Travels in the Riel World

Audrey Scott and Daniel Noll have been on the road for quite a while now. It’s been well over two years since they left their jobs to travel the world, take photographs and write about their experiences, which they do very well on their blog Uncornered Market. It stands to reason that they would have learned a thing or two during these many months on the road and, in fact, they just published an interesting post that shares some of the lessons they’ve gained along the way. It’s called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Travelers. Here is a brief excerpt:

Seek First to Adapt, Then to Complain (a.k.a., Adaptability) – Living outside your comfort zone becomes the norm on the road. New environments provide different challenges; what worked in the last country may not work in the next. All that stuff you became accustomed to just last week? Forget about it. Independent travel forces you to continually size up each situation and adapt accordingly. Your resulting experience depends on it. Sometimes your life may, too.

We’re reminded of: When we (two American non-Muslims) were presented with a steaming bowl of goat bits at a feast to break the Ramadan fast in Kyrgyzstan, we joined in by reluctantly chewing on a jaw bone.

Plan With Multiple Outcomes in Mind (a.k.a, Planning) – Determine which variables are most important to you (e.g., comfort, cost, risk, time), do your planning, and optimize accordingly. In doing so, you create not only Plans A and B, but also Plans C and D, too. In the end, circumstances force you to a hastily crafted Plan E, which you later realize may have been the best plan all along.

We’re reminded of: When a Chinese train station attendant informs us that the train no longer runs to our next destination, we don’t force it. We find another one…and stumble upon a Tibetan opera festival.

You should check out the entire post for all of their lessons, and then I’d recommend wandering around the website to read about their adventures and see some of the many wonderful photographs they’ve taken.

If you’re interested in knowing more about my travel experiences or my book, you might want to check out an online interview with me that was just published by Andy Hayes, who is a traveler, writer and photographer himself and who publishes the excellent Sharing Experiences blog. Here are my answers to two of his questions, dealing with our decision to take time off to travel and my view of life sabbaticals:

You started your world-wide travels with (and I quote) “deciding to take a chance in life”. Could you give us a little background into that decision-making process?

Well, my wife and I were both over 30-years-old and entrenched in our work lives when we decided to take our first round-the-world trip. Frankly, we weren’t sure we were ready to stop everything in order to do this and then re-start our lives when the trip was over. We also had to get over the normal doubts over how others would perceive our decision. In the end, though, we also didn’t want to go through life knowing we had passed up an opportunity to have an adventure together and to do some long-term travel.

The way we dealt with it was for my wife to ask for a leave of absence from work. Her employer was gracious in granting her the leave and keeping her job open. Since I was already making a transition to being self-employed, it was easier for me to manage the time off. Of course, by not stopping work completely we didn’t have as much time available to travel as we could have had by simply quitting altogether. Our trips were measured in months, rather than years. I have to say, if Twitter had been around a few years earlier and I’d been introduced to all of these other amazing people who were managing long-term travel between jobs, then our outlook might have been different.

Still, it was a good compromise given where we were in our lives. And it did have an unseen benefit, in that we began looking at our travels in a particular way – not as an open-ended adventure, but rather as a sabbatical that would be limited in time but that would have a lasting influence on our lives.

You also refer to the term “life sabbatical.” What does that phrase mean to you?

As I mentioned earlier, the fact that our trips were not open-ended encouraged us to view the experience as a sabbatical. Academic sabbaticals stem from the notion that there is value in taking time away from the everyday rigors of a job in order to rest, reflect or conduct research. The goal is to return to work with renewed energy and ideas. And the word sabbatical derives from the word Sabbath, with every seventh day meant to be devoted to family time and contemplation.

So I took to calling our trip a “life sabbatical” because it seemed to imbue it with more meaning than if I simply looked at it as a travel adventure. It helped us to view our journey as a way to learn about ourselves and the world, while also recharging our energies for the next phase of our lives. I actually think it would be a great thing if more people were able to schedule these “mini-retirements” periodically through life. Not only can we not bank on being able to fulfill all of our travel dreams during the traditional retirement years, but this time away from work really does give us an opportunity to recharge and even re-evaluate where we are in our lives and careers.

See the entire interview for my answers to a number of other questions. While you’re there you should also browse through his collection of interviews with other travelers and writers.

Many of you are no doubt familiar with the travel writing of Rolf Potts, and perhaps of his website Vagablogging. My travel memoir, Two Laps Around the World, was recently reviewed on Vagablogging by another writer. Here is an excerpt from the review:

As a writer, Riel has a painter’s eye for the color and mood of life on the road. Here, for instance, is his description of an African sunset: “It began with streaks of light shooting down from thick clouds. As if the heavens had opened and hundreds of golden Masai spears were thrust down into the pale green dusk of the plain. Then a sunset exploded across the sky in streaks of mango and purple.”

As a result, veteran travelers will enjoy revisiting favorite places through his prose, while other passages can serve as a primer for your wish list of destinations. A freelance writer and consultant, Riel lets his own story unfold slowly through the book, which correspondingly ‘grows’ on you with a series of anecdotes and vignettes. If you love that sub-genre of armchair travel that involves stories of everyday adventurers circling the globe, then Two Laps Around the World is a keeper.

You can see the entire review here, and read more about my book, including some sample chapters, here.

You’re gearing up to do some extensive traveling. You’ve got the time and the money. Where to go? Europe, Asia, Latin America? What about the islands of the Pacific? It’s a region that many people never really consider, but Gary Arndt wasn’t one of them. As he explains in a recent story he wrote for Indie Travel Podcast, the Pacific was the first region he headed to when he began his round-the-world journey and he found it to be “one of the most wonderful, and under-explored, places on Earth.” Here is an excerpt from his story describing a few of his favorite Pacific island destinations:

Palau - Palau is one of the smallest countries in the world with only 20,000 citizens. Yet, it has over 18 states, all of which have their own license plates. Palau has the some of the best diving in the world in the rock island of Korror. What Palau is perhaps most famous for is the Jellyfish Lake. In the middle of some of the rock islands are salt water lakes connected to the ocean through fissures in the rock. Thousands of years ago jellyfish were caught in the lakes and evolved away their stingers due to a lack of predators. Today you can swim with the jellyfish and they are totally harmless!

Pohnpei, Micronesia -If there is one place I’d describe as a hidden travel destination, it would be Micronesia, in particular the island of Pohnpei. It is a very difficult place to get to. The only flights are between Hawaii and Guam. It is probably the most beautiful island I’ve ever been to and is the home of one of the best, unknown ancient ruins in the world: Nan Modal. I describe Nan Modal as a cross between Macchu Picchu and Venice. It is made of stone with canals between all the structures. Aside from the history and mystery of Nan Modal, Pohnpei is just flat-out beautiful. The tropical fruit, flowers, the lagoon and the people make it a truly wonderful place.

Gary picks out six islands as being among his favorite Pacific destinations. Check out the rest of them in his article.

You want to do some extensive, long-term travel, but you just can’t imagine how to pay for it or manage it all. A couple of weeks ago, I referred you to an article by Nora Dunn on how to travel full time for surprisingly little money. Now we have more advice, this time from Dave Bouskill and Debra Corbeil, aka Canada’s Adventure Couple. They have a bunch of excellent and practical advice in post on their website titled, ”How to Live Your Life to Travel the World.”

People tend to think that we live our lives with no vision of the future and no equity what-so-ever just spending our money until it runs out. Others tend to think that we are independently wealthy, spoiled in the fact that we just have a lot of money. As a matter a fact neither is true.

Here is an overview as to how we live our lives and still manage to take extended trips around the world as part of the middle class demographic.  In the past 10 years, we have traveled to 37 countries. Not on short week long vacations at an all inclusive resorts, but on trips that last for months at a time, where we delve into the culture and live with the people.

Dave and Deb report that they never travel on borrowed money and continue to invest for retirement even while they’re on an extended trip. At home, they keep their expenses to a minimum so they’re able to save for their next journey, and they lodge in inexpensive local guesthouses or even campsites while on the road. If you want some good tips for living the traveling life, please read their entire piece. They’re great advocates for the reality that anyone can do extensive travel if you plan ahead and keep travel costs low.

Actually, for less than $14,000 per year. That’s what Nora Dunn promises you can do. The self-styled professional hobo, she recently wrote an article on how to travel full time for a whole lot less money than you’d think it would cost. This is how she introduces herself:

I “retired” from the rat race at the tender age of 30 to embrace my life-long dream of traveling the world, before life had a chance to get in the way.

So far, I have frolicked in the Rocky Mountains, fallen off the grid in Hawaii, managed tropical hostels, survived Australia’s worst-ever natural disaster, led eco-treks on Llamas, and nearly froze to death in a camper van. (The traveling life is rarely a dull one.)

I am not rich. I am not a trust child, nor do I have rich parents, a sugar daddy, or a stream of income that allows me to live the high life on the road. Full time travel doesn’t have to be expensive, and after two years on the road, I’ve learned plenty of tricks to travel the world without breaking the bank, and without an end in sight.

In the article, she provides tips on cheap airfare, free accommodations, working while traveling, rethinking travel expenses, and more. It’s chock full of good information. If you have any desire at all to engage in long-term travel, you need to read her story and take notes.

Impossible you say? You need income, you need a home? Actually, there are a surprising number of people who live without the anchor of homes or jobs. They’ve found a way to essentially live on the road. Yes, to be a permanent tourist. Christopher Elliott, in his MSNBC travel column, recently profiled some of these individuals and provided a few tips on how anyone could become “a modern-day nomad.”

If the thought of living on the road seems appealing, you’ve got company. Who wouldn’t want to spend a few weeks in an exotic place, discovering a new culture, seeing the sights, living like a native, and then moving on to the next destination? …

So what’s the secret to becoming a modern-day nomad? I asked people who were already doing it, and here’s what they said:

1.  Find a reason. Most transients have a portable career that allows them to travel freely. They’re consultants, freelancers or teachers, for example. But there are other ways to make money when you’re nomadic. In 2006, Tiffany Owens and her husband became full-time property caretakers. Both had been frustrated with their former careers — she was a magazine editor and he was a cable installer — and needed a break. “Now, I garden instead of sitting in boardroom meetings,” she says. “I couldn’t be happier.” Check out the newsletter Caretaker Gazettefor caretaking opportunities.

2. Travel extra light.That’s the advice of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.org. He became what he calls “unstuck” about two years ago, spending a month in Tokyo, San Francisco, New York, and Buenos Aires. “Pack less, and become unattached to possessions,” he says. “And then … pack less.” You’ll be living out of a suitcase for months — literally.

There are a total of nine tips in Elliott’s article. Read the whole thing for the full scoop on being a world nomad.

That’s the goal, at least, that Chris Guillebeau has set for himself. So far he’s up to 107 countries and he’s 30-years-old. He was profiled yesterday by the NY Times.

I had my first international travel experience when I was 6 years old. My mom took me to the Philippines, and I wound up living there for two years. Then, when I was 22, I went to Africa as an aid worker for an international charity group. I was traveling a lot between Africa and Europe. I remember being on a train and having this mad thought that I should visit 100 countries before I was 30 years old.

I did the math. And according to my calculations, it would cost about the same as buying a new sport utility vehicle, about $30,000. A lot of my friends were buying S.U.V.’s, but it just didn’t appeal to me. I wanted to spend my money learning about new cultures in places like Burma, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Lesotho and the Balkans, places I never thought I would see.

I began my 100-country countdown in 2006, and finished it in 2008. But a strange thing happened. At about country No. 50, I had another eureka moment: “Why stop at 100?” I’m 30 years old now, and my new goal is to visit each country on this planet before I’m 35 years old. Some of my friends think I’m nuts.

One of the problems is that I am running out of places with easy access. It’s not like every country is an Italy or a Mexico. Soon, I’m going to have to start making arrangements to get to Chad, the South Pacific and central Asia.

Read the whole article for insight on some of his travel tips and experiences. You can also check out Chris’ website. artofnonconformity.com, where he not only keeps track of his travels but also pens some fun articles of his own. Some of his pieces include:

- A short collection of unconventional ideas

- Will success follow if you do what you love?

- 9 overrated tourist destinations (and 9 great alternatives)

It’s fun to read and he provides some nice perspectives on life and travel.

Granted, $80,000 is only one-third of this lawyer’s typical annual salary. But still, talk about a dream year. Heather Eisenlord’s New York City law firm needed to cut expenses and didn’t want to resort to layoffs. So they offered all of their associates the chance to take one year off from work in exchange for giving up two-thirds of their salary for that year. Thus far, about 125 of the firm’s 1,300 worldwide associates have taken the offer. Eisenlord is one of them. For the next year, she plans to travel around the world. And she’ll get paid $80,000 for doing so.

This year may be a disastrous one for the global economy, but it’s shaping up to be one of the best that Heather Eisenlord has enjoyed in a good long while. Granted, that might not be saying much: For the past five years, Ms. Eisenlord has been an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, a notably grueling place for a lawyer to work.

But even by more stringent standards of fun, the coming year looks pretty good. Ms. Eisenlord, 36, who works in Skadden’s banking group, will be buying a plane ticket that will take her around the world for a year, and she’s been stocking her apartment in Brooklyn with Lonely Planet travel guides.

Although she’s not yet sure exactly what she’ll be doing on her trip, she has some ideas. She would like to teach English to monks in Sri Lanka and possibly help bring solar power to remote parts of the Himalayas. She’ll probably hit 10 to 15 destinations around the world, most likely practicing not-for-profit law wherever she can be helpful.

The best part of all: Skadden is paying her about $80,000 to do it. For a sixth-year associate at a New York law firm, $80,000 isn’t exactly competitive pay. But for someone cruising around the world, doing good wherever she sees fit and, let’s face it, probably hitting a beach or two, the pay is excellent.

Have you heard of the Lost Girls? They’re three twentysomething New York friends who left their jobs and hit the road together for a one-year journey around the world. Along the way, they blogged about the trip and are now back home working on a book about the experience. Sort of like Sex and the City meets On the Road. They recently stopped by the Vagabonding site to chat about their travels and their writing. An excerpt:

What are each of you up to now?

Despite our passion for full-time vagabonding, the three of us accepted desk jobs in order to restock our bank accounts (boring, but necessary!). Amanda is a nutrition editor at a health magazine, Jen does integrated marketing for an independent film/television channel, and Holly now taste-tests chocolates all day for a major candy manufacturer (well, that’s her dream job…she’s actually a freelance writer and editor for several national publications).

Recently, both Jen and Amanda approached their individual bosses about the possibility of going part time in order to focus more attention on book writing. And to their shock—both supervisors agreed to the arrangement! We’ve realized that if you put in the time and hard work to cultivate a successful career, your company/boss is generally more willing to allow time off to travel, or to rearrange your schedule to accommodate special project.

Now, all three of us spend our Fridays together at a coffee shop in Union Square, so we can make the task of book writing a collaborate process—and a fun one, at that.

Do you still crave a life on the road?
Absolutely. After living out of a backpack for a year, we found that we craved the stability and comforts of home. But now that we’ve been back in NYC for a while, all three of us find that we miss the freedom and ever-changing nature of life of the road.

Travel brought us rewards in the form of new friends, discoveries, and cultural experiences. It’s kind of fun never knowing where the day will take you, and we can’t wait until our next adventure.

Are there any trips in the works?

When we finished our year-long trip, we vowed to take a Lost Girls Getaway together once a year for the rest of lives. Since returning, we’ve planned a few weekend excursions together in the United States, and have traveled independently to Antarctica, Ecuador and the Bahamas. For the next six months, we’ll be staying close to home in order to write and promote the book. Once we finish the first draft of the memoir in January ’09, we’re planning to return to Argentina, the country that inspired our around-the-world adventure.

Now, this is the way to travel around the world. Matt Harding’s latest dancing/travel video…

You can read more about Matt at his website, or in this recent NY Times profile.

Last week, I provided you with a page of information on life sabbaticals. Today I have sort of a companion piece to that, with an overview of round-the-world travel. An excerpt:

Sure, you can spend a few months traveling around Europe. Or Australia and New Zealand. Or Southeast Asia, which is more of a bargain these days than are some more traditional destinations. There’s nothing wrong with any of those choices. But have you considered a round-the-world trip?

Believe it or not, a round-the-world journey is both easier to plan and easier on the budget than you might have imagined. Following is some information and resources to get you started.

Why a round-the-world trip?

*      Well, for one, do you know that list you keep in your drawer of your dream destinations around the world? Can you imagine visiting several of them during a single trip? It’s possible if you plan a round-the-world adventure, which would enable you to skip across several continents on one journey.

*      It’s also a fascinating way to experience multiple cultures back to back. Spend some time in Europe and Africa, or Asia and Latin America, or the Caribbean and the South Pacific. There is also some nice symbolism involved – you travel in a circle around the globe and then return home with an abundance of experiences and memories.

*      Because it’s a dream of yours. Lots of people fantasize about a journey like this, but few of them follow through and make it a reality. You can.

There is much more information on my round-the-world travel page, including tips on planning and budgets, some sample itineraries to get you inspired, and links to additional books and resources.

2007 has been a big year. I recently wrote about the birth of my first child. Now, I’m here with news about a different type of birth - that of my first book.

Two Laps Around the World: Tales and Insights from a Life Sabbatical is now on the market. The book is about the experiences that my wife and I had when we decided to take a few months off from our careers to travel. The experience was so incredible that we repeated the experience less than three years later and so ended up traveling around the world twice - once in each direction.

You can read more about the book here. There are excerpts from a few chapters, a reading guide for book clubs, and information about how to buy an autographed copy. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope you’ll check it out! And when you do, please let me know what you think.

Just last month, I linked to a Boston Globe article about an organization called Couch Surfing that connects people around the world by offering free places to stay in each other’s homes. Apparently, couch surfing is the new hot thing, because now the NY Times has published a long article about the topic, which seems to bring together the worlds of social networking and travel. Check it out.

…the Couch Surfing Project, at couchsurfing.com, a three-year-old global community built on a MySpace/Facebook model of personal profiles connected through a network of “friends.” According to statistics on the site, it has well over 300,000 members from more than 31,000 towns and cities around the world.

The group’s philosophy is also its method, which might be summed up this way: I will offer you my couch free, along with the company of my friends and a tour of my favorite spots in my city. In return, you will give of yourself, and not just slink into my home at 3 a.m. after you’ve done your own tour of my city. In this way, we will be friends, if only for a day or two.

Or, as its mission statement proclaims: “Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time.”

Couch surfing takes an ancient notion of hospitality and tucks it into a thoroughly modern paradigm, the social networking Web site. But, as its members say sternly, it is not a site for dating, or for freeloaders.

There seems to be a couch surfing subculture that has developed, with its own ethos and, inevitably perhaps, a novel about the experience.

A Kerouac mind-set inspired Ms. Huckabee to write a novel about her couch surfing experiences. Three years ago she was a lawyer in Charlotte, divorced for some years and facing an empty nest, as her children had left home. “It was a huge reconsideration of self,” she said. “Who was I if not wife, mother, etc.? I wanted to find a sense of carrying my home with me, and to do that I needed to let go of the sense that there was a home somewhere waiting for me.”

She gave away most of her belongings and set off on what was to be a three-month tour of Italy. That’s where she discovered couch surfing.

What kept her surfing were the sorts of details that delight a writer’s eye: the Algerian host in Paris who slept with a poster of Monica Bellucci above his bed so he could imagine falling asleep in her arms each night; a Bulgarian family’s grim Soviet-era concrete housing, which, when you opened the door, was like a tropical island, painted in bright greens and blues; the northern European woman who had not worked in three years and had not cleaned her bathroom in that time, either, it seemed, yet who nonetheless borrowed a bottle of wine from a neighbor to welcome Ms. Huckabee…

In an age of cheap airfares and porous borders, where nearly every corner of the earth, from Bulgaria to Bhutan, is open for tourism, the home is the final frontier, the last authentic experience. Instead of being in some sanitized hotel in Hanoi, said Erik Torkells, editor of Budget Travel magazine, “…if I couch surf I could be on some cool ex-pat’s or local’s sofa.” He added: “I’ve already leapfrogged barriers. It would take weeks under ordinary circumstances to get in someone’s home.”

With regard to “the whole MySpace thing,” he added: “This is a generation that’s all about talking to strangers. And why stop there? Why not crash at their place?”

Travel is always interesting, no matter how you do it. But the chance to interact with locals tends to take the experience up a level. So I was interested to read this article in the Boston Globe about an organization called Couch Surfing that connects people around the world by offering free places to stay in each other’s homes.

On a recent Saturday morning, five twentysomethings huddle in a cozy living room to map out their day. Two are from Montreal. Another is from Chicago. The hosts, Jesse Fenton and Erin Benoit, have lived in the apartment for three years. The guests have had plans to visit for more than a month, but their only contact with their hosts has been through computer screens.

The five met through CouchSurfing.com, an online network of travelers, mostly in their 20s, who are tired of staying in hotels and hostels and who want to see the world with a free place to crash — often on someone’s couch. But what sets CouchSurfing.com apart from a bevy of similar free services such as hospitalityclub.org is its focus on its mission, which according to the group’s website “is not just about free accommodations” but about human interaction.

“It makes the world a smaller place,” says Benoit, 25, a medical technologist at Boston Medical Center. “Eventually, we’ll have friends all over the world.”

First came the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Then the Travel Channel decided to base a television series around the concept and selected a Denver couple, Albin and Melanie Ulle, to embark “on a 14-week excursion across 13 countries.” The Ulle’s experiences were filmed for the series, which premieres March 29, according to this story.

The Ulles came back changed by the experience:

When Albin and Melanie Ulle are asked about their favorite places … they talk less about the destinations than the people they met:

• The maitre d’ in France who proudly wore an American flag on his lapel.
• The Bhutan citizens who measure “gross national happiness” rather than the gross national product.
• And a poor black South African woman who single-handedly put four girls through private school during apartheid and later ran for mayor of her township.

Even some of the small lessons affected the way the couple now looks at things:

“There are all these little things that have changed for us,” Melanie says, noting one. “I notice that I don’t want to (do) drive-through coffee anymore. I enjoy drinking coffee, and people all over the world treat it as a ritual. I know its so minor, so dumb, but that means something.”

Albin adds: “We’re so rushed a lot of the time, and I think we all kind of know that, but to see people actually slow down, sit and talk and laugh. Good things can come from slowing down sometimes.”

The story notes that experiences such as these are part of a growing trend for people to take sabbaticals to travel or have other life experiences. And if you follow my blog, you know I’m a believer in that.

Sure, round-the-world travel has gained a certain measure of popularity.  But most people do it by plane, train, bus or motorized boat.  No one has ever before circumnavigated the globe completely under their own power — that is, until Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei recently completed a two-year journey by biking, rowing and walking their way around the planet.  For that accomplishment, they were named National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year.

The goal of circumnavigation is hardly new, but no explorer - not yesterday’s Magellan, not today’s Steve Fossett - had ever done it by human power alone, without the aid of diesel or wind or sun.

The journey included biking from Vancouver to Alaska, rowing the Bering Sea, hiking, biking and skiing from Siberia all the way to Portugal, rowing the Atlantic Ocean, and biking from Central America to western Canada.  You can see a map and more details about their journey here.  You can also check out National Geographic’s other choices for adventure travel heroes, or its list of 25 trips for 2007.

Well, here’s a rare and unorthodox way to fund a round-the-world trip…

In 2003, Matt Harding posted on his website a video of himself dancing in a dozen countries.  As the video made its way around the web, it found its way into the offices of Stride gum company. The company then offered to fund a six-month trip anywhere Matt wanted to travel if he would make a travel-dancing video that could be marketed in conjunction with their new gum.  So Matt went off on a journey to 39 countries on seven continents.  Underwritten by a gum company.  And all he had to do was get in front of a camera and dance somewhat badly.  Nice work if you can get it.

If you want to see him doing his little dance in front of the ruins of Macchu Picchu in Peru, atop the sand dunes of Namibia, with a turtle in the Galapagos Islands, with villagers in Rwanda, or at any one of several dozen other places around the world, you can check out his website. You can also read an interview with him in the Washington Post. An excerpt:

Which places were the most difficult to dance in?

The hardest dance was on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I spent nine hours climbing up to the peak, I vomited eight times on the way up and I just had nothing left by the time I got up there. The most complicated to shoot was underwater in Micronesia, diving in front of the propeller of a Japanese shipwreck that was sunk in World War II. That was complicated because I discovered that you can’t talk to the camera person when you are underwater. And the most terrifying was on the Kjeragbolten rock in Norway; it’s just a tiny rock wedged between two faces of a chasm 3,000 feet up and only a few feet across. Dancing on that rock, yeah, I came very close to killing myself.

Were people inspired to join in your dance?

The only time that happened was in Rwanda. I went out to this village and started dancing, without any explanation of what I was doing. As soon as I started dancing, kids started joining in, and within a couple minutes, all the kids in the village had circled around and we were all dancing together.

Would you encourage people to go tour the world and do a little dance?

Absolutely. It proves the point that I did want to show, which was that there’s really nowhere you can’t get to in a small amount of time. We’re all stuck here together on this small planet.