The Benefits of Traveling the World

I’m currently reading Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman, a gift sent to me by my sister, Mary Ellen (thank you, again!)

It’s a relatable (for me, anyways) true story of a travel writer who embarks on a trek, the only goal of which is to experience transport by the world’s most dangerous means, in other words, transport the way most of the world’s nearly 7 billion people move from place to place.

At one point the author’s 17 year old daughter Lily flies to Lima to join him during her spring break from high school. They boarded a rickety old bus for a 450 mile journey that would take 36 hours, through the rain forests and over the Andes Mountains on single-lane, winding, clay roads.

Here the bus has taken a brief stop for the driver to urinate and have a bite to eat:

I wolfed down a quick meal of rich, gamey chicken  soup ladles from a pot big enough to throw a couple of toddlers inside, sitting on a wooden bench the width of a single two-by-four under a ragged blue tarp. Lily didn’t want any, but the chef could spot a hungry, nervous girl and brought her a bowl, insisting that she eat, which she did under the pressure of a mother, even if it wasn’t her own. Then, as church bells pealed, we piled on an even older bus. "Aren’t you afraid you’ll get sick?” said Carleton (a Canadian tourist who was clearly in over his head at this point), shaking his head. “I’m starving, but there’s no way I’m going to risk eating that!”

I looked at Lily and we laughed. “See how brave you are!” I said, secretly praying she wouldn’t get sick. As soon as the sun went down, roaches swarmed out of the curtains; they fell into Lily’s lap, crawled into my coat, scurried under our feel. It was black outside, the bouncing headlights illuminating dirt road and sheer drop-offs. Lily was scared; I felt bad for her and proud of her. I hoped she’d love the journey, but even if she didn’t, at least I knew she’d remember it and feel, perhaps only later, strengthened by it. That she’d learn that the world was big, rich, complex, sometimes dangerous, always interesting. That you could hide from it or explore it and embrace it in all its complexities.

Amen.