Note: i have been a Moderator for a Facebook travel group for over seven years. The group was founded by my dear friend Ellie MacGregor and her husband Tedly in 2017, the year I met them in Mazatlan where they were spending two months. One year later when they were heading off to exotic destinations where the WiFi might be unreliable, she asked me to help out. The group was created to push the concept of people becoming perpetual nomadic expats, seeing the world slowly, one destination at a time. Their main mode has been to rent an AirBnB for a month at a time in numerous different countries. They were young retirees, 50 and 40 something, when they threw over their careers, liquidated their assets and took off, exhausted from high pressure lives in the US. During the pandemic they were more or less trapped for almost two years on a small Philippine island where they made the best of it through many trials and tribulations. I have forgotten the original name for the group, but it soon became Earth Vagabonds (the website for their blog is earthvagabonds.com if you want to catch up on their adventures for the past eight years).

  Last year Ellie gave up the group to a new administrator. It is now called Budget Slow Travel in Retirement. I have stayed on, by my fingernails, as the group has strayed far from its original mission. Some of the other old timers have left and started a new group called Retired Nomads. This piece was originally written for the main group and has been edited for its present incarnation on this website.

                                         On the Joys of Getting Lost

    I just finished reading an interesting book called River of the Gods which dealt mainly with the expeditions that sought to discover the source of the world’s longest river, the Nile in the mid-nineteenth century.  That kind of travel was not for amusement, but a deadly serious business where a great many participants lost their lives, well aware of that probability even before they set out.  As for the survivors, they suffered hardships that we can barely imagine and many emerged broken in body and spirit.  Although these expeditions departing from Zanzibar covered only a few hundred miles as the crow flies, they could last for months or even over a year.  Most characteristically, these explorers had no idea where they were going, how they would get there if at all, or any sense of what they would find along the way.

   From my admittedly biased perspective, the pendulum has swung much too far in the opposite extreme direction.  Although the original founders and members of the Facebook group Earth Vagabonds, which has since spun off Retired Nomads, were interested in staying in a single locale for at least a month or so at a time, balancing “sightseeing” with the desire to somewhat integrate into the local culture, they have always retained their flexiblity. I see little evidence of that reflected in the great majority of the posts in the group’s newest iteration. The vast majority of the now over hundred thousand members seem to have less than no interest in the group’s original mission; this even though the title and group statement still pretend to espouse it. Instead it has totally morphed into a standard tourist forum.

   If the devil is in the details, then the dark side has triumphed. People are no longer writing about slow integration into a society. Rather they are now quickly on the move, itineraries  bundled together down to the tiniest detail. All transportation and lodging is pre-booked. Daily schedules are pre-set, what we are going to visit and how we are going to structure it all.  We have researched the restaurants we want to eat at. We have watched TV programs and YouTube videos and already know what it all is going to look like. We already think we know most of what we need to learn about our destinations. The minutiae tends to SIM cards, travel insurance, all the best apps and styles of backpacks and luggage.  To my jaundiced eyes, all of this is totally claustrophobic. It leaves no room for spontaneity, sudden opportunity, mixing with actual locals or almost anything that motivates me to travel personally.  It is safe - whatever that means - secure and sanitized. As to travel as exploration, that meme is now dead upon arrival.

    It would be ludicrous for me to compare my wanderings in the seventies and eighties to the horrors endured by Sir Richard Burton and his major frenemy John Speke. My level of peril has been comparably extremely low, much more similar to that faced by contemporary travelers  - the odd encounter with terrorism excepted - and nothing like the existential dread that marked their olden journeys.

   Yet in retrospect, I find my wanderings to have been considerably more akin to theirs, at least in spirit, than what I find today.  There was little or no source material or information available back when I first set out.  The only guide I really remember was titled Europe on $5 a Day.  But this was written about places like London, Paris and Rome.  And I had nearly zero interest in any of them.  Small towns, countryside and nature, my interests,  were a blank slate.  The only thing I could do was roam along and search for my interests, at best guided by word-of-mouth tips from fellow hippie-style backpackers.  To be fair, there were a handful of excellent books in the era, Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa by Ed Buryn and The People’s Guide to Mexico by Carl Franz.  But these two which have withstood the test of time, did not tell you where to go, only how to go about it.  Also notable was Full Tilt: On a Bicycle from Ireland to India by Dervla Murphy (1965) and Tracks by Robyn Davidson (published in 1982, but journeyed years earlier).  The first real guidebook of my type was Tony Wheeler’s Southeast Asia on a Shoestring (1975.) Wheeler went on to found Lonely Planet.  By the way, it is still possible to do Southeast Asia on that proverbial shoestring - adjusted for inflation, of course.

    So let’s get down to “getting lost” which is meant more or less facetiously.  I have actually only twice felt literally lost, once on a Costa Rican mountain and once in the forest in northern Thailand.  The first time I had managed to wander off from any semblance of a trail.  But the old standby is to find a creek and make one’s way downhill until reaching civilization. It was slow, difficult and somewhat risky, but I finally got down with just a bruise or two to show for the excitement.  In Thailand it was minimally scarier. I had no idea which way to go, and unlike in Latin America, almost none of the language. I walked in what I hoped was a straight line with occasional peeks at the sun through the foliage, hoping to run into some Thai peasants. And that I eventually did.  With a bit of sign language and the name of the town I was staying in, I was soon enough on a public road.

   What I really mean by getting lost is something different.  It is taking off from a country town or village either on foot or on a rented bicycle with no plan, destination or schedule, simply letting my nose lead the way.  In this manner I have had many of the most memorable experiences of my life.

   In Hue, Vietnam, I walked away from the hectic snd overwhelmingly touristic center with all its palaces and history.  After hiking along the Perfume River for over an hour into the countryside, I came to a rickety bridge leading to a small island.  In the late afternoon sun, many people were idling in front of their rude wooden houses.  From the excitement of the children, I surmised that they had never seen a foreigner before.  I was greeted with extreme warmth and soon found myself drinking a cup of tea surrounded by villagers.  Nobody spoke English, but there was a little French.

   Also in Vietnam on an island in the Mekong Delta, I bicycled away from the large market town of Vinh Long.  The night before there had been a lovely Catholic Christmas procession in the streets. I paid about a nickel to cross the river on a ferry, then pedaled off on a randomly selected dirt road through the gorgeous emerald countryside. It was one of the deepest green places I have ever seen. After a while I came to small building with what looked like a barber pole on the porch, along with three lovely young girls who appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties. They started giggling and motioned me inside. Soon I was installed in a chair, and one was trimming around my shaggy neck and ears, while I sipped on a hot cup of tea.  What fun! Then things took an odd turn when one of the other girls started stroking my inner thigh, heading northward. I gently removed her hand amidst another torrent of giggles and soon escaped with virtue intact, leaving behind a small stack of Vietnamese dong which probably amounted to a dollar or so.  That evening my proprietor confirmed that these establishments, more or less a barber shop crossed with a brothel, were quite common.

   I spent about five weeks hanging out in the Medina of Fes, Morocco in 1976, soon befriended by a street hustler about my own age who began teaching me the ropes of his trade. These kids multi-lingual skills were amazing, but certainly a necessity to earn sustenance.  One day he suggested a visit to his grandmother in a village far off in the Atlas Mountains.  We boarded the stereotypical cranky old bus.  Soon the pavement turned into a narrow and bumpy track. In a couple of hours we arrived at a primitive village. But this was not our destination. Buying some food for us and grannie, we walked another hour up a moderately steep hill. Upon arrival I saw about a dozen hovels. Many children jumped around in excitement. There were no men, only women and children, as the menfolk were all away working. In Morocco when you meet someone, you shake hands lightly and then touch your hand to your heart. But here they shook and then kissed their fingertips. It was very moving.  Shiki’s grandmother was a bent-over timeless old woman. After a lifetime of stoop work she couldn’t even begin to straighten her back. Her head was probably a meter above the ground.  He told me that she had never seen money and didn’t even know what it was.

    My family spent three months in the town of Argeles-Gazost near the famous grotto of Bernadette in Lourdes. It was 1962 and I was twelve, my brothers nine and seven.  I was put in a classroom and my mother who was fluent in French became friends with one of the instructors. In 1972 I hitchhiked across Benelux and France.  i had sent a letter from California and Monsieur Daries had invited me for an overnight visit. That was pretty much the extent of my planning that year. I must say that he was quite mystified by what I was about, or why I was doing it. The next day he introduced me to his “hippie” colleague. That worthy said I could sleep on the floor of his living room as long as I wished. I paid him fifteen dollars a month and spent a like amount on shared groceries and cooking. I bought a regional Michelin map and spent the next ten springtime weeks hiking to every lake, village, castle and ruin in the magnificent mountain scenery.  One day I came to a village of shepherds almost totally removed from modern life.  They asked me where I was from, but had never heard of America.  “Paris,” they kept inquiring?

  In India there are countless shrines and temples at the top of hills or in the mountains. Only the healthy and active can visit them on their own efforts. But for the rich, whether old and infirm, or just lazy, there is another way. They can pay four skinny, barefoot men to carry them up on a stretcher-like affair. I was hiking with a friend  from the small frontier town of Gangotri. This was a serious six or seven hour uphill trek. My friend and I were taking a break and drinking some ice-fed spring water, when we heard voices. Soon to our amazement, four little brown guys trotted by us carrying a sari-clad woman. And this was no ordinary woman. As Franck pointed out, “that woman has an ass the size of a sofa.” We couldn’t stop laughing. For five minutes every time we did, we started up again.

      This is just a tiny sampling of the amazing experiences my life has been blessed and enriched with.  I am still at this, hiking out of small Mexican Pueblos Magicos (Magic Towns) and running into all kinds of friendly people along with an endless supply of stunning nature. I have also traveled extensively this way in Vietnam, Malaysia, Sumatra, and countless other out-of-the-way destinations. In just rural India, I can’t begin to chronicle the wondrous things I have seen. India is a country where you can walk around a corner and consistently run into a sight unique in your life experience.

     In closing.  If you really want to experience the full flavor of authentic slow travel, trash some of your planning and just walk away.  Getting lost is really just a state of mind. And you never know what my happen. I for one, would be mortified if I already knew everything I was going to see along with every stop along a pre-printed and assembled itinerary.