[The World Tour of Oopsies is an ongoing series of travel stories about my first decade of travel. During these adventures and misadventures, I had to unlearn many things I thought I knew about life. Welcome to my miseducation.]
Videos by TravelAwaits
Catch up on the World Tour of Oopsies:
- Chapter 1: The Scorpion
- Chapter 2: The Bucket Shower
- Chapter 3: The Goat Sacrifice
- Chapter 4: The Idol
- Chapter 5: The Boot
- Chapter 6: The Monastery (Part I)
- Chapter 7: The Monastery (Part II)
- Chapter 8: The Ujjayi Breath
- Chapter 9: The Secret of the Universe
- Chapter 10: The Frenchies
- Chapter 11: The Festival
- Chapter 12: The Horse
Three years in…
My world tour of travel stories started with a scorpion sting in rural Cambodia (see: Ch. 1) and ended with a horse bite in rural Costa Rica (see: Ch. 12).
The tales in between mark a very action-packed start to my travel initiation. At their start, I was sixteen and thirsty for culture, especially in the realm of spirituality. By the end, I was nineteen, and falling in love with people at festivals.
These three years were important to my life’s trajectory; I was young enough not to be changed by what I saw and learned, but to be shaped. As a malleable teenager, I was actively molded by these experiences.
The Recap
In case you’re joining my world tour of travel stories now, here’s a little rundown of what happened in my first years of travel, from ages 16-18, as a very ordinary Midwesterner.
At age sixteen, I traveled to rural Cambodia and went on a homestay on a small island near Kratie. I was stung by a scorpion in the middle of the night at one point, then had my first taste of communal bathing via bucket shower.
At age seventeen, I traveled to India’s provinces of West Bengal and Sikkim. I visited one of Kali Ma’s most famous temples, where I witnessed a goat sacrifice—and the slap of the century. My group later forged into the Himalayan Foothills (which were the biggest mountains I’d ever seen) before getting booted out of a village for not passing the vibe check, and then doing a silent retreat at a famous gompa.
I learned about true compassion, true wisdom, and how to have a full-on spiritual vision with breathwork. Shout-out to the ujjayi breath (see: Ch. 8).
At eighteen, I headed off to a hippie-ish, alternative learning college (now LIU Global) where freshmen were shipped off to Costa Rica to study environmentalism, foreign investment, and more. There, I learned the secret of the universe, about the spirituality of surfing, about Burner festivals, and why talking trash to horses never pans out.
As my first year of college came to an end, I had a choice: head to my college’s campus in Guangzhou, China, or Bengaluru, India.
Tune in next week to see where I go on my ongoing world tour of travel stories, and what sort of misadventures I get myself into next.
