A Travel Junkie's Diary Read online

  I try but generally fail to live by the dicta of Lao Tzu, the sixth century contemporary of Confucius. Lao Tzu is reputed by some to be the author of the Tao Te Ching, from which we derive phrases like “create nothingness” and “act spontaneously.” I confess that for most of my life I’ve found comfort in the opposite mantra: “create somethingness” and “act with total premeditation.” Still, if I wanted to have one phrase tattooed on my body, next to those three little stars which came to live on my right shoulder thanks to a talented Sunset Boulevard inker, it would be Lao Tzu’s definition of travel: “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”

  My need to envision what I will be doing or feeling in the coming weeks does not seem to serve a useful purpose, nor can it be excused as physical weakness. Bernard says to me, “Stop worrying. It’s an application of energy that accomplishes nothing.” He’s right, in a way Lao Tzu would applaud. But that doesn’t matter. The need to place myself in the future is like quicksand. The moment I set foot on terrain called “What this trip will be like,” I’m sucked into the swamp of nervous uncertainty. Though I’ve traveled overseas yearly since I was in diapers, those trips were all of the “arrive, settle in, enjoy the immediate surroundings” sort. I didn’t have experience with traveling that calls for daily newness, let alone any aptitude for managing daily uncertainties. On early road trips this left me feeling helpless, but not anymore. As my creative powers have matured with experience, I’ve grown adept at conjuring wonderful possibilities, each further divorced from reality than the next. Nevertheless, thanks to tens of thousands of road miles, I now have experienced a wealth of real discomforts and disappointments to draw from to stoke my nerves. And what’s to stop me? On a road trip in a foreign land, anything is possible.

  That I tend to expect the worst is a known trap, hence my ability to deploy bustle, or as my mother would say, “Keeping busy, my darling.”

  I have many useful things to do on Day One of a road trip, like polishing fenders, and checking that toilet paper is handy somewhere in our car’s back seat. Inevitably there’s tension in the air. Though I feign nonchalance, the truth is I’m on edge, an edge that’s as comforting as sitting on a knife.

  I remember one such Day One as if it were yesterday. Recently upright after a thirty-six-hour skirmish with Delhi belly, I wobble across a parking lot in Kochi, India, my sandals leaving size-eight imprints in the melting tarmac. It’s a steaming January morning. We are embarking on a rally through India, starting near the southern tip of the continent and ending in the foothills of the Himalayas. We’re not alone on this trip, nor are we competing for anything other than daily bragging rights. We’re with a small, sociable group of people who will be driving a route reconnoitered and defined for all of us by the rally’s organizer. The unspoken purpose of this drive is to regale one another with the day’s exploits over one or more suitably refreshing cocktails. Sharing the trip with only eight other couples also is manageable for me, far removed from the two hundred fifty strangers in one hundred twenty-five classic cars with whom we undertook the P2P route two years earlier, strangers who turned out to be so clubby, clannish, and cliquish it gave new meaning to the word “outcast.”

  However, soon we will leave the safe haven of the parking lot where everything is stationary for the cacophonous, jam-packed roads of India. In that outer world, thousands of things will be moving at once, in all directions and all within inches of each other—and therefore of us. Bernard and I are driving a borrowed Mahindra Jeep. It’s a black, tough-looking ride designed to mimic a World War II army vehicle. On the side of the hood “Commander” is scrawled in florid gold script. This seems far too sea-faring a name, especially on a drive that will have us bisecting the subcontinent along its seventy-eighth parallel, in other words nowhere close to the sea. I dub our car Sexy Beast.

  During the years we were building our software company, vacation was a taboo word. This did not go over well with me. I’m a creative sort and my mind needs breaks. Bernard is the opposite. He’s Mr. Logic, and his mind just keeps plugging along at the task at hand. His ability to focus was a trait I admired, while his refusal to leave the office was something I bitterly resented, leading to stern words (his) and tears (mine). Despite the struggle I chose to be loyal to him (meaning us) and the cause of business growth (and continued marriage), though I raged silently that my needs could be subverted to an inanimate entity called “the company.”

  When we did start vacationing, we opted for vigorous trips. Intent on shaking out the stress of sitting at computers and straining to meet tight deadlines, on one trip we rode horses for weeks in the Kenya bush, on another we trekked to the base camp of Kangchenjunga, one of the highest peaks in the Himalayas. Don’t think of us gallivanting about, though. Our vacations were as sparse as hairs on a mangy Indian dog. It was only after we sold our company that we could indulge in yearly long trips. By then, our life on the ranch was so active that we relished the idea of sitting. Because, after all, if one is in a car all day that’s what one is doing, even if in a vigorous way.

  For India, we toyed with shipping over Roxanne, our trusty 1940 GM LaSalle who performed so valiantly on the P2P. There were problems with that idea, though. For one, India is a sizzling country, even during its cool periods. Driving Roxanne, who loves to overheat, seemed destined to give us vehicular hyperthermia. More to the point, India is a right-hand drive country. Roxanne’s steering wheel was on the left, as it should be for an American-made car. “I can stick my head out the window and tell you when it’s safe to pass,” I offered Bernard as we mulled this over. He stared at me with that look of puzzlement and irritation that sets my teeth on edge. It conveyed with one arching of an eyebrow that, “I know I saw your mouth move, but I don’t have a clue what you just said nor why you bothered to say it.” But then, Bernard had driven around the world years before he met me and he knew things I didn’t, in this case, that Indian drivers are famous for cutting it close. Combine that with my well-known imprecision in gauging the speed of oncoming traffic and I could just hear myself: “Go,” I’d shout. “No. Wait. Okay, go now. Now! No. Stop. Oh no! Go back. Go back!” The prospect of my head being squashed like a Halloween pumpkin didn’t appeal to me. I hoped it appealed even less to Bernard.

  Thanks to the kindness of strangers, the Mahindra has been put at our disposal, a valiant surrogate for our missing favorite. Little do we know what shambles Sexy Beast’s bold and shiny exterior hides. At the outset, in that gooey parking lot, we were impressed. True to its origins, the Mahindra makes do with a modest few dials on the instrument panel, sufficient to tell us our speed and how much fuel we have. The rest of the dashboard is a bleak stretch of cracked black vinyl. Though mechanics have installed seat belts, there are no airbags, no glove compartment. Superficially it appears to be a great car to drive, its doorless frame saying, “I’m practical, but I’m fun, too.” As for street cred, everything about Sexy Beast says, “Don’t mess with me.”

  Now, on the morning of, I turn with solemn intent to my personal rites of the road. It’s as close to a religious experience as an atheist like me can get, and I pursue it with the same intensity of tradition as I imagine a priest following the liturgy. At the car, I put on my cap and sunglasses, even if it’s predawn or cloudy. Wearing these two items is the only way for me to be sure I haven’t left them somewhere. Next, I plug the GPS into both the antenna lead and the 12-volt charger. It’s like tying your dog to a post when you go into a store, an essential bit of tethering that keeps important things in place till you return. Once this crucial instrument for navigation is attached to the car, I don’t have to worry about it getting into places it shouldn’t.

  Since Sexy Beast is doorless, I set my maps and guidebook in the gap separating passenger and driver seats, map folded back to reveal our route, guidebook flagged to wherever we are going on this particular day. Since I began driving in pre-GPS days, the feel of paper in my hands is the ultimate reas
surance. Next, the bottle of purified water gets snugged between the map and the seat. Sexy Beast is a WWII knock-off and cup holders didn’t exist during WWII, an era when quenching thirst while in a car meant taking a nip of whisky from that flask in your back pocket. My day pack crammed with almonds, raisins, and mini-packs of lemon and cashew cookies gets lodged in the rear, within an arm’s length of my seat. Nothing gives me courage so much as having food handy. I store extra water bottles behind my seat, wedge my purse where it can’t easily be snatched by an enterprising pedestrian, and put my camera on top of the food for hasty grabbing when something photogenic appears.

  Helping to soothe my nerves is the fact that yesterday we were blessed in a proper puja. This Hindu ceremony of worship ranges from simple private daily prayers to elaborate rites filled with bowing, chanting, and symbolic offerings of flowers, incense, and fruit. As with many religious rituals, a ceremonial puja is frequently done in a temple. Ours took place on a humid late afternoon under a dull gray sky. In a parking lot.

  Inside our semicircle of vehicles was a Brahmin priest, forty-ish, with a lush black beard. His skin a deep reddish-brown that reminded me of old sepia photos and, despite the very public location, was mostly naked, the upper half of his body decorated by a simple strand of black beads around his neck, a short white cotton dhoti keeping his midsection decent. The beads glistened from sweat dripping from a fold of neck fat, evidence that life as a priest was more lavish than I’d imagined. Entranced with the spiritual mission of ensuring our safety in the weeks ahead, he delicately placed the following in front of each car: a tiny clay bowl of salt, one hairy brown coconut, and a small brass brazier in which coals of incense burned an ashy red. Tenderly he lodged a pale yellow lime under each front tire, then knotted a garland of marigolds to the front bumper. This done, he gathered his dhoti around his loins and slowly sank to the ground, coming to rest cross-legged, his buttocks support by a thick slab of wood, belly flab sagging gently toward the tarmac. Arrayed within easy reach were brass spoons, saucers holding sacred water, two tiny clay salt bowls for his personal use, a two-foot tall ornate brass incense burner, one tin tureen holding a bunch of mottled bananas, grapes, and peeled clementines, another tureen holding rice, raisins, and almonds, and some large banana leaves heaped with mounds of pink, yellow, and orange petals.

  Eyes closed, thick black lashes that I would have killed for curling against his cheeks, he pressed his palms together and raised them to his forehead and his heart in a gesture of humility. He dipped his fingertips in water, flicked droplets in all directions, delicately lofted a pinch of marigold petals in the air. They fluttered to the ground like pastel-hued butterflies. Palm up, his right hand gestured toward the bowls of fruit and rice, then he pinched up some salt and flicked it onto the pavement.

  I was thirsty and for a moment wondered whether, with his eyes closed, he would notice if I grabbed some of those clementine slices for myself. But I was quickly lulled, transfixed. As his low humming mingled with the buzz of traffic, the sweet incense smoke seemed to stick in the sultry air, clothing me like a second skin. The priest chanted, nodded, and flung, banishing my thirst, calming my eager excitement until I was leaning against our car in drowsy silence.

  After forty-five minutes, our parking lot priest arose. I was so hypnotized my limbs felt like heavy ropes, the kind used to attach ferries to the dock, with equally lax articulation. With the priest advancing I marshalled every Pilates and Zumba command I could remember to get my legs moving. Carrying the container of water that was now properly sanctified, along with a bowl of equally blessed yellow turmeric paste, he approached our car, his attendant tagging along with a woven grass basket full of more candy-colored petals. Moistening his fingers in the blessed liquid, he sprinkled droplets on the hood, flung petals over the roof and thumbed a smear of turmeric paste on the windshield. A facial tic of annoyance made my cheek muscles jump when the assistant stopped me from wiping the yellow smears off. He couldn’t know I’d followed my own karmic ritual that morning, Windex-ing bug bodies off the windshield. Now it was smudged again. Not a good sign.

  Drive, She Said

  WESTERN SAHARA, MOROCCO, 2004

  When the possibility arose of driving those 7,800 miles on P2P, I would like to say I leapt at the chance. I did not. I shuffled. I lagged. I felt as unsuited for the mission ahead as a tightrope walker with vertigo. Only one thing kept me from quitting: shame. My fear of the humiliation from giving up before ever getting going was greater than my anxiety about what lay ahead.

  It’s a shame that during the angst of P2P preparation and its ensuing travails my mind deserted me so thoroughly that I did not recall I’d already done a distance drive, albeit one of modest length. That honor goes to Morocco in 2004. Compared to our months-long, thousands-of-miles drives after the P2P, our five days in Morocco were a jaunt, a soupçon of an excursion, not a journey. At the time, I didn’t realize that Bernard and I were doing a practice run for things to come. We just wanted to see a broad cross section of the country at our own pace. Even on so short a trip, and with no expectation of applying our experience to something more rigorous in the future, we each fell into what later became our standard roles: Bernard dealt with all things car, from driving to mechanics. I handled the GPS, map, and snacks.

  Early in our short road trip, we arrived at a lodge in Derkaoua, twenty miles or so from the edge of the Sahara, the desert which forms Morocco’s southern border. The surroundings were as you would expect for the world’s largest desert—sandy, barren, parched, the air so hot and dry I thought the skin inside my nostrils would crack with each breath.

  Stopping only long enough to check in and leave our bags, we continued along a sand track to a spot known to offer camel treks into the dunes. It was easy to tell which way to go. Someone thoughtful, or tired of searching for lost travelers, had lined the way with whitewashed cobbles. I thought they were picturesque, a bright ellipsis in the sandy forever. I had no inkling of how thankful I would be for their existence a few hours later.

  Arriving at the desert trek shack, we pulled in facing a row of parked camels. “Tall beasts,” I said to Bernard, as usual compelled to state the obvious. “Cute lips.” We approached the supine camels, giving several a broad and wary circle of inspection in case they felt compelled to lurch to their feet. I noticed a number were ribby or scarred. “No skinny ones,” I said, feeling that making an undernourished animal work for my pleasure was unfair.

  Eventually we found two which were appealingly sturdy and obedient-looking, both lying with gangly legs tucked and folded out of the way Origami-fashion, their heads swiveling curiously on necks like limp celery. A youth squatted lethargically mid-dune above the camels. I assumed he was associated with them, a slim small bedouin of the region’s Sahrawi tribe, left to mind the goods while the grown-ups tended to more serious matters, like sipping tea in the shade.

  “These two, please,” I said, sweeping my arm from him to the two plumpest camels in the row, expecting him then to shuffle over to the big guys with our request.

  Looks, as I am continually reminded when traveling, are deceiving. With business on offer, the young man got his legs under him more swiftly than I expected the camels would, scrambling up and handing each of us a red and white checked keffiyeh headscarf to wrap around head and mouth. “I am Kamal. I will be your guide,” he announced, his white burnous framing full smiling lips, a pointed chin, and the sort of arched, symmetrical black brows that my cosmetician has never been able to create for me.

  “Moustache,” he said to Bernard, because he has a big, bristly one. “This is your camel. You get on like this.” He held out the mounting stirrup for Bernard to use as a step up, then disconnected it, leaving me to wonder how we were expected to get off.

  “Gazelle,” he said to me, as I stood in front of my camel admiring the beast’s long lashes. Later, when I’d been called Gazelle multiple times, I understood it was merely a multi-national moniker for women used
by all guides in Morocco, who find Western names unpronounceable and easy to forget. At the moment though, I was thrilled with my nickname, which I took as flattery of my legs. The boy’s gratuity went up immediately. “Do not stand there. He may spit on you. Come around here,” he said, luring me with my own personal mounting stirrup.

  Kamal secured a lead line to each camel’s nose ring. They both crawked out a rough, low groan, like the sound of a falling redwood as its ancient fibers are slowly rent apart. It was a sound of distress, of protest, of resignation. I was fully inclined to lift my voice in sympathy with theirs. Yet the sun shone, the breeze frisked, we were snug in our saddles, ready for our single-humped ships of the desert to carry us forth.

  It took next to no time for the camels to bear us beyond the first dunes, after which no sign of civilization was visible. It was just the swaying camels, endless waves of blonde sand, and the enterprising Kamal leading the way. Like all camels, mine preferred to walk, but with legs as long as I am tall we made remarkable progress, even at his don’t-rush-me pace. My camel and I were both well-equipped to battle the desert sun. He had boney eyebrow protrusions to shield his eyes from the glare. I had my Ray-Bans. He had self-closing nostrils to keep out blowing sand. I had my keffiyeh. He had thick leathery patches on his knees to prevent sand burns when kneeling. I had on special underwear guaranteed to prevent monkey-butt, scourge of all riders.