"What a long, strange trip it's been..." or "And I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world'..."

So this is the final blog post—the cliché where I wrap up six months of travel and put a nice bow around it. Here’s fair warning: this is going to be a sentimental look at the trip, all while trying to give this big trip a pretentious moral. If that’s going to bug you, I’m sorry. Don’t hold it against me.

Let’s start with some numbers: 6, 12, 18, 19, and 37.

On this trip, I have burned through SIX Lonely Planet guidebooks: Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, Nepal, Dubai City Guide, Bangladesh, India, and Europe on a Shoestring.

I have dealt and learned to think in TWELVE different currencies: US Dollar, Baht, Kyat, Nepali Rupee, Taka, Indian Rupee, Pound Sterling, Lira, Euro, Leva, Denar, and Leke.

I have used EIGHTEEN different modes of transit (that are coming to mind at the moment): metro systems, airplanes, walking, bicycles, water taxis, cars, buses, trains, steamboats, motorbikes, horse-drawn carriages, auto-rickshaws, tuk-tuks, bicycle rickshaws, and ferries.

I have visited NINETEEN countries: Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, India, England, Scotland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Italy, and Vatican City. This brings my grand total (including Vatican City) to THIRTY-SEVEN.

I can’t help but count countries and feel like I’m merely collecting destinations; however, this trip was never about the amount of guidebooks and currencies with which I have dealt. Obviously, it’s much more intangible than that. I have seen a wide array of distinct places, and I still feel as though I barely scratched the surface when it comes to discovering just how vast and varied the world truly is.

I have been hopelessly frustrated in foreign embassies and barren landscapes, ancient mosques and modern police stations.

I saw crippled beggars on the streets of Dhaka, and I saw massive wealth and high fashion in Paris.

I hiked in remote Sherpa villages in the Himalayas, and I strolled down ultra-urban thoroughfares in London.

I visited the ruins of the ancient Roman Empire and witnessed Kosovo in the very infancy of its statehood.

I drank wine on the banks of the Seine, smoked hookah on the banks of the Bosphorus, and battled sickness on the banks of Inle Lake.

I legally smoked weed in Amsterdam, and I watched my friend Grant get quasi-kidnapped and arrested on a trumped-up drug offense in Koh Phangan.

I visited the burgeoning metropolis of Dubai before roaming around the crazy ancient city of Delhi.

Within days, I dropped into the ungodly heat of Bangladesh from the freezing snowstorms at the foot of Mount Everest.

I strolled around the birthplace of democracy in Athens, and I felt the ongoing realities of military tyranny in Burma.

This trip offered me many memorable experiences. I’ve tried new foods and met new people, seen the incredible achievements of civilization and been awed by natural wonders.

So what did I learn, if anything? I feel much the same way I did when I returned from Semester at Sea. It’s not as though I’ve become any smarter or wiser in the past six months. Rather, it’s that I have a better understanding of the world’s complexities. It’s a “the more I see, the less I know” syndrome. If it’s a wise man who knows that he knows nothing at all, then this trip did me a lot of good. The world is an extremely complicated place, and there are an unfathomable about of places and cultures and cuisines and borders and landscapes to discover. As I wrote before, I feel that this trip barely scratched that surface.

At the end of Semester at Sea, I went on a rant similar to this. If you happen to be hearing this for a second time… sorry.

One of my favorite poems of all time is by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I don’t have it in front of me, but the first line begins: “The world is a beautiful place to be born into / If you don’t mind people dying once in a while.” The poem proceeds with a laundry list of grievances and serious problems with the world, but it always comes back to the same refrain: “The world is a beautiful place to be born into.”

That pretty much explains how I feel about my trip and everything that I’ve seen this past six months. I have seen examples of greed and generosity, kindness and con-artistry, starvation and gluttony, rags and riches, freedom and tyranny, rural and urban, old and new. There are a ton of dichotomies, and the world—in all of its staggering hugeness and complexity—manages to encompass them all.

Back home, I’m often labeled as an idealist. In fact, I label myself as an idealist, and I’m pretty unapologetic and unashamed about that. Even before I started traveling, I believed things that many (most) people in America consider naïve. All “realists” ultimately revert to this argument: you just don’t know how cruel and dark the world is. They point to terrorism or starvation or disease for proof, as if explaining the fear “flavor of the week” will dissuade me. Well, I always thought, if I’m naïve, then I’m naïve. No one, certainly not me, denies the daily horrors of the world—starvation, rape, disease, greed, murder, war, et cetera. There is no shortage of proof that we have not yet reached the mountaintop, so to speak. To my mind, though, that argument was never a good enough reason to turn my back on how the world ought to be, as opposed to how it actually is.

Well, I have first-hand knowledge of the world (from this trip and others). Just look at the list of experiences described above. I’ve seen the race-based slums of Cape Town a short drive from luxury car dealerships. I’ve talked to AIDS patients in Africa. I’ve seen the horrible remnants of war in Southeast Asia.

In spite of all of that, though, nothing has yet convinced me that my idealism is somehow naïve or ill-founded. I have also been taken into strangers’ homes for shelter and a meal. Passersby have helped me find my way on foreign transit systems. I have had fantastic one-night friendships with travelers and locals in alien cities. I’ve been blessed by monks, and I’ve been prayed for in churches. It’s these moments that strengthen my resolve and convince me that the world is worthy of our concern. My idealism does not arise in spite of my experiences abroad; it arises directly because of them.

Yes, the world has a great number of terrible things to which the cynics can point, and this planet can be a pretty cruel place a lot of the time for most of its people. Nevertheless, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti would say, “it’s a beautiful place to be born into.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my travels. I’ve enjoyed experiencing them.

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

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