A few seconds later, a different monkey attacked me from behind, smacking my hand and waiting for fruit to fall. People feed the animals in hopes of divine rewards, which turns them into mischievous divas. Bali is the only Hindu island in the Muslim-dominated archipelago of Indonesia, and monkeys are considered sacred in Hindu culture as representations of the monkey god, Hanuman. I hoped devotees were reaping the benefits in exchange for their generous feedings, because the monkeys looked pretty fat to me.
“Holly, get closer to the big guy so I can get a picture!” Amanda was poised on the steps above, her camera pointed in my direction.
“Are you crazy?” I was mistrustful of monkeys—they had already stolen my mangoes in Kenya, grabbed my hair while I had been walking the 777 steps to the temple on Mount Popa in Myanmar, and nibbled my shoulder in the Amazon like deer on corn.
I sprinted up the stairs toward her just as another monkey grabbed her hand and almost succeeded in stealing her camera. “Karma is a bitch!” I exclaimed with a laugh as Amanda squealed and surged past Steph and Jen.
We didn’t stop for a breather until we reached the top, but we all froze once we arrived. The sun was flamingo pink and sinking behind craggy cliffs that pierced the sea, the light bouncing off waves as pointy as a sea urchin’s spine.
“I’ve never seen such an amazing sunset,” Steph said, her eyes glowing. “I wish I could travel with you for the rest of the trip. Every day must be one big adventure!”
“Come with us, Steph!” I goaded.
“Well, first I’d have to quit my job, and then I’d have to convince my husband to quit his, too,” she said, taking one last wistful look at the sunset. I froze for a second. Why had no person or thing tied the three of us to home? Steph turned to face us, her hair whipping wildly in the gusts rising from the ocean. Leaning against the ledge of the stone railing, she asked, “What are you going to do when you get back?”
Glancing at one another, we stiffened and stood a little taller. For the first time that day, we weren’t all talking over one another to get the words out. We’d come on this trip looking for insight into what to do next, but even though the trip was more than half over, we still couldn’t answer Steph’s seemingly simple question.
We’d slept under the stars in the Andes Mountains. We’d chanted as the sun rose over an ashram in India. We’d sailed past limestone pillars in Vietnam. We’d prayed in the killing fields of Cambodia. We’d scuba dived among the islands of Thailand. Now, as we stood on top of a temple in Bali, the future seemed like the most distant place of all.
How old are you?” asked the petite Balinese woman who’d introduced herself as Nyoman, while pouring me a cup of coffee. I was sitting at a restaurant table in a garden courtyard. Wide leaves protected me like a parasol from the already hot sun.
“I’m twenty-nine,” I answered.
“Are you married?”
Not that question again. Instead I smiled and said, “No, but I have a boyfriend at home in the States.”
She looked relieved that I wasn’t wandering this earth completely unattached. Family is the thread that binds Balinese society together, with each member shouldering specific roles and duties according to gender and birth order. The eldest brother, for example, traditionally plans all the religious ceremonies not only for his own wife and children but also for his younger brothers’ families. It’s the women, though, who make the offerings to the gods in those ceremonies.
And the impression I’d gotten was that the Balinese preferred doing most things together, from the crowds congregating at the warungs (traditional family-run restaurants) every afternoon to the packs of housewives wandering the markets together each morning. A lone woman traveling without a husband must have seemed like a lost soul. Many islanders deemed it their duty to relieve me of my solitude, as they struck up a conversation whenever I’d separated from Jen and Amanda.
After a little more than a week in Kuta Beach, we’d only just arrived in Ubud, Bali’s cultural center. The girls had chosen to linger in bed that morning, but I’d been too excited to sleep and wanted to explore the town, which was bordered by chartreuse-colored rice paddies and flanked with art galleries.
“Are you married?” I asked Nyoman.
“Yes. I live with my husband and his family, and we have two sons,” she answered. Balinese women typically move in with their husband’s relatives, living in a compound that also houses his parents, his brothers, his brothers’ wives, and their children. She likely also worshiped his ancestors at the family’s temple constructed inside the compound walls. I wondered how long I would last living in such close quarters with my in-laws.
“You look at menu, and I’ll be back,” said Nyoman. I was relieved that the menu offered English translations for dishes such as seafood omelets, fried rice topped with an egg, and vegetables in coconut-milk curry.
Songs spilled from an invisible speaker like a metallic stream of wind chimes, gongs, and cymbals, known as Balinese gamelan music. Sipping my coffee, I watched Nyoman stand in front of a stone shrine at the edge of the courtyard. She lit a stick of incense and waved it around as if in prayer before placing it inside a bowl beside a pile of bananas. The smoke billowed skyward and married with the scent of frangipani, jasmine, and gardenia.
The small acts of daily devotion performed by the Balinese captivated me even more than some of the major monuments of faith—from the temples of Angkor Wat to the ruins of Machu Picchu—I’d seen in the past year, maybe because seeing people actually worshiping made faith seem more tangible. When I’d first arrived in Bali, I’d tripped over the piles of flowers, coconut leaves, rice crackers, and incense dotting the roads and sidewalks. They appeared too beautiful to be trash but too random to be sacred, and I’d heard nothing about them while studying Hinduism at the ashram in India. So I’d approached Herman, who had been sitting on his steps as usual, to ask what they were.
“They are called canang sari—offerings to guard against the evil spirits and bring luck from the good spirits,” Herman explained matter-of-factly.
I’d since discovered that the Balinese practice Hinduism with a nature-worshiping twist. They believe that the world houses both good and bad spirits that can be kept in balance with rituals such as fruit offerings, dancing, and paintings. To stay in harmony, the Balinese believe, you have to keep good relations with the spirits, other people, and nature. I felt a surge of warmth and protection while watching the Balinese housewives communing with the divine every day, placing offerings at family shrines. And regularly stumbling upon those homemade piles of devotion reminded me I was wading through an island of believers.
After making her offering to the spirits, Nyoman approached my table, balancing a steaming plate of fried bananas. “It’s a gift for you to taste,” she said.
“Matu suksama [thank you].” The caramelized sweetness tickled my tongue. An elderly woman hobbled over with a baby cradled in her arms.
“This is my husband’s mother,” Nyoman said. “She watch my son while I work, but I must feed him now.” One of the perks of living with your in-laws is built-in day care. For what communal living lacks in privacy, it makes up for in cooperation, cocooning family members with the security of not having to struggle through life’s challenges alone.
I poured sweetened condensed milk into my coffee and watched the whiteness swirl into the blackness, creating the shape of a blooming lotus flower.
It was the balancing of darkness and light that seeped into every crevice of life in Bali. I could only hope I’d be able to demonstrate the same balance myself—on a bike. I’d read the roads carved into the hills surrounding Ubud made for picturesque rides with sweeping views of the rice paddies. Besides, I wanted to see what life was like outside town and figured pedaling around would let me cover more territory than I’d be able to by jogging. “Do you know where I could rent a bicycle?” I asked Nyoman when she returned.
“My husband’s brother rents them. If you walk Monkey Fo
rest Road, you will find them parked.”
After finishing up my breakfast, I paid my rupiahs, pushed back my chair, and wandered outside. The storefronts’s paintings were awash in primary colors and textures splashed across hundreds of canvases. Painters sat on the steps in front of their shops, fluttering their brushes with the soft touch of a butterfly’s wings. Even the concrete walls bordering the maze of alleys were decorated with art like mounted tie-dye, transforming an otherwise mundane space into something beautiful. Shadows moved across the walls. I looked up to see clouds blowing across the sun and noted that the air smelled heavy, like rain.
Not wanting to linger with a downpour threatening, I easily found the line of parked bikes among the rows of art galleries, organic food stores, and meditation centers. For $2, I had two wheels for the day.
Sliding onto the banana seat, I slung my purse strap across my body diagonally so it wouldn’t slip off. I felt like my childhood self, hopping on my bike to seek out the secrets of foreign lands: the school playground, the church parking lot, my grandmother’s garden. I was free again, belonging to no one.
With the wind tickling my ears and making my eyes water, I pumped my feet, mud from the tires speckling my legs. I rode away from Monkey Forest with its divine divas awaiting gifts of bananas. I passed a temple at the edge of town whose stone pillars were crisscrossed with carvings and shaded with palm fronds. I rode up a steep hill, past houses where children kicked balls around in the yard, stopping to yell “Halloooo!” as I approached. Men lounged on the front steps of their thatched-roof houses, eating balls of rice with their hands. Women carried jugs of water, laughing together as they walked.
I pedaled faster and faster as the sky darkened, trying to outride the rain. I’m free, I repeated to myself with every breath. The houses grew farther apart, and the rice paddies transformed the landscape into a layered green wedding cake. Palm trees dotted the grassy shelves, and a river ran through it all.
I’m free. Children’s laughter poured from a lone compound, and I turned my head to see a woman placing a stick of smoldering incense inside her family shrine. I pedaled faster.
BOOM! Thunder exploded a few seconds before lightning tentacles formed glowing fissures in the clouds.
A sane person would have turned back toward town to avoid potential flash floods—especially when biking in a foreign country where she had no idea where she was going and no one else had any idea where she was. Instead, I was compelled to surge forward to beat the lightning. I tightened my abs and pushed down on the pedals so fast that the world melted into streaks like the tie-dyed paintings I’d admired in town.
I’m free. Raindrops fell, washing away the sweat streaking my forehead. I can do anything, go anywhere, I thought as I crested a hill and started to pick up even more speed on the descent.
What are you going to do when you get back? Stephany’s question blew through my mind like a cold draft as the world breezed by.
I’m free.
Steph had also asked, while we were walking home from an Irish pub, giggling and sweat-soaked from dancing on her final night on the island, “What really made you go on the trip?”
I’d offered my standard answer. “How could I not go? I had two friends willing to travel the world with me and a little savings in the bank. It wasn’t really a choice.” I saw her examining my face out of the corner of my eye, sensing she wasn’t entirely buying it.
“Yeah, but you said you were happy with your job. And it sounds like you’re totally in love with your boyfriend—you don’t even look at other guys. And you live with him in a cute apartment. Seriously, why did you decide to leave for an entire year?”
I should have known the answer, or else why had I traded my 401(k) plan for credit card debt, my closet for a backpack, and my bed with the man I loved for a different cot every night? Amanda wanted to jump-start her travel-writing career, and Jen was escaping a relationship with the wrong man. Me, I was in it solely for the adventure. Or so I’d told myself.
I’m free, I repeated my mantra, pedaling faster still. Stephany couldn’t travel for a year because she was tied to her husband. Nyoman would never be able to go on a bike ride in the middle of the day, because she had a job to do and a baby to care for. I was tied to no one. I was free. And I was alone.
I heard Elan’s voice echo in my head as my tires turned over pebbles in the road. “I’ll miss you, Hol.” I remembered how happy I’d been, laughing as he spun me around in the snow on that Boston sidewalk. I thought about how safe I’d felt on those nights when we’d fall into our bed but stay up talking until the sky turned from black to gray. I pictured the way he’d helped me slip into my loaded backpack for the first time and then watched me from above on our patio as I climbed into a cab on my way to the airport to begin my journey.
Then, quicker than a lightning bolt shooting across the clouds, I didn’t want to be free anymore. I didn’t want to travel through my life alone.
Swish, swish, the sound of the pedals slicing through the air undercut the sound of the rain pelting the ground.
I’d picked up so much speed that I’d finally stopped pedaling and put on the brakes, sending my bike into a near tailspin. Along with drinking the water and flashing expensive electronics in public, biking rural roads in a rainstorm sans map was probably listed as a Lonely Planet warning about what not to do when traveling.
Before my bike could sail into a ditch-turned-river, I regained my balance. At the same moment, a sliver of sunlight cracked through the clouds. The rice paddies were iridescent, rhinestonelike raindrops studding the greenery as if the spirits had taken a BeDazzler to the landscape.
I slowed enough to put one foot on the ground and then turned back in the direction from which I’d come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Amanda
NORTH ISLAND, NEW ZEALAND
MARCH
Six days after we flew Garuda Indonesia to Bali, one of the carrier’s planes overshot the runway in nearby Jakarta and burst into a ball of flame. While 118 people escaped the wreckage (including one Australian cameraman, who unbelievably rescued his gear and started shooting footage for Sydney’s six o’clock news), 22 passengers weren’t so lucky.
Needless to say, none of us was clamoring to get on another Garuda flight in order to continue our journey, but we didn’t have much choice. Even if we could get a last-minute refund, one-way fares to New Zealand on a different airline would have cost as much as our last six flights combined. We had a choice: either carve out a spot in Bali’s thriving expat community and stay on the island forever, or bite the bullet and get our butts on the plane. A passenger in line behind us had an optimistic take on the situation: “The week after a crash is the best time to fly. At least you know the pilots won’t be sleeping on the job.” We didn’t feel comforted.
Fortunately, the trip was blissfully uneventful. We arrived just after dusk, checked into a windowless dorm at the Auckland Central Backpackers hostel, and proceeded to enter a sleep coma until the alarm of one of our dormmates went off just after 7 a.m. Jen and Holly barely stirred, but I couldn’t convince my brain to doze off again. I yanked on a pair of running pants, laced up my ultragrungy trail sneakers, and sneaked out of the room.
I wasn’t prepared for the full-force blast of early-morning brilliance outside the front door: the sky was so saturated blue and cloudlessly dazzling, it almost hurt my eyes to stare into it. The sun was rising through the city skyline, and Auckland’s wide streets were starting to fill with early-morning commuters. A bank’s digital clock flashed the temperature, 17C—about 68F. I’d emerged into one of those impossibly perfect early-autumn days that makes you stop, draw a breath, and feel humbled that you’re alive and able to experience it (particularly when you’ve been a Garuda passenger).
I didn’t need the map I’d stuffed into my windbreaker to find my way to the waterfront. As I moved past the shipping containers at the industrial port section just north of town and emerged alon
g the peacock blue waters of Judge’s Bay, I felt my steps lengthen and my body pick up speed. About a mile in, I realized that I’d actually forgotten to turn on my iPod. Why bother now? I’d heard every song and every playlist a gazillion times before. There was greater novelty in the silence.
As I ran, I thought about Jen and Holly, either still asleep at the hostel or starting their morning rituals. By now I knew them almost better than I did myself—their personality quirks, their mood shifts, their penchant for silliness and capacity for kindness. They were my left and right arms, my compass and guidebook. We’d become the tightest of teams. Yet sometimes I wondered just how differently this trip might have gone had I—or any of us—chosen to go it alone.
Though there definitely was strength in numbers, being in a group sometimes made us less likely to reach out to new people. Or for well-intentioned strangers to connect with us. I was intrigued by solo travelers, so flexible and autonomous, always bursting with stories of freshly forged friendships with locals who’d housed them, fed them, introduced them to extended families, and invited them to weddings. They had to work a lot harder to do all of the tasks that Jen, Holly, and I usually split up (nailing down train schedules, securing rooms at hostels, negotiating prices, lugging toiletries and electronics), but their trips ultimately seemed more rewarding for the challenges.
Holly had been a solo traveler at one point in her life; she’d backpacked alone in Costa Rica for several weeks after grad school. She pointed out that while traveling alone can be liberating, doing it for an extended period of time requires some seriously sharp instincts and a willingness, particularly as a woman, to take considerable risks. You couldn’t always throw money at a problem by staying at a nice hotel or taking taxis everywhere. By necessity, you had to put your faith in strangers, so you’d better have a knack for reading people.
Despite the potential drawbacks, I’d been thinking more and more about the possibility of extending the trip past our predetermined end date and organizing an adventure somewhere in Australia—on my own. I knew that both of the girls, especially Holly, wanted to head home on time, but now that I’d finally made good on my promise to stop pitching articles and writing and just travel, rushing back to my old life was the last thing I wanted to do.
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