Cult of personality.

"I tend to think of myself as a one man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack, it grew by one. So there.... there was two of us in the wolf pack. I was alone first in the pack and then Doug joined in later." - The Hangover


This post could have been written from Poland, back in late August. But back then it was too vague to be even a theory, just an educated hunch.
These words nearly came from Jordan, when in my five days I experienced this pretty strongly, and my beliefs were solidified.
I am writing this in my last few hours of three weeks in Southeast Asia, just before I walk down to the Mekong River in Vientiene and wash down some phenomenal laap with a Beerlao. I am writing it now because that cloudy theorem of months ago has proven undeniable.

I spent six days in Estonia. Far longer than I probably should have, far longer than the glorified village of Tallinn probably warranted. But while I was trying to get my stomach right again from the parasites, I met some people that weren't merely fun to be around, but that I clicked with surprisingly quickly. Same sense of humor, similar personalities even though we came from different backgrounds and opposite pinpoints on the globe. Leaving for Riga, Latvia was the first time I had to surrender friends at the border. It would become a pattern.

I met Ricardo and Paul in Lithuania, but we didn't hang out until two cities later, when we found ourselves once again in the same hostel (Ricardo and I even again in the same dorm room) in Krakow, Poland. Something like four days together and we three experienced Krakow's Old Town, the leaden grounds of Auschwitz, and the quirky salt mines of Wieleczka in a rotating 30 foot bubble of conversation. Not to mention the bars, restaurants, and clubs. To find people you've just met that you can be around all day, discuss heavy issues in Twentieth Century history, politics, and religion with, then still want to hang out with later for seemingly endless glasses of vodka is rare. Unless you know where to look.

The theorem that shed its mist, the central social lesson of my travels: Certain types of places draw certain types of people. As a traveler, when I've deviated from the commonplace, I have felt the most camaraderie. I have felt most at home.

In my first few hours in Amman, Jordan, I met Cindie from Vancouver and Til from Hamburg. This was when our hostel owner Ali was trying to get us to pay something like $80 each to take the sightseeing route (the King's Highway) from Amman to Petra. Together we found a separate way that only cost us a quarter of that. We traversed night markets together, stocking up on food and supplies for the next day, tackling everything together with a recurring sense of collaboration. It felt at times like we were solving a riddle that individually may have stumped each of us, leading to higher prices, shadier travel options, but together was different entirely. The Voltron approach to travel. We made it down to Petra, did the same shopping around and negotiated an equally good deal back up to Amman, where we parted ways once again, Cindie to Istanbul, Til to Damascus, and I to Qatar. We clicked instantly, not always perfectly and we're not in constant contact now, but we each still talk, each pass along travel advice for our next destinations. Because we're still unified, still feel that precious overlapping of our Venn diagrams that is shaped like the Jordanian border.

The moment these thoughts became granite was two days ago, in Champasak. It's one thing to go to Laos, let alone a tiny village in the remote South, so of the seven other backpackers of all ages on my cramped sawngethaew that held another 15 Lao locals, I had seven easy conversations, seven faces that looked back at me with the identical determination and small but still present sense of adventure that fewer and fewer places on this Earth are capable of giving you.

For all the grandeur and impossibly complex historical tapestry that is Western Europe, I'm in no rush to go back. I did meet some awesome people there, in Scotland and in Berlin especially, but the vast majority of other people at my hostels were weekenders or permanently attached to their copy of Lonely Planet. You can be somewhere for just a few days and not be a tourist. Then again you can travel around the world and still not see a thing. The experience can easily change you, alter your perceptions- if you're open to it. And that seems to be the dividing issue. One that cuts across the European continent like the Maginot Line.

If you've traveled a good deal, seen various parts of the world and Western Europe is still for you- awesome. That's you. I loved what I got to see while I was there, the life lessons I came across in Barcelona and Naples are no less profound, but Europe is domesticated to the point that I'm in no rush to go back. It will always be there, and be more or less like it is now. Places like Laos are disappearing. In the few hours I've spent on the patio outside my hostel in Vientiene, I've seen maybe 30 groups of backpackers get turned away because there's no room. I've seen the same groups an hour or so later still wandering hopelessly with their backpacks still on because the entire town, which has a large number of hostels and homestays, is full. The older travelers I've met that were here a decade, even two years ago, speak of how vastly it has changed, how modern and touristy it is now leaning. So far this is just some of the northern cities; in the south you still run in to incidents like my forced hitchhiking in Ban Mueng. As shitty as it was at the time, I'll take that over a stamp on my Eurail pass any day.

It takes certain personality traits to look at a map and say "Lithuania. I want to see what's there." Or Jordan, Phnom Penh, rural Laos. The night before I left Los Angeles, my best friend told me that I had a something of a gift, a strange mixture of stupidity, balls, and guile. Maybe this is what he was seeing. This personality trait, this product of curiosity and desire for adventure, it is probably the most unifying single social characteristic I have ever come across. Even though we've only known one another for days at most, sometimes as short as the span of shared tuk-tuk ride, these people that I have met and clicked with understand an aspect of my personality that people I have known for years have never approached. Because it is burning within them as well. Paris is beautiful, but keep it. We'll take Petra. We want to see places other people didn't even know existed, let alone thought of going to. I don't know what it is in the others that catalyzes this quality. For me it is a sense of discovery, the awakening of the frontier spirit that quickens the beating of my American heart.

That's the feeling I get when I think about the next places I want to go to next. Syria. Bhutan. Tibet. Nepal. The Trans-Siberian in reverse. I read an article that a British company is doing small guerrilla style tours of Iraq. Something with six or seven people that is less like a tour group and more like a cadre. How could I turn down a chance to go to Babylon? And of course my last continent: South America.

When I started this trip I was a little annoyed that traveling in the E.U. you don't get new passport stamps at the border. Now I'm grateful for that. Because each box I do have stamped in there is something that I feel I've earned, its pages are like a table of contents for the short stories that have comprised the last four plus months of my life. This little beaten blue and gold book in my pocket is more than a government identification for me now. Its obvious heavy use, that it is now noticeably heavier with ink and stamps- this is my badge of honor. One that I plan on always keeping in close range, always at the ready for the next adventure.