This weekend I met a ‘motivational’ speaker at at event. This guy has travelled the world and when I say travelled, I mean that he has really put himself ‘out there’.
Morbid experiences in the thick, dense, uncharted forests of the Amazon. Koochi-cooing with30-metre whales off the coast of Mexico. He has lived in conflict-stricken Myanmar. Slept on the cleanest sand beds in Papua New Guinea with families that have never seen firecrackers, and who listen to the wind as a pastime, for lack of things to do. Travelled like (and with) the bedouins in The Sinai.
This is how he picks out his next destination: he sits with his atlas and Lonely Planet guide. That little dot on a map, which is not mentioned in LP is likely to be his next destination. He travels by rickety boats and other unsteady modes of transports — whatever it takes — to get to this place.
He motivates people by sharing his extremely radical adventures across the world. If you ask him where he’s from, he says,” I’m from here.” His answer stems from his belief that the world is one ecosystem and hence he is from everywhere.
In retrospective, one could describe his trip to the Amazon forests as reckless and dangerous. Nothing romantic about it when you hear about the dark side. He set off on this odyssey along with three other daredevils to try and find a missing tribe. They ate monkey brain soup because there was nothing else to eat. They were bitten by insects and God knows what else. They were exposed to extreme heat and floods. What’s worse — here in the forests, the true nature of these four individuals emerged. There was competition, there were disagreements. It was not pretty or peaceful.
Two of his companions he never saw again because the foursome could not agree on whether to travel by the river or walk on land. One group was sure that the river would culminate into a waterfall. One group was sure it wouldn’t’t. And so they split ways, and the latter was proved wrong. Our friend and his buddy (a dedicated photographer by profession) toppled down the waterfall and he emerged from the river, alone.
During the next 18 day he crawled because he could no longer walk, went without food for five whole days and eventually, had worms coming out of his brain and pus and blood from his feet. As the days passed he wanted to die and prayed with all his heart that he would, but an imaginary female companion saved him. He continued his journey and eventually collapsed on a river bank because this was the most likely place he would be found. And he was proved right. His friend who had survived the waterfall and found his way back to civilis1ation, came back with a search party. Our traveller was saved by a cat’s whisker. Of course, he may have not lived to tell the tale if his friend’s boat had turned back before they spotted him.
When I shared his story with friends they refused to believe me. However, his stories seem rather convincing when he narrates them. A tall, rugged-looking man, he exudes this air of worldly wisdom, sans being snooty nor supercilious. He’s a good storyteller who has packaged his adventures, well.
One of my girlfriends who was quite taken in by him, thinks he must be as adventurous in bed! He is married thrice, and I speculate that he may be bisexual. His description of a tryst with a male traveller had homoerotic undertones. He described his friend as ‘a beautiful, young man’. They decided to spend the next two weeks together and became ‘very close friends’. Alas, their friendship took a dark turn when they ventured into the depths of the Amazon. The ‘beautiful’ man metamorphosed into a ‘weak’ specimen of the human race. They went separate ways during the trip, and his friend was never spotted again. Of course, this aspect of this personality is merely speculation, my imagination having a jolly good time.
what is this world citizen traveller’s name?