3 years ago today I left home with only a backpack and my then virgin passport, and set out to see the world.

Over 1,000 days and 35 countries later, I write to you from the back of a train car on a transcontinental journey across the beautiful country of New Zealand.

I’ve walked through humble villages, over magnificent mountains, through bustling metropolises and along dusty country roads. I’ve seen poverty beyond (my) imagination, beauty beyond measure, resolve beyond the conceivable and hope beyond the possible.

I’ve swam with sharks and manta rays in Mozambique, fired a machine gun in Vietnam, played a 19th Century British soldier in Bollywood, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with 10 Tanzanian street kids and eaten things I never thought one should eat. I’ve shared beers with nomadic Tibetan herders, drank gluwein with German engineers, sipped vodka with Kazakh grandmas and cooked apple pie on Armenian national television. I learned to surf in Indonesia, stepped off the world’s highest bungee jump in South Africa, dipped my feet in the Persian Gulf, slept in a capsule hotel in Tokyo, and been covered from head to toe in holy Hindu colors in Rajasthan (see photo). I’ve listened to Peruvian folk music in Armenia, American Blues in Hong Kong and Caribbean steel drums in Switzerland. I’ve tried to live the life of a maize farmer in Zambia, a fisherman in China and a cowboy in the Australian Outback. I’ve given out micro-loans in Asia, Polio vaccines in India and high-fives on the makeshift soccer pitches of Africa.

I’ve been exposed to our planet’s realities, humbled by the challenges these realities create and constantly inspired by the resilience of those trying to overcome them.

Since my last update, from on the job at the Balladonia Roadhouse in the remote Australian Outback, I’ve hitchhiked out of there in the cab of an express mail truck, and after a long flight to Bangkok, was greeted warmly by anti-government protesters who proceeded to take over the country’s two major airports, effectively shutting down international travel in and out of Thailand.

Had you been watching the world’s media accounts of the situation, you would likely have assumed the country was headed for total anarchy and certain collapse. Had you been with me, you would have seen first hand that the world’s media has a tendency to exaggerate and most Thais went on about their lives as they do on any given day. TV news does funny things to our perceptions of reality sometimes.

After befriending a local family that invited me to stay in their home (thanks Joe and family), I took lessons in “Ka Su Luk” (the ancient art of Thai fruit and vegetable carving) from two of the country’s last remaining master carvers (thanks Mr. Nirund and Pak) and tried my hand at working in a Thai dress factory, for 60 US cents an hour.

After the Thai airports reopened I headed into China to help throw a Christmas party for a group of kids that narrowly survived last year’s massive earthquake in Sichuan, then traveled across the country to postmodern Shanghai, up the eastern coast by train to the former German colony of Qingdao (now China’s beer capital) and then traveled 16 hours by ferry across the Yellow Sea to South Korea.

Upon arriving in Seoul, I arranged a two-day stay at a Buddhist temple to learn more about life as a monk. On the first day, I was shown meditation techniques, studied Buddhist sutras and woke up at 4 a.m. for pre-dawn chanting. A few hours before my scheduled departure on the second day, the head monk invited me into his home for tea.

“You have been traveling?” the bald headed man asked me through a monk who graciously translated.

Though the abbot spoke only Korean, which I could not understand, he radiated a deep wisdom.

“I have been traveling,” I replied, telling him briefly of my journey.

“What have you learned?” he asked.

I shared a few of my thoughts.

He nodded, took a sip of his tea and said, “Your travels are like that of the Buddha, who left his life as a great prince and traveled the world in search of enlightenment.”

I listened.

“The lessons you have learned,” continued the monk, in evenly paced Korean, “are the same that The Buddha learned.”

He then carefully dissected the lessons I had shared and translated them into the teachings of the Buddha.

He concluded by refilling my cup of tea and with a short genuflect of his wrist said, “I invite you to stay at our temple to rest as long as you wish and meditate on this.”

I decided this was an offer that I could not refuse.

So I spent the following week taking meditation tips from monks and eating delicious Korean food prepared by the mothers who ran the temple’s kitchen. While very little English was spoken, talking was limited so the awkwardness was quickly overcome with warm smiles, steaming cups of tea and quiet walks through the snow covered farm fields that surrounded the temple.

Departing on Day 10 with a new found appreciation for Buddhist teaching and karmic law, I was reminded, in a flurry of deep bows and warm hugs, of leaving my grandmother’s house after a big family dinner. The temple experience, like that of most family gatherings, served to remind me that despite the individual lives we live day-to-day, we share an intertwined past often determined by blood, by country, by religion or by circumstance, and it is this past that ensures an interdependent future.

While I don’t claim enlightenment, nor will I ever claim to be anything close to a philosopher, I do know this: After three years of near continuous travel, across five continents through thirty-five countries, I have come to realize that despite my initial belief that I had little in common with an Aussie truck driver, a Thai seamstress, a Chinese doctor or a Korean monk, we share much more of an intertwined past than we often realize and we most certainly share (whether we like it or not) a very, very interdependent future.

I sincerely appreciate all the emails, messages, and website comments from you all over the past three years. I hope this email finds you doing well. I encourage you to continue to keep up on me here on travelogue (and I encourage you to share my website with your friends who you think may find it of interest). In the past few months I’ve added a few notable, new features including a Twitter feed and Photo-A-Dayish feature.

In the coming months I’ll be sharing stories, photos and videos from Kazakhstan, Armenia, The Middle East, Europe and Africa, so stay tuned. I recently posted a story of my epic overland journey from Kathmandu, Nepal to New Delhi, India on a bus with 32 Nepalese men and a monk, which—-if you can only read one of my stories this year—is probably the story that best captures what it’s like to travel solo and independently around-the-world. Despite its length (divided into 4 digestible single serving posts), I hope you find it worth the read (Read “Taken For A Ride“).

Stay tuned here at www.noboundaries.org all this week for special posts looking back at the last 3-years of my trip around the world.

I plan to be traveling around New Zealand for the next month and some and then head into The South Pacific for a little island-hopping.

I am happy, healthy and content in this journey that has taken me far beyond all hopes I had for this adventure, a testament, I believe, to the power of believing in your dreams.

Thank you for all the support from home and a special thanks to all those who I’ve met along the way that have welcomed me so warmly into your countries, families, homes and lives. You’ve made it an experience of a lifetime.

Until next time my friends, I wish you all the best.

Thanks for coming along,

Andy
Dunedin, New Zealand