A few days ago I was boarding an enormous jet bound for Dubai.  I stood in the jetway and admired the size of the engine, thinking about the rooms of my apartment that could fit inside of it, when it occurred to me that I’d forgotten a fundamental detail of my kitchen.

“What are our countertops like?” I asked David.  I honestly couldn’t remember. It was then that I realized I’ve been away for a substantial amount of time.  In fact, today marks sixty days. Something happens to a person (or at least it has to me) when traveling for such an uninterrupted length of time. It’s been unlike anything I could have experienced had I dropped into any of my past destinations for an isolated two-week holiday. I expected to gain from this trip a broadened perspective on the world, but the same has also happened to my outlook on day-to-day life.  Here are a few of the ways:

Time feels irrelevant.

That might seem obvious but its implications are less-so. When there are oodles of time on your hands, you’re less protective of it.

A few days ago we landed in Dubai exactly 14 hours before our next flight was set to board. It being one in the morning, we checked into the hotel inside the international terminal, got a great night’s rest and then spent the following morning in an airport lounge sucking up free wifi and coffee.  We thought we were sitting two floors above our gate. We were wrong.

We hadn’t expected a bus would be required to transfer us to our gate and thus factored in zero time for the voyage. In the front row a British man was having a conniption. “My flight boards at 15:35 and this idiot won’t get going,” he told me motioning toward the driver who sat stoically behind the wheel of our motionless transportation. I looked at the 15:05 printed on my own boarding pass and gulped. We had just spent 14 hours killing time before a flight that we were now more likely to miss than make.

But we did make the flight, albeit as the last to board. To make matters better, the stewardess asked if we’d be willing to fill the empty exit row. “Why yes, we’d be glad to.” As I buckled in and looked out at Dubai’s skyline through the haze of choking heat I felt grateful to be sitting there.  But I also acknowledged that to have missed the flight would not have been the sky-falling-to-earth sort of calamity it feels like when time is absolutely of the essence. I had my laptop, a fully charged external battery and an e-reader loaded with unread fiction. Put me in a bunker for a week, I’d be happy as a clam. 

Mirrors are avoidable after all.

I wrote about this in one of my early posts, “Bonfire of my Vanity,” and what I’d predicted would be the case has in fact become it. I spend “this” much time (I’m pressing my thumb to my forefinger) thinking about what I’ll wear or which shade of eyeshadow to brush onto my eyelids.  And it’s immeasurably freeing.

I wash my underwear in the sink most nights and I practically live in my snazzy (even if shapeless) travel pants. On colder days, I’ve been known to layer long underwear beneath a short summer dress (an especially fetching look). The blonde highlights I’d normally head to the salon for right about now are coming to me compliments of the sun.  My last manicure was on August 28th and since then I’ve shamelessly re-engaged my nail-biting habit with great gusto. If I don’t use hair conditioner, I’ve found I can go a lot longer between washings.

Packing’s also a snap. Where I might otherwise be running around my apartment with a packing list, I now simply pack everything (and it fits every time). There’s no consideration about how many shirts to bring to Bhutan: I made that decision two months ago.

Sans shopping bags.

I never before realized how much of tourism is geared toward buying things. Refrigerator magnets and hats and t-shirts and tote bags and Christmas ornaments and painted tiles and carved wooden figurines shaped like giraffes. Traveling with a full backpack has rid me of the ability to buy anything (except for bracelets. I stop for bracelets). This has quickened our pace through some tourist attractions and even eliminated a few of them altogether.  I don’t feel any need to track down the perfect ‘singing bowl’ to commemorate my time in Kathmandu, and if I one day decide an African theme would suit my living room, well it will just have to happen without those wooden masks from Tanzania.

It’s not that I don’t want things.  I’ll admit to fingering colorful woven linens and beautiful wooden bowls with a longing.  But not being able to carry them makes the decision very easy. It also alleviates my guilt when I say to the shopkeeper, “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

The meaning of meals and moments.

I’m indecisive.  This has been a problem in the past.  David would regal for you tales of agonizing marches from restaurant to restaurant in places like Buenos Aires and Sydney.  Me insisting that I just want to make sure we’re getting the best possible meal that we can (“being there for only so many nights and all”) he insisting we get that meal before midnight.

Decisions about where to eat and how to spend the day are made with considerable more ease now. We’ve had countless incredible experiences and meals but also some duds – and I’ve learned to be okay with those. They do not mar the week.

In Stellenbosch, South Africa (wine country), we’d booked just one night at a B&B and planned to do and see as much as we could that day.  But in the morning I woke up feeling miserable.  So, a day that was to hold wine tastings and vineyard tours became instead our first dip into the very limited collection of television shows David had managed to illegally download when wifi speeds ran fast enough.  It was a gorgeous day and there we were, indoors, catching up on Don Draper’s latest affair.  I felt a smidgen of guilt to be passing up on a day of activity but dismissed it.  This is less a once-in-a-lifetime vacation and more a temporary lifestyle (as much as I’m still unable to believe it myself).  And sometimes we get sick. 

Highbrow dialogue.

In the time I’ve been away from America I’ve learned more about my own country’s present politics than I had in the preceding year. This might sound like an overstatement, and sort of is, but the essence is absolutely true. I’ve spoken with Australians and Irish and British and South African and Dutch and Swedish and French and Italian and German and some others I can’t recall at this present moment and nearly all of them have surprised me with their knowledge of American politics.

The conversations begin with questions like: “How is it that the United States of America is broke?” (to which I can only grimace and shrug). Or, “So what do you think of Obama’s healthcare plan?” (to which I find myself at a sudden loss for words, wishing I’d done more reading of the New York Times – beyond the book review section, that is.). And of course the latest and greatest: “So what’s with this wiretapping?”

Maybe they bring up these topics because it’s a sort of common ground. If the world’s a game of dominos, America is the tile the finger taps. Or maybe they genuinely hope I’ll shed light on some of our country’s more questionable moves. Either way, it’s been a humbling experience. One that has me tuning into the BBC far more often than ever before. 

Seasonal shifts.

In the last two months we’ve gone from late summer in Paris to full-fledged autumn in Rome to late spring in Tanzania to earlier spring in South Africa to later autumn in Nepal. This gets disorienting, though less based on weather and more the schedule of the sun.

Sitting on the tarmac in Dubai (on that flight we were so lucky to make) I looked out the window and concluded it must be around 6:00pm – the sun was so low in the sky.  But it was actually 4:00.  Without realizing it, I’d wandered back into autumn.

It’s not unlike time travel.  I’ve even gone so far as to think about what it would mean for us to travel a full year, returning to San Francisco in the exact same season we’d left it in. There isn’t a great deal of difference between the ages of 30 and 31, so then would I feel that no time had passed at all?

Before leaving on this trip I speculated about my ability to last as long as I now have.  And I received varying iterations of “Are you crazy? Of course you’re not coming back early.” from family and friends when I told them this.  They were right – at least so far.

Today we head out for 8 days of trekking in the Annapurna Region of Nepal. I’ve made the exceedingly difficult decision to part with my laptop for this time, even though I’ve heard there will be electricity at some of the tea-houses we stay in. I’m instead packing a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen, which seems far more appropriate for my upcoming circumstances.

So, here’s to day 61, whatever it may hold.