PREFACE
Delhi Train Station, 2 p.m.
It’s 45 degrees C, I’m as slick with sweat as a greasy New York hot dog, and I’ve just been elbowed in the ribs by a woman in a canary yellow silk sari who then spat out a gooey wad of betel nut onto the pavement next to my feet.
A pair of small hands moves towards my shoe and I step back instinctively: a plop of dog shit misses my left foot by an inch and lands on the steaming cement, not far from the splattered betel nut.
Delhi Dog Shit Man looks up at me and grins evilly.
Maybe it was the brain melting heat, or the immense weight of my time spent in India, but instead of screaming I just start laughing, patting Delhi Dog Shit Man on the back and say, ‘Better luck next time dude.’
In the spirit of recycling, Delhi Dog Shit Man scrapes the crap off the sidewalk and lopes off into the crowd in search of other victims.
Sometimes the Travel Gods send you white sand beaches, swaying palm trees or mind expanding enlightenment that sends you on your way, reborn.
And at other times, they just send you the Delhi Dog Shit Man.
When you travel, you learn.
Some lessons are great, and some are small. The Lowe Road serves up a tasty menu of lessons learned through adventures, disasters and situations – some good, some bad, some mundane and others unbelievable, from Japan to Vietnam, Nepal to Tanzania, and Djibouti to the Maldives.
These stories are real and raw, because you rarely use the right grammar structure when you have just been chased by bulls in India. Or spell that word right when that near death experience in Ethiopia almost made the news on CNN. Or use the right punctuation when a wheel falls off your car in Vietnam.
Looking back at the kaleidoscopic, psychedelic swirl of colorful locals, travelers, saints, sinners, madmen and madwomen encountered on the road, I can’t help but wonder: Am I cursed? Could my size 13 shoes be spreading bad luck with every step I take? Or have I somehow landed on the shit list of the Travel Gods, forever condemned to endure flightmare after disaster after catastrophe?
The jury is still out.
At 19, I never set out to Asia like a modern Marco Polo in search of Eastern riches, a Fountain of Youth, a White Whale or a Holy Grail; I didn’t go to find myself on top of the Himalayas, get a spiritual makeover or return home, transformed.
I did, however, learn on my very first trip to Asia that in the world of independent travelers India loomed large as an Emerald City or Mecca or Las Vegas or Shangri La, where redemption and rapture went hand in hand with stink and scams, a place down the rabbit hole where you simply had to venture, where you had to go to, in order to be considered a serious traveler.
In order to belong.
So on I traveled to South America and Africa and Australia with India always dancing in the distance, taunting me through the rear view mirror.
In late 2004 I finally did it.
I gritted my teeth and pulled open that trap door and fell into that Universe, enduring Saddhus and saints and cows and chaos and four months later stepped out onto the tarmac in the Maldives, thinner, more cynical, and almost sank to my knees like a Pope to kiss the sun drenched and sterile tarmac right then and there.
Grateful to be free of that beast.
Having scaled the steep sides of the independent travelers’ Mt. Everest, I enjoyed the postcard perfect paradise that is the Maldives, thinking my Indian sojourn was over. Behind me. History. Hermetically sealed in my hard drive as photos and in my brain as memories.
But it wasn’t.
On a beautiful island the day after Christmas I learned a lesson so far undiscovered.
My journey had actually just begun.
That’s the beauty of travel.
Because the horizon always remains where it is, every trip is never really quite over.
And for this lesson, oh Travel Gods, I am most grateful.
After years on the road I now know the Travel Gods have a very keen sense of humor. Or at the very least, are very, very bored. What else can explain the cast of characters I have collided into on the road, including a satanic customs agent in Japan, a horny camel called Raj in India, a demonic taxi driver in Ethiopia, a beaming Dalai Lama in India or an Indian Ocean churning tsunami?
Not to mention a sandwich served with cow crap.
(Which wasn’t served to me, Scout’s Honor)
So. After scraping the dog crap off the sidewalk, did Delhi Dog Shit man head to the nearest sandwich shop and surreptitiously serve it to some unsuspecting newbie in India, unfamiliar with the revenge some waiters love to inflict on hated customers?
Only the Travel Gods know for sure.
A selection of stories and flightmares from The Lowe Road have been published on this site, and can be found by browsing the country links on the navigation bar to the right >>>