My Year of the Lotus

I got the lotus early.

It is on the inside of my wrist, and I had it done after the very first trip of the year I turned fifty, long before I knew what the rest of that year would bring. Borneo and Bali had cracked something open in me, and I did not want to wait politely until December to honor it. I wanted to mark it right then, while it was still raw, even though I had no idea yet what I was marking. I just knew the first trip had changed something, and that something had started.

So let me start where it started.

I went to Borneo with my friends Josh and Tina, because I wanted to see orangutans where they actually live, not where someone keeps them behind glass. We began in Kuching, and that is where the grubs happened. Josh spotted them on a menu and decided, the way Josh decides things, that we were going to try them, and I have never in my life been able to back down from a dare. So I ate the grub. I have the photo to prove it, and the face I am making in it tells you everything.

From there we took a boat upriver toward the Sukau Rainforest Lodge, the water brown and slow, the trees leaning in close on both sides. And somewhere along that river, without any warning, a pygmy elephant came down to the bank near us. Nobody narrated it. Nobody reached for the right words. We just went quiet and watched, the kind of quiet that tells you something rare is happening and you had better not waste it talking.

Then Bali, which was the soft landing after all of that. I went with a group of fellow advisors on a Costsaver trip, one of TTC’s value brands, partly to do yoga and take a cooking class and exhale, and partly to see for myself what that kind of itinerary really offers. I believe in traveling the way my clients travel, at every price point, because I cannot honestly recommend something I have only read about. But the truth is Bali gave me more than market research.

Here is the part I did not see coming. The things I carried home from that first trip were not the orangutans or the temples. They were people, and they were a conversation I had with myself.

One was a barista. Something about a small ordinary exchange over coffee cracked open a much bigger question, which was why I so often soften what I think to keep the peace with people I love. I sat with that for a long time. I am still sitting with it. I came home a little less willing to make myself smaller just to keep a room comfortable.

The other was a man named Nigel, who worked the lounge at the Marriott in Kota Kinabalu. There was a good sunset coming through the windows, and we got to talking, the real kind of talking, and we never quite stopped. We are friends to this day. I have traveled to a lot of beautiful places and stood in front of a lot of famous views, and I can tell you with my whole chest that the people I meet leave a deeper mark than almost any of the sights.

That is what the lotus is. I got it before the rest of the year had even happened, because that first trip alone had already earned it. I just did not know yet how much more was coming.

What came was four more trips, each one different from the last.

There was the Danube, and my first time ever in Prague, a city I should have seen years sooner. I let myself be celebrated on the water, a birthday with the river slipping by. On the way to the ship I stopped in Esztergom and Szentendre, and I lost my heart a little to Szentendre, a small town just far enough out of the Budapest noise that the quieter beauty of the country can finally be heard. There was a winery too, Bolyki, in Eger, the kind of place you only ever find if you are willing to leave the route. That trip taught me a small thing I keep close now. The ship is the spine, but the detours are the soul.

There was a Regent sailing from Greece into Turkey, with Lauren and a few of our agent friends. I had been to those ports before, so the new thing was the ship itself, a line I had not yet sailed, and I do not believe in recommending what I have not felt under my own feet. We took two nights in Athens first and spent them the way I love to, wandering for the neighborhoods and the small hotels worth sending people to. Anyone can book the famous name. Finding the right little place on the right quiet street takes more work, and that work is honestly one of my favorite parts of this job.

There was Barcelona to Milan in July, overland, with Colette, and I am just going to be honest with you. It was hot, and I do not love a coach tour, so it was a good deal less glamorous than it sounds. But it gave me things I would never have found on my own. The people on the bus, who I ended up genuinely fond of. Costa Brava, which most travelers only ever taste as a day trip from Barcelona and which deserves so much more. The afternoon Brian and I quietly peeled off from the schedule to taste wine in Pic Saint Loup. The tiny seafood place we stumbled into down an alley in Marseille that I still think about when I am hungry and far from it. Even a trip that is not your style will hand you something, if you let it.

And then December, three weeks long, the grand finale. Krakow first. Then Prague again, except this time I was leading a group of sixty through the holidays and a Christmas Market cruise, every moving piece of it resting on my shoulders. When the group flew home, ten of us went up into the Dolomites, to Corvara, and skied, and the year ended the way it should, on a mountain with the light going gold on the peaks. I had never run a group that big, with that many parts in motion. I learned that I can. I came down those slopes steadier in myself than I went up.

So here is what fifty taught me.

I am an independent traveler by nature. Left to my own devices, I plan my own route and move at my own pace, rarely in a group, almost never on a coach. This was not that year. A Costsaver group in Bali. A guided run across Spain and into Italy. Sixty people following me through Prague at Christmas. Every one of those is a format I would not have chosen for myself, and every one of them gave me something I could not have found alone. I learned to say what I actually think. I learned that the people outlast the postcards. I learned that I can hold the whole thing together when sixty people are counting on me to.

I got the lotus before I knew any of that was coming, and it turns out I was right to. The best year of travel I have ever had looked nothing like the year I would have designed for myself, and that was the gift of it.

So that is what I tell the people I plan for now. Go, even the way you would not have chosen. Especially that way.