Name: Shikha Khanna

Hometown: New Delhi, India

Where she traveled: She’s traveled across India with camera in hand.

Where our paths last crossed: New Delhi, India

In past ‘Guest Traveler’ posts we’ve featured the writings of many (one of my favorite from Chen Luan in Shanghai), the videos of Davey Dance and the music of road warrior David Strackany (aka Paleo), now I’d like to share with you some guest travel photography from India.

Shikha and I met through a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and our mutual interests in photography and creativity helped forge a quick friendship.

Below is a series of some of her amazing photos of street kids in India.

The term ’street kid’ often draws up images of ragged clothes, dirty faces and outstretched palms, and when traveling (or living) in India, most people develop an indifference as a way to cope with the sheer numbers of such children on the street—after a while, the kids become invisible to most people.

Shikha’s photographs make these kids visible again, and remind me (and hopefully all of us) that behind the sooty hands and gnarly hair is infact a genuine child, smiling, happy and enraptured at times by the simplest of things.

I hope you find her photographs as inspiring and uplifting as I do.

All photography above our copyright Shikha Khanna and should not be reprinted,
reposted or used without the express written consent of the author. www.shikhakhanna.com

• Leave a comment on this post in the box below.
• Shikha can be reach through her website at www.shikhakhanna.com where you can also find more of her photographs.
• Suggest some to be featured as a future NoBoundaries.org “Guest Traveler” by contacting us.
• Read entries from some of the other “Guest Travelers” featured on NoBoundaries.org:
  • 陈峦 – Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • Richard Bitbaba, Iranian-born adventure traveler, takes on Mt Everest.
  • Davey Dance, a travel video series I guarantee will help you lose an hour of your day.

Hometown: Tehran, Iran now lives in San Francisco, California

Where he traveled: Rishard is a well traveled guy. In the summer of 2006 he took a few months off from his job as an engineer and traveled solo through Japan, China, Nepal, India and SE Asia. (The photo to the left is of Rishard on Mt. Fuji, note the shape of the mountains shadow.)

Where our paths last crossed: Lhasa, Tibet

Rishard and I met only briefly but his enthusiasm for life and his travel stories make him a hard guy to forget. I replied to a note he had left on a travel board when I was trying to arrange a way out of Tibet (and onward to Nepal) and though are travel plans didn’t match up, we had a fine Tibetan dinner together with a group of travelers in Lhasa.

Rishard was born in Iran and grew up in there and in the US, he now works as a engineer in San Francisco. His summer trip was full of wild stories from finding himself stuck halfway up Mt. Fuji with no money and no place to stay, to being mistakenly arrested in Beijing (where he ended up getting a free police escort from the non-English speaking, embarrassed police officer onward to his intended destination), to being robbed of everything he had (passport, camera, photos, etc.) in Thailand. I admire Rishard for his sense of adventure, his energy and his desire to live life out loud.

Below is an excerpt from an email he wrote home right after his trek to Mt. Everest, and since I didn’t make it there during my time in Tibet, this is the closest you’ll get to a Mt. Everest story at noboundaries.org.

As you read, I hope you get a sense of the energy Rishard brings to his life and his travels.

We got to the Everst base camp (18,500 feet above sea level) and hiked two hours to the furthest point that people are allowed to go. With a couple of short cuts, a coffee break on tops of some rocks (made with our portable stove), we made it to what was supposed to be the final viewpoint, though once there we felt a bit unimpressed. So we decide to sneak by the guards and head towards camp 1 of Everest (20,100 feet ASL) though we only got about an hour further and found the most amazing view I have ever seen (though we had to take 4-5 deep breaths with each step to get there): a pond with turquoise water and a perfectly CLEAR view of Mt. Everest. This was going to be our rest area for the day.

By this time it was noon and the sun was so strong that we could feel our skin burning though our clothes. What to do? Well obviously, strip down and jump in the water (note the picture you see below is prior to all the clothes coming off). After two hours of bathing in the sun (we had to put our clothes back on after thirty minutes since the sun was burning us up), we decided to walk back since we saw clouds headed towards us. Within a half hour we were freezing again and all our clothes, jackets, and gloves were back on. All we could say to each other, between long deep breaths, was “What a perfect day, WOW, what a perfect day.”

Manifestation, things happen for a reason, how simple and pure we were at the age of 3, what is love and how much of it do we give on a daily basis, who are we and what is our mission in life, how has traveling changed us and what can we do to have more of our friends get the experience of traveling, and where have we been and what’s next—are just some of the conversations in our Jeep ride across Tibet to Everest and finally to Nepal, which is where I am now.

All I can say, is that you need to jump on making plans to get out here as soon as possible. The humans are changing the face of the earth, and it’s not all in a good way. Come and see this world in its raw stages before hotels and resorts are set up, and humans, with no respect for the land, just leave their garbage on the face of our mother earth. My pictures may tell you a story, and some of my words may resonate with you in one way or another, but no words or pictures can simulate the experience of sitting in front of the highest point in the world. You just can’t get enough of it. The energy that you feel is life changing. The view will burn in the back of your eyes, where you can see it again each time you think of it, and the thought of it will place you back in that spot where you sat and gazed at pure beauty and the power of the world, and you become balanced and energized.

I am now in Kathmandu, Nepal, as I got here last night. I met a guy in a bar that was going river rafting and invited me to go (the river is at its biggest and best now, as the rain season is near its end. I say near its end because we got rained on all day today). So we river rafted all day, the bus ride took 7 hours (though it should have been 3), and we are planning another 3 day rafting trip next (Nepal is one of the best places in the world for white water rafting),before I am to jump into the jungle and sleep in tents so I can maybe spot a tiger (and hope fully not be his or a Rhino’s meal).

I’ll be back on email in a week, until then….

Plan your next trip. Where do you want to go? What is your dream vacation? Just think about what place you want to go. Don’t think if you can do it or not, just write down where, and how many days, and what you want to do there. What is your dream vacation. It’s not hard to do it. So many people I meet are living their second or third dream vacations. I want my friends to live that out.

Talk to you when I’m done and in India. Again, thanks for your emails and wishes. I have the same for you all.

-Rishard

• Leave a comment on Rishard’s story in the box below.
• Suggest yourself to be featured as a future noboundaries.org “Guest Traveler” by contacting us.
• Read entries from other “Guest Travelers” featured on noboundaries.org:
  • 陈峦 – Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • Davey Dance, a travel video series I guarantee will help you lose an hour of your day.
  • Brian Triplett and Denny Clark walk across America, and Brian on life in Africa on his 8 months trip around-the-world.

Well, after circling the globe it seems he didn’t shake the travel bug just yet, so he’s recruited a friend and set out on an equally adventurous endeavor: to walk across The United States of America.

During his around-the-world trip, we caught up with him more than halfway through the journey, but this time you can join in just as the adventure is beginning. Brian and his college buddy Denny Clark set out today on what hopes to be a three month walk across the country. Brian is a fantastic writer and has a great way of getting himself into interesting situations, so I suggest you follow along and lend them your couch when they come through your town.

You can follow along with their adventures on their website No Stranger Land.

Name: Brian Triplett(right) and Denny Clark(left)

Hometown: Davenport, Iowa (USA) and Ankeny, Iowa (USA) respectively.

Where and how they’ll be traveling: In their own words: “We are spending the summer of 2008 hiking coast-to-coast across the United States, performing random acts of kindness for the new friends we meet along the way. Our adventure begins on the Atlantic coast of Maine on May 20, and we hope to conclude our trip on the Pacific coast of California three months later. We will live minimally by traveling with our supplies on our back, camping, and cooking our own food. We will exist without luxuries, never paying or asking for accommodations or transportation. That said, we’re open to any good fortune that may come our way. In an adventurous, extreme approach, this is a study of how Americans interact with one another in today’s society.

Trip duration: Three months

Where our paths last crossed: Mickey’s Pub, Iowa City (USA).

• Leave a comment about this post below.
• Read our Guest Traveler post on Brian from last July and a bit about his time in Africa.
• Visit Brian’s blog on his trip around-the-world: Exploring The Unknown
• Read a bit about Brian and Denny’s walk in an article from The Cedar Rapids Gazette.
• Suggest yourself to be featured as a future noboundaries.org “Guest Traveler” by contacting us.
• Read entries from other “Guest Travelers” featured on noboundaries.org:
  • 陈峦 – Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • Richard Bitbaba, Iranian-born adventure traveler, takes on Mt Everest.
  • Davey Dance, a travel video series I guarantee will help you lose an hour of your day.

Name: 陈峦 Helen Chen Luan

Hometown: Luoyang, China (洛阳). She currently lives in Shanghai

Where she traveled: Yunnan Province of China

Where our paths last crossed: Hong Kong

Helen is a friend of mine from graduate school and she now lives in Shanghai. In a noboundaries.org exclusive, she shares a story from her visit to Lugu Lake in central China. I like this story a lot because it shows the universality of travel and the arbitrary distinction we often make between ‘us’ and ‘them.’

The Happiness of Fish

by 陈峦

This photo was taken by my friend Yijun.

It might not be the best picture taken during our ten day trip to Yunan, but it is my favorite because it contains both the reasons why I like the place and why I miss it.

This place is Lugu Lake on the border of the Szechuan and Yunnan Provinces in China, 184 kilometers northeast of the city of Lijiang, The people that live there are called the Mosuo People.

I like the lake and its blue skies, white clouds, fresh air, quiet mountains and peaceful water. The only word you hear by the lake is “beautiful,” and often in many different languages.

The above photo is a full shot of the lake, or the fullest my camera could take from this mountaintop. The water in the lake looks like paint.

After a thirty-minute car ride we got to the side of the lake, as seen in my photo below.

Thirteen of us took two canoes and headed for the island in the center of the photo.

As soon as we left the shore I mentioned I instead wanted to swim to the island. (Actually, I did not mean it, but the lake was so attractive that I just could not suppress the idea of jumping into it.)

Immediately I was told by our boat boy “You cannot swim in it.”

“Why not?” I questioned, “I saw people swimming in it just now.”

“They are our people, not you tourists,” he said, making a clear line between them and us.

“What’s the difference?” I questioned. “Is it because the lake is yours?”

“It might be dangerous. You are on my boat, I should be responsible for your safety,” he said.

“But, what if I am a good swimmer and I have life insurance?” I began to talk about things in theory.

“No,” he said.

I knew that would be his answer.

“Would you like to sing us a song please?” someone suggested.

“I don’t know how to sing,” the boat boy replied unenthusiastically.

“That’s impossible,” I said, “Mosuo people are known as born singers,” repeating what I had read in a guidebook.

“I am an exception,” he said shyly.

After a bit of paddling our group settled down—no more requests to jump into the lake, no more conversations about singing and by then, all our cameras were tucked back into their cases.

“Where are you from?” the boat boy opened the conversation with me, I guess because I was the loudest of the group.

“Where do you think I come from?” I asked sitting in the very front of the canoe behind the boy.

“I don’t know. But you are not from Shanghai.”

Because I am from Shanghai, his response surprised me a bit (Just a few days earlier, a group of Tibetan monks told me they knew I was from Shanghai because I had an accent…which can not possibly be true, because no one speaks more standard Mandarin than I do =).

“Why do you think I am not from Shanghai?” I asked.

“Because I have met people from there,” he explained.

“But you’ve met people from other place too,” I retorted. “Why am I not Shanghainese?”

“Because you are different. I have been rowing here for three years. I know people, ” he said with unwavering certainty.

“So you are saying I am different from Shanghai people in a bad way or a good way?” I asked sensing he’d say the latter. (I worked in customer service at the Shanghai airport for four years. I know people too.)

“People from big cities are not so good,” he answered.

“You mean I am a good person,” I smiled, “Thank you.”

“What about foreigners,” I asked, “Are you able to make fast judgments about them too?”

“I don’t know. I don’t talk to foreigners. I don’t speak their language,” he said quite honestly.

“Ok,” I said, “but you are only half right about me. I have lived in Shanghai for four years.”

“…and I think there are good people from every place,” I added.

“Whatever,” he said back.

(In this photo, Michelle from South Africa. Does the water look like silk?)

“You do not like outsiders very much, do you?” I said, sensing this from the way he spoke to us.

“You outsiders do not know what life is,” he said, shocking me a bit with his directness and insight.

“Everything you care about is money. You just come here to see what you don’t have in your place,” he paused a second.

“And we want to go outside to see high buildings and modern cities which we don’t have,” he added, I believe, only to soften the bluntness of his earlier comment by assuring me we had things that they did not.

The difference I realize, is that they could have high buildings and live “modern” lives, if not right now, at least some day in the future; although we could never have their beautiful lake and natural scenery. Everyone seems to be so excited about growth and modernization in China, but I wonder if the “modern” China we are building will still have room for these emerald green mountains, clear blue lakes and warm open hearts?

“Have you been to the cities?” one girl from our group asked.

“No, never,” the boat boy said.

“Do you want to go out there to have a look?” the girl followed up.

The boat boy paused a moment, “Umm, not sure, maybe, maybe not,” he said.

“Some friends of mine went out there and changed a lot,” he paused to think again.

“I liked them much more the way they used to be,” he concluded.

“If there were no restrictions, what are three places you’d most like to go?” the six girls in our boat asked the boat boy.

“I think I do not want to go outside,” he replied.

“Why, you just have said people like to see fresh things?” one of us replied.

“Maybe to see fresh things…but if I wanted to see high buildings, we have TV,” he retorted, “besides, we often get sick when we leave our place.”

He continued, “Some of you outsiders are arrogant and ask if we have electricity, running water and things like that. And outsiders are surprised that we have TV sets.”

I realized that these questions, asked in the wrong tone, could seem quite rude, but most people from China’s big cities have the impression that people in China’s interior live a hard life. (Though my Dad once told me when I was a little girl that people who live near the water would always live a good life since there are fishes in lakes and rivers that connect to the outside.)

“How old are you?” a girl asked the boat boy.

“Age is a secret for Muosou guys,” he said.

“Oh, have you done a walking marriage?” I suddenly remembered, referring to a common, yet often misunderstood Muosou tradition, where by a man will sneak to see a woman at her home at night and return to his own family’s home in the morning. Maybe, I thought, we could deduce his age from that?

“You don’t have any chance anyway,” he turned around and said to me. (I had the sudden urge to again jump into the lake—but this time it was out of sheer embarrassment.)

I told him my age and for that I learned his 20th birthday was next month.

“Do you think we are talkative?” I asked, afraid of saying too much that would make his already scarred image of outsiders even worse.

“Feel free to talk. You people are not those I hate. I have my little tricks to deal with those people,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I tell them I do not speak Mandarin and pretend I have no idea what they’re talking about. That shuts then up,” he said dryly.

“That’s smart.” I thought.

“Do you mind that more and more outsiders are coming to your lake and are changing your previously quiet life?” I asked.

“We could not prevent you coming,” he responded. “People like to see beautiful scenes. And the lake is not ours. It belongs to nature. We just happened to live beside it.”

“He is a philosopher!” I thought smiling.

“Are you enjoying your life now?” I asked.

“Yes, very much,” he answered quickly.

“What’s the most enjoyable thing,” I questioned.

“Drinking, rowing boats, chatting with friends and swimming in the lake where I feel I am like a fish, happy and free,” he replied.

I smiled, I think we all agreed with him.

People are so alike sometimes.

On the way back from the island, he actually sang a song for us–it was good. He told us more about his people and culture: an optimistic people, open hearted and longing for freedom. I like them.

When it was time to say goodbye, the boat boy let me take a picture of him and smiled.

He joked, “You, hurry up! Don’t get in the way of me making money. ”

And it was then that he told me his name: Tsili.

I am happy, happy like a fish too.

If any of you go to Lugu Lake and happen to see Tsili, please tell him I said hello.

This photo was taken by my friend Yijun. It might not be the best picture taken during our ten day trip to Yunnan, but it is my favorite because it contains both the reasons why I like the place and why I miss it.

• Leave a comment about Helen’s story in the comment box below.
• Suggest yourself or someone else for a future “Guest Traveler” post by contacting noboundaries.org.
• Read entries from past “Guest Travelers” featured on noboundaries.org:
  • Brian Triplett on life in Africa on his 8 months trip around-the-world.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central and South America for a year.
  • David Strackany writing 365 songs in 365 days, while living in his car and touring The United States.

Name: Brian Triplett

Hometown: Davenport, Iowa (USA)

Where he is traveling: Brian left home Dec 30, 2006 and since then has been in 73 cities. He left with some savings and little more than a desire to see the world. Without a specific plan or itinerary, he has ventured across The United States [where he drove a random German guy---whom he met in bar in New York City--to help fulfill the man's dream of seeing the Grand Canyon, only to have their car die a few miles outside of Las Vegas] to The Sundance Film Festival to a “honeymoon” in Fiji with a blond haired girl he randomly met in an airport to riding motorcycles through Thailand’s biggest waterfight to skydiving in New Zealand to camping on Fraiser Island to crepe eating in Greece to pub hopping in Ireland and now (as of this week) he has just arrive in Africa.

Trip duration: He has been on the road for over six months now….

Where our paths last crossed: Mickey’s Pub, Iowa City (USA).

Brian is a friend from college who is doing exactly the same thing as I—backpacking around the world. The difference between Brian and I (other than the fact that he’s an award-winning journalist and I’m not) is that Brian isn’t an obsessive planner. So, he arrives in each new country with no hotel reservation and often times no money outside of his lone ATM card. This has (and will continue) to lead him on some great adventures.

This particular bus I estimated had a capacity of 30 people. There were already at least twice that crammed into any place physically possible to store a body. I squeezed my way into an empty seat – a rarity – since someone was exiting just as I passed by. Raphael sat in the aisle across from me, no more than three feet away, yet I could not see him through the sea of Tanzanians. This is how buses work here.

A man in his 50s stood in the aisle right beside me. The way his body was positioned meant that his manhood rubbed against my left shoulder throughout the journey. Over every bump, and there are plenty, the rub was more like a thrust. I was somewhere between vomiting and laughing. When a seat opened up next to me, my close friend sat down. He was very tired today. I know this because instead of rubbing his man parts against me, he was now sleeping on my shoulder.

The man to my right handed me an English newspaper, a very nice gesture. I was unable to read anything but the front page and the left column of all the others since I did not have the proper space to unfold the paper. I was holding my left leg up with my left hand since it had fallen asleep without the proper space to expand. The man who handed me the paper laughed at my situation.

“This is Africa,” he said.

When it was time to exit, which seemed to take longer than it probably did in reality, we headed to an Internet cafe. No connection today. We headed to another. No connection. We then decided to accomplish our other mission for taking a pair of buses 45 minutes into town. I found an ATM. Out of service. We found another.
A line of 20 people. I said I would use it another day. So here I am, typing from the “third time’s a charm” Internet cafe in Dar es Salaam. Of course, the first computer I used didn’t work, so I had to swtich seats. I’ve never felt such a mixture of frustration and sympathy.

***

I’m short on time again. This will be a common theme it appears throughout my time in Africa. I hope you do not lose patience with me. Hopefully I will be able to provide enough anecdotes (not enough time to look up the proper spelling on that one) to keep you interested until the final project — the book — is released. Also, posting pictures is not possible, so please look for a slideshow from my time in Africa in early August.

***

In my previous life, Sundays meant laying on the couch watching football. In Pugu — a village outside of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania — Sundays mean time for prayer and worship. Lots of it.

I went to prayer service in the morning yesterday, and then again in the evening, doubling the number of times I’ve attended church in 2007. Do you ever get the feeling people are specifically watching your every move even though they probably are thinking about what to have for dinner that night? Well this happened to me yesterday during prayer and worship service, although the only difference is I KNOW that everyone was specifically watching my every move. I was the only white man in the open-air church, and likely the only white man for miles around the church. So when I was asked to come to the front and say something into the microphone, people didn’t have to turn their attention toward me. It was already on me.

More on this later.

In the name of culture, I thought “What the hell” and participated in the rituals as much as I could, despite not understanding the Swahili language. I danced around the church with everyone (they don’t celebrate Jesus’ name like this in Iowa) and since I was a bit timid, my white-man dancing curse was worse than ever. I received many thumbs-up and smiles. Later on during the service, I was certain a fight had broken out. After chairs were cleared out of the way, I saw a girl having a seisure on the ground and people all around her screaming and pointing. Emmanuel, a kid my age from Zambia who I have become friends with, calmly said, “She has demons,” as if it was no big deal.

Later that evening, my time came. I knew it would come, I just didn’t know when. I gathered with the family I am staying with in the village in Pugu for dinner. Since there is no electricity in the house, we dine by lantern, which creates a beautiful atmosphere of silhouttes (also no clue how to spell this) around the room. It’s a shadow puppet’s playground.

After almost one week of meals with the family, it happened.

“Brian, would you please say grace?”

My time is ticking at the Internet cafe. All I have time for is to tell you the grace ended in contagious laughter throughout the dinner. Lines from my prayer are now repeated like a famous speech.

This is Africa.

Name: Davey “Dance” Fishel

Hometown: New York City, NY USA

Where he is traveling: Europe

Davey Dance will make you smile. He is a friend of mine from college. He is traveling in Europe, is a film director, writer and editor, and he just moved out of Paris headed to an editing job in Germany. In the meantime, he’s made a really funny set of videos that involve him, an iPod, a famous landmark and an improvised dance route to a hit pop song.

From locations around Spain, France, Italy, and elsewhere Davey dances to the tunes of Tom Waits, The Postal Service, The Beatles, and even Vanilla Ice.

The results are hilarious, and you can see them all here. Below I tried to choose my favorite, but it was a tough call so I chose three: #1 (in Paris) is my selection for the the “best dance moves” category, #2 (at The Vatican) wins in the “best dance in a crowd” category, and #3 (in Barcelona) wins in the “best background extras.” Watch all the videos yourself, and comment on your favorite in the comments section of this travelogue.

Keep dancing Davey, and maybe I’ll have to submit my own dance video to your collection.

(Careful good readers, don’t click the links unless you’re ready to lose an hour of your day….)

Davey Dance Blog -6- PARIS – Katerine – “Apres Moi”

Davey Dance Blog -1- VATICAN – Tom Waits – “Chocolate Jesus”

What you can do now:

• Leave a comment on this post below.
• Suggest yourself to be featured as a future noboundaries.org “Guest Traveler” by contacting us.
• Read entries from other “Guest Travelers” featured on noboundaries.org:
  • 陈峦 – Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • Richard Bitbaba, Iranian-born adventure traveler, takes on Mt Everest.
  • Davey Dance, a travel video series I guarantee will help you lose an hour of your day.

Name: Nicole Bruskewitz

Hometown: Elgin, Illinois, USA

Where she is traveling: After studying for a semester in Oaxaca,Mexico, she has been meandering with a backpack gradually southward, she was last spotted in Bolivia, but even at the speed of the internet she is probably somewhere else by now.

Trip duration: Over a year and a half since she left home in Illinois.

Where our paths crossed: Iowa City, Iowa USA before she departed for Mexico in Jan 2006.

* * * *

I recently received an email updated she sent to her friends and family. She writes…

“In the Marseilles tarot deck the Fool is the archetypal wanderer, one foot off the cliff, eyes to the sky, knapsack in one hand.

It has been a long time since we spoke. Foolish, I know. But so I have been lately…

One of my feet has just touched Bolivian soil, the same that composes the cliff sides stacked with houses in the chilly heights of La Paz. I am here to see my best friend, the partner of youthful follies. Soon to be the accomplice in more. My other foot hangs off the edge of this continent, toes still reaching for the heat of central American terrain.

Four months I lived on the beach in Guatemala, volunteered in a conservation project hoping to save the sea turtles, or that small corner of the world. I lived with Brits and Spaniards. We lived amongst Guatemalan fisher folk, wood storks, sand fleas. Together we watched our plywood toilet blow over with the fierce north wind, the birth of endangered sea creatures, lightning on the sea. We roasted a thanksgiving chicken on a spit in our sand-floor living room, shared a new years bonfire, toasted mallows (a novelty there) with the children of the town. From the fishermen I learned to make nets, got tangled up with them, their stories. The one about the plane crash and the cocaine; the one about the dwarf who braided horses’ manes on “the little island of the dead” in the estuary; the one about the brotherfathercousinson gone north to work, the family divided.

The fool has just set off on his inner journey. He is uninhibited, unbothered by the opposing forces represented in the world and within him: the desire to be still, to move; to be loved, to be alone: to speak, to be silent; to make others happy and to please only himself.

My father came, shared a month of my reality. Together we jumped off a waterfall, went to a trance party, tipped a canoe, smoked cigars, climbed a volcano, befriended a dutch backpacker, got robbed on a school bus. We moved with the freedom I had enjoyed during my travels alone. This surprised me. I am in awe and admiration of him, of us, still.

He left and I retreated. For one month I lived on the shores of the magical Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. I bathed nude every morning in the water, the color of jade, the texture of the wind. There, where ex-pats have left 9-5 behind and devoted their lives to the arts of the New Age: yoga, reiki, meditation, massage, kinesology, astrology, holistic house painting, aura-friendly internet shop management, and the production of granola with ovens powered solely by energy channeled from The All– I commemorated the one year anniversary of my wanderings.

I realized it had been a year with my big blue pack, the same sandals, hundreds of found fruits and señora-sold vegetables, hundreds of buses and their strangers turned friends, hundreds of moments of loneliness and more than their sum of moments of passion for Now, the sight of my mind out the window with the those mountains, that sea, the sunset that filled me so full with the Beautiful, the Alive, the Wanderlust. When that moment of a year gone came I was finishing a month long retreat of yoga, meditation and metaphysics courses at Las Piramides spiritual center on the magical lake. After three weeks of stretching and breathing and deliberating on the possible secrets held in other dimensions–or maybe after a year of it–I went into a five day retreat of silence and fasting. The whole experience brought me to a little spirituality, a lot of gratitude. Instead of passing my anniversary it sort of passed me in the midst of thoughts of where I had come from, to whom I was grateful for all my good fortune, my good travels. All alone, meditating on the shores of that marvelous lake about the pacific shore, the sierra madre, the Mayan temple, the coffee plantations and corn fields—those places far from home, far from loving company—I thanked for good world, great home.

As a card, the Fool ultimately stands for a new start. When it turns up the Querent might be about to make a move, not just to a new home, but new job, new life. There’s more than just change, renewal, and a brand new beginning in the Fool, there’s also movement, a fresh, exciting new time.

For lack of another destination, curiosity, the habit of movement, maybe the same force that started this post graduate rambling…I’m still not sure…I hopped a bus for Nicaragua. I traveled with a Catalan pedagogue who dreams of a school without walls. We inspired each other. We slept for free on ferry decks, my tent, the cots of a former naturalistic clinic in the military barrio of Mangua. We ate gallo pinto, drank Flor de Caña rum, talked about autonomous governments and the Zapatistas in Mexico–the first theme that united us in our talks six months earlier when we met in the Yucatan before this reunion. . We were always talkin ’bout revolution (Nicaragua’s and ours). When he went back to Spain I was left to the libraries, beaches, the benches of the earthquake-fissured, solitary ” old Managua” with my Nica poetry books and the memory of our conversations. I stayed in Nicaragua for a month and a half exploring “social movements,” more NGOs, thinking of where I might help save the world, asking if it even need it. In the end I did a project taking pictures of school children, interviewing rural teachers for an article about a cultural exchange/environmental ed program on migratory birds that the island does with classes in the states. To complete it I walked forty km around a volcano, accompanied mostly by chattering magpie jays and howler monkeys…at least until I reached the houses of perfectly generous strangers, went fishing with a family of 15, and ate the most delicious rice and beans of my life, and stayed the night.

Further south still, Panama City had a fascinating gradient. I walked from the district of polished baroque, governmental facades, to the crumbling remnants of the first Spanish buildings (Havana Vieja style). Amongst the smell of stinking fish, the Negroes in their street puestos were selling anything from super glue to bird cages. I ate a snow cone which cost me one “cuater”, chatted with some old toothless men selling toilets. My presence provoked a benign shouting match between these guys, and before I wet myself laughing at them, I had to move on to the sidewalk markets, the streets filled with garbage in some barrio they told me I should leave. I eventually made it along the malecon to chat with a young indigenous boy selling artesian to pay his way in school. We admired the modern perfection of sky scrapers on the other extreme of the city, its clean windows, new cars parked in front, air of prosperity. It could have been any big city skyline in the states –except that it was not.

It was Panama City, full of people of myriad origins, all of whom are latino at heart. It seemed an apt place to be ending my stint in Central America; the mixture of chaos and development surrounded by “calor humano” is what I have lived in this in the past year, what this chica form the cold north has come to love…The Fool is likely have no idea where they’re going or what they’re going to do. But that doesn’t matter. For the Fool, the most important thing is to just go out and enjoy the world. To see what there is to see and delight in all of it.”

—-In an email to family and friends written by Nicole Bruskewitz, April 2007.

Name: David Strackany (also known as: Paleo)

Hometown: Elgin, Illinois, USA

Where he traveled: Across the USA. 215 cities. 54,434 miles. Still on the road.

Trip duration: 365+ days

Paleo is a good friend from college, one of the brains behind Iowa City’s James Gang, and a musical prodigy–the man drips creativity. He writes, records, composes, and sings and has been doing it all on the road touring, living out of his car, on couches, in borrowed basements, coffee shops, back rooms, friend’s parents’ spare bedrooms and other places for the last year, where he has been writing a song-a-day for a year and posting them to his website. April 15, 2007 was his 365th day. Traveling is tough, as is writing, and recording a song-a-day makes it even tougher. The amazing thing is that most of Dave’s songs are impressively good and in most cases it’s not just him and a guitar, but a variety of instruments real and found, played and recorded in stairwells, bathrooms, back porches, churches and anywhere else he could find. To get a feel for his travels see the absolutely phenomenal photo travelogue by Cary Norton, who accompanied him for a few weeks. Cary’s photos capture a lot of the texture of America’s vast landscapes and provide a great glimpse not only into the Paleo’s DIY music world, but also an authentic photographic glimpse into the jagged edges and dog-eared corners of America’s grassroots independent music scene.

Where our paths crossed: Dave is a friend from college and our paths last crossed at a wedding of some friends in July 2006 in Iowa (right before I left the US) after he performed on The University of Iowa Pentacrest. (Day #105 in his journey)

Two of my favorite tracks from his song diary:

Second Sight written Jan 23, 2007 (Day 283) in Decatur, Illinois, USA (lyrics)

In The Morning Linda Dies written April 29, 2006 (Day 14) in Lutz, Florida, USA (lyrics)

• Paleo’s website and song diary (all 365 of his songs are available for free download)
• Paleo’s MySpace page and tour schedule
• A phenomenal photo travelogue of Paleo’s travels by Cary Norton
• Download a podcast interview with Paleo on USA Today’s Pop Candy on iTunes.
• NPR’s Morning Edition covers the story here. updated
• Suggest yourself to be featured as a future noboundaries.org “Guest Traveler” by contacting us.
• Read entries from other “Guest Travelers” featured on noboundaries.org:
  • 陈峦 – Chen Luan, a friend from Shanghai on her trip to Lugu Lake in Yunan, China.
  • Nicole Bruskewitz saving turtles and backpacking the back roads of Central
    and South America for a year.
  • Richard Bitbaba, Iranian-born adventure traveler, takes on Mt Everest.
  • Davey Dance, a travel video series I guarantee will help you lose an hour of your day.
  • Brian Triplett and Denny Clark walk across America, and Brian on life in Africa on his 8 months trip around-the-world.