Mantras and Expectations
Reflections from vagabonding through India and Nepal when I was 22.
“I think we’re on the wrong train,” my friend said humorously, but concerned. The police officer, who was still holding my phone to use for Google Translate, started nodding in agreement, affirming what he had been trying to tell us for over 10 minutes now.
We were on the train from Agra to a town we had never heard of, nor could find on our map, and we needed to get to New Delhi. Those who have traveled in India via train before know it’s not uncommon for trains to arrive extremely late or at all. This was our rookie mistake; though we knew our train would likely be late, we hastily hopped on what we thought was our train to Delhi.
Among the dozens of travelers piled on top of each other, we sat down in the unreserved car with some young men, no older than us. We looked defeated, but we couldn’t help but laugh at the chaos of the situation. We weren’t in the hole; the young men explained that in two stops we could get off and wait for the next train to Delhi.
After sprinting through the station with our 50+ lbs. rucksacks in the hot night air, we jumped on the next train to Delhi.
So we thought. Rinse and repeat.
This is one of many stories from this trip with the same theme: expectations being squashed. When things seemed to be easy, they were far from it. The opposite was just as prevalent: when I believed things to be unexpected, spontaneous, even dangerous, they were entirely mundane and predictable.
In stereotypical fashion, after finishing college, I decided to deplete my savings and set off on a backpacking trip through Southern Asia. Inspired by modern adventurers like Levison Wood, who undertook cross-continental walking tours, I had been working and saving fdxscyfscd university for a trip like this, and I wanted a break before fully selling my soul to the working world. My friend and I crafted a “route” loosely related to the historic Silk Road and the Hippie Trail of the 1960s. I had some experience solo backpacking, and I’d previously studied abroad in Morocco, but this was entirely new territory to me.
Visiting Sri Lanka during the height of the Aragalaya, navigating India’s train system across the subcontinent, and motorbiking and trekking through northern Nepal during monsoon season… it was a messy plan, but it all added up to sound like an odyssey. All without Instagram Reels or an AI Chatbot to tell me exactly how to do it — the good old-fashioned way: Reddit and asking Australians at hostels.
With a couple of changes of clothes, an old camera, and a head full of expectations, it ended up exactly that.
Messy in the best ways, I thought.
Get Sam P.’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
At the start of the journey, I found myself being caught up in possibilities and daydreaming of what each new place would bring. I was a regular Walter Mitty about it. This backfired on me pretty quickly, and by the time we reached Mumbai in early July, I was feeling discouraged that I hadn’t come to some “profound” revelation about myself or the world. There was a lot more waiting-out rainstorms than I expected there to be. More time cooling off from the heat in restaurants or hostel lobbies. More COVID-19 tests. More avoiding scams and haggling. More waiting for visas.
I was caught up in trying to see everything as quickly as possible; even more, I was caught up in how much time I felt we were wasting. It was turning into the age-old “grass is greener” jam-up the longer we stayed in each place. I wasn’t present.
About halfway through the trip, I wrote down a mantra for myself:
Curb it.
Obviously, I was spending most of my time dwelling on what could be, or what was to come, never fully appreciating what was right in front of me. If I wanted to get anything “meaningful” out of this trip, it was time to leave all my expectations at the door.
I think I said that mantra under my breath nearly 100 times a day for a couple of weeks, which sounds absurd looking back now. But I had to remind myself to let go of what could be and embrace what would be; otherwise, I was missing everything I was looking for.
After a while, I started to write down a new mantra:
Engaged, not enamored.
As important as it was to be present with what was right in front of me, I wanted to also be involved with what was going on. For myself, that meant not getting caught up in the façades that were strategically placed in every tourist section of town. It meant going out and engaging in conversations with restaurant owners and bartenders, getting to know the rhythm of the cities we passed through. It meant making friends with people based off first impressions, and going to places that might not look necessarily great on an Instagram post. Sure, you may fall into a tourist trap here and there, but at least you fell in head first. Once I stopped waiting for all the “moments” to happen, all the picturesque scenes, they played out around me endlessly.
That mantra was harder to live out every day, though. When you’re hoofing it through places where you have no connections and intense language barriers, it gets difficult to become more involved, to get into the nitty-gritty. You learn to rely on the wisdom and kindness of those around you. Trust becomes a sort of currency.
All that quickly surmounted towards the end of the trip, in the Himalayas. It’s not something you immediately imagine when you think of Nepal, but much of the lower Himalayas are very lush and jungle-like, and during the low-trekking season they’re crawling with leeches. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that; you can walk a mile with the thickest socks on, and you will still have a handful of leeches up and down your leg that you have to pluck off. Between the leech checks and the altitude sickness, it got pretty easy to be engaged. By the end of a five-day trek through Langtang National Forest, up to Kyanjin Ri Summit and back, there wasn’t much to be distracted by. Inevitably, the great revelation was no revelation at all, just a good walk and some good conversation about what you’re going to eat later.
When you frame a trip, activity, or journey with some great expectation or spiritual undertone to guide you to what’s next, it’s damn easy to get discouraged. The best narratives are the ones that are unfolding as you live through them, and sometimes the best realizations are the ones you have long after the journey. I’ve rewritten, posted, and started over this essay several times over the past 4 years because no matter how many times I reread my notes, I realize something new about this journey and how my perspective on it has shifted, especially in a time when international relations and the idea of travel are shifting so rapidly.
In this day and age, travel is oversaturated and overromanticized. In a post-pandemic world where we’re still itching to get outside and not miss anything, I’ve seen social media warp and distort perceptions of travel and culture faster than lightning. Every place we want to go, everything we want to see, eat, or try has all been done and documented — most of which is now prepackaged in a Bourdain-esque, short-form video. Yet with all this overconsumption, it behooves one to go out and experience it for themselves (if financially feasible, of course). And it doesn’t always have to be something as distant and far from home; sometimes the best places to get grounded and involved can start down the street.
Curb it.
