Travelling Light
On my first backpacking trip to Asia in 2000,
I learn what is essential on the road and in life.
A Tibetan Buddhist Monk and I are photographed inside the Ghoom Monastery, West Bengal, India, 2001
My dad chuckled as he carried my massive backpack to the Calgary airport, where I'd be departing to Taiwan with my school friend, Tali, on a year-long backpacking trip. I borrowed his old army-style rucksack for my first independent trip abroad, the same one he once travelled with years before and had a camping store’s worth of supplies in it. Some of the items in my bag included zip-off pants that converted into shorts, a universal sink stopper for doing laundry in hotel bathrooms, and enough underwear for a month without having to wash any. As my dad struggled with the enormous weight of my bag, he comically asked, "You know you have to carry this, right?" It was damn heavy, but there was just nothing I could imagine parting with. I was sure it'd all come in handy at some point, and I'd hate to be that girl with freshly washed clothing but without her own personal clothing line to dry them on. So I brought that too.
After some twenty-odd hours in the air, the pilot announced we were approaching Taipei. I looked out the tiny window down below to try to catch a glimpse. The monsoonal clouds were dense and carpeted the sky in an impenetrable barrier, revealing nothing but the occasional dash of green to my eye. As the plane descended, so did the realization that I had actually embarked on my long-planned journey abroad, and I was just about to arrive. I had no real idea about where I was going; Taiwan was just an included stopover on our flight to India, and we figured we may as well see everything we could on the way. When the plane skidded into its final stop of this leg of the journey, my friend and I turned to each other with nervous, excited smiles as we stood to disembark the aircraft. "Here we go," I said to her as I puffed my chest with a deep inhale.
Roots of a Strangler Fig Tree dominate a temple of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat Complex, 2001
An elderly Vietnamese man stops for a portrait in his village, 2001
Somehow, in all the jarring chaos of an airport operating in a language I couldn't speak a word of, we procured a taxi to take us into downtown. Now on the ground, I felt safer staring at this new world through the car window and secretly feared the ride's end. After a similar anticipation as the one from the air, our driver finally dumped us into the heart of Taipei, a frenetic, buzzing and choked labyrinth of tiny lanes filled with the suffocating aroma of boiling eggs. The humidity only intensified the odd smells and cloaked the city in a thick blanket, unlike anything I could relate to from my hometown's dry, desert-like environment in the prairies. As we wandered the sky-scraper filled streets, the straps of my backpack dug into my shoulder, and the weight of it threatened to pull me backwards on my bum. It was then we both realized that neither of us had considered where we would be spending our first night nor brought a guide book to help. Being the year 2000, we had no mobile phones to search for reviews on local hostels or maps to orient ourselves in this dizzying scene. We explored the world in the era of traveller's cheques, calling home from a phone box at the train station, and the rare English speaker who could help out. While a gentle drizzle began to fall, Tali and I slumped down on a bench on the street, the local passersby hurrying to find shelter.
The Asia World Youth Hostel, the lodgings we eventually found, were anything but glamorous. The room where we slept seemed about as big as my bathroom back home, but this one was full of bunk beds and random women. There wasn't even a place to wash clothing, let alone dry it, and damp clung to the sheets and thickened the stale air. The following morning we planned to take a train to Hualien, a town on the Eastern coast, and the thought of lugging my bag there filled my chest with dread. I knew I'd have to lighten my load if I wanted to be mobile. One after another, I began throwing my underwear out after each use; I discovered that I didn't like hand-washing clothes much anyway. Our trip would continue onwards to Malaysia where we’d stop for a six-month exploration of South East Asia. I’d sleep on boats and buses, explore the remnants of the Vietnam War and The Killing Fields, and sip piña coladas with tiny paper umbrellas on unspoilt beaches.
The further I travelled, the more I realized that my need to be prepared for every unforeseeable circumstance was actually holding me back.
I not only didn't need many of the items I had brought, but I didn't want them either. There were so many new things on the road that seemed to fit the traveller's identity that I was slowly embodying, and all my pocket-size conveniences made me appear too much like a paranoid North-American. I just wanted to learn to roll with it like the rest of them in Thai fisherman pants and flip-flops.
Tali and I in the back of a tuk-tuk in Cambodia, 2000
Sunrise on board a boat sailing between the Islands of Nusa Tenggar, Indonesia, 2000
Portrait of Victoria in a wooden chai stall in Dharamsala, India, 2001
A man spins prayers wheels in the compound of the Vikrama Shila Buddhist Institute, Nepal, 2001
Punjabi sisters pose for a picture in Chennai, 2001
It was in meeting Wayne and Jane, a British couple who had been travelling for three months compared to our three weeks, that ultimately defined the relaxed nomad vibe I so desperately wanted to exude. They had just spent five weeks in a Nepalese village and were on their way to Indonesia, just like Tali, and I were. Their skin was sun-kissed and weathered; they looked so vibrantly alive and chilled out in this unfamiliar environment.
Although I would eventually go on to travel for years, at that time, I just couldn't imagine being on the road for as long as them. I knew if I was, I would have to begin to choose experiences over materials.
Letting go of those last vestiges of home piece by piece scared me, but it was also liberating. I had come on this journey to explore the world but also to let the world change me. This was the start of learning how to live with less stuff and place more value on experiences.
Halfway through the trip, I sent my dad's backpack home by sea mail and bought a much smaller North Face knockoff for $6 in a Vietnamese market. Some months later, when we finally arrived in India, that cheap bag was stolen by an old man who wheeled it on his trolley straight out of the airport. Instead of crying about it, I downsized again. I bought a bag as big as the purse I now carry in my urban life and lived on the one-rupee single-use packs of shampoo, with no excess belongings except for a camera and journal. Every traveller knew that the fresher you looked, the higher prices you’d pay. So, wearing the same shirt a few days a week was compulsory; looking worn-in was a sign that I was really out there living. And believe me, all dirty shirts aside, I was living my best life.
It wasn't just things that I learned to let go of. It was people too. My first ever love who I left back at home, the one I believed I would be with again, I never would be. I would travel for so long that I would leave behind countless lovers and friends scattered across the world like bread crumbs. Eventually, feeling the weight of my regrets, I'd follow the trail back through time to understand what motivated my departures. I broke a lot of hearts along the way, but in those days, the heart-wrenching goodbyes only meant that the highs of a new, young love were around the corner. And, boy did I turn a lot of corners.
A girl carrying wood pauses in the Dalat Highlands in Vietnam, 2001
A fisherwoman sits on the edge of her wooden boat, Vietnam, 2001
Tibetan Buddhist Monks of the Vikrama Shila Buddhist Institute in Pokhara, Nepal, pause for a photo. 2001
Looking back now at that eighteen-year-old girl who set off to Taiwan with that heavy rucksack, I smile at her naivety, but I also marvel at her courage. She learned that traversing the external borders of the world catalyzed the crossing of inner thresholds. She let life strip her down to the essentials, and she filled her belly on the soul food of love, the torment of heartache, and the adrenaline of being as fucking alive as she knew how to be. I can see her now, that little travelling light, with her brows furrowed under the eastern sun, everything she needs on her back and her open heart guiding her through strange lands.
To this day, she reminds me that self-transformation is a lot like packing for a trip: Only take the essentials and always travel light.
A view of Machapuchare (Annapurna’s Fish Tail Peak) in in the Pokhara region of Nepal, 2001
Portrait of a woman from the Tibetan Refugee Community in Ghoom, West Bengal, India. 2001
Buddhist monks gather in Cambodia, 2001
Women return from the fields on the outskirts of Luang Nam Tha, Laos, 2001
