Why Is The World Important?, Part One
Here is Part One of Torgeir Higraff’s final trip report and conclusions after completing his 2023 world tour. (Unless he takes off again later this year. Then we can expect trip reports from 2023 World Tour, Resumed.) He has a unique ability to meet fascinating people and then describe the conversations and settings so we feel as if we are there with him.
Torgeir’s adventures remind me of an Australian friend, Tony, a foreign teacher from my past. Here is how I described Tony in China Bound.
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Have you ever met someone who always seems to have bad luck? A person who, wherever they went, no matter what they did, however innocently, something unlucky always happened to them? It’s not usually of their own making; it just happens. They live a life of chaos, always dealing with one catastrophe after another. They cannot explain it but it’s a part of them. Somehow, every time you see them, they have a new disaster to relate. They are like a lightning rod for bad luck.
Tony was like that. Only, it wasn’t bad luck he attracted. In his case, Tony always managed to attract something unusual and fascinating. For example, he could innocently take a bus to go shopping downtown and find himself sitting next to someone whose job was smuggling Korean laborers over international borders. Despite speaking only a minimum of Chinese, Tony frequently went out exploring the city alone and always, somehow, came across some situation or person that made a great story. Perhaps part of the reason was his fearlessness to go into new places and meet new people. Certainly part of it was his casual air which made people feel as if they could confide in him. But, at least part of the reason was that he was simply a magnet who attracted interesting things.
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Torgeir is also a magnet for attracting interesting people and experiences. Then he writes about them. He finds something worth noting in almost every situation. Let’s join Torgeir as he regales us with more tales of places most of us will never see.
Sorry but my Buy Me A Coffee button skills are still woefully undeveloped. That means I have not yet figured out how to attach that button to this article. Maybe next time.
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Why Is The World Important?
Now I am back in the vineyard in Croatia where I started Expedition Important World in February. My daughter Paula and her best friend Erle are with me. A lot of new learning to travel with a couple of supersmart 16-year girls. But lots of time to sit down, enjoy the view of the vines and think back on my travel earlier this year. An expat is a person who resides outside their native country, and though I did not move abroad like Randy, I travel so much - and I travel in such a strange way - that I feel like an expat.
Those who travel like me understand one thing: How little we know about the countries on earth! For me, this knowledge grew stronger for every day since I left the icy, snowy, and cold Himalayas. During six hectic weeks I visited India, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore - before I took a week off back “home” on my favorite Greek island: Paros.
The highlight from my trip was driving a small motorcycle, both in India and Thailand. I was alone, but I never felt lonely. Always surrounded by people or lovely nature. I could stop and eat a good meal everywhere. I have not felt this free and happy the last couple of decades.
India is so big; I would need several months to see everything there that I am interested in. The country has more people than any other country in the world and the inhabitants seem to be hard working, positive and optimistic. Unlike Norwegians, they don’t tell their kids apocalyptic stories about the future, that their industry, production, and lifestyle is bad for the planet, that they have no culture and that they should give everything away, including their own country. Instead, India has full steam forward. Their politicians tell their voters that India is the superpower of the future, and in fact, they are right! India produces more and more energy every year - also from 99 new coal mine projects - and to the Europeans they say “India is making great steps toward renewable energy - yes for sure we will cut emissions and be net zero by 2070!” And politicians in my part of the world are foolish enough to believe them!
Travelling in New Delhi was surprisingly easy on a motorbike (five bucks to rent one day). But the traffic was crazy! I was there with 12 million cars and noisy tuk-tuks (a few of them electric), and the drivers seem to compete to fill the few spaces left in the chaos. I can’t believe that it used to be more cars and more pollution than today, in 2018 The Supreme Court banned diesel and petrol vehicles older than 10 and 15 years. On two wheels I felt I could die any moment; driving in this city is much more dangerous than climbing Island Peak in the Himalayas!
So, I parked the motorcycle and asked my landlord what to do. “Go in Metro!”, he advised me. All I had to do was to understand the metro map. And to find the nearest station.
My landlord used his application to order a taxi for me. The driver picked me up after five minutes. I got to the station real fast. Then I literally got up in the air, twenty meters from the dirty roads. From my railway viaduct I could watch the traffic down underneath me, like looking down on a million ants.
Going in taxi was also great when using a local application. Without the app I had problems. The first day when I arrived at the airport, the driver I picked in the crowd drove around for hours in the huge city and could not find my address. He found the address, but just a similar one a few miles away from my real location. It turned out to be several streets with that name. I had to change taxi at a bus stop, just to find out that getting a taxi without the local application is difficult. The first twenty taxi drivers I waved at in this busy street either ignored me, or stopped to tell me to use the app. They were all on their way to pick up someone else.
So next time I visit New Delhi I will live near a metro station. Then I can use the station to find my house. All drivers know all the metro stations.
As Lord Buddha said: “Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.”
I like the story about Bhagwan Shri Swaminarayan, or Sahajanand Swami as was his name during his travelling in Nepal and India, before he became a manifestation of God. So, in India they have a Jesus kind of figure who lived not 2000 years ago, but 200. Sahajanand Swami – God or not – was a fantastic character!
My main motivation to visit New Delhi was the temples. I went to a few Buddhist temples, but I was most interested in the Hindu culture that I did not know much about. Their temples look great, really Indiana Jones style. And they are amazing inside too! All you must do to visit them is to pay a small fee, take off your shoes and be as polite as you can in the crowd of tourists and local visitors.
It must have cost a fortune to make the temples. I tried to understand how the Hindu organization behind all this got all the money, but it’s still a mystery to me. The Akshardham Temple alone covers some 90 acres of land and include 6000 tons of pink Rajasthani sandstone, carved by seven thousand carvers. On average, 4000 workers a day were on site for a large proportion of the five years it took to build the temple. Inside the temple you have 20,000 deities, saints and mythical creatures to look for.
The most fantastic fact is that Akshardham looks thousands of years old – but it was constructed recently, and it took only five years! In Norway, it would take twenty years to plan this with a budget of 200 billion dollars, and twenty years for the construction.
Except of all the pollution, India is a great country to visit. I really like the polite and happy people. And the way they try to solve every challenge tells me this economy will continue to grow bigger in the future. They don’t care about Europe or The United States. And they really don’t care about climate change or gender issues and many more topics that we spend time to discuss at home. Why should they? When you have been poor all your life and finally your income is growing every year, you care about that, you care about your family and your own future.
TO BE CONTINUED…