Posted by Elizabeth

Yesterday, as you were reading the Sunday newspaper, getting ready for church, or flipping blueberry pancakes, Nicolas Raap was setting off in a Toyota Land Cruiser to drive around the world.

Can you believe that sweet face was shipwrecked for a month?

When Maikael told me about Raap’s expedition, which will take him overland through 40 countries (he’ll ship his car at unavoidable water crossings), my first thought was, “Geez, I thought my ‘round-the-world trip was adventurous.”  Travel, like most things in life, is a matter of perspective.  During our eight months on the road, we could proudly puff out our chests and report some of the perilous situations we’d encountered:  outwitting scammers in Turkey, cruising around rough Lima neighborhoods in the dead of night, rodents dashing through Indian train cars, and almost-lost passports.  Then we’d meet travelers like Raap, who were hitchhiking through Africa or traversing the notorious Darien Gap, the narrow strip of land that connects Central and South America, a no-man’s land inhabited by drug traffickers and native tribes.  (We met a woman from France who, years earlier, had made the crossing by boat.  They were caught in a storm and shipwrecked on a tiny island, where she became the cook for the passengers and crew while their boat was repaired over the course of a month.  This is the stuff that movies are made of.)  These daredevil encounters were fascinating, but would usually leave us feeling like we weren’t taking enough risks – in travel or in life.

Maikael and I and our two little backpacks in Jordan

Stories like Raap’s leave me with a familiar itch under my skin, a nagging feeling that I want to hit the open road again.  I’d never attempt driving around the world – I value my sanity too much – but I miss the day-to-day excitement that this type of extended travel brings.  Although our lives were often complicated, filled with complex travel schedules and tenuous language barriers, things were also extremely simple.  Many times, a successful day meant having our basic needs met:  managing to negotiate three meals and procuring a roof over our head for the night.  There were many lessons to be learned about grace and gratitude.  We each shouldered two small backpacks, and by the end of the trip we had the feeling that we could have cut our load in half and been just fine.  We all know intellectually that we can do with less, but there is real power in actually experiencing doing with less.  I remember walking over the threshold of our house upon our return in March and being struck with how big our house was (it’s not).  I walked slowly through each room, arms outstretched, and picked up do-dads and knickknacks.  I couldn’t believe that it was all mine.  If only I could hold onto that sense of wonder and novelty, and find a way to reclaim it anew each day, perhaps I’d want for a lot less.

I realize I’m not really longing for another extended trip, but to feel those same feelings of awe and wonder in my everyday life, the sense of discovering the world afresh.  It’s what I imagine a baby must feel like every day of their little lives.   Raap and I certainly undertook different journeys.  I can’t imagine driving across Iran, Pakistan, or Angola.  But I feel a certain affinity to him, too.  He said, “I believe a trip like this is something many people dream of…is there a better investment than traveling around the world?”  I know not everyone feels this way:  it’s a tremendous sacrifice in time and money, and not everyone has the inclination to set off for an extended period.  There are many lessons to be learned right in our own backyard, but, for me, my trip allowed me to see the lessons with a whole new set of glasses.

Would you ever drive around the world?  What adventures (or nonadventures) pull at you?

Follow Nicolas Raap’s journey at Transworld Expedition