Open if you want it to be

"To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them." Albert Camus.

I read a book this winter by Colin Thubron, a British traveler and historian who recently bummed rides and rode derelict buses from Xian, China to Antioch, Turkey. The ancient Silk Road. Of his many reflections during his journey, one has continued to stick with me. While traveling alone through northern Afghanistan en route to a safer Iran, Thubron suddenly realized that he was in an unspeakably dangerous situation. How did he get there? What made him think that a British man traveling alone through Afghanistan in mid-violence was a good idea? His self-evoked answer was as clear as day: danger is cumulative. One puts oneself in a situation of relative discomfort until that situation becomes comfortable. Once comfort is found, then the next rung of discomfort is pursued until it, too, becomes comfortable. Eventually, something seemingly inconceivable to one person (such as traveling alone through Central Asia and the Middle East) becomes relatively comfortable to the next.

Thubron's realization that danger is cumulative is not a new idea. But his putting it into words gave me a profound sense of clarity. The idea that danger is cumulative can be analogous to just about any type of experience, danger or no danger. Traveling, climbing, working, socializing, reading, cooking, whatever. Once the first level of discomfort is met and overcome, the next level of discomfort can be challenged. Over time, one will be doing and seeing things he/she previously thought were impossible.

I'm not comparing my travels with those of Thubron's. He speaks Arabic, Mandarin, and a sufficient amount of Russian. He's spent numerous tenures in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and China. I speak broken Spanish and haven't spent more than a few months at a time overseas. His travel tales include being quarantined by Chinese military, attempting to sleep in ramshackle rooms in Afghanistan while hearing gunshots in the streets below him, free climbing and bivouacking in the mountains of Iran. Mine include difficult (yet manageable) border crossings in Serbia, being chased by an angry dog in Ushuaia, Argentina, and being consumed by bed bugs in Puerto Montt, Chile (for anyone on their way to Puerto Montt, do not stay in Casa Gladys!). It is safe to say that his comfort levels have been stretched much farther than mine. Which is understandable... he has three decades of experience on me.

But what is of note is how quickly comfort and confidence can accumulate. The first few days in a new country or on a new continent can be overwhelming. Intimidating. Not knowing how to acclimate to local customs, fearing the inevitability of having to attempt a foreign language. Yet within a matter of days, these intimidations and discomforts become manageable. Within a few weeks, they are non-issues. Before you know it, you're doing things and visiting places you might have previously assumed were inaccessible. It's amazing.

This has happened to me on every trip I've taken. Before my first trip overseas, to Eastern Europe, I had media-influenced preconceived notions of the Balkans. Civil war of the 1990's, instability, organized crime. Totally unsafe. Totally inaccessible. Yet as I sat in a café in Budapest talking with a petite, blonde haired Slovenian-Australian girl who had traveled across North Africa, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Albania, and Bosnia by herself, I realized that my options were much more open than I previously thought. Talking with more travelers who had just arrived in Budapest via Moldova, Serbia, and even Kosovo opened my eyes and my mind even wider. Before I knew it, I was eating Bulgarian trout in a remote monastery in the Balkan Mountains. I was in front of the Hotel Moscow in Belgrade, a building that was frequently shown in the news when covering the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia. I was inquiring about bus schedules to Sarajevo. And although there was a certain amount of intimidation involved, it all felt normal:

-Do you want to go to Croatia tomorrow?
-Yeah, that sounds good. Let me run down to the train depot and check the schedule.

The same thing happened in South America. Before I left, I had no idea what to expect. I imagined I would visit the major stops in Argentina and Chile: Buenos Aires, Mendoza, El Calafate, Torres del Paine, Santiago. I would hang out in the apartment I had rented in Bariloche and see what there was to see in the immediate area. Yet within a few days, any hesitations I may have had about traveling in Patagonia disappeared. And although I did visit some of the famous sights and cities in southern South America, I also found myself becoming friends with travelers from Holland, Israel, and India and making plans with them to visit remote Andean villages, virgin seashores, and cities I previously didn't even know existed. It all felt normal. Exceedingly normal.

-Do you want to check out Trevelin with me?
-Where's Trevelin?
-I'm not too sure, 100 km south of here I think.
-Sure, I’ll go.

Or:

-Where should we go next? Chiloe or Temuco?
-Well I've heard Chiloe has some interesting architecture and amazing birds, but I've also heard that Temuco has a pretty unique feel to it. Let's go check the bus prices.

Normal. Comfortable.

There are hundreds of thousands of people that travel similarly in every corner of the world. And many of them are much more adventurous and courageous than I am. (Take a look at some of the Cool Works bloggers, for example… they have reached incredible levels of comfort and confidence while traveling abroad). What is exciting to realize is that the world is accessible if you want it to be. With all of the speculations and fears that the world abroad is filled with terrorism and anti-Americanism, it is refreshing to know that, for the most part, those fears are unfounded. Sure, there are regions that I would not visit at the present time. I would not encourage anyone to travel alone to northern Afghanistan like Thubron did. And I wouldn't advise anyone to cross North Africa and the Middle East alone like the Slovenian-Australian with whom I had coffee. But I am certainly encouraging anyone and everyone to go exploring. You'll be amazed at how natural it will feel and how quickly you will become comfortable.

Jill nailed it on the head with her latest blog: traveling is addictive. Once you start, you never want to stop. You want to see it all. You want to experience everything. Everywhere sounds interesting and exciting in its own way. Thubron nailed it on the head as well: experience is cumulative. Once you start to experience the world, you realize that it is much more accessible than you may have previously thought.

If you're tossing around the idea of traveling this fall, I say go for it. As Mark Twain put it, "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the things you did... Explore. Dream. Discover."

As for me, I'm already tossing around my next travel ideas... Namibia? Morocco? Armenia? India? They are all realistic options. The world is open.