“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
– Martin Buber

A four day wedding and a little journey across northern India, that’s all. That’s what I thought before I left.

I knew challenges might accompany me on that journey, but those were largely my thoughts as I embarked on that trip. You might say that they were the underthoughts of the year.

But what does it mean to say that an upcoming trip might be challenging, anyway? You can expect challenges and know they’re coming. You can read blog entries and advice and prepare for the challenges. But you’ll never know exactly what challenges will materialize and how you’ll feel when they materialize until you arrive.

For the most part, I put myself in a position to experience India on a basic level. Because of this, and even more so because I was a solo female traveler, there was no filtering anything. India laid it all out for me — filthy accommodations, excessive staring, frustrating gender dynamics, and close-minded ideas about skin color. Once I arrived, the idea of a comfort zone became this elusive thing; something that couldn’t necessarily be reestablished by holing up in a hotel room.

Of course there were the highlights like the trip’s impetus — the vibrant and elaborate four day wedding I attended in Kolkata. After attending that wedding, it’s pretty clear that as far as traditions, decoration, and attire go, an Indian wedding can only be topped by an Indian wedding. I’m now a believer in multiple day weddings. After one day you’re just getting started, but after a few, it feels like a complete well-rounded event.

And there were the beautiful sites like the Amber Fort in Jaipur, the Taj Mahal, and the Jama Masjid that left me in awe of creativity and craftsmanship. There were a few surprises like the Jantar Mantar and the Victoria Memorial. There were the everyday views of cities captured in the early morning or from cars or rickshaws.

A wedding and sightseeing were the things I went to do and see. But of course, my trip had other destinations waiting for me. Most of these unexpected sights were internal.

I’m a strong traveler. I go solo. I go budget. I go almost anywhere. But India had a way of stripping me of this sturdy identity and leaving me feeling incredibly vulnerable. “So you think you’re tough?” it asked me with its daily frustrations and the way it disoriented me by hyper-engaging all of my senses simultaneously.

I was in India for a short time and it wasn’t long enough to reach a point of reconciliation. But it did come eventually.

“I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”
– Vincent van Gogh

It was after traveling to India that I knew with absolute certainty that cultural exploration is for me. It just feels right. If you’ve ready my About the Author section, you might argue that I’ve known that for awhile. But no place I’ve previously visited has tested me quite like India. And still my wanderlust is untainted, maybe even enhanced. It goes back to the sleepy, “even when I hate this, I love this,” rumination on my flight to India. It also goes back to other travelers’ sentiments that, “If you can travel in India, you can travel anywhere.” I feel even more ready for the world after visiting India.

Destinations can be like people whose friendship is questionable. They might stab you repeatedly in the front and in the back. But over time, you appreciate their presence in your life.

They’ve driven you crazy and tricked you; they’ve challenged you and poked and prodded your seemingly fragile core. But in the end, because of them, you can gleefully, powerfully, and irrevocably say, “Yes, I do have mountains of inner strength.”

If the countries I’ve visited were people, India would undoubtedly be my foe. And yet I am still damn glad to have met her.

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

It’s been awhile since I last posted, but Girl, Unstoppable has not stopped. During my hiatus, I’ve been on the move in India, the ultimate in masochistic travel destinations. I still want to wrap up my reports on my Mexico trip, but being here has me so fully engulfed in the moment, it’s difficult to think about much else.

Here, if you’re not all here, you might get run over by a taxi or rickshaw or find that six people are now in front of you in a queue when you were originally next in line. You might think you’re at the gate where your flight will depart from soon when in fact, it will be delayed with much “regret” at regular intervals and you’ll be wandering the terminal trying to keep up with gate changes and four hours later, when your flight finally arrives and you finally figure out where you’ll actually board it, people begin to clap. Simultaneous hyper-alertness and patience are characteristics this country constantly requires of its visitors.

India is everything you expect, yet it can still be shocking to see the stereotypes unfold. Probably because of the challenges India throws at those who find themselves here, there’s a camaraderie amongst travelers that is unique, especially those of us who are trying to see India on a budget. On my first day, more than one traveler I met spoke these very true words:

“If you can travel in India, you can travel anywhere.”

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

Something I enjoy about working in a highly untraditional high school is that the list of standard books that often left me bored and uninspired when I was in high school is nowhere in sight. Instead, books are carefully chosen to relate to class themes and hopefully, the students themselves.

One of the books I’ve been introduced to this semester is The Plum Plum Pickers, a novel by Raymond Barrio about the struggles of Mexican farm workers in California in the 1960s. As I skimmed through the book, I came across a part where a teenage girl tells of the issues she has with her classmates and some of the misconceptions people have about Mexicans. In this section, these words stood out:

“There was more of everything in the Mexican character [. . .]. More sadness, more joy, more love, more ferocity, more intensity, more softness, more intimacy, more warmth, more family, more hatred.”

There it was, those ideas and impressions that had been a jumble in mind, but hadn’t yet come together. Since I’d gotten back from Mexico in July, I’d been unsuccinctly and unsuccessfully trying to explain my adoration for the country. It’s a challenge to be heard over the chorus of negativity about Mexico in the United States—the drug conflict headlines, the “illegal” immigrants, the image of it as a beach resort or party break destination.

The other chorus, the one that tells of the warmth of daily interactions, the ferocity of non-violently occupying a square in protest, the sadness displayed in a beautiful piece of art or the love in a plate of chicken mole is easily drowned out.

Though those words from The Plum Plum Pickers certainly weren’t written in the context of traveling to Mexico, they neatly and simply conveyed what I love most about Mexico… passion and a reverence for life infiltrate everything, including you, the visitor.

I’d begun to discover this in Mexico City at the beginning of my trip and would continue to discover it in Oaxaca. That is, once I got over the heartbreak of leaving Cuba.

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”

- Lao Tzu

I’ve seen this quote many times before, but thanks to this trip, I finally understand it.

I left home slightly freaked out about  how most of my trip was unplanned, aside from a week and a half of it. I had an idea of where I wanted to go, but no idea of how I would get there or how many days I would spend in each place.

Many would call me spontaneous because I rarely plan big trips more than four weeks in advance. The ideas come early, but the booking and planning phase tends to start late.

But frantically researching and planning either how exactly to get around or which places I need to visit and check off my list puts me at ease. And for the most part, my schedules have been stuck to. There has always been a plan.

I think I was nervous about traveling without a plan because it is dangerous for checklists. It enables you to get caught up in wherever you are, meet enough people who make you want to stick around, and it will keep you from crossing off destinations and sites on your “must-see” list.

When I came to Oaxaca, it wasn’t overtly appealing at first. I quickly began to plan my exit, weighing suggestions from other travelers, bus times, and flight costs.

But in a few short days, the layers of Oaxaca’s reservation began to peel and the charms of the city slowly began to be revealed. So my loose plans were ditched and I decided to stay in the state of Oaxaca longer. Though I haven’t been constantly arriving in new places, each day of exploring brings me to new arrivals and realizations about the city, both good and bad.

People ask me how many days I’ve been here and I’ve forgotten. Fellow hostel mates are doubting that I will leave. But as my trip begins to wind down, I know I have to go, but I will leave with a deeper understanding of how satisfying it is to travel slowly.

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

“The lobby fairly reeked of high-grade Formica and plastic palm trees—it was clearly a high-class refuge for Big Spenders.”

- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The Vegas bachelorette weekend has come and gone. A few hours after I returned to San Francisco, I was desperately trying to rehydrate my body while still struggling to understand the appeal of the Vegas experience.

All I will say right now is, wow, what a trip. There is definitely more trip reviewing on the way…

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

Turistas. Hostel. The Beach. These are all examples of Hollywood’s poor representations of traveling with a budget and a backpack. So it was refreshing to finally watch A Map for Saturday, a documentary by Brook Silva-Braga that takes a realistic look into the world of long term solo backpacking.

While my month-or-sos away would not be considered long term by non-U.S. citizens who go away for longer, I found that I could relate to most of the content in the movie—the initial loneliness, learning how to meet people, settling into the coming and going, traveler’s guilt and what it’s like when you have to go home. Throughout the film, I felt like I was reliving many of the emotions I’ve had abroad.

There were moments where I thought the movie was a little vapid. I think this stemmed from my wanting there to be more of an underlying story or a unique angle. Something more edgy and captivating than following yet another advantaged young person on the road. But all in all,  it’s a solid backpacking documentary full of inspirational tidbits. I’d recommend it for any past or potential backpackers.

As the film began, a traveler being interviewed by Silva-Braga supplied this quote about one of the most profound transformations traveling lightly and cheaply can instigate:

“When you have everything on your back, material goods don’t mean as much as they used to. That’s something you take with you for the rest of your life.”

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

Recently, I’ve felt and understood a joy that permeates my body and sustains me. This quote describes one seemingly simple, but loaded reason for my sense of fulfillment:

“It is the chiefest point of happiness that a [woman] is willing to be what [she] is.”
- Desiderius Erasmus

Beyond a willingness to be myself, there’s joy in I feeling like I can be accepted for being myself. When I am being what some might considered flawed—pissed off, childlike, or wanting to make non-PC humorous observations—I know there is someone around me who can understand me, laugh with me, or know that my funk will pass.

Both staying and leaving have aided in my development and acceptance of my imperfect self. I love traveling challengingly and deeply. I seek out strength gained through having to re-adapt… the destruction of self and the fortified rebuilding. While traveling has helped me define myself, remaining in one place has helped me solidify myself.

It’s given me the opportunity to reveal myself slowly through both personal and artistic interactions and find that there are people out there who accept quirks and flaws and whole people. Like any physical trip I’ve taken, this inner journey has been less scary and more beautiful than I imagined it would be before it began.

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

I spent the final afternoon of last year’s Pacific Northwest trip in a cafe called El Diablo. One of my Seattle friends always tries to convince me that the weather there is not that bad, but outside, the frenetic rain proved otherwise. The bright Latin America-inspired cafe felt like the perfect warm refuge. I skimmed through some local papers to kill time before I had to leave. In one of them, my horoscope read:

You’re in luck, Virgo. Not so much in the sense of winning the lottery or scoring a major award, but more in a spiritual sense. Do you know “Auguries of Innocence,” the poem by William Blake? I think you’ll experience what it describes: “To see a world in a grain of sand/ And heaven in a wild flower/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/ And eternity in an hour.”

It summed up my trip completely. There was not much to “see” or “do”, it was more about enjoying and appreciating the simple things– the company of old friends, the freedom of a mini roadtrip, flower farms and snow-capped mountains, meeting interesting travelers and friendly locals, and a rainy afternoon spent in a colorful cafe.

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

“In the spring, at the end of the day you should smell like dirt.”

- Margaret Atwood

As I wrote last weekend, this past week was my Spring Break and I had no travel plans. So I contacted the awesome Lauren Quinn to see if she could take me on the Palomarin Hike she’d mentioned in her Top Three Travel Secrets post.

The day of our hike was super foggy. As we arrived to begin the hike, it wasn’t pouring, so we went ahead with it. Lots of winter rain allowed us to enjoy a few things Californians don’t take for granted– colorful wildflowers, incredibly green vegetation and an abundance of flowing water. Alamere Falls was a nice surprise, it wasn’t like any other waterfall I’d seen before. The water tumbles over the cliff and splashes onto the beach before draining into the ocean.

I used to hate getting dirty, now it’s something I enjoy from time to time. Partly it’s a throwback to my childhood and the other part of it is a sense of being close to the earth. After the hike, I was soaked in mud up to my mid-calf. I washed the jeans and socks I was wearing that day and they are still caked with mud. It was a good day.

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.

“Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.”

- Colleen Wainwright

I am officially on spring break now. I often feel an urgency about taking advantage of my designated time off  to explore a new destination. This year, I didn’t get much of a chance to plan anything for spring break. And I while the list of destinations I want to visit is long, I struggled to think of an affordable place that I really wanted to go to for just a week.

But I still halfheartedly searched for flight deals this past week before having a moment of realization– I was stressing myself out in an effort to find a place where I could de-stress.  So I’ve decided to stick around, get stuff done (writing!), get a lot of sleep and maybe take a local trip to nature for a few days. Not as exotic or as exciting as I was hoping, but it sounds like exactly what I need right now.

©2012 Girl, Unstoppable. All Rights Reserved.