Tom, Emily, and I were heading out the door of our hotel when we were cornered by the Belgian. He was stuck here in Xian, he said, while waiting for the border with Mongolia to open back up. He could afford to be patient. After all, he had been traveling for six years.
It isn’t really possible to travel for six years, any more than it is possible to be away from home for six years. Once you’ve been gone that long, you’re not traveling anymore, and you don’t have a home. Depending on your personal bias, you might employ any number of terms to describe a six-year journey: drifting, fleeing, questing, living the good life, whatever. Most backpackers look slightly askance at these sorts of extended trips. It’s a trite truism that one of the nicest things about traveling is returning home. And then leaving again.
So we were all just a little suspicious of the Belgian. If he had spent so much time in monasteries, as he claimed, why did he have a gym-built body and Fernando Lamas hair? How did he support himself? What was inspiring him, after all these years of traveling, to make the schlep up to Ulan Batur?
The Belgian, of course, had an endless supply of hoary traveler’s tales. He had been in Beijing almost twenty years ago. Back then, the city was empty of cars (much as SARS has emptied it of tourists today). A huge metropolis, mile-wide streets, all crammed full of workers on their bicycles. The Belgian complained that travel in China back then was so much easier. No killer diseases to worry about.
We listened politely, although we all knew this last claim was nonsense. Traveling in China today is almost too easy. A decade ago, China was reportedly a nightmare of restrictions and bureaucracy, a banana pancake-less tourist wasteland.
Tom, Emily, and I were locked in a silent conspiracy not to invite the Belgian to dinner with us, and at the first convenient moment, we slipped away.
Over the meal, I confessed that what most put me off was jealousy. I wanted to see Beijing without any cars. I wanted to visit a country where getting “off the beaten track” didn’t entail marooning oneself in some godforsaken rural outpost. I wanted to bore other tourists with stories of Back Before.
Tom pointed out that there is a good chance Beijing is a lot more interesting today than twenty years ago. That once you had spent a few minutes ogling at all the bicycles, you had to deal with the fact that you were stuck in a huge city without any hope of getting a taxi, in a country suffering from terrible infrastructure and bleak economic policies. Beijing twenty years ago may very well have, in a word, sucked.
Point taken, but we all know that the worst travel experiences are the best travel experiences, and that the unspoken subtext of all those boring old travel stories is, “Sure, you’re having a nice little tea party in Botswanastan now, but I was here when it totally blew.”
The three of us attempted to come up with a list of countries that still exist in a state of Back Before.
Bhutan? A likely candidate, but virtually impossible to visit. Bangladesh? Sounds depressingly poor. Ethiopa? Maybe, but probably also depressing, and Africa just doesn’t have the mystique of the Silk Road countries.
I’ve since been poring over maps, and I’m left with Central Asia and the Middle East. These countries have it all: ancient histories, colorful traditions, beguiling cities, natural beauty, unstable political situations, daunting obstacles, a whiff of danger.
I’m already formulating my next trip. Do you know anyone whose been to Turkmenistan? No? Good. I’ll be sure to tell you about when I get back.
