Less and longer: a few words of wisdom on traveling right

So you’ve saved and budgeted for your trip and now it’s finally time to plan your itinerary. Six months of travel time stretches out before you like a magic carpet. So many opportunities to explore exotic locales! So much time to explore all those places on your bucket list!

Ahh, your bucket list… How many boxes will you be able to check? You have six months. Why not do the Inca Trail, explore Patagonia, go shark diving in South Africa, eat dumplings in China, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, go to a full moon party in Thailand and find yourself at an Indian ashram? Hell, you should probably throw in an Italian cooking class and a camel riding in Morocco for good measure. It all sounds great. Until, of course, you hit the brick wall of reality.

Inside a hellish bus for a heinous ride through Nepal

Travel can be hard, frustrating and draining. You start to think about that into your second day into a thirty-hour bus ride in Nepal where the space between the seats was apparently designed to be perfect for two-year-olds and there’s a box of meat rotting in the back. Or when you arrive in your fourth Tanzanian town and every single local is trying to cheat you for forty times the proper cost of accommodation. Or maybe when you get violently sick in the middle of the wilderness with no hospital (or road) for days. These are the times when you start to appreciate two magic words: less and longer.

Less really is more. Don’t stack your itinerary. It’s far better to spend two months than two weeks in any given country on your list. And in that country it’s far better to spend two weeks rather than two days in any given city or destination.

By doubling down on particular places you kill two birds with one stone. First, because you’re in one place for a long time you’ll find that perfect beach bungalow owned by the local mayor’s family and get invited to a massive wedding party where you make friends for life. If you were only there for two days you’d probably be at that guesthouse with decent but outdated reviews from Lonely Planet that now has a cockroach infestation.

Second, you minimize your exposure to the bane of all travelers: logistics. You don’t spend half of your time in country on a local bus. You don’t discover that your fourteenth taxi driver rifled through your bags. You don’t loose you luggage on an avoidable regional airline flight. You've taken six months off, use that time wisely: with less and longer you'll interact more with locals, enhance the quality of your experience and maintain very healthy levels of personal relaxation.

Basically, you’ve taken the work out of the travel. By staying longer in each place you actually get a feel for the local life there instead of blazing through in a series of photoflashes. As you get ready to plan your trip, doing a country a month would be a good rule of thumb. You may not check as many boxes but you’ll learn a lot more about yourself, a lot more about the country you’re visiting and a lot more about the true meaning of fun!


Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

Bus rides through mine fields

Enjoying coconuts on the train

We chugged out of Colombo on one of Sri Lanka's British colonial era trains. The track wound its way North through bright green rice paddies and coconut plantations. The leg space was generous as Asian transportation options go. We were serenaded by vocal toddlers and lulled into semi-consciousness by the potent nasal onslaught of cow shit and locomotive exhaust.

After a few hot, humid hours we arrived at the next destination of our sabbatical: the unpronounceable city of Anuradhapura. A tuk-tuk driver ferried us through the unremarkable town to our guest house for the night. The old couple who owned the place explained that the famous temple complex in the old town had extraordinarily high entry fees for foreign tourists (on the order of ~$30 per person vs. ~$1 per person for locals). Instead we elected to take his suggestion to support the local economy and hired the same tuk-tuk driver to smuggle us into the various sites. 

Drea experiments with surf yoga

Our valiant driver took us through the various secret routes to avoid the ever-watchful gaze of the tourist police and park attendants. Once inside we were blown away by the scale of the temple complex. Anuradhapura is one of the less-talked-about stops on Sri Lanka's cultural tourism circuit but the Buddhist stupas, statues and carvings there rival anything in Asia. Make sure to check it out if you get the chance to visit. 

The next morning we caught a bus to the Northern tip of Sri Lanka, a city called Jaffna. Jaffna was the center of the long-running civil war and the home base of the Tamil Tigers. 

The war ended violently a few years ago in the midst of some complex geopolitical posturing. After quietly supporting the Sri Lankan government for years, the US withdrew its support just as they were mounting their last major offensive against the rebels. Obama is quite unpopular in Sri Lanka because he also tried to sway the EU and other international parties to push for a diplomatic resolution with the Tamil Tigers due to (well-grounded) concerns about human rights violations perpetrated by government troops. Luckily for the government, China stepped in to take up the slack. India sat back, worried about its huge Tamil population getting upset over any action.

Elephants are the national animal

China actually has a long history of international support for Sri Lanka. When we arrived in Colombo we both wrongly assumed that Sri Lanka and India must be close allies. Their actual relationship is far more complex, and far less friendly, than we thought. The straight is fraught with tension and constant political bickering. China supported Sri Lanka for centuries as a strategic trade hub and came to the rescue with funding and military supplies when Colombo decided to wipe the Tigers off the map. Many Sri Lankans saw this as the only viable solution because of the singularly failure-ridden track record of peace negotiations. They saw Obama and the US as trying to subvert a final resolution to their civil war by claiming to support peace when their actual (secret) goal was protracted conflict that benefited US weapons manufacturers. 

And you thought the Eiffel Tower was big

Our experience of Jaffna was surprisingly mundane. We had to stop at a few military checkpoints. Burnt out, bullet-ridden shells of ancient trucks occasionally marred the landscape. "CAUTION, LAND MINES" signs were common. But the city of Jaffna was a slow-paced, laid back place. There wasn't a lot to see but the town was in good repair and the infrastructure was better than in many other parts of the country. We visited the sights that did exist: a remote island with wild horses, an ancient colonial dutch fort built out of coral, a colorful cemetery overlooking the coastline where the 2004 Tsunami hit hardest. But we were quickly ready to move on.

That next move turned out to be the longest bus ride of our lives. The crowded vehicle bumped along from Jaffna to the beach town of Trincomalee on the Northeast coast. Mind-numbing Indian pop music blared through the speakers at volumes they weren't designed to handle. We quickly muted it out by listening to our default road trip soundtrack: The Heist. Road construction slowed our pace to a crawl. The driver's constant extended bathroom breaks hinted that we weren't the only ones suffering from Sri Lankan indigestion. The mix of dust and heat was enough to break the strongest soul. Objectively the drive took about eleven hours. Subjectively it took exactly four and a half months.

Eliot takes up a new profession

Lucky for us our next two designations, Trinco and Arugam Bay farther south, were the most laid-back beach towns we had visited yet. We spent the next few weeks swimming, snorkeling, and sipping on fresh king coconuts. We caught up a little on our writing. Drea surfed the best wave of her life and experimented with surf yoga. We watched Wimbledon and chilled out to the constant background hum of reggae. Arugam Bay oozed soul. Local tailors made us ~$10 custom bikinis/board shorts from high quality local textile. Resident chefs whipped up delicious local rice and curries. We relaxed and were able to let loose after our rather harried tour of the North. Hell, we even had some fun nights of Jenga along with Sri Lankan beer on tap, the first good beer on tap we had had since leaving California!

Eventually we realized we were at serious risk of succumbing to the East Coast's chill vibe completely and missing the rest of the country. It was time for our next adventure: the mist shrouded peaks of Sri Lanka's famous tea country...

Co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com

So THAT's how you wear a sarong!

Gettin' jiggy with it at the temple

Yum!

Yum 2!

Hindu temple in Jaffna (we didn't bother going in but it was cool to look at anyway)

Tsunami cemetery at Point Pedro, in the norther-most area of Sri Lanka

The unfortunately named Tsunami hotel @ Arugam Bay

A day at the office...

Chillin' like a villain in East Africa's version of paradise

Zanzibar, the perfect place to escape from it all!

Spending 3 months in land-locked countries (Nepal, Ethiopia) made us realize we really missed the ocean. Feeling worn down and exhausted, we booked a last-minute flight from Ethiopia to Zanzibar. We splurged and went against our quasi-scientific budget. Oh well, sometimes we just have to treat ourselves to a little something.

It was hard to contain our excitement

Zanzibar is a wonderful little island off the coast of Tanzania and with a rich spice trade heritage. It's a semi-independent part of Tanzania (you have to show your passport upon entering and leaving) and the economy mostly relies on tourism. The capital, Stone Town, is a bustling little place, full of tiny little streets that often turn into mazes where you can happily get lost.

Hard to take life too seriously in Zanzibar!

You can walk the entire 'city' in about a half hour if you know your way around and don't get accosted by too many touts (taxis, hashish, spices, they have it all). The harbor is nice to walk around and they have a really scenic waterfront public park where you can get amazing passion fruit juice and even free public outdoor wi-fi!

Stone Town has delicious fresh seafood and tropical fruits to offer and we enjoyed amazing dishes such as lemon fish soup for breakfast, coconut ginger lime smoothies, freshly pressed lime sugar cane juice and beautifully spiced seafood dishes with cinnamon straight from the tree and fresh, whole vanilla.

We ate from sea to table, every day

Our brief stay in Stone Town -- just a day -- was enhanced enormously because of our wonderful Couchsurfing hostess  This amazing Brit showed us the entire town and gave us an amazing hookup at Evergreen Bungalows for the remainder of our stay in Zanzibar.

We left Stone Town and headed east to one of the least touristy beaches on the island on an overcrowded local bus. Because of low season and our hookup, we got to stay in an amazing eco-lodge right in front of the beach in Bwejuu. Our huge bungalow was so close to the water, we usually fell asleep to the sound of small waves crashing on Zanzibar snow, aka fine, powder white sand.

For 10 days, we did absolutely nothing with the exception of one awesome snorkeling trip. Oh and a few en-suite full body massages.

Beautiful snorkeling site

Doing nothing felt great. It re-energized us. We felt amazing! We'd take turns going from the hammocks hung between palm trees to a quick dip in the perfectly calm azure ocean. We even dared to go on a tremendously difficult 15 minute walk on the flat, white sand beaches to the main part of town just to switch up lunch. In between our incredibly relaxed activities, we'd either take advantage of the free wi-fi, drink and eat meaty, sweet fresh coconuts or eat freshly caught seafood.

If this isn't paradise then we're all screwed.

When life gives you lemons, make a mint lemonade with a tad of sugar and an optional shot of rum and bring it over to Zanzibar. We guarantee you'll relax in ways you never even thought possible...

Perfect chill out spot -- our awesome hotel

co-posted on www.eliotpeper.com