Evan S. Rice - The Wayfarer’s Handbook: A Field Guide for the Independent Traveler

W HEN I WAS 25, I left my job and booked a one-way ticket to Kenya. By the time I returned home almost ten months later, I had become enchanted by the road. I discovered countless treasures sprinkled throughout the world: lovely communities of kind people, beautiful and bizarre wildlife, delicious street foods, wonderful little mountain villages, bustling rainbow-colored markets, and so much more.

In seeking out these gems of nature and culture and unexpectedness, I also found a group of people who chose to experience life in a way that I didnt know was possible. Independent travelers, of all ages, who went to wondrous places for indeterminate amounts of time, driven by reasons that even they didnt seem to understand. They were so effortless in their movements: relaxed but aware, self-reliant but blissfully aimless, improvising their own spontaneous paths through the world. And best of all, they were free. Truly, completely free, in a world that increasingly opposes that notion.

The people I met out there werent perfect. Its tempting to imagine that the road is full of noble citizens of the earth, all strictly adhering to some alternative but deeply ethical philosophy. The reality is that the itinerant lifestyle attracts all types: doctors and drunks, soldiers and hippies, the devoutly religious and the unabashedly hedonistic. They were united by only one idea: the refusal to mindlessly adhere to societally imposed concepts of how to live life. They recognized, and rejected, the absurdity of things like being told to choose a lifelong career path when youre in your early twenties or limiting the act of exploration to corporate vacations. For all their flaws, I came to deeply respect that choice.

The lifestyle they, and now I, so passionately preach is not for everyone. Independent travel is a personal decision, unique to every person who makes the critical choice to explore a new place. For some, that means a weeklong trek up a mountain. For others, its about wandering the world for years at a time, picking up seasonal jobs along the way. All are equally valid forms of exploration. It has become increasingly fashionable among the backpacking set to romanticize the act of travel at the expense of others, to deride anyone less adventurous as conformist and in doing so subtly imbue oneself with some kind of enlightenment. This is a comforting but false superiority; to judge others based on your own goals is reductive and foolish. Worse, it misses the point of independent travel entirely. The specifics of how a person chooses to explore the world are irrelevant, all that matters is having the autonomy and knowledge to make that choice for oneself.

I wrote this book because I suspect there are many people, my fellow Americans especially, who are as uninformed as I once was. People perhaps unhappy in their work or unsure of what they want from life or simply curious about the world, who are completely unaware of how accessible independent travel is. So many daydream about travel but consider it vaguely implausible, like some unrealistic hobby that they are inexplicably not lucky enough to be able to participate in. But there are roving bands of independent travelers of all different kinds out there, right now, staring at some horizon, wondering whats beyond it. The dream of this book is to encourage you in the idea that, if you so choose, you can be one of them.

Even after these few years on the road, I am not some expert traveler. I spend money foolishly, have no sense of direction, am terrible with languages, and have found myself in more calamitous circumstances of my own making than anyone I know. But being good at traveling is neither the point of this book nor the point of travel. There is a terrible, pervasive misconception that you need to be uniquely skilled (or prepared or wealthy or strong or brave) to explore the world. Nothing could be further from the truthI am living proof of that fact. Even this very book, which is among the more cavalier in attitude currently on the market, errs wholly on the side of caution and is full of bits of advice for situations that you will hopefully never encounter. In short, you dont need this or any book to travel. Talking with locals and other travelers, not reading books or websites, will always be your most accurate and interesting source of information. This is meant simply as a small collection of notes, tips, and stories that might help you avoid some common pitfalls or keep you entertained on a long bus ride. Everything you truly need is already out there.

The world is a far safer place than most people give it credit for. There is money to be made in peddling fear, and that business is, and always will be, flourishing. Entire industries are built on the idea that something unknown is something fundamentally dangerous. And while there are unsafe places, to be sure, there is a much scarier fate to consider. If you give into the paranoia incited by those who promote terror and dread, you will voluntarily imprison yourself in your tiny corner of the world, cut off from countless amazing experiences. That outcome, not meeting some menacing thug in a dark alley, is the one you should fear. It is infinitely more common.

The best piece of advice I could ever hope to provide is, simply, Go. The world has never been safer, easier, and cheaper to explore than it is right now. Be free, be curious, disappear, have an adventure. Once you start seeing things, you will realize just how much there is to see. Go seek your own treasures and you too will be joyfully overwhelmed by what you find.