The Nomad's Rest

During all my adventure, I published a story about my trip every two weeks in the weekly newspaper La Tribune. Here is the translation of the assessment I wrote for the Saturday August 18th edition.

Source : CUSTEAU, Jonathan. « Le repos du nomade », La Tribune, Saturday August 18 2012, p. 10.

The friendships we make in a trip like this are way stronger than we can imagine. They leave you pensive, always a little sad after each goodbye, and put you in a loneliness you never feared before, like here on Mykonos Island, in Greece.

The Nomad's Rest

Allow me to have a lump in my throat. Allow me to be dizzy, drunk of these six months that went by. By going through the door of Pierre-Elliot-Trudeau Airport, Wednesday, the book closed itself in a deafening noise. I went all the way around the circle, ended six months of traveling around the world. Put the sail away. Went back home. And I still don’t want to hear the alarm of the daily routine knocking at my door.

After six months of sailing from discovery to discovery, I’m still trying to land. I will surely miss that freedom of waking up every morning in a different country. In a country I had chosen.

I will miss those friends I met randomly, those citizens of the world who get their fuel at the same place I do, who understand without asking questions. I will miss that intoxicating feeling I get by pretending I’m Chinese, Greek or Portuguese, acting as if eating at the nearby café, taking the metro, were part of the routine.

I will miss that magic moment where you stop being a tourist to navigate comfortably, being able to find your way in those towns you made yours.

I was told I probably wouldn’t come back exactly as I was before. That I would become a better man. Do we get better because we leave far away for six months? We get more maturity, more wisdom, more madness maybe. But is that making us better?

Six months around the world, it’s far from a hippie trip to smoke weed and grow dreadlocks.

Six months of travel, it’s trying to seize the uncatchable more and more every day. It’s stopping time in every second dripping between our fingers. It’s letting soak some images we might, sooner or later, forget.

It’s accepting to die a little bit more day after day with those moments that will never come back, that we will never be able to describe or explain as they really were. The paradox is to collect so many unforgettable moments that we will probably end up forgetting some of them. And we hate ourselves a little bit for that.

I smiled like an idiot at the back of a tuk-tuk in Cambodia, simply with the satisfaction of living in the moment; I opened eyes that big when I got to see Australia’s coasts; I found unexpected peace in Wadi Rum Desert in Jordan. But up above all this, I will remember those people I met that now define the countries I visited.

In all of those faces, I saw the World! Way more than in those pieces of land or in those ruins all older than the previous one. I’ve found friends for life!

There are actually some moments where you want to stop it all, hug those people so hard so they’ll decide not to go. Because they made us feel at home in this other land, because we would build a house right there, each day trapping in a big bottle that instantaneous happiness.

I found much more in each word I shared with a foreign friend than in each kilometre I went through between here and there. Those friends make you smile, steal a tear from you when it’s time to say goodbye, make you think way more than the wisdom you acquire with this time that, in the end, only can go by. I will miss all these people for whom, in so little time, I became somebody.

Those six months were full of innocent happiness, spontaneous laughter which allow to dig in the children in ourselves to explore, experiment, take risks, stop asking questions and stop worrying about consequences…

Because the more you learn, the more you understand you know nothing. The more you travel, the more you understand you’ve seen nothing. And yet, yet, after 20 countries, 72 cities, 28 planes, 58 hostels and more than 16 000 pictures, one could wish for an illumination or two. Nothing! Nothing but the feeling of wanting even more.

I could disappear again in one week, one month, one year. Hard to stay in place when there is a whole world, out there, that is left to explore. I also want to realize so many other dreams, surf on the vibe I got going.

Six months around the world, it’s also learning to let go. Let go of what you can’t control, of course, but accepting to live knowing you leave each part of happiness behind day after day. You snatch yourself away from those places you like, those people you would like to stay with a little bit longer. One needs to accept it, that’s all.

Six months around the world, it’s living at all costs. Living instead of surviving. Because that life has no price.

Allow me to have a lump in my throat when it’s time to end this trip of a lifetime. Allow me to have a lump in my throat when it’s time to write these last lines that will definitely turn a page I refuse to turn. And forgive me if my head is still in another time zone sometimes…