Ten Years a Nomad

by Matthew Kepnes

  I didn’t understand at first. We had left on good terms. What had changed since I left?

  With distance, of course, nothing had changed. Only the context from which I was looking. Whatever love we’d had for one another only existed inside the travel bubble—the self-contained world of hostels and beaches and sightseeing. Outside that bubble, back in the real world, our feelings for one another had no foundation. Outside of the travel bubble, our love had withered and died.

  As it was destined to.

  She just knew it before I did.

  * * *

  WHEN I FIRST STARTED TRAVELING, I was worried about making friends and finding my groove, but I never really thought about being alone. When 2012 came to an end, being alone is all I really wanted. I wanted to go off the grid and relax before my book came out in January. It had been a trying year, and I was still depressed about Samantha. I needed an escape. Some place where I could clear my head.

  I chose Southern Africa. It offered everything I wanted—weeks camping in nature disconnected from the world—and delivered on all of it, until one evening in Namibia as I stared out at the watering hole in Etosha and the setting sun turned the sky a fiery red and purple. Around me were families, friends, couples. I was there by myself on purpose, but looking around at all these people who seemed to have someone, who were enveloped in the joy of sharing this magical moment together, I suddenly felt very alone. True loneliness hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. And the more I sat with that emotion, the more I understood that I was done being alone.

  Sure, there is value in going solo: You have no master but yourself. Your time and thoughts are entirely your own. But the way all those couples and families looked as they soaked in the dazzling African sunset made it seem like they were enjoying the experience far more than I was, simply by virtue of the fact that they could share it with the people they loved. I always thought that was such a cliché, until the moment when it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I had first traveled to escape being easily defined; now I had fallen into the trap of being easily defined … as a traveler. Travel had become my cubicle, and I was in it by myself.

  Watching that sunset was a kind of painful joy: joyful, because of how full of beauty the world seemed just then, and painful, because I couldn’t turn to someone I cared for to see the same joy in their eyes.

  Where was my special someone? Where was someone to put my arm around? Someone to talk with about what we had seen during the day? Someone to share in my work or in the excitement of seeing an elephant?

  I didn’t think of Etosha. I thought of Samantha.

  I thought back to the last time we’d spoken. I had asked her if we could have another chance to see if our relationship would work. She told me she had been dating someone else, and wasn’t ready to jump back into a relationship with me. Our story had ended. That talk was the epilogue.

  I think what bothered her was that we were at two stages of life. Family was always important to her. She always joked about having five kids—and in most jokes there is a kernel of truth. Yet, as much as I wanted a relationship, I didn’t want kids. A nomad can’t have kids. A nomad carries a backpack, not a BabyBjörn. I wanted negative kids. I wanted zero bowlines to me and the dock. I wanted zero obligations to anyone but myself … and maybe a travel partner.

  In retrospect, we weren’t right for each other, but all relationships impart some wisdom in their disintegration. In ours, I came to realize the idea of a family might be far away, but the idea of wanting someone else was front and center.

  In Etosha, I thought about Samantha and the happiness I experienced traveling with her. I no longer desired to wander cities or gaze upon African sunsets alone. I wanted to gaze at a familiar face. I wanted to share moments. I was tired of having to start over in each new city and make new friends.

  I wanted someone. I lacked the deep connections that you get when you grow roots in a place. Trees grow tall and powerful because they are rooted deep in the soil, but I was still a seed blowing in the wind. I wasn’t grounded by anything. I thought I had put down roots in the world of travel, but it was only keeping me rootless. I decided then and there that it was time to settle down, make friends, and then who knows what from there.

  But it turned out stopping was a lot harder than I thought.

  9

  Burning Out, Coming Home

  A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

  —LAO TZU

  I THINK I’M DONE, I said to Matt over drinks in Brisbane. He had relocated from Perth while I was traveling across Australia.

  After eighteen months on the road, I began to experience a sensation that, until this point, I’d only read about: travel burnout.

  Travel was no longer fun. It was work.

  There’s this perception—from both travelers and nontravelers alike—that travel is all excitement, all the time. Before I’d set off, I’d even indulged that perception myself. It’s natural to only imagine the good bits to come. We do that with our future as well as our past. Think back to some of the highlights from your past: how many of them include waiting in line at the grocery store, holding a pole on the bus, being stuck in traffic, filing your taxes? We edit those sorts mundane moments out of our past. But we also preemptively edit those sorts of things out of our future. We treat anticipated travel like a highlight reel that plays in advance. It let’s our imagination play through all the fun scenarios we think we’ll experience when we travel. That’s why the planning phase is always so much fun.

  Burnout can seem like the ultimate ingratitude. What’s there to be tired of? You have complete freedom. You’re on an adventure that most people only dream of taking. You are seeing famous attractions, meeting people from all over the world, trying new cuisine, learning new languages. You don’t have any responsibilities. You get to do whatever you want, whenever you want. There’s nothing to get in your way of any of your craziest desires or whims. And what, you’re over it?

  So you’ll ask yourself, like I asked myself: Why am I not enjoying this more? What’s wrong with my trip? What’s wrong with me?

  The truth is that our anticipations, and our memories, have a way of holding only the most striking parts of an experience—the parts that don’t cause burnout. Talk to anyone who has just returned from Disneyland with children and they will tell you tales of a congested hellscape full of long lines, screaming children, arguing parents, and overpriced everything. Talk to them a year later about that same trip, and all you’ll hear about is princess breakfasts and memories and funny stories. They’ll probably even show you pictures the kids took with their favorite Disney characters.

  It’s the same way with long term travel. When you’re planning a trip, all you see is excitement. You see the parties, the sightseeing, the new friends and food you’ll try. You create a highlight reel of your trip even before you’ve boarded your first flight. When you’re planning your trip and taking ownership of your adventure, you can’t imagine that there will be a downside.

  Why would you? You’re going on an adventure, and adventures are inherently thrilling—at least they’re supposed to be. Who’s ever heard of a boring adventure? A shitty adventure? A disappointing adventure? The possibility never even enters your head when you’re in the planning stage. Your head is full of all the life-changing things you’re going to do, and how your adventure is going to be better—not worse—than wherever you are right now.

  When you’re creating your highlight reel, you don’t think about the long, boring hours you’re going to spend on tiny buses. You skip over the delays at airports or the train strikes that leave you stranded. You don’t think about snorers in hostel dorms, food poisoning, dirty accommodations. You think about making friends with the locals, not about fending off touts and scammers, or losing your wallet. You think of an experience that will supply memories for a lifetime, not of all the tiny hassles that suck energy and joy out of your life.

  In
this way, anticipation works just like memory—editing out the boring bits, glossing over the pain and frustration, turning the tedious into the glamorous. The great travel writer Paul Theroux said that “travel is only glamorous in retrospect.” But what holds true for looking back also holds true for looking ahead—travel is glamorous in prospect, too.

  You forget that travel can settle into a routine just as easily as office life can. Get up, eat a terrible hostel breakfast (burnt toast and cornflakes, usually, and if you’ve found some peanut butter left in the jar, you’re winning), sightsee, meet travelers, go out at night, sleep off your hangover, pack up, find your bus, and head to the next town to do some variation of it over and over again, for who knows how long. Those beautiful places you set out to see are still there—but they’ve become the backdrop to the same old cycle. It’s as if you stop seeing them so vividly, like the scenery behind a Mario Kart race. The setting for each level is unique, but all you really see is the track.

  And the longer you travel, the more the novelty fades, and the more the routine hardens into boredom.

  You get sick of constantly trying to find your bus or hostel in countries whose language you don’t speak. You’re tired of making plans from scratch each day. You’re worn out of seeing new friends take the bus out of town, never to be heard from again. The quotidian parts of life that you take for granted at home—finding food that won’t make you sick, figuring out where to clean your laundry, communicating about bus schedules or menus—become tedious chores.

  You have to learn a brand-new set of social norms at each stop. You have to restart your life again and again, in a new place and with new people. As much as the backdrop changes, nomad life can come to resemble an unending Groundhog Day.

  And when it does, the fun of being able to do whatever you want wears off. You don’t want to see one more fucking temple or waterfall. You don’t want to invest time in getting to know one more person who is just going to disappear. You don’t care about other travelers, where they are from or where they are going. You don’t want to unpack and pack every day. You don’t want to pretend to sleep through two drunk people having sex in the bunk above you.

  All you want to do is stay in one place, watch Netflix, and relax. You crave the monotony of the life you left. A nice bed, someone to fully understand the words you are saying, someone to stay longer than a day, some consistency and dependability.

  One day you reach your limit.

  Congratulations: you’re burned out.

  * * *

  WHEN I BEGAN MY TRAVELS, a million and one fears and worst-case scenarios ran through my mind. What if I couldn’t make it? What if I couldn’t find friends? What if I got so lost I couldn’t find my way back? What if I got sick? What if I ran out of money?

  And I blew those fears out of proportion, because for some reason I kept neglecting the obvious solution if any of them came to be. Barring the absolute worst-case scenario, I could always come home. If it didn’t work out, there was always the next flight home.

  People rarely think about that option.

  They assume that once you’re on the road, you’re stuck. That when it doesn’t work out there’s nothing that can be done.

  It’s ironic, when you think about it. Being a traveler is about being free—and yet it’s possible to commit to the nomadic life so deeply that you forget you’re always free to go home. You forget that you can say, at any time, “You know what? I miss my home and my friends. I will scream if I see another hostel. It turns out that I’m done with budget travel for now, and the next time, I’ll try something more comfortable, even if that means traveling for a shorter period of time. I’ve had enough for now. I’m going to go home.”

  You’re free to stop. But stopping seems like the least free thing you can do.

  It feels like an admission of failure.

  You’d be surprised how resistant a committed nomad can be to making that admission. I wish they wouldn’t be. We travel to become better people, and one of the ways we do that is by learning about ourselves along the way. One of the things travel sometimes teaches you is that you don’t want to travel anymore. There’s nothing wrong with coming home.

  There’s no shame in admitting that travel can be hard. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns—it’s routine, frustration, stress, and disappointment, too. And if you find those feelings swelling up inside of you—if you find that the thought of one more temple is going to make you snap, that is the sign that you need to make a change.

  I left Bangkok to continue my journey, but there, wandering around Australia—first up the West Coast, then down through the center and then back up the coast—I found I had little desire to engage with the people I met on the road.

  I saw fresh recruits come through the hostel door and—while once I would’ve rushed to swap stories with them and offer advice—now I only wanted to tell those kids was to get off my lawn or go to my website if they wanted to hear what I had to say. I yearned sometimes for a hotel, where none of these other people were. Where I had privacy and niceties and a robe to put on.

  As days turned into weeks, I began to feel as if the magic in my relationship with travel was gone. That I was simply going through the motions. The scenery was beautiful. I met a few people I really clicked with, including a German girl who would travel with me on and off for the next few years. But, for the most part, I resented the young college kids who seemed to be vapid and only concerned about partying. The backpackers here seemed different than the ones I had previously met in Europe and Southeast Asia, and I didn’t want any part of them.

  Or maybe it was just me who had changed. I felt older than all of the other backpackers I met—not in calendar years, but mentally older. I had already “been there and done that.”

  I found myself repulsed by the newbies filled with optimism and a desire to drink themselves stupid. It seemed so fake and phony to me. Where was the desire to learn about other cultures? To sightsee? To meet locals? Where was the authenticity?

  Whenever someone invited me to go get drunk on the beach with them, I almost had to stifle my gag reflex. I was tempted to say, “I’ve been doing that for the last year. Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

  But, as far as the others were concerned, there wasn’t. They weren’t jaded yet—it was all new to them, even as it was getting painfully old to me.

  By the time I met Matt in Brisbane, I had hit my breaking point.

  “If you don’t like traveling, don’t do it.” Matt said. “You don’t need to prove anything. You’ve been gone close to eighteen months. Go relax back at home, and come back when you’re ready. The world will always be here.”

  “I know, but I just feel like I’m giving up. I’m so close to New Zealand and the end. Am I just being impulsive?” I asked Matt. He should know—at that point, he’d been a world traveler for nearly five years, and had completed an itinerary much like mine two times already.

  “Nah man,” Matt replied. “You have to follow your gut. Traveling is like a relationship. There are going to be ups and downs. The trick is to know when it is truly over. It sounds to me like it’s truly over for you right now.”

  “I know, but I’m torn. On the one hand, I love traveling. On the other, the thought of traveling longer makes me sick. I don’t care about the people I meet or the things I do. I don’t want to see museums or sit on the beach anymore.”

  “You can stay, but you’re going to be miserable. There’s nothing wrong with going home. Or just stay put in one place, recharge your batteries, and go back out again, if you still want to travel. But don’t rush yourself. What’s the point of traveling if you don’t want to do anything?”

  As burned out as I was, home seemed equally boring. I sipped my beer and pondered Matt’s advice.

  The next day, on impulse, I decided to listen to Matt. I booked a flight home. I didn’t check the price. I didn’t look for a way to hack it with miles. Matt was right. The world would always be ther
e. I was done. In two weeks, after eighteen months away, I’d be home.

  * * *

  I RETURNED TO THE United States in January 2008, for the first time with no plans of going back out, with no job, no money, and, worst of all, to living with my parents.

  At first, home was fun. It was exciting to be back. I went to my favorite restaurants, visited the bars I used to frequent, did some sightseeing around Boston, and held some “Welcome Home” parties to catch up with my friends.

  I saw my old home with new eyes. The mouthwatering taste of my favorite sushi restaurants, breakfast joints, and sub shops. The rhythm of conversation in my favorite bars. Even the clamor of the Big Dig, Boston’s massive highway project sounded like home. Reentering life in my old city felt natural, easy, seamless. The city was like comfort food for my bad breakup with travel. Plopping down in my old bed and wrapping myself in my blanket was exactly what I needed.

  But once the odd excitement of comfort wore off and I found myself with lots of time on my hands while my friends were at work, boredom set in again. I’d escaped Boston to escape the pattern and routine of my life there, and now I was falling back into it sooner than I had imagined. Home had remained frozen during my time away. My friends had the same jobs, were going to the same hangouts, and mostly doing the same things. The bars were full of the same kinds of people and playing the same kinds of music. The city had the same old stores and the same old construction work.

  What had excited me in the moment of return was now a reminder of all the reasons why I left in the first place and how I had changed on the road. Nostalgia had turned into monotony, which had turned into stasis, which had turned into atrophy. All in the matter of a few weeks.

  There’s a post-trip depression that happens when you return home. A jarring sense of whiplash as you get pulled back into your old life. As you leave for your trip, you’re full of excitement, wonder, and zest. You’re going to conquer the world. Soon, you’re moving a thousand miles a minute as you explore the world, taking in every activity you come across. That momentum continues when you first get home and then all of a sudden, bam! The music abruptly stops.