Taming the Void

View of the street outside our guesthouse...
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Long holidays are inevitable lessons in how to live life. Travelling on the road for six months, a year, or even longer, we learn to recreate ourselves in strange and new communities where no one knows us or our life story. We are continually thrilled, amazed and challenged by our experiences and often learn to move outside our comfort zone and push the envelope of who we are.

Then again, there is that nagging existential void that sometimes takes over, swelling to the point where we might feel for a day, a week or more that life has lost its meaning, or in the words of Anne Rice, that ‘the wine no longer has any taste.’ Perhaps for the long-term traveller, this feeling stems from the vast difference between our so-called normal lives in our home country and the recreated lives we make for ourselves elsewhere; or maybe it’s the result of over stimulation or over indulgence? After all, travelling for many is one party after the next, after the next, and so on…

...a funny saying that seems to help me solve pretty much all of my problems: “don’t just do something, sit there!”

View of Shangri-la from the Monks' residence on the outskirts of the town...
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In any case, my story at this point goes a little like this: seven days spent high in the mountains of north-western Yunnan in the fabled town of Shangri-la and I hardly know myself any more. That can be disorienting to say the least. Who am I going to be when I go home? Who was I a month ago? Who am I now?

The grossly inadequate heating of my otherwise opulent guesthouse provides little respite from the all too early winter outside. Shivering underneath mounds of bedclothes, I’m reeling from the sudden onset of altitude sickness, and am forced by the annoying void to reflect on these questions, without even the slightest hope of an answer emerging. While I could pretend this place – the world outside my room – has been for me the backdrop of some mystical, spiritual journey (it sure sounds good when you say it like that), it’d be better to be honest: I’m sick, stuck here in minus-five degrees Celsius nights without decent air con and am feeling the cold more than ever before – I must be getting older! The truth in all this is that my time here serves to remind me of the continual distractions I create for myself, fuelling trivial desires and generally obscuring reality. Surely you can only distract yourself for so long, right?

View of the intrepid travellers on the mountain overlooking Nappa Lake...
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A Buddhist friend of mine once said to me, ‘you know, I have a funny saying that seems to help me solve pretty much all of my problems: “don’t just do something, sit there!”’ What an interesting thought – that so many of life’s problems would cease to weigh so heavily on us if we stopped trying to distract ourselves with things we think will make us happy and got to the essence of what it really means to be a human being.

A few days ago we met some inspiring travellers, most of whom had been – or planned to be – on the road for a year. Peter, an American, reminded me a lot of myself: introverted, usually sleep-deprived, creative and, at times, a little manic. He seemed to be somewhere deep in a cloud – not quite knowing where he was going next and a little over the standard ‘whistle-stop tour.’ He was deep in conversation with Kuaterina, a woman from Byron Bay, about popular mediation retreats in southern Thailand. I remember him fidgeting through a half empty packet of cigarettes, saying, with a slightly quivering tone in his voice, ‘I just ’gotta try something different… I can’t go on like this…’

The prayer flag hill above the Tibetan village we visited...
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Maybe the idea of a cloud – or a void – that swallows us up when we finally realise we can’t keep distracting ourselves with standard tourist sites, bottles of beer, souvenirs and cheap clothing is some rite of passage in our journey? Perhaps it’s some necessary part of the travelling experience reminding us that it’s people and their actions that make the world what it is, for better or worse?

I keep telling myself that I’m going to make something of this life, tomorrow, when the altitude sickness subsides, when I’m no longer stuck here in this room, in the cold. Then, somehow, things seem to make a bit more sense. In the midst of a blinding headache, a smile slowly forms on my face.

More prayer flags representing the hopes and dreams of thousands...
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I guess, for once, I’m taking my friend’s advice.