Life is a Trip

  PRAISE FOR LIFE IS A TRIP

  Life is a trip. Judith Fein’s globetrotting adventures remind us that we travel to be changed, in big ways and small. This book is immensely readable, steeped in a spirit of connecting with place, with each other, and with our inner selves. Get a massage in Vietnam, travel the land of the witches, and meet a joyous rabbi. You’re in the hands of a writer who has a keen eye and a singular voice.

  Keith Bellows, Editor-in-Chief, National Geographic Traveler

  I don’t travel unless I have to. I don’t know Micronesia from a microwave. In fact, I find it annoying just to walk from one end of my tiny bungalow to the other, yet when I read Judith Fein’s incredible new book, Life Is A Trip: The Transformative Magic of Travel, I found myself eagerly tagging along on one adventure after another. Ms. Fein doesn’t simply move from place to place, she is moved by every place she goes, and she has the artistic and literary skill to move the reader along with her. This is an excellent book by a very talented writer. And I read it without ever having to move at all.

  Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of Recovery, The Sacred Art

  In Life is a Trip, Judith Fein provides a mouth-watering feast of journeys from Mexico to Micronesia, Vietnam to the splendors of Istanbul. Fein’s writing is as honed as the sharpest knife edge. Many a writer would give their front teeth to match her eye for detail. She deserves great success with this book, not only because of its extraordinary sensitivity, but because it illuminates many lands in a new and remarkable way—from the inside out.

  Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph’s House, In Arabian Nights

  Truth-seeking in travel appears to be Ms. Fein’s mantra. The scenes she reveals in this fantastic volume are delightful, vulnerable, and at times, painful. She catches the tender details of human interactions and the pursuit of spirituality with grace for her subjects. Her writing inspires trust and those who want to be both heart and mind inspired will not be left wanting. A wonderful read!

  Shannon Stowell, President, Adventure Travel Trade Association

  I have learned over my 30-year career that the injured and the sick must do more to restore their health than take pills and submit to surgery. More frequently than most patients and physicians realize, the heart, soul and human spirit must be attended to in order for healing to be complete. Through Fein’s travels, we see healing modalities from other parts of the world that pave the road for complete healing of the body and soul and are complementary to those that we are familiar with. Life is a Trip is a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

  Dana P. Launer, M.D., Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla, California

  From irreverence, reverence. That’s the magic of Judith Fein’s writing. Her unconventional view of the world and her grand sense of curiosity open doors to new adventures and understanding. She reminds us to look deeply into the differences that keep the world fascinating and the similarities that keep us unified. Life Is a Trip is a journey of the heart, soul and mind, and we are much the better for it.

  Catharine M. Hamm, travel editor, “On the Spot,” Los Angeles Times

  For Judith Fein, every day on the road brings a new chance to touch and be touched by a magical world. These beautifully written travel stories and reflections work like 3-D glasses on a flat earth. More than a guide to transformative travel, this is transformative writing, as the author’s keen capacity for amazement help us to see the world and our own lives as amazing.

  Danny Rubin, writer of Groundhog Day

  Although Life if a Trip is a short book, it is not necessarily a quick read. It is a deep and breathtaking invitation to a journey of appreciation. So take your time. Enter the world of transformational travel with Judith Fein as the most compassionate guide. You will travel with your ears, eyes, heart, and soul wide open. You will veer off the predictable track and venture beyond the course of a traditional guidebook. You will naturally become a part of the culture of the places you visit. The people you encounter, the habits you observe, the ways of life you absorb along the way, will change you profoundly. Yes, Life is a Trip is a wonderful read. It is a book of adventure, love, forgiveness, courage, friendship, respect, reflection, and challenge. More importantly, it is a guidebook to viewing (from a new perspective) your own life—the people in it and the choices you make. Through Judith’s willingness to get “up close and personal” wherever she goes, she gives us the courage to step onto paths that truly do transform us … not only while we are on the “trip” but also when we come home and re-consider the way we walk our own path.

  Dale V. Atkins, Ph. D., NBC “Today Show” Psychologist

  Life is a Trip

  The Transformative Magic of Travel

  by Judith fein

  Copyright © 2010 Judith Fein

  First Printing by Spirituality & Health Books

  Second Printing by Pudie Inc.

  Copyright © 2012 Judith Fein

  Second Printing by Pudie Inc.

  Pudie Inc.

  POB 31221

  Sante Fe, NM 87594

  www.globaladventure.us

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

  in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without

  the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Back cover and interior photography by Paul Ross

  Cover design by Sandra Salamony

  Interior design by Barbara Hodge

  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available upon request.

  First Printing 2010

  ISBN: 978-09818708-8-5

  Second Printing 2012

  ISBN-10: 0988401924

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9884019-2-1

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. His Way or the Highway: On the Road with a Maori Elder

  2. Yes, You Can: A Very Special Newfie

  3. Never Say Never: The Recipe for Success from a Maya Woman in Guatemala

  4. The Last Judgment on Mog Mog in Micronesia

  5. Searching for Forgiveness in Vietnam

  6. The High Priest and the Camel Eater on the Holy Mountain of Blessings

  7. In a Mexican Prison

  8. Meeting Maximon in Guatemala

  9. The Sorceress’s Apprentice in Mexico

  10. Tales of the Tombs in Israel

  11. In the Shadow of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul

  12. Happy Among the Hmong or at Home: Zen Travel

  13. The Other Side of the Pilgrims’ Road in Spain

  14. Life after Death in Nova Scotia

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  For more than twelve years, I was a Hollywood screenwriter. By day, I spun tales of love, broken hearts, tragedy, triumph, and teen angst. I puttered around in a nightgown and brown fuzzy slippers that looked like bear claws. By night, I often went to screenings or swanky dinners, and my life was a swirl of pitching stories, drinking cocktails, taking meetings, negotiating contracts, and observing people so I could transform them into characters. Sounds glam, right? In fact, my experience was that it was a cutthroat, cruel, crazy biz designed to make a writer quake with insecurity and angst, and I felt as though my soul were being sucked out of me by an industrial vacuum cleaner.

  One day, I woke up and knew I couldn’t do it anymore. No more pitching, agents, lawyers, waiting, pain . . . or income. Nothing. I sat at home, my mind peering into the abyss, wondering if I had any talent or if I would ever work again. Months passed. The abyss grew deeper and blacker. I checked into a monastery in Arizona, took a vow of silence, and didn’t speak for a week. And then, a strange ca
ll from my sister.

  “Hey,” she said. “There’s a new national show on public radio about travel. You lived in Europe and Africa for ten years, you’ve always been a passionate traveler, and you have a long background in theatre. Why don’t you record a story and send it in?”

  “Why would they want me? The competition must be fierce. I have nothing to say,” I moaned.

  For lack of anything better to do, I wrote the tale of my recent silent retreat—where I managed to get into a food fight with a nun, was almost arrested on a dark, secluded road, and fantasized about why the statue of St. Francis frowned. My husband, Paul, and I performed voice-overs, so we had a small recording studio in our home. I performed my monastic adventures in front of a mike and sent the tape to the show, The Savvy Traveler.

  Four days later the phone rang. They really liked the piece, wanted to use it, asked me to be a regular contributor to the show, and gave me my first assignment. The pay was very low, the prestige high, and I loved it.

  For several years, I traveled every chance I got and I tumbled into wild and wacky situations, which I recorded and then transformed into radio pieces. I earned about as much as a teenager who waters his vacationing neighbors’ plants. Then an idea struck me: what if I parlayed the prestige into pitching travel stories to newspapers and magazines?

  It worked, sort of. I sold a few articles to newspapers, and one or two of them asked me if I had any other articles. And the fact that I had a few outlets for my travel stories inspired me to do more traveling. I didn’t even know that what I was doing had a name—“travel journalist”—and that it was a bona fide way to make a living.

  Since that time, I have written for more than eighty-five publications worldwide and garnered awards for my articles. I write about food, culture, art, history, spirituality, luxury, off-the-beaten path travel, exotic destinations, people, celebrations, special events, and anything else I am lucky enough to discover. Paul and I have made travel films, given many talks, and he sells photographs from our trips. Sometimes we work fifteen-hour days. I basically have two states of being: on the road or on the computer.

  One day, an editor said to me, “Your articles are different from other travel journalists’ because you really know how to tell a story.”

  I grinned, and I thanked my years in Hollywood for teaching me how to do that—how to tell a story about a place and the people who live there.

  “You know how to travel deeply,” said another editor.

  I had never really thought about it. My interest in travel had always been a fascination for what lies beneath the surface. I relished spontaneous meetings, arrows pointing me in a different direction from the one I had planned. Even mishaps. In South Africa, Paul got an ear infection and he couldn’t fly for a month. Panic. Stranded in South Africa. Opportunity. Adventure. We went to a Zulu sangoma (healer), stumbled upon an Ndebele village where the women are artists and paint geometric designs on their houses, visited townships, met locals everywhere.

  In Switzerland, some unexpected bad weather got in the way of touring, but led us to inquire about how locals predicted the weather. The next thing we knew, we were in the home of a wetterschmecker (literally a “weather taster”) and entered a world of people who predicted the weather based upon signs in nature—like the wool on a sheep or the way branches hang from a tree. Locally, they are also known as the “weather frogs.”

  In Tunisia, we missed a desert festival, but I had a chance meeting with a Bedouin horseman, which gave me precious entry into a beautiful and ancient culture, which led to a correspondence with the horseman that went on for years. In the Israeli desert, I was disappointed because we arrived too late to catch photos of the sunset, but I ended up in a tent with a sheikh, exchanging ideas about marriage over several bracing cups of tea and a meal of chicken couscous cooked on an open fire.

  In Ireland, a comment by a guide about the truth of the nineteenth-century potato famine led me on a focused and fascinating trip through the country, where I discovered how the Irish people were starved to death and why they really came to America. In New Zealand, a keen interest in the Maori people and an exploration of their origination stories led to the joy of us getting “adopted” into an extended Maori family, who remain close to our hearts and lives today.

  Eventually, all of these experiences resulted in published articles. And that encouraged me to be continually on the lookout for stories, to find the characters, history, tales, and teachings that lurk and shimmer and are waiting to be discovered underneath the surface of our travels. Of course, I always hoped that the stories I wrote would enrich the lives of readers, but I knew for sure that they enhanced my life and kept me in a perpetual state of wide-eyed excitement. I was a hopeless, incurably-addicted traveler.

  The difference between being a tourist and a traveler is that a traveler is open to unplanned experience and doesn’t have her nose stuck in a guidebook, tracking down famous sites. She ventures out from behind glass windows (in hotels and touring buses) and meets people. She connects. The difference between a traveler and a travel journalist is that the latter is always searching for stories. But it occurred to me that any traveler can travel like a journalist—looking for cues and clues, diving into new cultures, and coming home with great stories and new ways of responding to life.

  Maybe the marks of a good traveler—whether one treks for pleasure or as a profession—are the stories he experiences and retells and what he learns from those stories.

  “How do you become a travel writer?” people always ask me. I decided that I would like to answer that question in order to let others know how to do it. I want to focus on the way of the travel writer, rather than the note-taking, interviewing, information-gathering process. I hope to encourage others to step out of their comfort zones and really experience the places they are visiting and the people who live there.

  I understand that not everyone wants to be a travel writer, but the skills that a travel journalist has can help anyone to travel more richly, in a safe, satisfying, and spontaneous way. And the traveler is sure to come home with fascinating stories and experiences that can transform his life and touch the lives of those around him.

  In this book, I’m sharing with you what I absorbed and brought back from key experiences and encounters during my years of travel—experiences that have shaped me, opened me up to the world and been put to the test many times. I hope these experiences will touch you and help you as you navigate the challenges of travel and traveling through life. Maybe the experiences will inspire you . . . whether you are on the road or never venture beyond your hometown.

  I live to leave . . . and I invite you to join me on my adventures.

  Christine Wilson had a vision—a travel vision whose participants included a gaggle of fidgety, vomiting infants; handfuls of potentially incompatible adults; a few guardians who were strong enough to manage the unpredictable rages that sometimes erupted from a deeply traumatized brain; and Christine’s husband, John Wilson, an unflappable Maori elder.

  This odd parade of pilgrims waddled, crawled, bounded, and walked into three aging, rented camper vans that had the annoying habit of breaking down. The children spewed and pooed, the women frowned, the men stared intently into the campers’ frequently failing engines, fiddling with this and that wire. And, throughout it all, Christine Wilson exuded confidence that all would be well, and elder John smiled and flicked his woolen cap. Sure enough, the vans eventually hit the road again until the next automotive collapse.

  Christine’s travel vision was broad, chaotic, and inspired by history. In the mid-nineteenth century, British immigrants and convicts began arriving in New Zealand. The former were seeking a better life and they were accepted as long-term residents and citizens. The latter—young offenders—were roundly rejected and it was difficult for them to find work. Most of them were guilty of petty crimes and they had been raised with poverty and deprivation.

  As more European immigrants arrived,
there was a degree of hanky-panky, love, lust, and marriage between them, their descendants, and the Maori tribes who had populated New Zealand for many centuries. The Maori were a robust Polynesian culture, and their tattoos, taboos, wood carvings of ancestors, pride and proficiency at seafaring, navigation, oration, hospitality, as well as their custom of dining on human flesh made them seem quite exotic compared to the more reserved Europeans (called Pakeha by the Maori). There are few records documenting the mixing and matching of Pakeha and Maori, but Pakeha today will often tell you about Maori ancestors in their family trees and Maori will acknowledge their Pakeha forebears.

  As is most often the case with indigenous cultures, the Maori were tricked and abused by the colonial powers (in this case, the British Crown). More bellicose and efficient than most, they have refused to take broken treaties lying down. Their fight to regain land, money, language, and dignity goes on today. But, at the same time, they are intertwined with Pakeha culture, and many Maori have Pakeha spouses.

  Perhaps because she is a Brit who married a Maori man, Christine Wilson became very interested in the historic blending of Pakeha and Maori—two cultures she admired greatly.

  “I thought that my husband and his kin might be interested in going back to Europe to find out about their Pakeha roots,” she said simply.

  Other Kiwis (New Zealanders) have certainly thought about a roots route before, but Christine moved from musing to action. She booked flights, rented camper vans, and peopled them with an assortment of folks connected by blood, affinity or, in a few cases, smoldering antipathy.

  John Wilson’s son, Carin, and daughter, Virginia (from his first Pakeha wife), were among the chosen. Carin’s wife, Jenney, and Virginia’s daughter came along as well. Accompanying them through ancestral lands were Christine’s children from her first marriage to a Polynesian—Natasha (with her three young boys), Hans (who was navigating a born-again Christian phase), and Antony (a young man of indomitable spirit who had been run over by a transport truck when he was a child and suffered horrific brain damage). There was also Kristina (the semi-estranged wife of Christine’s son Nicholas) and her three daughters.