Youre not limited to one path
[Music]
[Applause]
i always thought
backpacking was something only white
people did
growing up in bangkok which was arguably
one of the biggest backpacker hubs
i was accustomed to seeing an endless
stream of farongs
you know the thai term for white
foreigner as they arrived in the country
armed with their rucksacks guidebooks
and
the wide-eyed hope for adventure
meanwhile
like many other asian cultures my thai
upbringing emphasized
hard work studying and increasing one’s
level of comfort
the idea of purposefully throwing off
said comfort to live out of a backpack
was very very foreign in all capacities
south african comedian trevor noah once
joked something similar about camping
he said his ancestors didn’t work so
hard to get out of the bush just so he
could go back
into the bush backpacking to find
oneself
was not a rite of passage in the same
way
that it is in a lot of other western
cultures
and so though my single mother always
saw the value in travel
we were way more touristy than intrepid
travelers
we opted for organized excursions
cruises
and trips with friends and family the
idea of ever going off by myself
into the unknown was way too scary to
ever comprehend
i was working in an office job in los
angeles when a trip to south africa
changed everything
far from the urban sprawls of cape town
and johannesburg lies part of the
country
that few venture to it’s where you can
wake up to blazing sunrise over the
ocean
you can surf your soul away and you can
also swim
with the biggest underwater migration on
earth
this place is known as the wild coast
the sole purpose of my visit
to photograph what’s known as a sardine
run
despite its misnomer the sardine run has
nothing to do with running marathons
i am definitely not fit enough for that
nickname the blue serengeti the sardine
run is an event
larger number than the wildebeest
migration of eastern africa
millions of fish are moving up the coast
huddling into tight bait balls as a form
of protection
the shoals often stretching for
kilometers long
and with these fish come the predators
that hunt them
think swimming with sharks whales
dolphins even birds
as they’re chasing around these fish and
frenetic frenzied feeding
basically if anyone has seen the tv show
entourage i went from swimming with
sharks in
hollywood to swimming with actual sharks
i spent my days in the open ocean diving
into bottomless blues
and returning to the backpackers lodge
later in the evening to sit around a
campfire
with other backpackers as we jammed on
broken five-string guitars under the
stars
i didn’t really know it back then but
the experience would change my life
forever
upon returning to california i couldn’t
shake this feeling of annui
this restlessness that there must be
something more
at that point i was barely 24 and i was
working at a talent agency
representing book to film rights but i
often felt that i was spending so much
time helping other people tell their
stories
that i was forgetting to live my own to
be so close to the creative process
and also unable to do it myself was too
painful for me to bear
and so i did the very unasian thing
and i quit as someone who’s always been
a chronic over planner
the idea of the yawning gaping unknown
was absolutely terrifying
and also surprisingly exhilarating
you see life is hard for two reasons
because you’re leaving your comfort zone
or because you’re staying in it in scuba
diving
we have this act called the giant stride
it’s where you stand at the edge of the
boat
and you do a large step into the ocean
that was my goal
to embrace the giant stride into the
unknown
french poet francois roble once said i’d
go to seek a great perhaps
and so strapping on my backpack i left
the familiar to go and seek mine
after all we often regret the things we
didn’t do more than the things that we
did do
i saw the slogan once at a bungee
jumping spot in south africa
that said a fears temporary regret is
permanent
that really resonated with me and
despite having an immense fear of
heights
it was enough to encourage me to take
the 200 meter plunge
down to the abyss basically the most
expensive seven seconds of my life
very smart marketing the goal of my trip
wasn’t to go on a holiday
it was to be challenged embrace
discomfort and to grow
and to also challenge certain myths
regarding solo female travel you know
most people warned me you’re
gonna get kidnapped or ransomed or
murdered spoiler alert
i survived i wound up solo backpacking
across 20 countries and five continents
spending most of my time in southern
africa
on this journey i hitch a ride with a
stranger in a combi
swim with bioluminescent plankton in
colombia swim with
20 whales in a heat run as they’re
basically a mating ritual
in tonga saw the world’s largest bat
migration
in zambia trekked across landmine
infested territory
in bosnia learned how to surf in
mozambique
and of course i swung with sharks
it was female explorer fray stark who
perhaps said it best
to awaken quite alone in a strange town
is one of the most pleasant sensations
in the world
you’re surrounded by adventure standing
at the top of the second
highest waterfall in the world after
hiking through
sunshine rain and hail all the same day
i remember thinking i could be in the
office right now
but the life-changing experience weren’t
always so bucket list-y
you know sometimes they’re smaller
quieter moments of resonance
daily sunsets you know sitting in bumpy
bus rides
sharing a dorm room with backpackers
from all corners of the world
in the back of a pickup truck as local
kids chased after us yelling muzungu
muzungu which means white person
and then seeing them pause as their eyes
landed on you as a solo female traveler
an asian wasn’t a really common sight in
that part of the world
in regular life we’re so defined by what
we do for a living that sometimes we
forget to actually live
none of that matters on the road you
know the freedom to be whoever you want
to be is immensely liberating
you don’t have to carry any of that
baggage that you did from your previous
life
save for the actual bags on your back
and the transience creates this sort of
freedom of expression of openness
perhaps that’s why they call it the open
road
this was the magic of backpacking
disappearing off the map reinventing
yourself
making new friends but amidst the beauty
there’s also various forms of privilege
that exists on the road
gender economic color religion
passport sure i was roughing it by
staying in eight person dorm rooms
but i was lucky enough to not live
paycheck to paycheck and to be able to
afford time off work to travel at all
and there’s this term romantic
primitivism
which talks about the idea that noble
savages elsewhere always have it better
and trust afarians on the road will
often tout the
perfection of foreign places you know
frequently ones in less developed
countries
thailand bali you name it
but this is merely a symptom of
romanticizing and idealizing these
cultures
without really understanding them as a
whole
i remember sitting in a 4x4 winding up
the sunny pass
this infamously treacherous route that
splits south africa with the mountain
kingdom of lesotho
when we saw a man carrying firewood on
his back
for me it was a moment of stark
realization that while some of us
strapped on a backpack to go in
into the wild and eat pray love living
out these carouck fantasies
others carry things in their back out of
necessity
we often forget that travel is a
privilege and not a right
and in no place does this become more
apparent than in africa
my point isn’t to disregard the fun
aspects of backpacking
but just like embracing depth and scuba
diving it’s to encourage you to travel a
little deeper
the places we go shouldn’t serve it’s
just pretty instagram backdrops
relegated as you know backgrounds for
our journeys of self-discovery and
self-actualization
we are real places inhabited by real
people
take the time to genuinely find out what
that means
in my case it meant learning about
neocolonialism
the and the pitfalls of foreign aid
and debt trap diplomacy now your
vocabulary and vernacular may grow
exponentially as a result
some say that in the age of trip advisor
and lonely planet
true exploration is dead i would like to
challenge that
i think that if you travel deeper you’ll
find out that so much of the world has
yet to be discovered
after all i don’t think google maps can
go underwater yet
africa challenged so many preconceived
notions i had of both myself and the
continent
and showed me that no matter where we’re
from we really are more alike than we’re
different
especially since it seems that every
single backpacker knows the lyrics to
wonder wall
the thing is travel can feel a lot like
falling in love
both have the exhilarating rush of
discovery and that feeling of wonder
that’s why road romances are so potent
they exist in this completely separate
separate travel bubble and it’s really
easy to conflate hostels with home
you know people want excitement but
safety
stimulation and stability and it’s
almost near impossible to achieve
both let alone permanently
it struck me that this dichotomy is
perhaps best
represented by a volkswagen combi this
common symbol you see on instagram for
the vagabonding van life
it’s what humans crave most both in life
and in people
the adventure of the road and the
comfort of home
and that’s why like a lost love it takes
time to get over travel
it’s only after processing the reverse
culture shock
that its true value blooms in hindsight
your heart almost feels like it’s
bursting from the richness of the places
the faces and the people you’ve come to
know
you know the world feels so much larger
yet also so much smaller and connected
at the same time there’s really no way
to sum up
everything into a palatable lesson a
single one except that the experience is
larger than some of its parts
the true measure of how far you’ve gone
shouldn’t be by mileage flights or
hitchhike
rides but it’s really the distance
you’ve journeyed within
the travel writer ralph potts once said
exploration is not so much a covering of
surface distance
as it is a study in depth
i spent a year trying to recapture the
serendipity of the sardine run
what i discovered was that you can never
replicate that first time
but you can find so much more if you
travel with your heart your mind and
your eyes wide open after all
isn’t the transients what makes it
beautiful
swimming with sharks taught me to face
my fears and find comfort and
uncertainty
and to recognize that if you have the
privilege to ever backpack
is this wholeheartedly an opportunity
you should take
there’s a common misconception that
travel has no link to the real world
but by breaking out the traditional path
my time abroad led to working as a film
producer
for international stories launching
hollywood’s first scuba diving club
and was the inspiration behind my new
novel a book about questioning the
comfort of ordinary life
and going out there to seek that great
perhaps
while in the drakensberg mountains in
south africa i found myself in a film
set
after meeting two crew members at the
local hostel nearby
flash forward one year later and i was
working as a film executive at sony
pictures
and i was meeting with a south african
filmmaker
upon telling him about the story he
paused and he asked
what was the name of that film turns out
he had written it the best analogy i can
think of while backpacking is that
sometimes you’ll run into the same
people on the road
and similarly if you follow your
passions you’ll be surprised at where
those roads intersect
i came back from africa almost three
years ago but the memories constantly
linger in the back of my mind
see we age not by years but by stories
and i’ve spent a lifetime chasing
stories to tell when i’m old
in turn i’d love to encourage you to
live your own story
and to embrace that giant stride into
the unknown
thank you
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[Applause]
[Music]