The Deal of a Lifetime

The first word of the email: Congratulations! My brain short-circuited, my hand instinctively flew up to my mouth, perhaps in anticipation of an upchuck reflex. My eyes jumped erratically around the page: “generous gift”, “unique educational opportunity”, “travel independently”, “broaden your understanding of the world”. Was this real or had scammers become insanely good at their jobs? Finding no suspicious link to enter my bank account information, I decided that it was real.

I had been selected to be a Bonderman Fellow, meaning that I would be traveling by myself to eight countries over a period of eight months. And I would be paid to do it.

The catch, you might ask? I would not be allowed to work or go to school during the fellowship. Dealbreaker? I thought not. Don't get me wrong, the Bonderman Fellowship is not a guise for students to booze cruise around the globe – and frankly, that's not my cup of tea anyway. Rather, Bonderman Fellows are encouraged to travel to underdeveloped areas, to areas where they do not speak the language, to areas where they stick out like a sore thumb.

To me, that was the opportunity of a lifetime.

When I got the acceptance email, I happened to be on a commercial fishing ship in the Bering Sea. I'm sure the crew thought that I had lost my marbles as I bounced off the walls with this giddy excitement. In an effort to funnel my energy into something productive, I did what any meticulous planner would do: I opened a new Google sheet. I slapped a blank calendar into the main tab, color-coded each country, then blissfully plotted out arrival and departure dates for each country: Mongolia, Tanzania, South Africa, Lesotho, Nepal, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan. My mind pinballed around logistics, bouncing from travel visas to flight path efficiency to optimal weather windows in each region. And I, hardcore hyperlinker, Skyscanner extraordinaire, was stoked about filling in the gaps. After all, there were eight months of blank cells just waiting to be plumped with my travel plans.

But pretty soon, I gave up.

I booked start and end points. You know, Seattle to Ulaanbaatar. Cape Town to Kathmandu. Sorong to Singapore. But the middle, that precious middle that I had always clung to, was wide open. It became apparent that planning each day was not only unrealistic, but that it would be more restrictive than helpful. After all, how could I plan for getting lost, for meeting new people, for changing my mind? And that's what I am perhaps most excited (and nervous) for on this journey: giving up control and learning how to handle things when they go wrong.

Now, from the Seatac airport, I'm at the starting point. A 31-hour starting point, to be precise. After that, I will be figuring it all out on the Mongolian steppe.