“In Traveling, Companionship, in Life, Compassion!”
Whenever you lose your way or have stopped in your tracks, the key phrase that will move you forward (sometimes diagonally) on your path is, to me, “travel, books, and friends.”
Within those three, “travel” is the biggest energy and impact. (Though, time and money spent are also big...)
Let me take you back to a little story from my younger days and memories of traveling.
This is a story that took place in the mid-80’s.
America. Where I traveled to when I was 20 years old.
The Grand Canyon and the nature of the West Coast.
The amazingness of and musky scent of a livehouse performance in NY.
The movie I watched with youthful indiscretion.
The Empire State Building, just like now, going swiftly up without lining up.
America in the beginning of the 80’s was, I thought, not seemingly in the best state.
But I might’ve felt that way because Japan was accelerating at that time.
When I turned 22, I didn’t even look for a job (I couldn’t), using the year I repeated to roam for 3 months on travels to India and Nepal.
A room with only walls and a roof... meaning a cottage-style lodging where the floor was dirt and the only furnishing was a stand for my sleeping bag and not even a toilet. It was neither a room nor a lodge. It was a system where you carried a water bucket to the back of the thicket and took care of your business (I’m not joking). The dirt floor room (and the toilet behind a bush).
During those times, before the internet, you didn’t make reservations for lodges (you couldn’t). It was “go-show” (go visit directly) and asking, “Do you have a room tonight?” – it was quite a nerve-wracking thing.
The neighborhood with the cheap lodging-looking area around Sudder Street in India, Kolkata is still like that now, isn’t it?
The people I met at Sudder Street Dormitory
・ The college student that was touring on a motorbike shipped from Japan
(At that time, the large-size Japanese motorbikes were given a lot of attention, so they became a hero)
・ The girl that puts a ton of a strange kind of tea into her aluminum bento box (Japanese)
・ The beautiful girl that wanders around with a bath towel (Brazil)
・ The Kyoto college student who was stripped of all their possessions at the cheap brothel (when I think about it, they had volunteered at the house of Mother Theresa)
・ The person with unknown origins who completely turns into the big hit Michael Jackson (dancing every night)
・ The swindler in front of the lodging who calls out “Asagaya, Setagaya, Bodh Gaya” Sudder Street Dormitory
Now and then, I would be invited to eat with the local people that I happen to ride together with on long distance buses and trains. The food was delicious, and times when it wasn’t, it would seem to come out of my mouth. Fortunately, the local people that I met were almost all happy people. A friend I met at the destination.
Travel, especially a free kind of travel where you go with only a rough plan to an unknown country, makes you get considerable jitters from even before you leave.
As if to meet that expectation, it was as if every day, various things would happen.
Trouble with rickshaws and taxis were standard.
Disputes with money were often and, especially, being taken to unknown places.
Whether germs got into my contacts or something, my eye had swelled up and I rushed into the hospital. I had taken out a colorful pile of medicine, and if I think about it now, I would guess that they were probably antibiotics. Really, it was strange. And when I was suddenly given an injection, I thought, “I’m done for...” and prepared for the worst. Fortunately, the pain and swelling drew back but... Even for international flights, seats were for the quick – meaning unreserved seats – and I finally managed to reach Dhaka Airport (Bangladesh) in order to transfer.
I stayed another 3 days due to flight cancellation. (They only flew 2 flights a week?)
Luckily, I didn’t spend the nights at the airport, but rather a high-class hotel in the city that I was taken to (Army? By police).
Many of us were crowded into one room, and were told, “Leave your passports in our care! Additionally, going outside the hotel is prohibited!” But, of course, I snuck outside to wander around. House arrest at the Sheraton in Dhaka.
The reason the whole town had a bizarre atmosphere was because they were actually under martial law at that time, as I had found out later. It was a pretty foolish story.
The Bangkok 楽宮 Hotel that I had, with great difficulty, managed to transfer over and come back to was full of bedbugs, and I had a terrible experience...
I was constantly crossing between the hopeless feeling of “I want to go back to Japan already! Even just one day earlier” and the thrilling thoughts of “but I want to keep on going, go to more places I don’t know about.”
I have noticed this “hopelessness of wanting to run away” and the “thrilling feeling of always wanting to experience more” in recent years.
That is, it is exactly “the feeling of management.”
These days are the days that I have really thought, there are so many, many more travels that I want to do.
The dirt floor room (and the toilet behind a bush).
Sudder Street Dormitory
A friend I met at the destination. 
Even for international flights, seats were for the quick – meaning unreserved seats – and I finally managed to reach Dhaka Airport (Bangladesh) in order to transfer.
House arrest at the Sheraton in Dhaka.
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