“You will feel at Home,” he said patting me softly and reassuringly on my left shoulder. “At Home, at Home,” he repeated, and I knew he meant that the whole universe was this Home. And that there was nothing other than Home.

A few minutes earlier, he had taken a ripe peach out of his small plastic bag and, with a sharp knife he had brought with him, cut it into two perfect halves. I took the half with the stone. Sitting at the edge of the little wooden dock, I started eating it slowly while admiring the sunset at the grey horizon of Cayuga Lake in upstate New York.

“This is the sweetest peach of my life!” I exclaimed. I was about to stand up to get us some napkins, but he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some for us.

“You are self-sufficient, Brother David,” I said with a smile. “You are a whole universe unto yourself!”

After this small snack, I asked him a few questions. Then silence, calm, peace. For the first time in many years, I began to experience a homey feeling – the one I was sure he was talking about. I felt I was truly at Home and that Brother David was my father, my mother, my brother, my whole extended family.

Here I was, on the 23rd of August 2005, at the quite late age of 42 (he was 79, almost twice my age) with the first True Man I had met in my life, the first person who had turned out to be greater than my expectations. The first person in whom I could feel and experience Being. He was a man at absolute comfort in and with the world. He was truly at Home, behaved as one who was at Home, and let everybody else around him feel it too. All of his movements and gestures, his voice, his words, exuded an air of, how should I describe it?, well, “Authenticity.” Whatever he said and did flowed effortlessly, flawlessly, naturally. But this authenticity was not something that could be rationally deduced by observing the expression of any number of his qualities, such as openness, honesty, or the harmony between uttered words, facial expressions, and bodily movements. It was something that could be experienced through his living Presence. Actually, Being, Authenticity, and Presence seemed to be the three fundamental elements of the constitution of this True Man. I did not experience them as distinct, but as one – a totality. There was such a natural flow in his behavior, in every little thing he did or said, that nothing could be isolated as an instance of any of these three – everything merged into one continuous stream: Being – Presence – Authenticity.

The gratefulness of having met him two days earlier, after I had just found an amazing cottage on this very lake, had now turned into great-fullness. Never before in my life had I felt such indescribable fullness for being alive, for the privilege of being immersed in this incredible Existence that also included this great person. How pertinent that although the main teaching of Brother David Steindl-Rast is about Gratefulness, which I was at the time trying to practice in my everyday life (with some success), I ended up experiencing its very peaks when I met with him in person! The term “Gratefulness,” which he coined, is different and more expansive than gratitude: it describes a state of Being that does not depend on external circumstances; it is a deeper and unconditional experience of gratitude.

My six-month-long American journey, which had brought me for the first time so close to all of the ideas of Brother David that I had discovered in his books a few years earlier, this journey that allowed me to experience many moments and even whole days of true gratefulness, was now coming to its magnificent conclusion with events that I never anticipated and with gifts that were beyond my wildest imagination. How could I have imagined that after meeting him, I would still, that same day, be even more surprised by finding the perfect resting place on the shore of the lake with the kindest landlady, Diane? And who could have imagined that Brother David would have accepted my invitation to visit me at this place in order to enjoy the sunset together? And then there was the arrival, the next day, of my newfound soulmate, Jane, who was coming to show me around the area she knew very well because she had studied there. All these events were followed by a remarkable week of even more unforgettable moments in this magical resting place.

Were all these extraordinary events the result of setting the wheel of my new life in motion by departing from Europe to travel around the world, or were they a wholly divine gift? Well, maybe it was both: it was the divine gift which was given to me because of the courage I had to follow the inner voice and leap into the unknown. I now felt the truth of the saying that “when one follows his dream, the whole universe conspires to turn it into reality.” During those few days at Cayuga Lake, I felt for the first time that the universe (my universe, like my lake and my dock!) was dancing to my personal tunes; that I was the maestro of an orchestra whose music extended to infinity. Yet, paradoxically, I also felt that I was not in control of the music. That somehow all these gifts bestowed upon me were not the result of any effort on my part. I was conducting a piece that unfolded while I was conducting it! All the events seemed to unfold in spite of my own volition, for they went far beyond what I had envisioned: I had wanted to meet Brother David, not the greatest man I had met up to that time; I had wanted to find a nice cottage in the countryside to relax, not an earthly paradise; I had wanted to feel at home, not at Home. Everything surpassed my wildest expectations. I was within an unfolding process that did not distinguish between myth and reality. I felt grasped and consumed by the myth that had guided my first steps into the larger world – a myth that now seemed to materialise into a Real Myth:

Suddenly, Brother David became my father Laertes, Jane became my Penelope, the modern nearby town of Ithaca became the ancient Ithaca of Homer, and I was transformed into the eternally reappearing Odysseus.

Huli country, Papua New Guinea – 2007

Papua New Guinea is one of the most fascinating corners of our galaxy!

And its highlands are one the most amazing regions of our planet.

These highlands are actually the last frontier of the Earth. It is the last place to have been explored by modern man. The story of why this is so is fascinating:

Until the twentieth century, there had been virtually no real attempt by Westerners to explore or map out the rugged and mountainous interior of Papua. It was simply assumed that because the highland terrain was so difficult, nobody could possibly be living there. This reasoning was based on the observation that the chain of mountains running east to west across the heart of the country appeared to form an impenetrable barrier that effectively isolated the north coast from the south. It was unknown that there are actually two parallel mountain chains, between which lie a series of fertile valleys. So, when in the early 1930s a small expedition headed by the Australian prospector Michael Leahy decided to venture into the interior in search of gold, they shockingly discovered that in these highland valleys was a population of a million “hidden people” living isolated and disconnected from the outside world in what was effectively a Stone Age existence!

But that was not all. The other extraordinary discovery was that these highlanders had the greatest diversity of languages in the world: a total of over 800! The reason, it seems, is that because of the dense tropical forest and rough terrain, there was almost no intermingling between the tribes, each one having, as a rule, some relationship with only its two neighboring ones – a relationship that was often hostile. Effectively, each tribe was isolated from the rest, and it seems that some form of “language speciation” occurred, giving birth to many different “language species” – the equivalent of the biological speciation of finches that Darwin first studied in the Galapagos Islands.

It was with these things in mind that I decided to organize my own small private expedition to the heart of the highlands. I wanted to meet these people who only a few decades ago had made the monumental leap from the Stone Age to the Space Age in a single generation. I decided to visit the Huli tribe, famous for its colorful wigmen. I hired a young woman, Maria, to act as my main guide, who in turn recruited her husband (who had been born in the Huli region) to take us there and one of his cousins to carry our belongings. We departed from Tari, the main town of the region, and walked deep into the countryside to reach some villages relatively unspoiled by Western civilization. I say “relatively,” because ever since that monumental day Leahy opened up the region to the outside world, many Christian missionaries have significantly altered the indigenous societies and customs: Everywhere I had traveled in the country up to that moment, I had seen the presence of missionaries – whether it was the Christian bookshops in every town, or the Christian societies, or important construction works sponsored by various missionary associations and nonprofit Christian organizations. Still, though, I imagined that if I ventured far from the main town, I could hope to meet a few older people who would remember the Stone Age life of their childhood, as well as the historic transitional period and adaptation to the modern world that followed it.

We soon arrived at the home of the elder, called Papete, who came out of his small thatched hut to welcome us. He was a simple old man (not a village chief or noble) in his early seventies, with curly golden hair and beard, wearing a traditional grass skirt with colorful beads. There was a huge pig outside the hut, and Maria said Papete’s plan was to keep the pig healthy and fatten it even more in order to sell it at some point and receive a small fortune – since big fat pigs were very valuable in the community. She also explained that the pig actually slept in Papete’s hut every night for security reasons, because there were pig thieves in the region. I peeked into the small hut and saw the pig’s corner, as well as two “hard beds” on the floor made from bamboo – the second bed was for Papete’s middle-aged son.

We sat on the floor, Papete in front of the hut door facing us. He immediately reached into a large cloth sack, pulled out a few large leeks, and started cleaning them. I asked him to talk to me about his life, starting from when he was a small kid and describing how his tribe lived before “the white man” came to the region in the late 1940s. He said that when he was a child, his tribe only had contact with its two neighboring tribes, one in the west and one in the east, and that they didn’t know there were so many other tribes living in the highlands, something that they only discovered after the arrival of the white man. One of the neighboring tribes were cannibals, and although they were not at war with the Huli, he remembers that his mother always told him to avoid playing with the kids from that tribe. He described the simplicity but also the roughness of life during his youth. He explained how, upon reaching a certain age, teenage men would leave their families to live alone in the wilderness as part of a rite of passage after which they would be considered men. During this period, lasting between one and two years, the young men would obtain many skills, such as hunting, fighting, making tools, and more. They also did not cut their hair, all the while preening their coiffure into a huge mushroom-like shape. Once the hair grew to the proper length, they cut it, stitched it to a light wooden frame, and decorated it with shells, iridescent bird feathers, and other items in a process whereby each man created his own wig that was basically a unique hat made from his own hair. During the period when the volume of their hair increased, the wigmen slept on a special neck rest. Papete said that although nowadays many young tribesmen still create and wear their wigs, the elaborate customs and rites that were associated with the wigs’ creation are waning.

I began asking him many questions, and Papete addressed all of them in a most impressive, detailed manner. He didn’t shy away from a single question, although he seemed to be shy himself, rarely lifting his head up to look us in the eye. While talking, Papete was continually cleaning the leeks, and when he finished the first batch, he took some more out from the sack and continued his work. I asked Maria why he was cleaning leeks, and after inquiring, she told me…the leeks were his gift for me! How weird, I thought, for him to be preparing this strange gift for me while we were conversing.

Papete then recounted the first encounters of his tribe with the white man. He explained that his tribe, in spite of the ferocious appearance of the usually painted-for-war wigmen, is generally a peaceful tribe, and there were few conflicts with the first Australians and Europeans. Surprisingly, the Huli were eager to learn from them and soon embraced Christianity. He too was now a Christian – he was baptized Charles, although everybody still addressed him as Papete. I inquired how deep his understanding of Christianity was: although he did not know many theological nor scriptural details, he got the main Christian ideas of love, of not hurting one another, of kindness and selfless service. I was actually impressed by his judgment, by how he had sifted from all teachings what is most valuable and relevant in our everyday life.

He then described how shocked the Papuan tribes were when they saw all the amazing, or rather (initially) miraculous technological advancements of the outside world – the metal tools, then the cars, airplanes, electric appliances, and more. He still remembered with awe the one and only time he had entered an airplane in his late thirties. He could have never believed that such a heavy object could fly with people in it. But the one thing that most shocked him above all was when he slowly came to realize how huge the world is, and how many countries and cultures there are on Earth. Throughout his youth, he had thought that the whole world was delineated by the region of his Huli tribe and its nearby neighbors. At this point, Maria told him that I had traveled to many countries, and he started asking me questions about other parts of the world and other cultures. In my answers I tried not to overwhelm him too much. Although he could not read, nor speak English or Pidgin, he also appreciated the fact that knowledge could be stored in books and transferred from one generation to the next.

Listening to him was a most eye-opening experience. Papete was one of the very few people in the story of man’s existence on the planet who had the extraordinary experience of jumping from the oldest past of humanity into our advanced present in the span of a few years. I became aware of what a rare privilege it was to look into the mind of an ex-Stone-Age man and see my world with fresh eyes. All the things I grew up taking for granted – my upbringing and education, my “ordinary world” of everyday objects, the technology I used, my travels, my books – were being described by this old Papuan man as miraculous, extraordinary, once absolutely inconceivable for him and his people! I realized that I am truly living in a fairy-tale world, the dream world of all ancient human societies up until the last couple of centuries of the modern era.

To my amazement, Papete was answering all of my questions with clarity and a deep awareness of all the important moments of his life, never losing the thread of the conversation. What was most impressive throughout all this was the way Papete described both the outer happenings of the transitional period as well as his inner feelings, psychological transformations, and cognitive and sociological adaptations. I felt that this unique juncture in human history had not been thoroughly studied by social anthropologists and psychologists and that we currently have a very small window of time to delve into this extraordinary once-in-history event, by interviewing, in a more systematic way, the few remaining Papetes in the world.

After a couple of hours, Papete was getting tired, so we agreed to continue our conversation the next day. I took my sack of cleaned leeks and headed to the hut, where a nice dinner prepared by our host family awaited us. Exhausted after a very long and rich day, I went to the corner of my host’s hut, which was separated by a curtain from the rest of the interior, to retire early. Just as I was rearranging my stuff, I noticed that my money was missing from my wallet. I called Maria and her husband, and we all soon realized that the cousin the porter had gone missing, most obviously with my money! They were both shocked, they apologized, and Maria’s husband immediately gathered as many men as he could to set up a search crew to go after the runaway cousin. Papete’s son also joined the mission.

While the men went searching, the news about the theft spread around the village as it was still early evening and most were awake. After some time, Maria told me that Papete had also learned the news and that he felt so ashamed that the rules of hospitality of his tribe had been violated, and so sorry for me, that he offered to sell his pig – his entire life savings – to reimburse my stolen money! I was dumbfounded by his extremely generous offer. He had offered to sell his whole fortune after only having known me for a couple of hours.

Fortunately, before dawn, the search team caught the thief three villages further down, beat him up, banished him forever from their village, and returned home with my money. Yet until I dozed off, my mind was not on the theft, but on Papete. I felt his generous offer had somehow shown me that he already considered me a close friend.

The next day was Sunday, and most of the now-Christianized village gathered at the church – a small rectangular building with walls made of pressed wood and a tin roof. Τhere was a priest, a guitarist, and a few singers in front of an open sanctuary. After a brief sermon, they all sang hymns while some kids stood up and danced in unison in front of the sanctuary. Papete was sitting in the corner and seemed to be enjoying the festive atmosphere, although he did not sing with the rest.

After the service, I bought a small pig as a gift to my hosting family and asked them to cook it in the traditional way. I also invited Papete to join us, in order to continue our previous day’s conversation. This time, Papete felt more comfortable asking me as many questions as I was asking him, and soon our conversation turned into something akin to a mutual cross-examination. While the rest were preoccupied with the preparation of the roasted pig, which they finally placed into a makeshift earth oven – basically a pit in the ground – and covered with hot stones and banana leaves, Papete and I were talking nonstop. I felt that we were slowly building an invisible bridge between us, on which feelings of mutual love and respect flowed uninterruptedly. The longer we spoke, the more I realized how deeply Papete had managed to absorb, digest, and assimilate the alien worldview of the western world and Christianity. Surprisingly, he had also become a devout Christian, and asked me a lot of religious questions. I thought of how extraordinary it was that although his previous Stone Age world had collapsed, not only had he remained sane and psychologically balanced, but he had a clear and deep understanding of everything that transpired during this period and was self-aware about his own personal transformations. Furthermore, the deeper we went into more abstract things – such as the nature of God and its relationship to humanity – the more I came to realize that I had the privilege to be conversing with someone who had the rare charisma to eloquently express his views and ideas in terms that a foreigner like me could understand.

The next day, just before we departed from the village, I visited Papete in his hut one last time. I asked him what gift he wanted me to send him after my return to Mt. Hagen, the capital city of the highlands. He said he had always wanted to have a sleeping mattress, because others had told him they were very soft and provided a better night’s sleep. I promised to send him one, and after a strong embrace, we parted.

While several years have passed since I met Papete, he is still in my heart. His life story, his character, nobility, kindness, and unadulterated friendship made an indelible impression on me. Papete and I have bonded forever, and I honored him by including his photo in my book.

We had just finished traveling through the Deccan Plateau in the Indian summer heat. We had taken a small boat across the Narmada River to visit the holy town of Omkareshwar, situated on a small island that has the shape of the word “Om” as it is written in Sanskrit – hence the town’s name. The town and its main temple are dedicated to Lord Shiva and are among the most sacred sites in India. It is therefore a pilgrimage area for many sadhus – the wandering holy men dressed in orange robes that have abandoned all material comforts to seek spiritual enlightenment.

Upon arrival, we walked up the ghats – the traditional staircase that emerges from the river – and through the ancient town’s narrow streets. After visiting the main temple, we decided to walk around the island because we knew that many sadhus, hermits and holy men lived there.

A few scattered simple homes were built on the arid red landscape, surrounded by dry bushes and strangely shaped leafless trees. Two little girls in tattered dresses carried large rocks over their heads while a few sadhus relaxed in front of their simple homes, some of which were like wall-less shacks. One sadhu, who spoke very good English, was sitting on a bamboo table under the shaded veranda of his home, smoking a joint the size of a Cuban cigar, and invited us to join him for tea and a short conversation. A bit further down, we met more sadhus, some of whom had small gatherings around them, mostly of local young women. Every now and then, we would see small shrines to various gods painted with bright colors, fantastical sculptures of deities, and lingams (holy phalluses – the symbol of Shiva).

After a while, we saw a very impressive Shiva shrine, and we stopped to admire it. In front of the shrine sat a woman wearing an all-black salwaar kameez – the traditional Indian outfit of a loose-fitting tunic and trousers. She was sitting in a yoga posture and meditating. When she saw us, she stood up, smiled, and beckoned us to approach her. She was a European woman in her early fifties, with dyed reddish-black hair and a weary face with old acne scars. She stared at me with her penetrating brown-green eyes, as if trying to locate the heart of my soul and connect with it. I will never forget that first glance.

“Hi, my name is Radhika. Let me show you how to prepare an offering to Shiva,” she said with what sounded like a German accent.

Radhika started to sprinkle red gulal (powder) on the wide black lingam sitting on a round base that was full of offerings to the god. She then placed a string of wildflowers around the lingam, as well as two small votive candles next to it, all the while chanting in Hindi. Jane and I were impressed with the graceful manner of her movements that had apparently been honed through years of practice. The ease of her chanting revealed a profound devotion. We had only seen Indians perform such rituals before, never non-Indians.

When she finished, Jane said, “What a beautiful offering you’ve made. Are you a practicing Hindu?”

“My dear friends,” she said with a soft smile, “I guess I have practically become an Indian. I’ve been making offerings to Lord Shiva for almost 30 years now.”

“You sound like a German,” I said.

“Yes, I am. Unfortunately, this German accent of mine will stay with me forever!” she said, and invited us to sit opposite her.

“A German praying to Lord Shiva for 30 years – you must have quite a story!” I said enthusiastically. “We are dying to hear it.”

“ ‘Dying’! Interesting that you said this. For my life’s story revolves around this word,” she remarked with a mysterious grin.

She then began to share her story: She came to India in the early 1980s as part of her spiritual quest and traveled around the country visiting most of its famous sacred sites. But just as she was about to return to Germany, she fell madly in love with Anand, an Indian man fifteen years her senior. She stayed with him and his family for a few months and then decided to marry, even though his family did not approve of it. Anand was a true soul mate, who shared Radhika’s deep curiosity for spiritual matters. They were soon exploring all aspects of Hinduism, reading books, traveling to religious sites, and meeting with various teachers from many different sects.

Jane and I listened intently. Up to this point, her story sounded like a typical love story – a European traveler falls in love with an Indian and creates a life in India. But then, Radhika’s tone changed abruptly.

“All was well, but after fourteen years of marriage, Anand unexpectedly died!” Radhika said and then paused, as if allowing dark clouds to hover above us.

“At this moment, this saddest moment of my life,” she continued, “his family threw me out of their home and banished me from the village.”

Without us interrupting her, she continued sharing her life’s story:

To cope with her husband’s devastating death, she moved to the holy city of Varanasi and started exploring the various spiritual sects there. She tried to delve deeper into the mystery of death by approaching some Aghoris – a very fringe sect that is obsessed with death, their practices dealing with all aspects of death and dying. The Aghoris are “philosophical radicals,” she explained, in that they have taken the idea that everything is an expression of the Divine to its extreme. So they practice Equality to all sensations and all experiences. For the Aghoris, there are no ugly things or reprehensible objects, no fearful situations, no disgusting acts. Everything in the universe has a unique value and a reason for being what it is. So every aspect of the creation has to be embraced. All distinctions and categorizations, mental notions of good and bad, clean and unclean, holy and unholy, are for them obstacles against spiritual advancement and union with their monistic god. Above all, Death, whom humans fear most, is not to be put aside – and never thought about or talked about – but should be faced head on, so that its supposed sting is removed forever. Therefore, the Aghoris of Varanasi live near the cremation area on the shores of the Ganges River, in order not just to be continuously “near Death” but also to use the nearby dead bodies from the funeral pyres in many of their unorthodox rituals. Radhika soon became attracted to both their philosophy and the fact that they had no inhibitions or taboos. Without overthinking it, she decided to join the Aghori sect.

Her teacher and his group adopted her as if she were their sister, taking very good care of her. She felt she had found her true family in life. With a developing mutual trust, she was then ready to plunge into the strange rituals of the sect: She would drink water and eat her food from a human skull, the “kapala.” She would take the gray ashes of the dead and cover her whole body with them; she learned to eat shit and drink urine without feeling disgusted, and much more. She meditated with the others of her group surrounded by corpses, often even sitting on a dead body. The Aghoris’ special “obsession with death,” she said, serves many functions, including the final overcoming  of the fear of death. She recounted in detail her realization that there is truly no death, but only transformations, endless changes of form. “We die every day and are reborn: Are you today the same person you were at your birth? No, you are a completely different being,” she asked and replied in rhetorical manner. “Yet you think you are connected somehow to that newborn because you have created the notion of a personal history. But the truth is you constantly change – the baby dies and the boy is born, the teenager dies and the adult is born. Similarly, our apparent ‘final death’ when we leave behind our physical body, is simply one of many such transitions. But there is no death; only constant transformations of energy. And this energy that lies at the heart of our being, is immortal.”

She described how every day she practiced the Aghori versions of what in effect is Hatha and Raja yoga, with the aim of controlling some of the subtle energies of the cosmos. The Aghoris are famous, she explained, for mastering esoteric psychic powers, but these must be handled with extreme care and mindfulness. She had gained some of these powers, but she was reluctant to elaborate, save to say that she mainly uses them for her own spiritual advancement, or, whenever she can, to help others.

One of the most important milestones in her training was the first time her teacher asked her to eat human flesh – part of a dead body that was not completely incinerated during its cremation. Doing this, she emphasized, is not so much an expression of any cannibalistic cravings, as many people think, but a meditative exercise in experiencing the Equality of all objects and all sensations. Human flesh is just a piece of meat, as is pork or beef. By consuming it, the Aghoris break all bonds to the identifications, the likes and the dislikes with which we have been conditioned as we grew up. She said things were difficult in the beginning, but she had willpower and she managed it – one of few women who had completed the full initiation that lasts for more than five years. She finally connected with her innermost being that is identical in nature with the Divine, and she now knows that everything in the universe is a manifestation of the one Divine Being. All the Hindu gods, such as Shiva, next to whose shrine we were sitting, are simply different aspects, manifestations of the Divine Nature and of the Divine Forces. She also stressed that Shiva’s lingam is not sexual but symbolizes the regenerative power of the universe and is related to the round base on which it usually rests, the yoni, the lingam’s feminine counterpart that is an emblem of the goddess Shakti. The lingam and the yoni symbolize the union of the masculine and feminine principles, but also the unity of all existence.

Radhika finally addressed the fact that many people in India are fearful of the Aghoris or are disgusted by their rituals and way of life. She said that irrespective of what the majority thinks, the Aghoris are the kindest and most open-hearted of people, never harming anybody, and never creating any problems.

Listening to her fascinating story, Jane and I were mesmerized and awed. Her penetrating eyes were now truly shining, and we both felt that she was being truthful with us. She may have exaggerated some parts of her story to capture our full attention, but it was obvious to both of us that she truly had lived through the events she was describing. We stayed silent for a minute or so. Radhika was very forthcoming in her answers to all of our subsequent questions – although we didn’t have many, because she had already told us everything we would have liked to know, as if she could see into us.

The end of her story was less fascinating. In the past few years, she had moved to Omkareshwar, where she now lived alone like a hermit, enjoying her peace and quiet near nature while being in constant communion with the Divine. She was now basically a sadhu in her own right, although she was not a teacher nor had any pupils, nor traveled much anymore.

After spending over two hours with her, we thanked her for everything.

“Dear Radhika,” I said. “We need two days to truly absorb and digest everything you have told us. Know that if you are still here when we return to Omkareshwar, we may end up staying with you for a few days to delve deeper into this most fascinating world of the Aghori.”

“You are always welcome,” she said, and then chanted something and moved her hands and body in a strange way. I guess she blessed us and transferred some of her Aghori powers to us.

I fell upon Laurent in Xijiang, a beautiful Miao village between Guiyang and Guilin. Just as I was entering the village and searching for a place to stay, he approached me and offered to be “my translator.”

“Let me help you find a place to stay! I’ve been studying Chinese for two years now, and it will be an excellent opportunity to test my language skills,” explained Laurent.

“Wow,” I said, “that sounds great!”

Laurent, a fifty-year-old Frenchman, was traveling with his eighty-year-old mother whom he had just left at the lodge in order to explore the village on his own. While we were strolling around Xijiang interacting with the locals, Laurent did not miss any opportunity to test his newly acquired language skills in the real world. It was so cute and funny to see a Frenchman experimenting with different versions and pronunciations of a Chinese word or sentence in order to make himself understood. Every now and then he would lose the thread of his thoughts and throw a French or English word into his struggling Chinese. More often, though, he would become desperate at being misunderstood after not pronouncing the words correctly, in which case he would start using his arms and hands and facial expressions to describe an object or a request. A number of Chinese would occasionally gather around us to help in deciphering his weird sounds and expressions, while I also began assisting him by adding my even more expressive facial expressions. A Frenchman speaking Chinese in a French accent in one of the remotest regions of China accompanied by an equally strange Cypriot traveler making all sorts of grimaces – this is what I call a truly odd couple, behaving oddly, in an odd place!

We soon discovered that despite our different backgrounds and paths in life, we actually shared many interests about a range of things. After an hour or so of getting lost in the narrow streets of the village and interacting with the locals, we were conversing about everything under the sun – from the Chinese language and the traditions of the Miao people to our favorite travel destinations and our mutual admiration for the French pianist Helene Grimaud!

Laurent was the first person I’ve met who had “retired” at a younger age than me! After his father’s death and the acquisition of a significant inheritance, he had stopped working at the age of twenty-nine. A few years later, his younger brother unexpectedly died, bequeathing to Laurent even more wealth. As such, Laurent’s financial situation was set for life by these unfortunate events.

After his “retirement,” he decided to live with his mother in their family cottage in the middle of a small private forest outside a small hamlet, a two-hour drive west from Paris. For the last twenty years, he had been tending his garden, his vegetables, his  forest, and as it seemed, his aging mother. He had never married nor had any children, although he still seemed open to the possibility. He led a simple life in nature, with very few friends, and almost zero social life. His daily preoccupations were not basically different from those of a hermit. When he traveled, it was usually abroad with his mother. In the past few years, they had both become obsessed with China – its culture, history, peoples, attractions, language, food. This was their third visit in the country in three consecutive years!

After he helped me find a hotel, we walked around Xijiang, took many photos, conversed (or failed to converse) with the Miao locals and other Chinese tourists, and finally ended in the central plaza of the village. Well, actually a Chinese “village” is not exactly a small entity, and Xijiang, the largest of the Miao villages, had the nickname “village of a thousand houses.” In Europe it would be classified as a small town. The central plaza was quite grand and impressive, with multi-storeyed traditional stone and wooden buildings surrounding it. We were very lucky because that night we fell upon a special festival that included local dances and other activities. While we sat observing the festivities from the balcony of a café with a view of the grand plaza, our conversation, for some weird reason I cannot now recall, suddenly turned philosophical.

Without much prodding, Laurent eloquently shared his views on the meaning of life, his thoughts about God, ethical conduct, and much more. As it soon turned out, his views were rather about the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life and his strong doubts that there was a God or any objective ethical criteria. He said that although he understood his mother’s attraction to Buddhism and Vipassana meditation – “there is probably something there” – he thought that in the end “there cannot be any meaning in having entered this world of ignorance and suffering only to ascend some ladder to some nirvana.”

“So Laurent, do you think there is nothing beyond this life? This is all there is?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he replied. “One day we will all die, and whether there is another life or not, the fact remains that this life of ours, right here and now, just is as it is and does not seem to point anywhere,” he replied, emphasizing the last word.

His voice was of someone who had resigned from trying to figure out why and for what he exists. “Placid resignation” was the phrase that came to me to best describe his overall stance. Yet somehow I felt that his resignation was not complete. He always seemed to leave a door slightly ajar through which he would allow a glimmer of hope to enter – a hope that he might be wrong and that his life – all Life – might, in the end, turn out to mean something. But for now, Laurent, who not only claimed to be living but seemed to truly be living a meaningless life, was convinced that there is nothing more to life than living one’s days without too many worries until death arrives.

I tried to suggest that there are occasions during which meaning enters life. That there are many “cracks” from which one can see things that lie beyond this life. And that even if there is no soul or afterlife or any other type of “beyond,” nevertheless one could always derive meaning from within this life, from within one’s work and loving relationships and more, without recourse to metaphysics.

“Waiting for death,” I said, “cannot be all there is. If this were all, then there would be no reason to wait for death in the first place. Committing suicide is an equally valid, ever-present alternative. Why bother traveling in China? Why don’t you finish your life here and now?” I challenged him playfully.

“Because I want to see the fireworks!” he responded in kind, just as the fireworks, concluding the evening celebrations, began to light up the sky.

“…and because you love your mother, and enjoy traveling with her around China – no? Isn’t this love meaningful, just as traveling and discovering is?” I said.

“Yes, but everything will end soon, like these fireworks,” he replied.

At that moment, a kind Chinese lady brought us a few local culinary delicacies to try. Nothing in China, not even impressive fireworks, can be truly enjoyed unless one has his mouth full!

We were both delighted to be enjoying the wonderful atmosphere and all the new experiences in this isolated place. Laurent’s Heraclitean emphasis on the transience of everything could not have been more timely. Here we were, enjoying so many things that mysteriously converged on our life’s path: our serendipitous encounter, the surprise festival, the music, the dances, the philosophical discussion, the fireworks, the great local delicacies gratuitously offered to us. At one point, I thought that maybe he was right after all: There is nothing more to life than simply enjoying each moment as it comes; there is nothing more to do, complete, or achieve. This is all there is: events coming and going, and us witnessing or experiencing whatever crosses our life’s path.

Laurent was a good listener, and although he followed all the intricate arguments I was presenting, he did not change his attitude or main position: Life is meaningless and there is nothing more to it. Yet, in spite of our philosophical disagreements, my new friend happened to be a most loveable person – open, generous, warm-hearted, kind, and helpful. He was even quite impulsive, and in this respect he was nearer to the Chinese mentality and character than to the French. His pleasant and interesting personality made it difficult for me to accept that he lived a life empty of meaning and empty of aims and purpose. Well, maybe it wasn’t truly empty: he was helping his old mother, tending his vegetable garden and forest, reading books and listening to classical music, while harming nobody and asking for nothing from anybody. He lived, I dare say, the ultimate neutral life. A life devoid of crests and valleys, too much excitement and too much pain. A life effortlessly traversing the fine line between the utter despair of the thinker and the meaninglessness of the mindless doer.

For days after we parted, I was still thinking about our encounter. My conversations with Laurent made me question my deepest truths: What if he was right and I am living in my own self-enclosed myth of believing that life has meaning? What if whatever meaning I give to my life is arbitrary and absolutely contingent – in the sense that any meaning I give to or discover in my life, or in Life as a whole, is as good as any other, which would include Laurent’s meaninglessness? Maybe just Being, and simply enjoying one’s aliveness, without philosophizing, with no sophisticated ideas, no systems of thought is the way to go. What if what I saw as “emptiness in his meaninglessness” was another type of fullness – his fullness? After all, maybe his real or even his imaginary sense of fullness was truer than my search for fullness or meaning. Or more radically: maybe the search for meaning is more empty of meaning than accepting meaninglessness!

Despite my self-doubts and the transformations they entailed, still in my mind Laurent gradually became the symbol of a life that simply lives without searching for anything, aiming at anything, or doing anything for anything. A life that accepts itself for what it is and stoically awaits its end – a death that is neither sought after nor avoided. The only thing that I still could not answer was whether Laurent was truly content with the life he had chosen.

Rio de Janeiro was hot, humid, and bustling with people. I boarded a bus to Copacabana, and I was lucky enough to find a seat next to a well-dressed elderly man. A few minutes after I got comfortable in my seat, the man turned to me and introduced himself with a perfect English accent: “I’m Mr. Irenaeus, pleased to meet you. What is your name?”

It was such a nice surprise to find a local Brazilian who spoke perfect English and wanted to converse with me.

Mr. Irenaeus immediately started talking about Rio, the history of Brazil, and the attractions and monuments of South America, all the while providing the historical and cultural context necessary for me to appreciate their significance. I couldn’t believe my luck! It was my last day in Rio, and I was forming my travel itinerary for the south of Brazil, Argentina, and the rest of the continent – so he was a God-sent gift. What was most surprising is that what interested him and what he judged as important were the same exact things that I also loved and appreciated. I had just met the perfect guide and travel advisor for South America – my man! 

Soon we discovered that we shared many loves: history, politics, geography, philosophy, religion, and more. Surprisingly, Mr. Irenaeus was not only very knowledgeable about Latin American history, but he also knew a lot about European history – ancient and modern – and even the recent history of my country, Cyprus, including the details of the life of our first president, Makarios! We were jumping effortlessly from one subject of discourse to another, as if we had been friends for decades. Although I let him do most of the talking, every now and then I would interrupt him to ask something about his life, at which point he would gladly open a parenthesis to interweave a personal story into the conversation. So, while I was learning everything I could about Rio, Brazil, and Latin America from a living encyclopedia, I was also getting glimpses of his life: he had worked for the civil service for thirty-five years, retired ten years ago at the age of sixty, had no family, and lived alone. He also used to work as a part-time English teacher and loved the English language and culture. He shared his time between Rio and his hometown, where he had a summer house. He had a good pension and some savings, and was spending his disposable money on books, which he apparently devoured. Since he didn’t have a big social circle, he lived a relatively solitary life. He enjoyed frequent daily strolls in town and, as it became implicitly obvious to me, whenever he saw a tourist willing to engage with him, he would try to open up a conversation and practice his (spoken) English.

Still chatting, we got off the bus at Copacabana and started walking together along the famous promenade with its adjacent sandy beach that extends for four kilometers. As time passed, I felt comfortable asking him even more personal questions. I inquired about his opinions concerning modern technology, the internet, and mobile phones, but he abruptly changed the subject by saying “I don’t know about these things, I’m old-fashioned.”

Noticing that he was furtively glancing at the beautiful young Brazilian women showing off their perfect, tanned bodies on the beach, I asked if he had a female companion.

“I had one for a few years when I was in my early fifties, but now I’m alone,” he said. “I think I’m too old now. Women prefer young men.”

“You are not old, Mr. Irenaeus! Actually, there are many women who prefer older, more mature and educated men,” I said, reassuringly. “Those who come to this beach may be in search of beautiful and impressive young bodies, but trust me, there are many others for whom you would be the ideal partner!”

“Maybe. Maybe you are right. But it is too much energy to run after women. I prefer my books,” he said emphatically, as if to convince himself that he was making the right choice.

Eventually, I felt it was time to bring up the subject of travel, wanting to get his insights on the other countries I was about to visit in South America.

“To which Latin American countries have you traveled, Mr. Irenaeus? I’m dying to hear your opinion about all of them!” I asked with eagerness and enthusiasm.

“I’ve traveled nowhere,” he replied.

“Nowhere?!” I repeated in disbelief, making sure I had heard correctly.

“Yes, nowhere,” he confirmed.

I felt that a metal rod had just pierced my stomach!

“You mean you have never left Brazil?” I asked again, hoping he would somehow modify his answer.

“Yes, I have stayed in Brazil my whole life,” he said in a low voice as if he was ashamed to utter it.

“But why? How? How’s that possible…?” I continued trying to extract the rod from my stomach.

“It just didn’t happen,” he replied, knowing that it was not a real answer.

“You are seventy years old, well-off, you love learning and reading about other cultures, you know history and so many things – weren’t you ever curious to see other countries?” I exclaimed in a rather loud voice, as if mounting an accusation in a public court to which the accuser had to respond to save his life.

“Yes, I know I should have traveled. I don’t know why I didn’t. It didn’t happen…it just didn’t happen…”

“What do you mean ‘it just didn’t happen’? Things in our life don’t ‘just happen.’ We make them happen. Why didn’t you make it happen?” I insisted. “And why, Mr. Irenaeus, didn’t you ever travel to England, a country you so admire, or even neighboring Peru with Macchu Pichu, or Mexico with its rich history and culture? How come your curiosity didn’t urge you to take even one single trip? Come on…not even to nearby Buenos Aires?!”

“You are absolutely right. It was wrong,” he replied, sounding as if he had just said “guilty as charged.”

As if on cue, we both walked towards the nearest bench and sat in silence for a minute. I felt paralyzed, the pain in my stomach having reached my legs.

I could not truly fathom it. Mr. Irenaeus, the most educated, friendly, kind person I had met in my travels in Latin America up to that moment, had gone nowhere. He had never crossed the sea, he had never crossed a mountain range, he had never crossed a border. Even my grandmother, who grew up in a small village in Cyprus, had boarded a boat and visited the Holy Land in Israel. She even once traveled to the USA and England, without speaking a word of English and without having the education and interests of Mr. Irenaeus. Yet Mr. Irenaeus’s life was permanently enclosed within a limited universe delineated by his home, work, summer house, and books.

While still sitting on the bench, I felt as if I had just been handed a mission: to shake up his life, to destroy his settledness! The world traveler within me revolted. I spontaneously invited him to come to Cyprus, where I would personally host him. I asked him to travel with me to my next destination (the island of Santa Catarina), or to join me in Buenos Aires in two or three weeks’ time. He was unmoved. He politely declined my invitations to Santa Catarina and Buenos Aires, and said he would think about a trip to Cyprus, although it was obvious he was just being polite.

We continued our walk for another hour or so, although we both felt a bit awkward after his shocking revelation. Just before we parted, we exchanged phone numbers to keep in touch. A week later, while in Santa Catarina, I called to incite him to come and join me and also reiterated my invitation to visit my country. He declined again.

I kept in touch with him throughout my time in South America. Although he had not traveled anywhere during this period, the optimist in me wants to believe that he must have finally visited Buenos Aires as a result of our encounter – and my prodding.

Years later, I would realize that my reaction and protest had little to do with Mr. Irenaeus himself and everything to do with me: With so many things in common, I had projected myself onto him and somehow imagined who I would have become at seventy had I too never left my country. Although there would be nothing wrong in becoming Mr. Irenaeus, the idea of this potential life – a life I could have easily led, but did not – made me feel suffocated. Furthermore, I couldn’t bear seeing this magnificent bird with long colorful wings being self-imprisoned in a small cage for his whole life for no reason whatsoever and, most disturbingly, without any excuse.

Compared to Doris, I’m a little travel-ant.

Doris is a world-traveler in a league of her own. She has been to 180 countries, many of them multiple times. Most shockingly, for the past twenty years, she has been traveling for about half a year every year. She is the female equivalent of Ibn Battuta, the greatest traveler in history, the only difference being that he traveled continuously whereas she does it piecemeal.

We had both been traveling through the villages of the Dani tribe in the Baliem Valley of Irian Jaya when I first saw Doris: a tall, blond, well-built German traveler in her late fifties. She was traveling alone like me, and we were visiting separately the same family in one of the villages. She was leaving just as I was arriving, and we didn’t talk. Later in the evening, we bumped into one another again at the hotel in Wamena where we were both staying. We soon discovered that we were working on identical parallel missions to either find a guide or some Christian missionaries to take us to the more remote Asmat and Korowai tribes. Over a glass of wine, we started talking about countries and continents, peoples and cultures, our travels and stories. As she opened up, I was so fascinated by her life that I fell silent and let her do most of the talking.

Doris must have been born with a unique and rare “travel gene.” By the age of nine, after earning some money by gardening for neighbors, she traveled alone to a nearby town. By the age of fifteen, she had already traveled to ten European countries with her family, whom she pressed to take her on trips more often. At sixteen, she convinced her father to sign a special permission letter for her to travel alone on the Orient Express from Vienna to Istanbul, something that she actually did! Ever since that trip, she traveled for a few months almost every year, sometimes even for a few years in a row. According to my rough calculations, Doris had traveled a total of fifteen years out of the last forty years of her life! She had managed to do it by having a flexible work schedule: she was a radiologist covering for other radiologists who went on holidays, so she chose her various jobs and their duration based on her own travel plans.

Doris’s husband also loved to travel. Since they had no children, they had the freedom to organize a few multi-year journeys together as well. For example, they traveled by Jeep through the whole African continent, moving north to south, camping along the way; they traveled nonstop for a year in North America; they sailed for a year along the coast of Northern Europe, from the Baltic Sea all the way to the Mediterranean. She had been to Indonesia six times, to Yemen four, to Iran three; she had traveled alone to Afghanistan after the war in 2001; she had visited isolated tribes in Papua and West Africa multiple times – the list has no end. Doris is not just another world-traveler. She is colossal!

Among her many adventures was escaping from a wild and enraged African tribe who ran after her when she unwittingly did something improper; witnessing an armed robbery in Latin America; being incessantly pursued by a tribal chief in Vanuatu who wanted to marry her; and most recently, surviving the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that took the lives of 230,000 people. Amazingly, she and her husband were among the very few tsunami survivors in Northern Sumatra. Although they were at the beach when the gushing wave struck and sucked them in, they both managed to emerge above the water and survive through a series of small details that Doris still considered unexplainable, if not miraculous.

Doris seemed to be neither aware nor conscious of how special her life and travels are. She did not suspect that she might be one of only a handful of people on the planet with such an incredible and extended depository of travel experiences. She spoke of her extraordinary travels as someone would speak about everyday common things, like going shopping or picking up the kids from school. While she recited her stories and adventures, I often exclaimed “wow,” “ooh,” and “I can’t believe it!” But she kept talking as if my reactions to what she was saying were insignificant. I wondered why this was so: Was it because traveling had become such an integral part of her life that visiting the Mongolian desert was like going to the neighborhood grocery store? Was it because she had recited the same stories many times and she was just repeating them without any emotions? Had travel become an unimpressive adjunct to what was now her “ordinary life”?

It was obvious that she took travel seriously, as I did, and sought a better understanding of the societies she visited. But did she really enter into their heart and soul? The following day, we visited some villages together, yet when some locals wanted to engage with us, she didn’t seem to be interested. She was content to just observe from a distance. And I noticed that while we were in one place, she was already thinking about the next – she took a few photos and was eager to move on. Her mind wandered and I sensed a loss of presence on her part, even a level of jadedness in her demeanor. I felt there was a constant “matter-of-factness” about the way she experienced her travels. She seemed to be more concerned with the movement inherent in travel than with its magic. I couldn’t help but wonder whether traveling for her had simply become an end in itself. Was she now traveling just for the sake of traveling? Had travel become an integral and “invisible part” of her life, just as it becomes for international businessmen? Had she lost the ability to experience wonder in travel? Was her apparent insatiableness an expression of her jadedness?

While trying to answer all these questions, I recognized something in her behavior, traces of which I had recently observed in my own: I had developed a new obsession with squeezing more countries, towns, cultures, and natural wonders into my already overloaded travel itinerary; I had a rush to move from place to place, not staying still for too long as I used to do during the early years of my travels. I was disturbed by the thought: was my own journey turning into an end in itself? Was I too on the verge of losing my sense of direction, my sense of wonder at new sights and experiences? I recalled a traveling couple in Samoa who had refused to walk with me down a short path to see a waterfall, because, as they said “it’s just another waterfall; we have seen so many.” At the time, I had found their comment so puzzling, but was I also now becoming like them?! Was I losing myself in a meaningless labyrinth of incessant traveling that knew not its own whence and whither? Was I becoming obsessed with experiencing new thrills, the old ones – such as an impressive waterfall – having lost their magic? Was becoming “Doris-like” the culmination of all world-travelers?

Doris suddenly turned into a mirror in which I could see my worst nightmare. A few months after we had parted, I suffered from extreme travel fatigue – a sort of physical and mental collapse. This marked a most crucial and transformative period in my travels and in my life, for it offered the opportunity to stare hard into that mirror and reexamine my everything: my travels, my intentions, my life’s-path. After a few weeks of critical self-analysis, my darkest thoughts receded as I realized that for all of our similarities, Doris and I were completely different creatures. Yes, I had been a serial nonstop traveler for years, but my curiosity for other subjects in life was too strong for me to just be a traveler. Even as I traveled, I devoted time to reading and writing, which required periods of a stationary life. I also had a desire to linger longer in different countries that I had greatly admired in order to experience the culture on a deeper level. But most importantly, travel sparked my inner childhood wonder that had not yet been extinguished. Even after years on the road, I had not yet tired of waterfalls, amazing landscapes, the laughter of children, talking to locals, trying new foods, listening to strange music.

At the end of this transformative period sparked by my collapse, I had vowed to slow down and mindfully strove never to become like Doris. I promised myself that, irrespective of how many hundreds of waterfalls I would see in my life, I would always walk to the end of the path to see the one nearby.