On the Never-ending Road

There is a romantic idealism towards vagabonding, bumming around, moving along trodden and untread roads in perpetuity.  I want to say we have all dreamt of it at times, but I can’t say with any certainty that’s true. I am, after all, one of the people who dreams this dream and am consequently perhaps a bit incapable of imagining how such a life could be unalluring. But my friends know I left the US for Edinburgh with this romantic notion of being a traveller in my head and in my uni days I did try my best to do some exciting travelling during the pre- and post-COVID eras. The summer I graduated I spent bouncing around from Stockholm to Marrakech with friends and although it was fun, a great deal of fun, I kept dreading the fact that it always had to end. To that end, I thought back to my first trip out of the UK in the winter of my freshman year when I took the trains from Edinburgh to Istanbul.

I had about enough funds to travel non-stop for about one month then. I had a large portion of my budget dedicated to a Interrail pass which frustratingly turned out not to cover a great number of travel costs, especially in the West. The rest of my budget went towards museum admissions, local foods, and hostels. Outside of trying my first pickled herring and Iskender kebab, I subsisted on bread, cheese, butter, and cucumbers. The satisfaction of that simple fare no doubt contributed to my romanticism. I met a great number of people on trains and in hostels from all walks of life: a retired engineer from Japan, a Bolivian psychology professor, an ex-banker from Peru trying to make it as a DJ in Berlin. I sat by the Danube, I wandered across markets and canals, and nearly got deported from Turkey at 3am. Looking back, I remember it as one of the most exciting times of my life.

So that was the vivid feeling I remembered as Pasha and I embarked on our working holiday to New Zealand. Every moment was ripe with anticipation – packing my single backpack, boarding Air New Zealand, taking the bus out of Auckland Airport. The streets of the city seemed to beckon adventure around every corner. But this lasted about a week before we got dreadfully tired of Auckland where nothing really seemed to happen. So we itched to get out of the city. We had our bank accounts, our tax IDs, and as soon as we bought the first available van we found, we bolted without any idea of where to go other than a job set to start in 2 weeks.

In the total sensation of spontaneity we felt, we drove right up the Coromandel Peninsula to a town labelled on the map as Hot Water Beach. There in fact a beach with hot water, but the real highlight was our campsite run by a guy named Warren and his mother, Auntie Dawn. He invited us to drink homebrewed beer, taught us (forcefully) about rugby, and the next night invited us and the newly arrived Irish girls again to his home for a great deal more beer. This was when I got my ears pierced by the girls, who claimed to be nurses, and it was because of that decision we had to leave the next day to Tauranga, an actual city, where I could find someone to replace the safety pins in my earlobes and disinfect my piercings.

After ducking out a few days of torrential rain, we made our way to our new workplace, a small farm 40 minutes from the nearest town. We drove our van in to the camp and were immediately greeted by the sight of 10 other vans. A few were permanent workers – local Kiwis. The rest were all Czechs, on the same visa as we were. They were certainly the most memorable part of our stay on that first farm. Every evening after work, we would all start drinking, play darts, and cook together. We drank a lot. But it was somewhat necessary; it was hard work. We woke at 6am, started work at 7am under the hot New Zealand sun, and kept going until 4pm. The type of work we did made things more miserable. Occasionally we did something interesting on the farm, like fix the sprinkler system in our first week, but most of the time at work was spent walking through tens and hundreds of kiwifruit rows, picking off small buds, sprouts, and flowers.

After that, we joined a travelling carnival working the games. The whole, ‘step right up, test your luck!’ sort of thing. As an aside, New Zealand carnivals are incredibly wholesome – the food is cheap and the kids always win prizes. Or at least the North Island ones, from what we’ve been told. The carnival took us across most of Taranaki and Manuwatū-Whanganui before we parted ways in Wellington. The carnival work became very dull as well, as on show days we just paced back and forth hollering at people and taking their money. Between the two jobs, we began to feel extremely deflated. Of course we expected to work, but by gosh it was hard work. Our last gig with the carnival was working Peter Jackson’s Christmas party for Weta Studios. We thought that the incredulity of being at such an event was enough to kickstart our adventuring spirit back on as we took our ferry to South Island, where we had a week free to travel down to our next job on a small dairy farm.

Unfortunately, the farm stopped communicating with us shortly after they told us that we had been hired and asked when we could arrive. We slowly moved down the Eastern coast as we waited for an answer, but when it became clear we had been ghosted, we decided to just take the time to travel South Island and go back North to find a job.

So we went from Kaikoura to Timaru to Clifden, kayaking with seals, searching for blue penguins, and caving as we moved. As time went on, it became increasingly dull to just travel. And around the holidays, with nothing open and nothing to do, we began to realize how lonely we felt. Odd to say that, “we felt lonely,” but it’s specific type of loneliness. At a certain point, Pasha and I became constants in each other’s lives. We missed the variety and diversity of community. The friends you see passing on the street, the ones you meet up for coffee every few months, the ones you bump into at a party. It isn’t quite the same feeling socializing at camps or on tours or hikes. You miss feeling part of a greater whole in this life as the constant stranger.

We also began to miss having structure to our lives, some sense of purpose or goals. Neither our travels nor our work satisfied that void. New Zealand culture becomes fairly standardized at a certain point as you travel town to town, the only significant difference being what sort of tourist attractions and hikes were in the area. Māori culture, the most intriguing part of the country, is relatively localized in areas of traditional settlement and even then, the Māori people have a tendency to remain somewhat insular. We visited what museums and took what tours we could, but I think even now, we will leave New Zealand without a real sense or understanding of Māori culture and existence in the modern day.

As for work, well, let this is my publicization of the fact that I intend to go to law school. I’m in the application process right now and the decision was come to in part because of my work experiences in New Zealand. I need work that is genuinely purposeful, in which I can have long term goals and do something that will allow me to work thoughtfully and creatively. Our time working here felt extraordinarily meaningless with little freedom to learn or develop any skills.

These travels in New Zealand have made me realize that I was not made to be a vagabond. We have certainly met other people who seem made for this life – the sheer number of Kiwi campers attests to that – but this life is certainly more difficult than the romantic notion I imagined it to be. I guess that’s something I should have realized sooner if I looked past the rose-tinted memories of my time Interrailing.

The major difference between my travels then and now is of course the duration. That winter trip was one month, we’ve been in New Zealand for nearly six months already. There are too many things to fit in the itinerary of a short stay in various European capitals, but in six months across New Zealand, you quickly do the things you wanted to and find yourself sitting around much of the time. When I grew weary near the end of my Interrailing, I looked forward to seeing my friends again. Here, I have no idea what comes after all of this. It just goes on. And if I’m being honest, I felt lonely and directionless during that winter as well. It just didn’t grow under the surface for months and months and eventually make the world feel gray.

We’re still trying to fill up our days and we’re excited to take off to Southeast Asia soon for a while as well. Maybe that will rejuvenate us, but I thought the same multiple times before. I still yearn to see the world, but I’ve come to appreciate stability and community so much more. I thinking about law school in the fall, for the first time in my life the idea of routine excites me. Taking yourself out of your familiar environment always challenges you and makes you re-evaluate the relative importance of your values. So of course, I do not speak against travelling, but if you read this, do feel free to reach out and say hello. I miss everything and everyone a lot.