One year ago today I boarded a one-way flight to Delhi, India.
I was alone, I was nervous. But I was ready. I packed letters and pictures and stumbled through my living room trying to lift my backpack. I was working furiously to make as much lemonade as I possibly could after a very hard year.
It was a warm February day when I left. I remember it vividly. 11 degrees and sunny. Family breakfasts and dinners and pictures. It also happens to be a warm February day as I write this now. I’m sitting in my favourite cafe, L’eau à la Bouche. My flatmate Toby and I just went for a swim and coffee. I’m surrounded by trendy Europeans wearing striped shirts and loafers.
Let’s rewind a bit.
Even though I stopped writing after Morocco, I did about a month more of travelling through Europe to visit friends, including three weeks of sacred-soul-sister travel with my dear friend, Hannah Rittner. I cherish this last month so much, but didn’t write about it because it felt like the loose leaf part of my trip was over. And I wanted to keep these moments sacred between my friends and I. To give a brief glimpse, some highlights include a Soul & Surf reunion dinner in London, a Dutch hip hop festival in Amsterdam, swimming in the stunning Mediterranean of Greece, sitting on a dock under the stars sipping sparkling rosé in Venice musing about future love, incredible food and art in Berlin …
It’s been five months now since my trip officially ended and so much has changed. I don’t even know where to begin.
For starters, I moved to London!
A very spontaneous decision and a complete leap of faith.
When I first arrived in London from Marrakech something just felt right. Like I was home. I was in a cafe thinking hmmm, maybe i should live here someday and who sits down next to me but an old childhood friend from Canada who I haven’t seen in 14 years.
That afternoon, I visit the Tate while these thoughts are swimming in my head. I sit outside on a windy balcony overlooking the Thames. I order rooibos tea and wrap myself in a giant scarf. I feel whole for the first time since the day my visa was denied. I call my mom and say, mom, i think i have to move to london. She says, yes. i think you do.
A few days later I’m in a cafe in Amsterdam. I search london fundraising. The first person who pops up is Alisha Miranda. I send her a cold email at 1:00pm on August 15th asking if I can take her for a coffee, very well knowing that no one ever answers a cold email (and certainly not in August). Turns out, it was the best cold email she’s ever received. So begins a Skype from Berlin, an impromptu trip back to London for an interview, and a call with the job offer on the very last afternoon of my trip.
The moment I hung up the phone I burst out laughing. You can’t even write this stuff.
(And yes. The only reason I came to London in the first place was to visit people I had met at Soul & Surf. The very place I cancelled my trip to the Himalayas for because a gut instinct woke me up in the middle of the night and made me book a ticket to Kerala for no reason.)
I am truly shaken to my core when I think about this. Wildly grateful. Humbled. And an official instinct-believer.
It was hard to go home and have to break the news to everyone, but I couldn’t ask for a more supportive network of friends and family. Every single person who I love and trust told me I had to go. Because the worst that could happen was I hated it and left. And there’s no shame in that. The shame would be to choose fear over curiosity – to not show up for my own life.
So show up, I did.
The first few weeks were a blur I hardly remember. New job, flat hunting, life admin, friend dates. I stayed with my cousin, Eve, in Hampstead but she was away when I arrived so I spent a good portion of my first weekend eating tiramisu alone on the couch watching Gilmore Girls wondering what on earth I had done. I remember calling my mom and saying to her i understand why people never move. moving is bullshit. She laughed.
Moving to London has been far harder than anything I experienced on my trip. Backpacking is transient and impermanent. When you don’t like something, you leave. When you like it, you stay. Everyone’s a stranger so intimacy is easy.
But when you move to a new country and you are the only new person, things are different. You can’t leave. People are set in their lives. They have their friends. They don’t need new ones. Hence the sitting alone on couches eating tiramisu with Rory and Lorelai.
I always know I’m going through a hard change when I wake up thinking, all i have to do is make it back into this bed tonight. But I also must admit I felt strong and sure. There is something very badass about moving across the world alone with no one picking you up from the airport, taking the train into the city with two giant suitcases, finding a flat you’ve never been to, eating soup in the cafe across the street, going for a long evening walk in a neighbourhood you apparently live in now, having a hot shower, and collapsing for 15 hours with the blackout blinds.
I’ll always look back at my first weekend with a huge badass smile on my face.
So a quick London update: I’m very happy to report that I love the city and after this first overwhelming weekend, things settled into place rather quickly (I’ve come to the conclusion that London is New York with Canadians in it). I’ve found the dreamiest flat with the dreamiest flatmates, Annick and Toby. We cook together and have Sunday movie nights and make each other hot water bottles before bed (soulmates). I’m also completely in love with my job and all my colleagues. I took up tap dancing post-November 8th. My best friend Molly flew down from New York, we hopped on the Eurostar after work with pink champagne, and ate our French dreams in Paris. I started volunteering as an MC for Sofar Sounds. I’m slowly picking up British lingo like loads and loo and it makes me feel cool (although I still can’t say quid with a straight face).
Don’t get me wrong – there are still many moments of loneliness and missing people but that’s just where I’m at. It comes in waves and I’m trying to surrender to the fact that healing isn’t linear.
There’s a beautiful word in Welsh, hiraeth, which means a feeling of homesickness for a place that no longer exists. I love this. Because I still miss New York. I still think about my life there every day and miss it very palpably. But I’m also building new bones and new memories. And it feels really groovy.
It’s funny – now that I’m settling in a routine, I forget my trip even happened.
People ask me about it and refer to me as a badass travel goddess and I’m like who, me? that couldn’t possibly be me! But then there are moments when I catch myself telling some story or referencing some place and inside my head I’m like, holy shit. i am a badass travel goddess!
The cool part is I know I’m going to continue learning and growing from this trip for the rest of my life. As Cheryl Strayed calls it, backpacking is retrospective fun.
70% of my trip was spent getting from A to B. Stuck on hot sweaty busses in the middle of nowhere when I really had to pee (etc.) but had no one with me to watch my stuff. Sleeping against my backpack on the floor of train stations spooning cold water bottles. Trying to get a train ticket. Trying to read a train ticket.
I also spent a good bit of my trip alone. I made a promise to myself that I would always choose to be alone than spend time with people I didn’t vibe with. So I had dinner alone a lot. Explored alone a lot. Took myself out in Bangkok and read my kindle by candlelight at a cozy bar with a glass of whisky. And also had several solo nights that were uneventful and lonely and confusing, where I just ate dinner, washed my face and went to sleep.
And you know what? I’m honestly having a retrospective ball. (Except my whiskey book date in Bangkok – that was a ball the whole time.)
After 7 months on the road, I finally made the decision to fly home on September 10, 2016.
One of the things I noticed while backpacking is that most people are travelling because they’re running away from something – not running towards. A lot of people conflate backpacking with the cliché of Eat Pray Love or Wild, but it’s not true. Those books are about women fiercely chasing their own healing, whereas hostels are oftentimes filled with people trying to avoid reality by drinking and sleeping with people in exotic countries (ugh). At first I was running towards myself, but then something changed around the end of July. It was as if I got all I could get from solo travel at that moment and staying would come from the wrong place. It was time. It felt really good to realize this. It felt really good to come home.
In addition to the retrospective ball I’ve been having since September 10th, my favourite thing about coming home has been my travel-turned-real-life friendships. You never know if these things will translate, but I feel really lucky to say that many of mine have, especially with the Europe move. Iris from RangMahal visited me in London and I’m off to Amsterdam to visit her for Easter. Dani from RangMahal took me for sushi in Soho when I first moved. KJ from Morocco and I are going on a ski trip to France in a few weeks. I have a hilarious voice-memo correspondence with Lara from Siargao. Fran from Soul & Surf and I have a standing Sunday date at Bess’ yoga class (the mermaid teacher also from Soul & Surf). Brian from Morocco sent me the most glorious list of things to do in Paris and I did every single one.
Isn’t that fun? ❤
When I met up with Hannah in Athens for our three weeks of soul-sister travel, I asked her if she thought I had changed. Without hesitation, she responded, no – but you’ve found your fire. And that’s exactly it.
I didn’t change. I’m not different. I just found my unique blend of fire that protects me and pushes me. It’s this fire that decided to send a cold email to a stranger at 1:00pm on August 15th. That pushed me to choose curiosity over fear, and show up to an empty flat in Hampstead with two suitcases.
45 destinations. 13 countries. 3 continents. 206 days.
Onwards!
Thank you for sharing this journey with me.
x Rachel
loose leaf 