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Now Ye're Talking - To a World Traveller
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Hi,
Could you tell us more about your life before you started travelling?
How old were you? Did you have a job? Any qualifications?
Sure. Though I'm not really sure what to say
I've always been travelling or outdoors-y in some capacity - I was lucky enough that I had a father who brought me up into the mountains from the age of four onwards, or fishing, or camping or similar, so the urge to travel was instilled in me from an early age. And when I was old enough to do so, I'd go myself - first to the mountains around Ireland, and then outwards to Europe and beyond. My first 'big' trip was through Africa when I was 19, and I've been travelling most years ever since. I've posted about some of it to lesser degrees on Boards before - those who know me on Boards will easily figure out my username. The reason I did this AMA anonymously was more to give a little protection from Google searches, and that I don't really talk about travelling, or my personal life on Boards very much.
When I left on this particular trip, I was 27, and I was working as an engineer in South Africa. The job I had at the time suited me very well - I was based in an Irish company, but working and living on-site in various locations around the world as the job required it. But apparently, it wasn't enough and I wanted to do and see more. I've also worked in various other more practical fields which stood to me more in terms of getting work as I went along.Could you tell us about your life now that you're back. Did you find it easy to get a job (If you have one) and how do you feel about your future now?
Being back is strange in a lot of ways - in some ways good of course. Being surrounded by Irish accents again after so long was the immediate shock to the system, and hearing Irish people everywhere, from busses to radio and TV. Being amongst my family is particularly strange; even though I did see my parents once in that seven years (they visited me about five years into the trip), I hadn't seen my siblings at all. Seeing that my mind is dealing with snapshots of my family seven years apart, my parent's have visibly aged to me, and my 'little' brother and sister are now grown adults. Same with my friends - the people I used to be out with every weekend are now married and have children and responsibilities I never foresaw them having. But certainly, one of the good things about being back is having a circle of friends again and enjoying myself as part of a group. Being self sufficient is a good skill to have. Being self sufficient 100% of the time means you eventually lose out on experiences.
I do think about my future quite a bit, and what I want to do next. While I'm a firm believer that there's more to life than sitting in an office or making as much money as you can, and that you only get one shot at life, I'm acutely aware that I had a great career which I effectively roadblocked, and there are moments, not many, but moments nonetheless of self doubt when I wonder if I did the right thing. I'm not working full time at the moment - I took some time to upskill in certain areas and I do some contract work - but I have job offers overseas that I'm giving serious consideration to.Is there anything about life here you appreciate more/less since being away?
I don't think there's anything I appreciate less, but there is certainly a whole lot I appreciate more. At risk of sounding like a tree hugging hippy, we live on an absolutely beautiful planet full of amazing people, and time spent getting more in touch with it is time well spent. Conversely, you also get to appreciate the fact that we are destroying it at an alarming rate, and that something has to give. I appreciate my good health, and I very much appreciate the world I was lucky enough to be born into, in terms of ready access to food, education, medication and so on. I volunteered for a while in Calcutta - there are various centres there who help children born to the slums, prostitutes, those suffering from leprosy and so on, and it's something that always reminds me that but by the grace of God (or whatever deity -or not- you happen to believe in), I could have been born into similar circumstances. I also appreciate how little money equates to happiness - I've met the wealthiest of people who are absolutely miserable, and have seen families sit down on the footpath and cook their evening meal, completely happy with what they have.How much did all this cost you in the end and how did you manage for money.
Honestly, I don't know how much it all cost - I've never sat down and totted up my income and expenditures. I left with €31K in my bank account, returned with about €9K, but I worked here and there that all factors in to my spending. My honest answer is that I don't really want to know, partially because I don't want to put a dollar value on it, and partially because on the days where I question my choices in life, I don't want to have an "Oh no! I just blew XXXXX euros on that trip" moment.Okay so Welcome
In 1-month:
~ Where in the world would you go?
~ What in the world would you do?
~ Money not a subject - where would assistance be most needed & valued?
Many Thanks in Advance,
kerry4sam
Hm, I've seen a lot of the easier-to-get-to places, so my sights as I get older lean towards the harder to reach places. I prefer very cold over very hot locations, and as such I would love to visit the arctic regions - Greenland and Alaska, particularly the Inuit regions.
As to where assistance would be most needed and valued? It's a harder question to answer than one might think. Obviously the locations that have just been hit by disaster, but on a day to day basis, some of the most striking poverty I've seen has been in India, particularly in Calcutta. Despite what the Trócaire boxes of my youth led me to believe, much of Africa isn't extremely poor to that same level, though of course there are plenty of regions in need of immediate relief. And of course, just because I've travelled to a place doesn't mean that I've seen the depths of poverty a country has to offer - it's just that in Calcutta that the disparity between rich and poor was so visible on a daily basis.0 -
I think this thread will be pretty popular! Some food questions!
What was the most disgusting thing you ever ate or had served to you while travelling? Is there anything you'd turn your nose up at or would you give anything a try once? Even dog or monkey brain?
Were you ever served something that at first you thought was completely disgusting or mad, that actually turned out to be delicious?
Ever get very bad food poisoning from the food or water in a place? In general actually how did you fare when you got sick or toothache or something, was it a problem in countries where the English isn't good or were there ever any issues with things like insurance etc?0 -
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whiskeyman wrote: »Did you have any relationships during this period?
Did you have to end / disrupt these, if any, because of your desire to travel?How did you find travelling for hooking up with women cheeky question I know !
Seeing as some common questions are coming up, I'll try to group some together, to save typing up the same things twice. Yes I had relationships along the way, one or two quite serious. And there were other more short term things along the way. In some ways travelling drops you into an accelerated microcosm - due to the nature of travelling, those engaged in it appreciate that they don't have time to play games or be coy if they like someone, so often there's a level of honesty that doesn't happen in day to day life, and things can develop quite quickly by comparison. Did some end because of travelling - sure. And it can be very difficult, and sometimes you need to stop and think about what your priority is. Which sounds quite selfish I know. But generally both people involved know what they're getting themselves into from the outset.0 -
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Since you've travelled the world and are now back home in 'normality', if you got a weekend or a week off for holidays, where would you go?
Where'd be a top city break for you?
Have you travelled around Ireland much?
(really enjoying your answers here. Thanks again to you and the Board team for this) 0 -
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So, food questions
And believe me when I say that to experience different countries cuisine is a great reason to travel.Did you eat frogs legs or insects
Yes I have. Frogs legs from when I was a kid - part of my family is French, so I spent quite a bit of time there). Insects, again yes. Fried insects of various kinds are pretty common in certain Asian countries, and I've had deep fried crickets, deep fried Cockroaches, and assortment of deep fried insects that I wouldn't even try to identify. It's not uncommon to see a vendor at night in parts of Bangkok for example, pushing what looks like a pick n' mix trolley around the streets. You take your paper bag, fill up with the deep fried insects and sea life of your choice, and pay by weight - like a liquorice allsorts bag
Taste-wise, insects are pretty meh - they're crunchy and taste like something that's been in the fryer for too long. but not bad. The sea urchins and whatnot taste much better, in my experience.mahamageehad wrote: »I think this thread will be pretty popular! Some food questions!
What was the most disgusting thing you ever ate or had served to you while travelling? Is there anything you'd turn your nose up at or would you give anything a try once? Even dog or monkey brain?
Personally, I'll try anything at least once, and turn my nose up at very little, though there have been a few notable exceptions. I'll refuse certain foods for ethical reasons - there are still parts of the world where meat from endangered species are served up to tourists, and worse, there are tourists who will happily seek this kind of thing out, so they have a story to tell when they get back home. But I've certainly eaten rat, dog, snake, so on and so forth. Dog was probably the 'strongest' meat to stomach - I came across a guy cooking one over a barrel in Vietnam, and ordered some - it had a very strong taste, and very game-y.
Probably the most disgusting thing I have eaten in my life has been Khashi - it's a traditional Georgian soup/tripe type mix. Traditionally it's considered a hangover cure, with the added benefits of giving strength and virility to men, and after one particularly long supra, the woman of the house served me up a massive steaming bowl of it.
To paint a picture, what sat in front of me was a biology lesson in a bowl the size of a small saucepan, containing a murky greenish-grey liquid. And floating in it were, but my no means limited to, sections of cow intestine, rings of trachea, pieces of lung, with a cow shin/hoof floating in the middle, and it smelled exactly what you might imagine all those things would smell like if they'd been stewing in garlic and onion water for three or four days. It was like somebody had decided to make glue, and about halfway through the process, changed their mind, and figured that it would make a fine dinner instead. And like most Georgian housewives, the woman was hovering over me with a big smile, waiting fro me to try her wonderful food.
I managed to put about a third of it away, and to this day I'm genuinely unsure how I didn't throw up. Thankfully the woman left the kitchen for a few minutes, and I managed to dispose of much of the contents of my bowl before she came back in. But yeah, even now, I feel a little queasy just thinking of that morning.mahamageehad wrote: »Were you ever served something that at first you thought was completely disgusting or mad, that actually turned out to be delicious?
Probably not to that extreme. I've eaten a lot of things that looked like crap, and tasted not bad. Nothing stands out as looking terrible, but actually being awesome.mahamageehad wrote: »Ever get very bad food poisoning from the food or water in a place? In general actually how did you fare when you got sick or toothache or something, was it a problem in countries where the English isn't good or were there ever any issues with things like insurance etc?
My stomach is pretty cast iron, so it hasn't been much of an issue compared to other people's horror stories about bad food or water, and I'd imagine that I've built up a tolerance to a lot of things over the years. That being said, there was one particular instance on this trip - a few days in to entering Pakistan - where I picked up what I imagine to be food poisoning of some sort or another. It's one of the few cases of illness which genuinely incapacitated me completely - I found a place to stay in the nearest town, some back street rooming house for men, and spent an entire day squatting over a hole in the ground like an upside-down volcano. And that was about as far as I could make it from my room. Between being sick and the heat, I spent two days solid laying down, going between thinking I was going to die and wishing I did, before I managed to shuffle outdoors again. I'm a pretty robust guy, but it genuinely shocked me how much that particular bout took out of me.
Health-wise, I have never travelled with health insurance, and that's foolish of me I know. I guess part of that is borne from that sense of invincibility that every guy in his 20's has, and another part borne from the knowledge that I can take care of the minor things myself (I've previously volunteered in a field which required constant first-aid training), and if I have a serious accident, it will probably be life threatening enough that I probably won't walk away from it anyways. And I have had accidents and injuries along the way, some quite serious. I mentioned a motorbike accident in Cambodia earlier - a friend of mine from the US who happens to be a vet was visiting me for a week, and we were coming back from the Killing Fields back to Phnom Pehn, when we went in under a truck (she was riding pillion). Thankfully she wasn't hurt at all, but I went under with the bike and was pretty beaten up, in particular my left arm was split open from wrist to elbow. My friend ended up cleaning it out back in the city, and stitching it with dental floss and a sewing needle.
The incident in Laos was more serious - it was not long after the 2008 earthquake and I swam and kayaked in a river that contained chemical runoff from factories upstream in China which had been damaged in the quake. And it burned/melted a lot of my skin, particularly my legs and hands. After three days the pain was so bad, I genuinely needed hospital treatment, and the local medical staff opened up the hospital at 11pm and came in on their time off to help me. At that stage I would have given them every penny I had, but when I eventually felt well enough to leave and went to pay, they wouldn't charge me. I paid something like $7 for all of the meds and painkillers, that was it.
There have been a multitude of other more minor injuries over the years, but I've been pretty lucky, definitely.ScienceNerd wrote: »What country had the best food?
China, and India - for me, India wins by a hair. By the time I'd gotten to China from Mongolia, I'd eaten almost nothing but meat for for over a month, and I was never so happy to see vegetables and rice in my life - I'm pretty sure my body was trying to tell me something. The great thing about China is the vastness of the country, so each province has very distinct local cuisine, some good, others quite bland. My favourite would probably have been the food from Sichuan Province, in terms of its flavour.
Indian food still tops my list though - I had lived and worked there prior to this trip so it didn't come as a surprise, but the sheer vastness of Indian cuisine is amazing. It's probably one of the few places where I could live a happy existence as a vegetarian - their vegetarian dishes are so diverse and have so much flavour.After having traveled thew world and probably experienced many different cuisines, What is your favourite type of cheese?
I'm still partial to a nice camembert, myself 0 -
I've travelled the world, AMA wrote: »Indian food still tops my list though - I had lived and worked there prior to this trip so it didn't come as a surprise, but the sheer vastness of Indian cuisine is amazing. It's probably one of the few places where I could live a happy existence as a vegetarian - their vegetarian dishes are so diverse and have so much flavour.
Good to hear! I've had food cooked by the Indian wife of a colleague who happens to be vegetarian, and I completely agree. I love my meat (wahey) but this stuff didn't miss it at all.
Thanks for your answers, really enjoying this so far. Will probably have more questions for you later Cake, and grief counseling, will be available at the conclusion of the test
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Do you miss travelling if you are not travelling ? is being 'home' a weird feeling?
Yeah, pretty much as I said before, being back here again is certainly strange. In many ways my life and my family and friends lives took two very different vectors seven years ago, and now that they are converged back at a single point again, it's difficult to marry the two together sometimes. Even the sense of having a home again is strange, after not having a base to operate out of for so long.how long did it take to reach Everest base camp
Everest has been on my to-do list since I got to the top of my first mountain in Connemara when I was seven years old. Chances are I'll never be able to afford to summit, but base camp was certainly within reach, and I ended up doing it on two separate occasions. The majority of people who go to Base Camp fly from Kathmandu to Lukla, a village nestled in the Himalayas, and from there to Base Camp is a 2240m straight ascent over 62km, which is a pretty straightforward hike for anyone reasonably fit. Both times I've done it, I have hiked in from a village called Jiri, which is where the Hillary Expedition started from if I remember correctly. From there it's a 300Km return trek to Base Camp and back. The best way I can describe the route is that it's shaped like a reverse letter 'L' - you first trek east towards a village called Nunthala, before heading north towards Everest. The eastern trek is the most difficult as, similar to going along the teeth on a saw, you are cutting across the mountains, starting off at around 1000m ASL, climbing 2000m during the day, only to descend to around 1000m ASL again. On one particular day you end up about 500m lower than where you started, which can be a little depressing. Once you start heading north, you are working your way along the mountains, so it's much easier. All in all, by the time you have reached Everest Base Camp, you have climbed in total over 10,000m, which is over 1200m more than Everest itself is from sea level to summit. That being said, it's not a technical climb to get to Base Camp - you don't need any specialised equipment - it's just an awfully long slog. If I remember correctly, I got there in ten or eleven days.
Map: ht tp://i.imgur.com/hD2Vj87.gifWhen I think of Everest, I think of the dead bodies that apparently litter the way to the top now. Was there anything as grisly at base camp or is it fairly far removed from that. What *is* actually there? I'm imagining a few wooden huts or tents at the foothills of the mountains but I haven't a clue really
It's not quite that dramatic getting to base camp Base Camp is situated at 5500m, from there if you are to summit, you work your way up the Khumbu glacier. The bodies that you mention do exist, they are climbers who have perished on the mountain, and are generally found in what's known as the Death Zone - the area of the mountain higher than 8000m, where anybody there is at serious risk. It's often just not feasible to recover bodies from this area, and yes, those who summit often have to walk past the corpses of those who have gone before them. That being said, there are constant reminders on the way up of just how fatal a mountain it can be. Once you pass Namche Bazaar, there's an area with many, many cairns dedicated to all of the climbers and expeditions who have lost their lives on Everest, many of which I recognised due to my interest in the sport. It's an sobering place to walk into, as it's deathly silent and generally you are very much in the cloud bank. It's certainly a humbling experience.
Sadder though is that while any Western climber who perishes while summiting makes the news, there is far less record of the hundreds of sherpas who have perished alongside them. And you will find sherpas who have summited, all along the way. It's not uncommon to stop at a teahouse in a village and get chatting to an innocuous looking sherpa sitting by the fire, only to learn that he's summited Everest, often multiple times. On one particular day I got talking to a guy well into his 60's, who had summited eight times. He spoke of it as if he had just climbed Croagh Patrick a few times - anybody else, and it would be front page headlines.
If you want to climb higher than base camp, you need to be part of an expedition, and to have purchased a summiting permit from the Nepalese government. Rough figures on that are an initial $60,000 per expedition of six, plus an extra $10,000 per additional member. And that's just the permit. As it happens, I did climb somewhat higher than Base camp on the first occasion - on the way up I had to take an alternate route as glacial waters had washed out many of the foot bridges, and ended up overshooting my stop for that night and meeting a team of meteorologists based in a meteorological base on Everest (it's called 'The Pyramid' - Image: ht tp://i.imgur.com/mMk9Rzi.jpg). As it happens, they were climbing higher than base camp a few days later to replace come weather data equipment on the mountain, and I accompanied them for some of that. The second time there I was limited to Base Camp and Kala Patthar.
Base Camp itself is like being on the surface of the moon. There is little vegetation, just a plateau of dirt alongside a very fissured glacier made up of equal parts ice and dirt/rock. On the plateau, there are a couple of tin roofed timber lodges, built from wood and sheeting carried up by sherpas, on a foundation of local stone. It's manned by a sherpa who spends much of the year up there - he descends now and again to visit his family in the Kathmandu valley. Other than that, there's a large flat dirt area to the north just below Kala Patthar mountain, used an an emergency helicopter landing pad, and now and again, if there are enough people to make up a team, the odd game of soccer 0
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