Aquest breu escrit és un homenatge a totes les mares i a tots els pares dels viatgers que voltem pel món.
Category Archives: Reflections
The Weight of Water
“I get knocked down, but I get up again.
You’re never going to keep me down.”
Ugh! I reach into the daypack draped across my chest, and rummage around for my MP3 player. It has slipped somewhere between one of my water bottles and the ripped baggie with toilet paper, hand sanitizer and sunscreen. I fumble over the fast-forward button and skip through a half dozen songs.
Welcome! Come in! Tea?
“Choi? Chay?”
These Tajik and Russian words will long echo in our ears and our hearts. They are more than an invitation for tea. They are a way into people’s homes and lives. They are reflections of a kind of hospitality people in today’s busy world don’t seem to have time for any more. These words have come to mean “Tajikistan” to us.
Lost in the Long Stretches
We trudge forward. Hours drag on.
Each step brings us to another curve leading to a long stretch of alpine nothingness. It’s just us alone in the world, heads down and walking different paces alongside the Panj River that sometimes meanders a few meters below or rages through narrow gorges.
There’s comfort in solitude. There’s unity between the human spirit and the natural world. There’s also a simultaneous sense of bigness and smallness, being a speck in the shadow of mountainous greatness while having a heart large enough to notice the smallest rock sparkling in the sunshine.
It’s easy to get lost in these long stretches in between Pamir towns. The monotony invites a meditative calm, a peace that comes with moving at about three kilometers an hour. It often, too, stirs restlessness and a string of unconnected thoughts anxious for answers or impatience from feeling like we are going nowhere fast.
Walking the Wakhan Valley
We round a bend on the bumpy road, and I am immediately spellbound. I want to ask the driver to stop the car so I can fall to my knees and bow in honor the beauty before me. My jaw keeps slipping towards my chest with each rock we roll over. My eyes tear up.
“My god. It’s beautiful.” I whisper over the lump in my throat. I can’t make my mouth spit out the words, “Stop, please, stop. We must see this greatness at a standstill.”
I have never before truly understood what compels climbers to summit the world’s biggest mountains, but now I catch a glimmer into their psyche. Staring at the Hindu Kush from the road snaking through Tajikistan’s southern corner, all I want to do is touch these faraway jagged, snowy peaks. Touching them with my eyes is not enough. I want to touch them with my soul.
Random Ramblings from Kyrgyzstan
This a different kind of post from me. It’s a slightly edited email note I recently wrote to a group of friends in San Francisco asking about our walk. After re-reading it, I decided it could also work here. It’s very much what’s on my mind these days.
Curiositats de… Birmània
Aquestes son algunes de les curiositats que ens agradaria comentar:
Curiosities From…Burma
What makes travel fun is noticing the quirky things that are unique or special to a place. Walking makes those things appear in slow motion and gives us more time to mull them over.
Here are a few of the curiosities we spotted in Burma, a series we started in Thailand and hope to continue with each country we pass through. Lluís and I often spot different things, so read/translate his list to chuckle twice as much (His post about Burma will be posted the same day as this one, and here is take on Thailand).
La continuïtat de la ruta
De la mateixa manera que ens agradaria poder fer la nostra ruta de manera que no tinguem ‘forats al nostre formatge’, és a dir, caminant tots els quilòmetres que ens trobem entre Bangkok i Barcelona, també ens agradaria fer-la de manera continuada i en ordre. És a dir, primer Tailàndia, després Birmània, després Bangladesh, després l’Índia… però això no serà així.
Les benzineres a Birmània
Fa unes setmanes ens vàrem referir a les parades d’autobús a Tailàndia com els meus particulars temples tailandesos. Ara volem honorar les benzineres birmanes i totes les persones que hi treballen.