French party, the Spanish life and the crazy Italians. 

If you need help with the site just ask. I never ever had a bad experience couchsurfing. I have had bad experiences travelling, but they are to be expected. And, you will find, are the moments that you will look back on and laugh, not to mention will prop up in storytelling and reminiscences the most. 

I’m also planning to do an article on my budget after Mongolia so you can see just how much money I have left after 1 whole year.

Hope this helps.

Abidextrous

PUT YOUR HANDS UP FOR ULAANBAATAR

I love this city.

Anyway, from my previous post you will have garnered (yes, garnered) that I was heading for Mongolia in a few weeks. Well, in a quantum leap of faith, I am here now! This is because my writing of this article and my making of this blog didn’t necessarily coincide that well. Please forgive me. I’m actually a week into my journalism placement at a new television channel they have here called Star TV. But, I get ahead of myself. I will take you back into the past (another quantum leap), and start from the start:

First of all, to get one thing straight, my initial impressions of Mongolia were not influenced by any information I may have gathered before the trip. This is because my research was barely minimal, and my sources were drunken house mates on a Friday night. “Mongolia has loads of yaks right? Can you bring me back a hairy yak please? ” “Every one’s covered in fur over there, and they all look like Genghis Khan.”

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Hello internet, 

Well, I was going to introduce myself but I have a better idea: let’s skip the small talk and get cracking with reading my first blog post. Huzzah!

TRAVELLING ON NEXT TO NOTHING, INNIT?

When I look back on my diaries of past calendar years, I am always astounded as to the variety of adventure I can pack into my life. Take 2010, for example: I walked 890km across Spain, worked on a dairy farm in Germany, toured with a rock band on a psychedelic bus in Australia, had a short but passionate love affair with a Frenchman, chilled out in the mountains of Morocco, ate too much seafood in Portugal, rented an apartment in Paris, saw a West End show in London, spent New Year in Amsterdam, hosted my own radio show, stayed with a US intelligence officer in Italy, jumped off a bridge and, to top it all off, got showered with tonnes of tomatoes at La Tomatina.

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