In my hand is a boarding pass and on it are three letters in bold: SFO.  
The ticket agent treated this as a very routine check-in.  She tucked the boarding pass into my passport and handed it over the counter like I was just another passenger.  Like I wasn’t someone who was about to end the biggest, craziest, scariest, best thing she’d ever done.

I mean, isn’t it obvious?

The whole thing feels anti-climactic.  There ought to be balloons.  Fireworks!  A marching band wouldn’t be out of the question…But alas, as my airplane climbs higher and Bangkok’s sprawl grows smaller, I am, as the ticket agent surmised, just another passenger – in this case, one with her nose pressed against the plastic window in an effort to squeeze out a few final glimpses of hot, hectic, but wonderful, Southeast Asia…Already the nostalgia is kicking in.

I lean back into my seat and I attempt to think monumental thoughts – deep, insightful ruminations because the moment deserves nothing less, and yet all I can seem to think about is my stomach.  For a week David and I have been plotting my homecoming meal and while I’m still a good fifteen or so hours from touch-down in San Francisco, my mouth is watering.  Which begs the question: Did Travel do me any good at all?  After all of it, am I still thinking only about my appetite?

Six months ago I set out on this journey with several loosely acknowledged intentions.
To attain some level of sudo-enlightenment, for one (easy, right?).  To collect some half-way interesting stories to share at future dinner parties.  To find perspective on my life.  To develop a genuine interest in the countries I read about in the news.  To replace a few fears with confidence.  And, while I’m being honest, to get this travel thing out of my system so that I might feel a little more comfortable with ‘settling down’ (a relative term) and having children.

I’m proud to report that all of these things happened…well, except for that last one.

Travel, as it turns out, isn’t the flu.  It’s a virus.  It feeds on itself, multiplying by the tens of thousands.  It’s an addiction.  It’s the snooze button on your alarm clock.  It feels so gosh darn good that you don’t ever want to stop.  And yet here I’m doing precisely that.  By choice, no less.  And while my plane closes the distance between Southeast Asia and San Francisco I’m filled with a feeling that I assume is not dissimilar to that of parents watching their teenager graduate high school:  One of the best thing I’ve ever done is drawing to a close.  And, like those parents, I calm myself with with caveats:  It’s not over over, it’s just changing…There will be more plane tickets in my future…more stamps on my passport…And anyway, I’m headed back to California.  There are certainly worse places.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the best thing I’ve ever done (to date, of course).  And I don’t suppose that’s so difficult to believe.  Six months of ‘vacation’?  Who wouldn’t love that?  But, actually, in the beginning I was pretty certain I would not.  “We say six months, but we might not make it to three” was what I told  anyone who asked.  On my face I wore a semi-permanent expression of pure anxiety and I spoke of Travel like it was a chore – an upcoming right of passage that I was forcing myself to endure.  Quite frankly, it terrified me.

Here, today, I don’t recognize the girl who said those things.  The one who disembarked from that airplane in Paris.  The one who felt all jittery about ordering a filet of fish at a fancy French restaurant and worried the Parisians would be rude to her because she could not direct a taxi driver in his native language.  She is a basket case, that one, and I hope she’s gotten herself some help.

As for me today? I’ve mastered the motorbike in Vietnam and I’ve flown in a questionable propeller plane in Myanmar.  I’ve come up close and personal with great whites in South Africa, and I’ve floated in a hot air balloon over the Serengeti.  I’ve milked cows on a farm in Bhutan , and I’ve dove in pitch-black waters in the Maldives.  I’ve hiked miles in the Himalayas, and I’ve conversed with the world’s kindest people in Sri Lanka. And all along the way I’ve watched – really watched, not just seen – more sunrises and sunsets than I had in my previous thirty years and six months.  I say all of this not to brag, but rather to point out to my formerly fearful self that the world is only as big and frightening as you let it seem.

Also: the world is huge.

Motorbikes in Hue, Vietnam

Diving in the Maldives

Aloha, our jovial tuk tuk driver in Sri Lanka

the U Bein Bridge at sunset

Boat ride from Bagan to Mandalay at sunrise

Milking lesson in Bhutan

Poon Hill, Nepal

Ready to get in the cage in South Africa

Ballooning in Tanzania

Over the course of my wanderings I have found many things.
Some of them tangible, some of them not and it’s those ones that I’ve liked the most.  As I prepare to close the door on (this installment of) Travel, a few findings have floated to the surface of my mind.  Objectively, I recognize that they are ones that make me feel like going home is the exact best thing to do, but that does not detract from their truth:

1. Travel, like anything else, can go stale.  In January we were on a boat in Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and for good reason.  It’s silver water dotted with abruptly rising rock formations is breathtaking – that was the word I overheard a couple of American tourists exclaim in voices tinged with heartfelt wonder.  I remember looking up from my book and suddenly seeing things as they, fresh off a plane from New York, did.  Where a few minutes before I’d been taking for granted the brilliance of our surroundings, I quickly forced myself into a state of awe.  And it worked.

Just the week before I’d been diving in the turquoise waters of the Maldives…The week before that I was riding a train through the mountains of Sri Lanka.  The week before that?  I was feeding elephants in Thailand…Life for me had become so perpetually outrageous that the novel no longer felt noteworthy.  I did not reach for my camera with that consistent urgency that I once had.

Appreciating life, no matter what kind you’re living, is a constant effort.  I hope to remember that when I, inevitably, chafe against the upcoming routine of life at home.

2. Foreign is a relative term.  For me today it means drinking water straight from the tap.  Clean public restrooms.  A washer and dryer at my disposal.  English.  The ability to share an in-person conversation with good friends.  Raspberries.

3. It is in fact possible to carry everything you need on your back.  From the very start, I was oddly attracted to the idea of stripping away all of my ‘things.’  I called it the bonfire of my vanity and indeed it was exactly that.  For six months I have washed my underwear nightly in hotel bathroom sinks and I’ve selected outfits for dinner based on smell, not style.  I haven’t used a drop of hair conditioner and my fingernails are bitten to the quick.  My toes have not known the confines of anything other than my ratty trail-running shoes.  I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to comfortably wear pants with zippers when I get home.

Am I now dying for a haircut?  To deny that would be a lie.  But I’ve learned the difference between want and need and regardless of how I put that into practice in my future, I’ve proven my hypothesis correct: less might not be more, but it can sometimes feel that way.

4. The where is relatively meaningless next to the what, the who and the how.  When I think about Travel I think mostly of the moments that could have happened anywhere.  Walks home from dinner when David or I suddenly burst into some absurdly disjointed dance.  People-watching and music-listening and book-reading and breakfast-table conversations that began with David saying “so I spent some time on Wikipedia last night…”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Travel is not what I’ve liked most about Travel.  It was never about the sites as much as it was the person I was experiencing them with.  It wasn’t the cultural oddities, it was my curious observance of them.  It wasn’t the ocean I’d put between me and my previously ‘normal’ life, it was that I’d had the audacity to do so in the first place.  It wasn’t the freedom that Travel allowed, it was how I chose to spend that time.

Perhaps this contradicts my prior statement about Travel being an addiction, but I don’t think so.  Because while I will always crave that unique rush that Travel brings, so too will I find contentment wherever in the world I am.

Halong Bay

Train travel in Sri Lanka

Up close and personal with an elephant in Thailand

The other day I made the mistake of clicking one of those ‘100 places to see before you die,’ articles.

It gutted me.

Cherry blossom season in Japan!  Torres Del Paine in Chile!  The Blue Lagoon in Iceland!  When will I see these places?  Whereas I once ventured that taking this trip might be the biggest mistake of our young lives, I suddenly wondered if ending it is in fact the real misstep?

But as I made my way through the list, past the fjords of New Zealand and the salt flats of Bolivia and the glistening waters of the Galapagos I came to one place that I know very well – it’s visible from my kitchen.  I gaze at it while I hang a steaming spoonful of whatever I’m cooking out the window to cool…I squint at it through the morning fog while the water for my coffee boils on the stove top…I fall asleep to the sound of fog horns tucked beneath its rusty-red expanse.  I’ve never been shy about my long-standing love affair with the Golden Gate Bridge and I’m excited to pick up where we left off…

…As excited as I am to see David waiting for me on the other side of this flight.  And the white-wine-and-saffron-steamed mussels I plan to eat for dinner…

I want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has followed my journey here on Somewhere Seeking.  While I would have written even if nobody read a word, sharing my experiences added a layer of meaning to it all that I could not have anticipated.  This is indeed the end of Travel for me for now, but it is not the end of Seeking.  To what degree I will record my findings here in this space?  I am not yet sure, but I hope that in the meantime you, too, will go forth and find.  We are constantly surrounded by beautiful, unusual, hilarious, incredible things.  It’s that kind of world.

For a full collection of pictures from the past six months, click here.  And to be notified if and when Somewhere Seeking is next updated, pop your email address into the field near the top of the page.