Update 19: Returning to the U.S after one year; a milestone in my travels

Hello all:

Today is my last day in a foreign country for a while.  Tonight I leave Bangkok for New York.  If I exclude the facts that I am leaving after midnight and I will be in the Kuwait airport for a few hours, I will be in international airspace after today and then in the U.S.

I have been traveling now for one year and twenty-one days.  February 12 was the anniversary of leaving the U.S.  I see now on the internet that they are celebrating Holi in India.  I celebrated Holi last year in Jodhpur at Singhvi's Haveli.  It was one of my more memorable experiences.  At the time it seemed like I had been traveling for a while, but really it was only a few weeks into my travels, after a week in Mumbai and two weeks i n Goa.

An question after one year of travel is:  have I changed?  This deep, narcissitic, obvious question does not have an obvious answer.  I will give it a try:  I have changed, but probably not in the ways that I thought I might.  I did not think I would change at all.  Given that I am not the typical 22 year-old traveler, I did not have major epiphanies; I think I went through all of those in my twenties.

But I have learned to handle changing situations on a day-by-day basis.  A short trip of a few weeks gives you time to recover to normality when you return home; a long time on the road means trying to find normality while you're on the road.  And there is that potential for isolation that comes from meeting only new people all the time.  I suppose practice at meditation could help prepare one for this monk-like existence.  "Put your mind at peace, grasshopper..."

Ways to make money for nothing did not materialize as I had distantly hoped.  Money remains the reality factor, the one litmus test for any plans.  I suppose things are better this way, otherwise we'd all just sit on a beach all day.  We couldn't have that, now could we?

The website has been a great pleasure of mine.  Here was a case where I created something from nothing.  I also had to put aside my tendency to find perfection and revel in the real imperfection of the photos and blog entries on the site.  I've actually made connections with new people through the site, as well as gave my friends and family back home a taste of my experience as it happens.  This has been very gratifying.

My flight back to the U.S. is not an end.  First, I will continue to put up photos from my travels abroad.  In addition, for a geographer (which somewhere deep down inside I am), every place is an interesting place, and I will keep making blog entries.  When I get back to the U.S., I will be staying in New York City for a couple of days, and then going to Disneyworld for a family wedding.   I will be staying on a manufactured Caribbean Island Resort.  The irony that I am leaving true tropical paradises for a manufactured one in the swamplands of Florida (at ten times the price per day), has not escaped me.

Peace,

Mark


Blog entries since my last email update:

• Little travel mistakes when leaving the Philippines
• I'm in Puerto Galera, Philippines, pondering coral
• I'm flying from Cebu to Manila to go to Puerto Galera
• I'm on Malapascua Island, Cebu, Philippines
• I'm using skyscanner.net to search for Southeast Asia airline tickets
• Scenes from Manila, Philippines
• Headed to Malapascua Island, Cebu, Philippines
• Thailand scenes
• Befuddled in the Philippines
• I shape the next few weeks buying airline tickets in Bangkok
• ItinerantWitness.com Updates are now archived on site
• Lipstic Guesthouse in Krabi, Thailand
• Dr. Travellove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the World