A Brief Reflection

Coming home seems to have been almost as exhausting as backpacking itself. Five days in and I’m only just getting my thoughts together. Sure enough, there’s still plenty of excitement to go around, mostly in the form of beach soccer, beach fireworks and beach drinking.

Now I’m back in the Philly area, using it as a base for some mini-adventures before returning to DC. It’s strange to me how everything feels exactly as I left it, just much hotter. For some reason I’d expected things to seem drastically different and almost foreign to me. Instead it’s more like I’ve just woken up from a dream, my tour already feeling like a foggy creation in the back of my mind. Here I am simply continuing along as I always have.

I imagine a lot of the fog comes from just how intense the trip was. While on any individual day I could explore at my leisure, overall I crammed a lot into a fairly short amount of time: 

11 countries, 30 cities
~200 hours of biking
~100 different beers, and as many liters
Unknown hours of aimless exploring

And, of course, the people. Everybody I met was living an impressively unique life. For a light sample, I’ve hung out with two traveling musicians, a beekeeper, a physicist, a lawyer, actors, bankers and, above all, wanderers. 

A lot happened. Quirky details, strange contexts and new ideas are all swirling about. I used to feel as if my travel world and home world existed separately from each other. But now they are blending together. Everything is foggy and confused, but I can see the familiar with a fresh sensation and feel the new as if it were home. So, although I can separate my experiences into segments like the past four months it really is just becoming one grand adventure.