Jessica Thomson-Robbins
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The Overland Track is Australia's premier multi-day alpine hike and probably the country's most popular. It's a 65km+ trek through Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, which sits in pristine Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. You traverse ancient landscapes: valleys formed from long lost glaciers; rainforests from the Pangaea period; peety buttongrass moors and towering eucalypt forests. There’s no phone reception, few manmade structures and little evidence of the life I’d come to escape.
After leaving Page and Antelope Canyon, I had only left myself two days to visit the Grand Canyon, and both were working days, so I'd need to be online for a large proportion of the time. After driving around so many National Parks of the South West though, I didn't think that the Grand Canyon would be any better than the others.
Turns out I was wrong.
It was early in the morning when I drove up another hill on another American highway, singing American Pie at the top of my lungs. It had become the theme song to my campervan trip and I was unabashed about my off-key rendition. I'd already done a few hours work in Bear Country (see my last post) and was keen to get to Arizona before it became intolerably hot; I could charge my computer or have the air con on in my van, but not both...
Sa Pa, in the north of Vietnam, can be reached by a rickety overnight train from Hanoi, then a climbing drive south from Lao Cai on the the Chinese border back towards Mt Fanispan (the highest mountain in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), which lies just beyond the city. The town of Sa Pa is just a base - and a rather ugly one - from which to explore the seemingly endless rice paddies and hills that lie beyond.
I had been on the road working and travelling and hiking and drinking pre-mixed margaritas (not while driving, of course!) for a week and was loving the freedom that comes with travelling solo in a giant RV. I was following (a small portion) of the same itinerary my mum took in the late 1970s and she had highly recommended crossing the border into Colorado for Mesa Verde. Although it wasn't a long drive from Moab (my last stop at Arches and Canyonlands), I was then planning on continuing to Arizona that evening, so my Sunday was full of kms and podcasts.
In early January 2019, I spent several days in the small fishing village of Kampong Khleang, which sits on the banks of the Tonle Sap river. Appointed an UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1997, the Tonle Sap river flows southwest for six months of the year into the Mekong, and northeast for the remaining six months into the Tonle Sap Lake, due to its low elevation and the impact of monsoonal rains. As the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, it provides livelihood through fishing and land cultivation to over 1.2M Cambodians.
I woke early on the Saturday - a (mostly) non-work day - in my boondocking site just out of Moab to another gorgeous desert sunrise and rushed out with my iphone to take some sunrise photos and go for a quick bathroom break. Boondocking, also known as self-contained overnighting (so technically I wasn't meant to be doing it, as I had no bathroom in my van) is legal in some US states.
This was the busiest site that I had boondocked at, with lots of huge - HUGE - RVs littered across the dry, cracked ground.
After crossing off my morning to-dos, I cooked and ate breakfast - choc-chip pancake special - and prepared for the day at Arches National Park.
After a couple of cold days at Bryce Canyon (catch up here), I drove the five or so hours to Canyonlands in the east of Utah, near the town of Moab. Due to the fact that I was living the #digitalnomad working life while on this roadtrip, I quickly found a boondocking site not far from Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, and spent the rest of the day and the next morning catching up on emails, sipping on premade margaritas and eating my weight in cheese. I may have been on the road and living with a startup salary, but that never meant that I could not treat myself!
I was told no information other than to meet my guide out the front of my Airbnb at 4.30am. I set my alarm for only moments before, which saw me rushing down the stairs still pulling my tshirt over my head at 4.30m exactly. The door was locked from the inside with a key I didn't have, and I heard nothing but the whizzing and chirping of tropical, nocturnal insects and the loud snores of my host's father, drowning out soccer still blaring on the antennaed television.
After leaving Zion National Park (see Southwest USA - Part One) in the morning, I drove for only a couple of hours before reaching Bryce Canyon in time to find a commercial campground, fitted out with shower - necessary after my two days of hiking. Unbeknownst to me, Bryce was actually higher in elevation than Zion, and as I was checking in a woman saw my glee at the (very few) snowflakes dropping and asked whether I was from California, on account of having never seen snow.
In April of 2017 I spent two weeks in a campervan working and travelling across the deserts of Utah and Arizona in the USA. I was inspired by my mum's memories of her roadtrip around the area in the late 1970s, and wanted to see - and explore - the landscape for myself. My first stop was Zion National Park, Utah, and it was beautiful and humbling and vast beyond expectation.
To anyone that will listen, I will tell you that my 2015 trip to Sri Lanka changed my life. But when asked why, I am unable to find the words. All I know is that I left for Sri Lanka as one person and returned another - bolder, wiser and kinder. What I do know is that the people I met were funny, welcoming, gracious and loving. Here are the photos and stories of too few.
Escaping life is rare. There is always some reminder - some impossible to ignore breadcrumb - that has you turning around before you have even departed just to sap a little more energy.
So it was with great joy and surprise that I managed to go 'off grid' for over two weeks recently when I travelled around Southern Africa. I worked until 11.30pm the night before, with a 4.30am departure planned the following day. I charged my iphone, charged my battery packs, prepared to respond to only 'urgent' emails, and scheduled my out-of-office.
18 days later, I arrived back to reality and an untouched inbox, having evaded the constant news cycle and the ping of new emails without even missing them; the lack of internet and wifi across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana preventing any urge to check in.
One of the places that I travelled, without internet, reception, electricity or permanent structures was the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
Tourism has rapidly increased across Myanmar since the military junta officially 'dissolved' in 2011 and instituted some semblance of democracy. However the main areas to benefit from tourism tend to be the major cities: Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay, Inle Lake. Previously Aung San Suu Kyi, the spiritual leader of Myanmar who spent 15 years under house arrest for her efforts to convert the country to democracy in the 1980s, condemned tourism due to the most of the money lining the pockets of the military elite. The National Democratic League, whom Aung San Suu Kyi leads, now supports tourism but they are keen to stress that it must: promote the welfare of the common people and the conservation of the environment and to acquire an insight into the cultural, political and social life of the country.
Spending only two weeks in my favourite city in the world was never going to be enough.
I could wander the laneways, waterfront and mosque gardens everyday for the rest of my life and still never tire of the charming contradictions of this Ottoman city.
I dream, daily, of returning and pursuing a life there.
Until then, I look at these photos and can feel the memories I made towards future not far away.