Old Town Lijiang, China

It’s been almost a year and half since I set off to Europe. I’d imag­ined I’d be gone for about 6 months before return­ing to Los Angeles….well that didn’t real­ly hap­pen. The longer I trav­el the more the con­cept of home becomes, well, kind of just a con­cept and not real­ly a spe­cif­ic place. Home is where you make it. (Kind of cliché I know but it’s true, for me) And hon­est­ly I don’t real­ly miss being back in the US. I def­i­nite­ly miss my friends and less­er so a sense of famil­iar­i­ty, but it’s not like I yearn to go back.

“The longer I trav­el the more the con­cept of home becomes, well, kind of just a con­cept and not real­ly a spe­cif­ic place. Home is where you make it.”

After deal­ing with some tech­ni­cal issues on my web­site I can final­ly start post­ing again. I’ve got a LOT of catch­ing up to do. I have been keep­ing a detailed jour­nal and I will try to post at least once a week mov­ing for­ward. I’m cur­rent­ly in the mid­dle of South­ern Chi­na near Tibet. I’ve got a ten-year visa for Chi­na but unfor­tu­nate­ly I can only be here for 60 days at a time. And let me tell you, 60 days is bare­ly enough to scratch the sur­face of this amaz­ing, com­pli­cat­ed cul­tur­al­ly diverse coun­try. Some for­eign­ers I’ve found can’t wait to get out of Chi­na after being here for a week or so. For me it’s one of my favorite coun­tries that I’ve trav­eled in so far. It intrigues me as it’s so dif­fer­ent, it stim­u­lates my mind and inspires me cre­ative­ly. Though I’ll add it’s also the most chal­leng­ing coun­try I’ve trav­eled in so far as so few peo­ple speak Eng­lish. Try tak­ing a bus to a loca­tion you can’t read much less pro­nounce, with a bus whose sign you can’t read and a dri­ver who does­n’t speak English.

A list of countries I’ve visited:

Italy, Mon­tene­gro, Greece, Mal­ta, Spain, Andor­ra, France, Switzer­land, Croa­t­ia, Slove­nia, Bosnia & Herze­gov­ina, Ser­bia, Egypt, Israel, Pales­tine, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Sri Lan­ka, Nepal, Hong Kong, Chi­na and Laos.

Spain — May, 2016 

Cha­monix, France — June, 2016 

Trum­mel­bach Falls, Lauter­brun­nen Switzer­land — July, 2016 

Hvar, Croa­t­ia — Sept, 2016 

Sara­je­vo, Bosnia — Sept 2016 

Athens, Greece — Oct, 2016 

Del­phi, Greece — Oct, 2016 

Giza, Egypt — Oct, 2016 

Beth­le­hem, Pales­tine — Dec, 24 2016 

Petra, Jor­dan — Over­look­ing the Trea­sury — Jan, 2017 

Cho La Pass 17,782 ’ (5,420 meters) Himalayas . In the BG are Cholatse and Ama Dablam 

Matrix leap into Kung Si Falls, Luang Pra­bang, Laos — Aug, 2017 

Wen­feng Bud­dhist Tem­ple, Lijiang, Chi­na — Sept, 2017 

At the end of Octo­ber I’ve got a flight from Cheng­du in Sichuan Province (Chi­na) back to Hong Kong where I plan on camp­ing on some of the islands ( I missed this last time). And then I’ll return to Chi­na and head over to Vietnam.

Portraits of us

This is a side project I’ve been work­ing on to doc­u­ment peo­ple I encounter while trav­el­ing. Some con­ver­sa­tions are longer, some are just in pass­ing or brief due to lan­guage bar­ri­ers (google trans­late will only get you so far). But it is some­thing that has a lot of mean­ing for me as I feel that a huge part of trav­el is learn­ing from the peo­ple you meet. The nav­i­ga­tion on this web­site might be a lit­tle clunky right now but I am work­ing on upgrad­ing my web skills. (Who knew it’d be so much trou­ble just try­ing to get a dou­ble line spac­ing between para­graphs in Word­Press with­out cod­ing. I spent a few hours try­ing to fig­ure this out yes­ter­day and only came up with a cod­ing option to fix it. *bangs head on the wall)

Sara, Yi Minor­i­ty — Lijiang, China

And so, for my 5 or so fol­low­ers I hope you enjoy and feel free to share my blog if you so desire. I promise I will (try) keep the posts com­ing more frequently.

Lots of Love from China,
Alden

Kun­ming, Chi­na — Sept, 2017