Remembering the Highs and Lows of Tibet
I was nicking your food in Lhasa. Not.
Anne
That’s the email I received today from the woman with whom I traveled in Tibet in 1987 and hadn’t seen in three decades. She saw the blogs that I wrote last year about the ups and downs of being in Tibet (and in which I described my suspicions—fueled by my altitude drug-induced paranoia—that she was stealing my food). Here are the blogs:
Part 1: When Dreams Become Reality, Then Become Hell: Traveling to Tibet in 1987
Part 2: When Dreams Become Reality Then Become Hell: Traveling to Tibet in 1987
She wrote to me two days ago:
Just amazing that we have some of the same memories and some very different ones…I loved reading the post. Truly. A couple things that you left out though:
When we were on the bus where everyone was smoking and a couple times I was sure the bus was going to fall off a cliff, when the bus stopped and everyone got off to do their business. I remember turning to you with a look of, WTF, do we get back on? And you turned to me and said, ‘Well you’re either on the bus or off the bus.’ Those were words of wisdom that I have carried with me since in many situations.
Anne
(NB: I take no credit for the quote: it was Ken Kesey, of course.)
[I also remember] when we were hitchhiking out of some town and got picked up by someone in a Land Rover. I took the disgusting opportunity to take off my wet, vile, and fragrant socks and put them up by the heater to dry them. You were struggling with altitude sickness and turned to me and told me more or less, ‘I will kill you if you keep stinking up the car with your stinky socks.’ I still laugh at that today. It was such an adventure and I am so glad we did it.
Anne
And the highest high was to have had someone read my blog, certify that the trip 33 years ago was not entirely in my imagination, and share those memories.
Remembering Thailand with a Soulmate
In fact, since I started writing my blog a year ago I’ve had folks from all over the world chime in with their own memories of travel. Last summer I posted a blog about inspiring—and then worrying—about your kids when they do what you did: Someday YOU’LL be a Mother and You’ll Know How It Feels: When Your Child Takes to the Road.
A few weeks later someone I met in Asia almost 40 years ago and with whom I traveled in Thailand found this blog and replied:
I recognize this story. Love you for writing it. It is my story too. I remember meeting you on a ferry in Hong Kong in 1982 while I was a solo traveler, a kindred soul. And both of my children are adventurous, leaving home to live abroad from time to time. It makes me happy to know that they are trusting of this crazy world.
Judith
Remembering a Relatively Sane World
Now the memories of these journeys—and these responses—mean so much more to me because of what has happened in this ever more crazy world. Covid-19 has put all travel on hold, and I am not sure what travel will be like in the future, especially for people my age (I’m 72, somewhat gimpy and have several medical challenges).
Remembering the Launch of the Baby Bloomer Blog
The Baby Bloomer, my blog site, was launched on June 2, 2019 with a story about how returning with my daughter to the island of Menorca in the Mediterranean, a place I first visited 40 years ago, made me examine and appreciate some of my life choices. Check it out at Travels with Babs Darling: The End of All Our Exploring.
Remembering How I Took My First Shaky Steps
How did I decide to become a blogger? Well, I was laid off in February 2019 from my 25+-year job as a senior editor/writer for two online encyclopedias, and I was deciding what the next steps in my life would be. I had always wanted to see Mt. Rushmore, and since I knew that I probably would never visit by myself, I decided to sign up for a group trip (my first ever) with the educational travel company Road Scholar.
A few weeks after I returned from that trip I approached them with an idea for a blog about taking my first group tour as a solo woman, and they posted it on their Web site. I went on to write a number of articles for them in 2019, including this one, Eight Reasons Why I Travel Without My Husband. The last blog I wrote for them was this past February (about Slow Travel and entitled “Slow Down! The Benefits of Walking, Looking, Breathing.” It hasn’t made it to their site yet, because in the interim Slow Travel has become No Travel.)
When I started my blog, writing about myself was the first hurdle to overcome. I had written a drippy and very personal poem for a journal in western Massachusetts in my 20s, and that seemed to cure me from publishing anything for 30 years. I felt naked when I imagined that people had read my innermost thoughts. Of course, almost no one did (and the few readers did not point at me and laugh), but it has taken me this long to reveal myself in public again. And, truth to tell, the response has been positive (with one exception: a woman who suggested that I write more like Eat Pray Love. As Cher Horowitz would say, “As if.”)
Writing the Space Between Imagination and Reality
I didn’t want to write about where to eat, what cultural sites to see, or what the best modes of transportation are (although there was one exception—the blog about my trip to Iceland in the fall of 2019: A Solo Tour of Iceland: A Luminous Gift.)
It was incredibly liberating to not have to write for a client and to write in my own style and about what I liked. I wanted to write about my funny and horrible experiences as a traveler in Tibet, India, Turkey, and other places—and the distance between what I had imagined and the reality.
I went on to write about everything from travel lessons from a Tibetan monk (Travel Lessons from a Tibetan Monk: Part 1 and Travel Lessons from a Tibetan Monk: Part 2) to becoming online pals with millennials I’m Not a Stalker…But My New Friends are All 40 Years Younger than Me) to my disasters as a tour guide for teenagers (The Summer from Hell: Worst Trip I Ever Took and The Summer from Hell: Worst Trip I Ever Took, part 2) to what to do if your significant other has different ideas about wandering (When Your Mate Hates to Travel: Solo Travel for Women) to what books inspire wanderlust in women (Wanderlust: What Inspires Women to Travel?)…and many more.
I’ve written blogs about favorite films that have helped steer my life: I Know Where I’m Going, which inspired me to wander the Scottish isles (A Love Letter to I Know Where I’m Going!: The Best Film You Never Saw;
The Bridge on the River Kwai, which sent me to Kanchanaburi, Thailand; Travel Destination: In Search of the Bridge on the River Kwai); and, during the Covid-19 lockdown, Rear Window, the Hitchcock film which made me identify both with Jimmy Stewart’s voyeurism and Thelma Ritter’s common sense and cynical humor (Channeling Hitchcock in the Pandemic).
…..And Then, the World Changed
My latest trip to Portugal and England ended early in March of 2020, and I managed to return just under the wire, when the corona virus lockdown was just beginning in the United States. The subject matter of my blogs immediately and changed: I found myself writing about how previous pandemics caused a depth charge in my family’s history (The Depth Charge of Covid-19) and about how the beauty of Portugal has provided dreams while in quarantine (Escape the Cloud of Coronavirus with Daydreaming).
Another blog was about how we have been forced to travel in memories rather than in reality (Travel on Hold? We Can Still Travel in Our Minds) and one more about how much I miss my favorite city in quarantine, although I’m only six minutes away (A Love Letter to NYC).
With a Prayer for a Heartbreaking Year
I’ve written 32 blogs over the past year, and, while I originally planned my blog site to be about inspiring women over 60 to travel, now it is about memories and nostalgia. In a few days I’ll make a toast with V8 juice (low salt) to commemorate the first anniversary of the Baby Bloomer, but it won’t be a celebration. It will be more like a prayer for the day when we can work, visit loved ones, and explore once more.
With Gratitude for a Life of Travel and Exploration
More than telling stories, my blogs have enabled me to meet some terrific fellow travelers and fellow dreamers, both online and in person. At a time like this, those ties with soul mates are especially meaningful. I also have had the opportunity to amuse myself and hopefully a few others, and to see how innocent and sometimes wrong I was about the world. I have vented a few times and have invited others to do the same.
And several of my blogs became the source for online articles for which I was sometimes actually paid, on Medium, The Old Broad, Travel Awaits, Boomer Café, Elephant Journal, NYCBlog, and, yes, a site called New Jersey Isn’t Boring,among others.
Dayenu
Many of us are staying put until we feel confident enough to venture out healthfully. In the meantime, what better way to provide ourselves with sustenance than to just connect with stories and memories? I am also spending hours staring out the window at the trees and birds, thinking about the people with whom I have shared experiences over the past 50 years and laughing at some of the wonderful and foolish things we did. For me right now, that is enough.