I travel for work and for pleasure. I like to bring a camera along wherever I travel; it makes me see even short business trips as new experiences. I love food of all sorts and experiencing new cultures. I always travel solo and occasionally by bicycle.
I’ve spent several extraordinary days exploring Cappadocia and have been thinking a lot about luck. Luck is a concept where, for me, language falls short.
There is luck in the sense of serendipity, a happy accident, and there is the view that I’ve always subscribed to, as Thomas Jefferson put so well:
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
For me the two are hopelessly intertwined; the more you extend yourself, the easier it is to stumble happily upon something wonderful, as if by chance. But first, you have to be there.
People tell me all the time how lucky I am to travel to so many outstanding places, and I can only agree wholeheartedly. At the same time, travel is also very challenging, between physical stress, cultural differences, miscommunication and the lack of familiar faces and things. But as with anything, difficulties so often yield great joy. For me, travel has become a microcosm of life, a tool that I use to teach myself to adapt, to learn and to find joy in the most unexpected places.
Today I was hiking behind a village that has cliff dwellings that were occupied until a 1962 earthquake killed several people, when the town moved to the base of the cliff. I was thirsty and lacking sugar, so I thought I’d find a kiosk with something to drink. I did, and quickly several people were talking to me.
Where are you from? America! (pointing) He lived there for 10 years. In California.
10 years? Wow. What part of California?
Um. Not 10 years. 3 months. Not California.
(I think he was in Washington State, but in any case it was nearer to Canada than California.)
Then they asked if I wanted to see the church.
Church?
Yes, the church at the top of the cliff. 6th Century.
And in less than a minute we were off, scrambling over rocks and, later, climbing. Now let me confess here that in spite of my best efforts to the contrary, I am terribly afraid of heights. And yet I’d found myself climbing foothold after handhold behind someone I’d just met, and who spoke very limited English, with no language skills of my own. He kept repeating: 1962. Earthquake. 3 people died.
This was not helping.
Yet when we got to the top, it was the most spectacular place. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and yet it would have been so easy to miss.
To me, it was just the latest example of serendipity as a result of overcoming so many potential obstacles. A new place, a language barrier, my natural tendency to be shy. But it was also pure, dumb luck.
It is easy to take things for granted and I also realize that I am lucky in a completely serendipitous sense: I was born into a family that taught my to be independent and confident; I grew up speaking English, which so many people have made the effort to learn worldwide; I have the financial resources to go places I choose, and a job that takes me to many other places that I enjoy immensely. I have worked hard to be here, but I have also received many gifts through pure chance.
At this moment I am grateful on all sides, for being here, for all the opportunities I’ve earned and been given, and for the happy chance that happens along the way.
Moonlight over Cappadocia. Göreme, Turkey.
I’ve spent an astounding couple of days in Cappadocia so far, but the highlight has been the full moon and yesterday’s full eclipse which I got to watch overlooking the incredible landscape.
I’ve been hot air ballooning a number of times, and it is always a special experience, but ballooning over Cappadocia is a new experience entirely, especially at the moment the sun lights up all of the rock formations with amazing colors.
Solitude is one of my favorite parts of travel, and something I always seem to overlook the importance of when I am planning a trip. After all, isn’t the point of travel to go somewhere new, to experience a different culture and new foods and to see how life really is? And aren’t we, as travelers, practically obligated to savor every moment and experience as much as we possibly can?
I always travel alone which surprises many people. People first ask “don’t you get lonely?” and I respond that there are people everywhere to talk to, but that I meet a wider variety without a constant sidekick. Sometimes it is in fact lonely, especially on holidays or after a bout of food poisoning, or over dinner, but to me it is offset tremendously by the freedom. Part of the appeal of the freedom is simply the selfish free-will; deciding on a whim to sleep in, or wake up early, picking and choosing the parts that appeal most to your individual path. But all of that, really, is superficial and easily negotiated. When I really notice the lack of anyone familiar is upon seeing something truly spectacular, whether unique in the world or utterly common.
Wow.
With a companion, it is often wonderful to have another face to reflect the beauty you are experiencing in the world at that very moment, perhaps to prove that it is even real. But the more I experience the world the more I also find the joy in solitude, in seeing a sunset that no one else will see precisely the same way, in shuffling through my own thoughts until everything I have worried about, wondered about or pondered is well thought through. I often think fondly back on the third-day-in-the-wilderness afternoons in Patagonia where my mind was so empty I took to counting to move my feet along, and the beauty of the world was simply reflected in my eyes.
I spent many days hiking in beautiful solitude through Cappadocia. Meeting others occasionally, but only in passing, and pausing around every corner to gape in wonder. This photo is from one evening, just after sunset, on the outskirts of Göreme.
Sunrise over Cappadocia, from a Hot Air Balloon
Every morning we open our eyes on a new day is a lucky one, but some are more beautiful than others. I had been out late the night before and dawn didn’t seem like a good idea when I woke to my alarm in the cold dark of morning. I forgot all that, and the cold, as the sun kissed the snow-capped rock formations all along the valleys.
