I wrote the following letter to friends in late 2004, exactly one year into a 14-month journey across Asia. I came across it again recently and it did my soul good to read it one more time. Among other things, it provides a glimpse into what a long term journey can do to—and for—a person.

October 24, 2004 - Osh, Kyrgyzstan

Dear Friends,

It is a slightly overcast autumn morning in Osh.  I just returned from breakfast (four fried eggs, bread, and a couple cups of Nescafe), having enjoyed my food from a table set up beside the sidewalk.  An elderly man with strikingly thick glasses came into the cafe and sat at the table next to mine.  We were the only two in the restaurant and I sensed he was hungry.  I asked Shildiz, my waitress, to bring him an egg and bread and charge it to me.  She did, but when I went to pay the pill an hour later his tab was not on there.  They had written it off.

And last night I had an extraordinary experience: for the first time since I arrived in Asia, I was in a room with about 25 Americans.  I have not seen that many of my compatriots together in 369 days.  Almost all were in the Peace Corps and hailed from places like Detroit, Denver, Mobile, and Richmond.  These names struck me as exotic, belonging to a land and life far away.  It has become ordinary to meet men and women from places like Shanghai, Islamabad, Tashkent, and Mumbai.  In the room last night I found myself uncertain how to stand, how to talk, what to think.  Finding my way over thousands of miles this year, I had reached a room where I felt a little lost.  While it was a great evening with some wonderful men and women, it was also a foretaste of what it will be like when my plane sets down in the States and I walk back into a land that, while home, is also foreign.

It has been a year.  I look back on that first night in Asia (October 21, 2003) when I walked through the empty streets of Beijing after midnight, trying to find a bed, and I see a younger person than I see when I look today.  Now I see the significance of that night in a way I couldn't then.  In the year that has followed I have slept in 173 beds (this number does not include nine overnight bus trips) and spent 787 hours on the road, rails, rivers, and sea.  I would watch myself be depressed in ways I don't think I've ever been; I would feel fear more keenly than I think I ever have; I would become even more tired than I had been in the busiest times of college and post-grad studies.

Looking back on the year, I have a sense of being fortunate.  In the wake of scores of miserable nights alone; of rock-bottom experiences like having my day-pack stolen in Nepal and losing that which I could not comprehend losing; of two straight weeks of intense nightmares about my graphic death in Afghanistan, which left me physically and mentally exhausted and sick; of occasional periods of mild hunger; etc...in the wake of all the trials of this year, I now feel a profound tenderness toward things: the autumn leaves on the street outside this cafe, the old man in the restaurant this morning, the young couples making out on top of Mt. Suleiman yesterday evening...even toward myself, I think.

Kathmandu, Nepal

But I shouldn't give the impression that this year has been all trial when in fact it has just as often been wonderful.  When I look at a map of Asia today, it is animated by the faces of people and how they've affected my life.  The dots on the map are springs flowing with good memories.  I see the dot in eastern China that marks Shanghai and I can't help but see old men and women dancing by the riverfront.  I see Hanoi and hear ABBA singing "Happy New Year" and the beautiful faces of Vietnamese calling me to stand with them as the seconds count down to 2004.  I see Kuala Lumpur and remember the root beer float at an A&W drive-through with a new friend.  I see the dot showing Berastagi, that small Sumatran town, and hear the hiss of a steam vent five feet away as I sat alone in a volcanic crater reading Thomas Merton, followed by a hike back to town where I had coffee at a table with the restaurant manager whose cat purred happily in her lap.  I see eastern Tibet and give thanks for the thousandth time for the university graduates from Shanghai who took me under their arm on those cold, rainy, and snowy three days as I traveled illegally, nervously, and with limited language ability toward Lhasa.

I see the landlocked country of Laos, and see the bombs falling in its jungles and villages, remembering that more American bombs have fallen on this nation than on any other.  I see its legacy of war, but even more I see its people: a man reading the Bangkok Post beside the Mekong, teenage monks in the midst of their evening chant at the temple, Lao men and women singing in church on a Sunday morning.

I see Kathmandu and think of two of the most beautiful kids I've ever met, girls who could teach master's-level courses on pastoral counseling for foreign travelers who have just been robbed.  They lived in a poor part of town and had recently lost their father, but they took my pain into their own souls and in so doing I could feel my own pain lessening instantly.  It was a profound experience.

I see the line showing the road between Islamabad and Peshawar and think of the three bus journeys I had there, of the Taliban sympathizers who got up to give me their seat, of the passengers who invited me to stay in their homes and made me feel safer here than I would have in many areas of Washington, D.C.

I see Dharamsala in northern India and see the smiling yet reserved face of Tsering, a 27-year-old who walked with a group of monks for 20-some days through the Himalayas to escape Tibet when she was only 14 years old.  I remember her unexpected embrace when we said goodbye after getting to know each other over several days.  It was the embrace of an exile, an embrace that gave this wandering American a deep sense of Home, a place of the spirit that is beyond any physical location or particular culture.

I see thousands of things, too much to name now and probably ever.  What I'm trying to say is that today a map of Asia is anything but a piece of paper to me.  It is like the photograph of a loved one.

Karimabad, Pakistan

In the last four months, my route has been altered.  As planned I went from Tibet to Nepal, where I flew to Israel/Palestine for two weeks.  Back in Nepal I headed south to India, later crossed into Pakistan, and from there began the adjusted itinerary.  From Pakistan I went north into China for a third time this year.   This was because I could not get an affordable visa for Iran because of my nationality.  (So I have been left to hear the stories of other travelers, all of whom have spoken highly of the people in Iran.) Then it seemed best to cancel my plans to go through Afghanistan.  And so I am going through Central Asia now, shelling out cash for visas but so far loving the people and food.

To celebrate my year anniversary in Asia (and to save some money), I hitchhiked from Kashgar, China to Kyrgyzstan, enjoying the coat I had bought the day before as I trudged through snow along the long, high highway.  Every day has its stories.  Let me share one from this anniversary day:

Late in the afternoon I was in an area with no snow.  The sun had come out and the landscape was not unlike the mountainous desert of Southern California.  I was enjoying the wide open space and the silence, feeling that this road was leading me forward.  Then the silence fell apart: a pack of ten dogs shot out from behind a mud wall and, once on the asphalt, made a hard left straight toward me, the white guy about 100 meters away.  I saw their nails dig into the pavement. Even worse, I heard the scratching sound their anxious feet were making.  One was in the lead and the others fanned out behind it, much like migrating geese.  They were not flying birds, however; this was a terrifying blitzkrieg of teeth and hair, saliva and sound.  There is no way to fight such speed and so all I did was stand on the yellow stripe in the middle of the road and say to myself several times, and somewhat calmly, "Oh no. Oh no."  My life did not flash before my eyes (that would take too much time after this year), but I remember thinking quite clearly that I might very well have my flesh scattered on this nicely paved Chinese road just 30 miles from Kyrgyzstan, then have small pieces of it drug into the desert.  It was as if I was watching this from outside myself (I don't remember my heart racing in the least), and it was with some confusion that I crouched down to defend against the first dog and then, as it neared the speed of sound, I watched it pass me just two feet away and continue on down the road.  The other nine dogs followed suit.  It was only then that I saw that the head dog was not the leader of the pack.  He was the one being chased.  Feeling a little sorry for the dog in the lead but happy to be able to continue toward Turkey, I picked up my backpack again and continued the walk westward, scanning the horizon for an oncoming truck heading west as well.

Now for a summary of statistics:  I've spent about $2,190 in the last four months, almost $500 of this on visas.  In the last 12 months I have spent $6,855 in Asia, plus several hundred more in the States for health insurance.  Sadly, I had my day-pack stolen and lost about $1,300 on top of this.  The good news is that it is $300 less than I originally thought.

In the last year I traveled about as far west of Beijing as Salt Lake City is from Boston.  And I've traveled about as far south of Beijing as Quito, Ecuador is from Washington, D.C.  On the one year anniversary I was equidistant to Amman and Beijing.

Soon I will be home.  I've pushed back my date still further, anticipating arriving back in the States about a week before Christmas.  I hope to spend about a full week in Istanbul before doing so. I'll watch ships on the Bosporus, catch a belly dancing show, smoke a water pipe, and get all the dead skin scrubbed off me by a burly man in a Turkish bath.  I'll be clean, but I imagine my ribs will still be protruding when I reach the States.  I'll gain a few pounds at Christmas time with considerable pleasure.  My bank account will be a little emaciated as well, but I'll be returning to the States with no regrets about that.  It's been money well spent.

I will need to find work soon though.  I will have about 50 hours of video and have considered proposing to CBS or NBC to do a reality TV show with my videos.  They could hype it up better than I could and I think some people would tune in.  But then again, maybe I should watch the videos first and see if even I can sit through it.

I've been thinking of a title for my hoped-for book. They've ranged from the slightly humorous (Boobs and Burkas: Reflections on Things Seen in Asia) to the theological (Made in God's Image: The People of Asia) to the self-critical (The Grumpy American Rides through Asia).  Obviously, I have some work to do still.  (And yes, I think all these titles sound corny and I'm not serious about using them.)

I thought about marketing some of my photographs as screen-savers:  "Toilets of the World" (thanks, Dave); "Hands of Asia"; and so on...

My post-Christmas plans are not clear yet, though I hope to spend several weeks some place, probably in Tennessee, writing.  I've had the idea of offering myself for speaking, perhaps in conjunction with showing pictures on PowerPoint.  The title could be something like "Meet you Neighbors."  It is important for all of us, especially Americans, to have a sense of who are global neighbors are, to look them in the eye, even if it can only be through pictures and stories.  If this is of interest to anyone, let me know.

Myself in northern Pakistan (September 2004)

I am feeling very good this week.  There's no place I'd be happier to be right now than in Osh.  And when I am in Uzbekistan on Tuesday, I suspect there's no place I'd want to be more than there.  I'm enjoying people, enjoying autumn, enjoying food, enjoying hot showers, enjoying clean socks, and lots of other things.  But to my good friends who may be thinking I've arrived at a heightened state of being, don't worry:  you'll still find that I am impatient too often, that I can be really disinterested in what you have to say if my mind is wandering toward what I need to get to done today, etc.

But I have a feeling I've learned some important things this past year and that I have changed a little too.  I've gotten to know the other side of the world better.  I've dined with too many priests and prostitutes; truckers and farmers; rich and poor to not be changed.  I've been too depressed and then too alive to not be changed.  And I've probably hit my head on the ceilings of too many buses and vans to not be changed (two days ago I thought I might have gotten a concussion in the suspensionless Russian jeep I was in after I went airborne into the hard metal ceiling).

A warm hello to all of you.  Have a wonderful week and drop me a line if you have the time.

Joel

Joel Carillet, chief editor of Wandering Educators, is a freelance writer and photographer based in Tennessee. He is the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. To learn more about him, follow his regular photoblog, or purchase prints, visit www.joelcarillet.com.