The Global Slowmad

After six months of s-l-o-w travel, it’s time for a little s-o-l-o travel.

Why am I still on the road when Darla is already back in Tulsa? Well, keep in mind that this originally was going to be a year-long adventure to celebrate my retirement. We agreed back in May to nix the final three months in Mexico, but Darla ultimately decided that six months was as long as she was willing to be away from Alex and Echo right now. (She has assured me that she’s still willing to embark on a longer journey once Alex is off to medical school.)

I’m coming at it from a somewhat different perspective. As an initial matter, I miss Alex and Echo too but already feel lucky to have spent a little extra time around Alex before we left on this adventure and am content with having another eight months with him after I get back to Tulsa. Likewise, I know Echo has been in good hands and having a blast getting near-daily pup cones with his boy.

Second, there are a lot of places in the world that I’d like to see. Many of these locations do not overlap with Darla’s own wish list for various reasons – extreme temperature, humidity, rainfall, dust storms, insects, disease, power grid outages, lack of potable water, pollution, over-crowding, over-tourism, criminal activity, religious intolerance, mistreatment of women and minorities, political turmoil and/or a generally seedy reputation. Sounds like a fun time, I know! To be fair, most of these things bother me too, but my insatiable curiosity nearly always prevails over practicality and common sense. And let’s not forget that my permanent home is in a little corner of America known as Oklahoma, which doesn’t excel itself in some of these categories. Anyway, in the Venn diagram of Kasiske family travel, there is a lot of space that only appeals to me.

Third, for the very reasons cited above, not all of my wish list destinations deserve a month or more of my time as a full-fledged slow travel stop. (But hopefully I discover a few that do and can convince my reluctant traveling companion to return with me.) I will be moving relatively quickly the next couple of months, spending no more than a week in any single location. Darla does not enjoy the transportation phase of our adventures, so she really prefers to go places where she can settle in for a while. In fact, we’ve determined that she really needs more than a month at each place when we do this again because it takes her about that long to recover from the initial travel day and get comfortable. Asking her to join me on a whirlwind tour spanning multiple time zones would not be good for her or me or us.

Fourth, I suspect it will be less stressful going solo. I’m a little more tolerant of (albeit still pretty annoyed by) filth, noise, hot, cold, mystery meats, lack of sleep and things generally going haywire. I like to travel in style but also am quite frugal, which means I’m willing to lower my standards from time to time if it means saving a few pennies or pounds or bahts. I know my own limits and will breathe a little easier not having to worry about anyone else’s comfort level. If planes, trains or buses are cancelled or late – and they will be – it’s easier to re-book most things for one person than for two. Yes, there are some circumstances where it is helpful to have a second person around, and I really hope I don’t get seriously ill, mugged or drugged. Losing my phone or passport would be challenging too. But I’ve dealt with difficult travel situations before. Odds are that whatever goes wrong will not be that much worse than getting stranded in the desert outside Las Vegas in the middle of the night during the summer with no car and no money (which happened to me when I was Alex’s age). Or getting stranded on Okinawa during a typhoon (which happened to Alex a couple of years ago). I’ll take a delayed flight, a bad meal or a chilly apartment any day.

Fifth, this could be my last chance to do something like this. I’m hopeful but, candidly, still somewhat skeptical that Darla will agree to depart on another long-term adventure. And there’s no telling how comfortable and/or lazy I’ll get upon returning to Tulsa either. Health is always a wild card as we get older too. And some of what appeals to me about the destinations I’ve chosen is the ephemeral nature of them as viable options for American visitors. Some (e.g., Taiwan and Hong Kong) are regularly in the news as potential targets for an unwelcome invasion. Another (Kosovo) is the newest nation in Europe and is still not officially recognized by Serbia or Russia, which always adds an element of uncertainty. Others (e.g., Hungary and Turkiye) are under increasingly autocratic rule. One (Qatar) was recently attacked by Israel due to its support of Hamas. Others (Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia) are currently engaged in border disputes to one degree or another. I feel like we already missed our window to safely visit Ukraine, and I recognize that time is fleeting; you must do things while you can.

Finally, I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that my homeland is a bit of a shit show. There was a time in my professional life when I had to censor myself and refer to this sort of situation as a dumpster fire, which also paints a pretty accurate image. Regardless of your preferred vocabulary, things are bad out there. The government is still shut down as I write this, and I actually have mixed feelings about that. Freedom of press, freedom of (and from) religion, due process, equal protection, separation of powers, respect for science, support for education, compassion for humankind, the right to vote and other basic tenets of our democracy are no longer guaranteed. Inflammatory rhetoric has gotten out of control, and a lot of people no longer feel safe. Honestly, I don’t want to go back. Why on earth would anyone want to return to America right now?  Oh, that’s right. We already answered that above: Alex and Echo. And those are pretty much the only reasons I’m moving so fast and coming back in December instead of staying away longer.

Am I nervous? Absolutely!

Am I making a mistake? Maybe.

I basically had to scrap a year’s worth of planning that went into the next three months of the original trip and start over while on the move, so this trip is not as well-researched as my usual travel itinerary. I’m also taking a lot more chances with my frequency and modes of transportation (including ferries and buses crossing international borders) and with some of my lodging choices – most of which have not actually been reserved yet. I’ve already had four flights cancelled or rescheduled, and I haven’t even left London yet. My flight re-booking options are somewhat limited by my insistence on using points and miles wherever possible too. It’s not clear whether my eSIMs will work in every destination. The languages are much less familiar than Croatian (similar to Slovenian) and Spanish would have been. I’m not nearly as good as Darla at interacting with humans, so there no doubt will be some frustrating moments and awkward silences. To make it even more interesting, I’m deploying every skill I’ve learned lurking around the r/onebag group and will be traveling for two months with only a personal-item sized backpack (I shipped my rollaboard suitcase back from London, which was a surprisingly complicated and stressful process that merits its own tirade post someday).

It probably will be a complete disaster, and that’s ok.

The pot of gold at the end of Shit Rainbow.