Ugly Travel

Ugly travel is beautiful. It’s living out of a backpack for 1-2 weeks while you circumnavigate a country you’ve never been to. It’s only carrying a passport, some clothes that you may have to wear for multiple days, a camera (or your phone), a notebook, hand sanitizer, some local currency, and just enough of the language to be dangerous in a bar, a transit station, or a drug deal. It’s the dark circles under your eyes from a 13 hour time difference and trying to sleep under less than favorable circumstances. It’s your family thinking you’re out of your mind for going at it alone. It’s learning some customs on the fly. It’s illumination about using high tech toilets or just a hole in the ground. It’s showing kindness to strangers and seeing their faces light up. It’s not having plans and adapting as you go. It’s a long, sweaty walk to see something only to get lost, but seeing something better. It’s eating weird delicacies from a convenience store or street stalls down a hidden alleyway. It’s having a beer with a local and listening to their story (even if you can’t understand it). It’s parking your ass on a bench to watch people go to their jobs, to school, on dates, and figuring out that we’re all the same and all want the same things.

We all want to do a little honest work that puts money in our hands so we can have a safe place to lay our heads, go watch a baseball game, see our favorite bands, ride roller coasters, eat hotdogs, hold hands and smile in selfies with our friends and loved ones, and listen to country music… even in Japan.

When you dirty travel, a lightbulb flips on and you quickly learn that your racist and nationalist war noise bullshit doesn’t hold up in the real world. It’s a realization that you’re one small piece in leaving a place better than you found it while understanding that you’re better than when you arrived. It’s doing it for you, not for the Gram. It’s you discovering yourself for the first time, seeking inspiration, healing a broken heart, or doing it because your next evolution is beckoning you to. It’s coming to a knowledge that you don’t need as much as you believe. It’s having a quiet moment to realize how fucking lucky you are to even exist in the ever expanding void. It’s learning to love the skies you live under. It’s missing someone and allowing that amplify their station in your life. It’s coming home to their arms with photographs and stories of how you traveled ugly and, in doing so,

became

more

beautiful.

Cut the excuses, get your passport and some courage, and go see the world.

xoxo,

Tolar