Miles Astray | passages

__________
travel passages

topic

__________

finding the home within out there

traveling inwards

My soles brought me places, but immersion taught me places, taught me people and lives.

ENORMOUSLY ELUSIVE

The more water the falls carry, the less you see them. The less water the falls carry, the more you see them disappear. Rainy season, dry season—take your pick between misty veils or bare walls; it’s hard to win with Victoria‘s falls.

Victoria Falls / Zambia · 2017

HOSTEL CREATURE

Hostels are anthropological petri dishes, in which all sorts of creatures mingle: Sick Dudes, Awesome Mates, Future Friends, And Others. Everyone is someone who does something. A common technique to scan people’s surface is the following line of questioning: “where you from, how long have you been traveling, where you headed?” Some dig deeper into their conversational partners in hopes of finding versions of themselves in likeminded others. And then there are the occasional oddballs, refreshing palate cleansers so fluid in shape that no label sticks to them. Like the kind of guy bolting into a Kyrgyz dorm late at night, wrapped into a dark coat and darker mystery, insinuating a committed murder with a face so stern that it couldn’t possibly be used to insinuate anything else, but being all jovial and no longer hangry after a midnight snack, now casually clarifying that the murder victim was he himself, killed by a society that had not prevented his near starvation leading to strokes and nerve damage, and alleging that some Balinese villagers worship him and his wife as reincarnations of Hindu gods, before putting on his Kermit sleeping mask.

Bishkek / Kyrgyzstan · 2018

TRRROIA

It sounded something like “Trrroia” when my Turkish bunk bed buddy in Istanbul shared a travel suggestion with his eyes glowing like dark suns. Our conversations were pleasant, but never made it too far past smiles and the mutual understanding of Raki and cigarettes. Right now, I had no clue what he was saying, but it was becoming increasingly evident by his incomprehension of my incomprehension that “Trrroia" was of some significance. In his irritation he kept firing that strange word with his machine-gun-rrr, until it finally hit me: suddenly, Troy was no longer a faint myth of the Iliad, but an actual place, its ruins firm as fact. With only one intelligible word my dorm roomie had rewritten history for me and sent me off towards the past. I found the Hollywood horsie parked along the seafront of nearby Canakkale—maybe somebody should look that gift horse in the mouth.

Canakkale / Turkey · 2015

SWIM ACROSS THE BRIDGE

If you look close enough, you might find that the fine line between imagination and reality is really a bridge. It is neatly inevitable that by the time you’re reading this, your hasty eyes have already jumped to the picture and with it to conclusions. The journey has begun. Your eyes carried you away to the Guatemalan dreamscape by the Mayan name of Semuc Champey. They hypnotized you with a tale of turquoise water dividing the jungle and lured you from reality’s solid bank into imagination’s fluid realm. For things aren’t what they seem. The paradoxical title, reminiscent of a surreal dream sequence at first, is actually the signpost to reality here. Follow it and you will see what you’re really looking at: a bridge. Naturally formed from limestone, it spans a thousand feet wide across the ferociously raging Cahabón River underneath, while shallow pools sit placidly atop. Only by imagining the river, which remains forever tucked away from your eyes, you can see the bridge and swim across it to reality’s bank.

Semuc Champey / Guatemala · 2014

EXPENSIVE POVERTY

What a dark paradox: if you belong to the 35 % of Limeños, who live in the barrios pobres of Peru’s capital, you pay up to 10 times more for water than wealthier residents, according to Oxfam estimates. Water, filling entire swimming pools in affluent Miraflores, is a scarce commodity in next door San Juan de Miraflores, where squatter settlements crawl up muddy hills. Without plumbing, they depend on costly water truck deliveries that don’t make it up the slopes. This translates to additional labor and costs for those living higher up. Despite an infamous perpetual winter drizzle, it almost never rains in Lima, which undermines any efforts to harvest rainwater. And as though the irony wasn’t bitter enough up until here, the occasional rain comes down as torrential downpours, washing out these very hills and demolishing the brittle existences of those who live there.

Lima / Peru · 2013

Black Nazarene celebration, Manila / Philippines · 2015

RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS

This year’s No-Bell Prize in Random Acts of Kindness goes to These Guys “for sharing their joy with a stranger.” From the statement: “these [random acts of kindness] are not necessarily about giving, helping, or being selfless—it could be a fleeting smile between elevator doors; or tipping your bus driver with a thanks; or These Guys asking some passerby to take their picture and share their microcosmic instant.”

Black Nazarene celebration, Manila / Philippines · 2015

D R O P I C A L

Come sunshine or cloud-shade, sweat or rain—for better or worse, the tropics keep an almost constant solar angle throughout the year, making for eternal warmth. In the Köppen–Geiger climate classification this warrants an A, not for the best, but the warmest climate. Kuala Lumpur falls into the subcategory Af: tropical rainforest climate with no distinct dry season. Meaning: the sky brews hot and humid weather all year round, serving almost daily rainfalls. And when it rains, it rains.

Kuala Lumpur / Malaysia · 2015

SPOTTING GIANTS

You’d think the world’s biggest fish is hard to overlook, but then again, the ocean isn’t exactly a bathtub. To spot the chubby needle in this liquid haystack is an art that takes ample practice and ampler patience. As the only place in the Philippines where the interaction with whale sharks in governed by a tight framework of regulations, Donsol has brought forth a multitude of these artists. Day in day out, they climb the mast and scan the sea, while a group of goofy-looking tourists in snorkel gear sits on deck and keenly awaits the signal to hop in. While more popular whale shark hot spots like Oslob lure the animals with bait and don’t striktly enforce no-touch policies, the interaction in Donsol is ecologically responsible. Sightings aren’t guaranteed, but the encounter is natural when it happens and all the more magnificent.

Donsol / Philippines · 2015

LOTTERY FAIRY

Like astrological beacons of false hope, the Laotian lottery fairies popped out of the early night that befell those long days of work. Splitting the dark with LED-glazed folding tables, their stations attracted a wealth of motorists driven by the same wish: turn little money into big money. An eager lamp would bend its metal neck towards a well-thumbed layer of laminated pages that caged a strange zoo of animals, numbers, and Lao script. Three digits, associated with a creature one might or mightn’t have been lucky or unlucky enough to see in their dreams, all claimed the shortest route to small fortunes. Rooster 428, snake 632, deer 974—the wish of your dreams was registered with a swipe to conclude the invisible transaction. And hadn’t the upper bosses clipped their wings systematically, maybe the fairies could have seen to granting more wishes.

Luang Prabang / Laos · 2023

PIECE

Oh Santorini sun, fiery minx, you set like no other; dressed in nothing but amorous promises, you lean in to kiss the horizon and our voluptuous human longing for romance begins to dance. But, alas, the faster you near the embrace, the more passion shatters into skirmishes. To hell with loving surrender—we choose a piece over peace any day before the night. None of us can afford time or space for sentiments while demanding our turn in this crossfire of pointed elbows and hectic shutter shot staccatos. Like the tide below, the second wave of people has arrived to replace the first, but the flesh pours in erratically unlike the smoothly transitioning surf that caresses the shore. We are all here, now, but not in the moment and not together. Oh Santorini sun, you lured us with union, but all you gave was divide. Now you wander west to seduce another sorry lot of naive fools, leaving us in the dark.

Oía, Santorini / Greece · 2017

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Austerity is a narrow gateway. Most material possessions are too bulky to fit through. The flood of overindulgence is too wide to pass it whole. Merely a humble iota of societal diversions makes it to the other side and accompanies the Buddhist monk on his path to raw consciousness and spiritual enlightenment. Only after shaving off all distractions delivered by the senses, the innermost mind is sharpened into necessary focus for the journey inwards. But concentration goes only as far as the belly is full. The blossoming mind can’t escape its organic roots. And so the monk’s quest is nourished by the alms giving lay people, who in return feed off good Karma and the Buddhist teachings. A mutual exchange of food for thought.

Luang Prabang / Laos · 2015

SALASAKA

And so the months passed by as the place kept me. Its spell felt like deliberate inevitability to me, some sort of circumstantial fate. I was stranded well. In a subtle paradise. Salasaka. Melding yesterday and tomorrow today, the Salasakans knew something that was either long forgotten or far from discovery elsewhere. Their wisdom was of the ancestral kind, their lives in rhythm with life itself. Everything was deeply rooted in bygone centuries, in the land, in Pacha Mama, but change was harvested everywhere. Salasaka was not a village outside the world or inside a vacuum. It was right there, where it seemed to belong and wanted to belong, in a forward-facing folkloric dance between eras. Holding on to ancient knowledge while embracing the next generation’s wit, the indigenous realm lingered beautifully on tomorrow’s verge.

Salasaka / Ecuador · 2012

REV

"Revving the engine is enough to lure them," explained our captain. Then he fed them anyway. Unconditional conditioning. Right off Belize's Caye Caulker, nurse sharks live alongside stingrays, eagle rays, manatees and other aquatic neighbors in an oceanic vicinity known as Shark Ray Alley. Local boat operators use bait in preparation of a touristic snorkel encounter with the harmless animals in the shallow and crystalline Caribbean waters. The dubious feeding practice has conditioned the sharks to line up in front of the boats by the mere sound of an outboard and raises the question of how this unnatural dependence and behavior will affect the animals in the long run. After raising the question, silently inside me, I hopped in, because I’m just like the other sharks.

Caye Caulker / Belize · 2014

PEACOCK APOCALYPSE

The sun had exploded and hung in shreds all over the sky. I could tell by the nuclear mist that seeped through the flyscreen, not minding all the little rectangles in its way. That entire morning was one fuzzy cloud of light. Maybe the fever had done me in. Hell, I thought, hell wasn’t so bad after all. Just that it was upside down. A celestial ocean of fire. Ah well, I should have been so lucky. The end of the world wasn’t as near as the Dengue suggested. No, there was no escaping another long day on the peacock farm. Can’t ever take a day off on a farm. Because nature doesn’t. And days are longer on farms. Breaks shorter. To be sure, meals and laughs are heartier. What you reap is juicier. And the sleep is sound like death. Until that pesky sun rises again. Never takes a day off either.

Piribebuy / Paraguay · 2024

THE VIOLINIST

Most plots in life are stillborn. Ends dressed up as beginnings. Strangers slipping in and out of sight as though they only pop into existence the moment we encounter them, as though we make them up as we go along, like extras populating our film set. Likelihood in all its strictness had dictated that the story of the violinist would start and end synchronously, the moment I saw him volunteering his tune atop a dune. But somehow reality deviated from its script, and as I moved on to forget all about him, I walked straight into an unforgettable fairytale. Pointing my feet towards Russia’s Kaliningrad border, I descended into the sandy valley where determined steps fast subsided into an amble. Along the lagoon. Into the forest. Where the trunks stood taller than any temple’s columns. A portal between the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea. And in its wooden rib cage, with not another soul around, there was the violinist again, now resting on a moss mattress. Just him and a picknick and him. Not very alone in his own company. And me not very alone in mine. Something in us, some poetic longing, must have been as much his as it was mine. Ours together. And driven by the same longing, I moved on. Again. Because you can’t hold these moments as much as they hold you. Finally, I saw the beige light at the end of that green tunnel. The beach. I dipped my toes into the sea and followed the surf down to that final EU frontier. The border ran through sand. Lithuania and Russia separated by something that runs through your fingers the moment you lift it. Again, not a soul around, much less a tank. I took one step across the border into the no-man’s-just-sands-land. Then I went back. And as I walked up the beach, there he was again. At the final destination of our story. Third time’s a charm, but first and second time no less so.

Nida / Lithuania · 2023

NIRVA-NAH

I liked the reclined Buddha, nestled under that rolling tongue of cliff-rock with plants sprawling over his sleep like dream catchers. And there were big spider webs there, plotted by big spiders, but he didn't mind them because he was asleep and his skin gilded, and no critter would be able to penetrate it. He couldn't even feel them. He couldn’t even feel. That part was a bit sad. But maybe not for him. The Buddhists want to escape the pain of desire. Good luck with that you foolish sages—I’ll take a good spoonful of whatever you leave behind. Sleep tight.

Luang Prabang / Laos · 2023

LIVELIHOOD

His skin was leather, testimony to a noble life spent beneath the generous Ethiopian sun. He looked eighty but was probably closer to sixty when deducting the dignified furrows a career of arduous labor had etched into his face. And while his reticent demeanor expressed a polite indifference to my existence, I somehow felt like he would guard that bit of stranger’s existence with all of his if necessary. He exuded an air of loyalty to his responsibility as a scout. All he carried into the mountains was a small rucksack, a quilted jacket, an umbrella, a shawl that inexplicably sufficed him as a blanket throughout the relentless altitude nights, and the AK-47. Ka-lash-ni-kov, rat-tat-tat-tat—what a perfect last name to invent a rifle, I thought. The phonetics and connotation were a match made in Russia. What kind of machine gun would a Wilson or Gonzales be? But if the rifle made me feel any safer, it made me feel unsafer in at least equal measure. I disliked the tangible proximity of death the gun established, notwithstanding that this one was more livelihood than weapon—a tool of life and death that was foremost a tool. Some written or unwritten rule obliged him to carry it, and me to be babysat by an armed veteran. Wild animals or wilder humans are not much of a threat here, but a family going hungry is.

Simien Mountains / Ethiopia · 2017