02. NEARLY GIVING UP AT THE START

Jaytheauthor Travel Diary: Samarkand

SERIES MISSION: For the past few weeks I have spent one hour, every two days, writing a diary entry to try to process and analyse moments, emotions, and happenings on and off the road. I found that if I let the words come out unfiltered, uncomfortably honest, this practice pulls out many hidden meanings and secrets. I thought these realisations and learnings might help others too, because maybe you too, feel these emotions, and maybe we can both learn from the autopsy of such emotions.

Samkarand, Uzbekistan

12th October - Samkarand, Uzbekistan

Isn’t it funny how one bad moment can make you believe your whole future’s heading into a black hole? That was me two days ago, spiralling over something so small it felt enormous. When you’re travelling alone, everything feels magnified, both the good and the bad, no matter how experienced you are. Maybe that’s why solo travel hits so deep: everything is raw, unapologetic, uncomfortable. When something good happens, your spirit feels it. You feel seen. The moment lasts, forever photocopied and stored in the locked places of your mind. But the cost of such awakening is this: you have to bandage your wounds alone, in the dark.

I got so worked up I told my boss I was heading home early, ready to give up on the road altogether. For a moment, I thought I’d outgrown it, that I was finally ready to settle down. But a couple of days further up the road, after meeting kind strangers and witnessing little acts of grace, I realised I wasn’t done. I was just giving myself an excuse for not being able to handle a little hurt. So I decided not to go home. To keep walking. To not let someone else’s actions slow my pace.

I also made a deal with myself. To stay in guest houses for most of my journey instead of backpacker hostels. Guest houses cost more, sure, but if I came all the way to the other side of the world, why refuse to spend what could make or break the journey? When I was nineteen, twenty, hostels were heaven: cheap, social, full of beers, sex, and the endless party after sunset. But nearing thirty, and in a happy relationship, that kind of life doesn’t fill the hole anymore. It claws at it. Gouging it wider.

One of the main reasons I don’t want to stay in hostels is because I want to surround myself with people from the place I’m visiting. There’s nothing wrong with sticking to a group of travellers to feel secure, I did that for many years, and had a lot of fun, but now I’m travelling for a different reason. Back then, my reason for travelling was to collect experiences to hang from my belt of accolades. the wilder, the better. But now, after collecting so many wild experiences, I barely have any space left on that belt. I no longer crave madness. I crave meaning.

Hostels can be little traps. You spend more time with other backpackers than with locals. You go to the same bars, eat at the same cafés, share the same tired stories. ‘Where are you from? Where are you going?’ You end up in a bubble that could be anywhere. And when you do finally visit the place, you wander around in groups, like spectators at a zoo.

On this trip, I want to do it differently. I want to integrate myself into the culture. Eat at local restaurants that can’t be found on Google Maps. Sit in tea houses and learn how to play local board games. Cough through the smoke of a harsh hookah. Go alone to hole-in-the-wall bars and force myself to speak to my neighbour. I want to try to understand the place I wander through, not just look at it through the eyes of an experience-goer.

After staying in that hostel back in Bishkek, I felt extremely low. Uncomfortably other. Not in a superior way, far from it, I was just frustrated that I couldn’t enjoy sitting at the bar drinking beers until the early hours like everyone else. So I started inventing reasons to explain why I felt so detached. The feeling carried through to the next day. And the next. It grew into the sense that I was travelling just for the sake of it. When people asked why I was on the road, I couldn’t give an answer.

I called my best friend, something I hate doing when I’m feeling rough. I don’t like dumping my storms on other people; we’ve all got enough dump-truck emotions to deal with. But when I told him how I’d been feeling, I was weirdly relieved to hear he was going through it too, all the way in Florida. Different reasons, same ache.

I told him about the hole. The emptiness. The otherness.

He said, ‘When we reach our thirties, the things that once fulfilled us stop doing the job. The drinking, the parties, the one-night stands, the distractions turn into reminders. Mirrors highlighting all of our cracks. The only thing that fills those cracks now is purpose, a job, a passion, something that carries weight. Something that makes us feel whole, whether it secures our future spiritually or economically. The more we chase the ghost at the party, the deeper we sink into the mist.’

Listening to those words made everything feel right again. The mist’s still there, but at least now I can see through it a little.

As I write this, I’m sitting at a desk in Samarkand, looking out my window at the Registan, a blue-tiled palace built by a king who believed that the key to great art and spiritual evolution lies in cultural, philosophical, and poetic exchange. And as I squint up at the blue dome above, it’s impossible not to think how inspiring humans can be, how wise they can become, when they open their hearts to the differences of others and truly listen.

If I’d listened to the voices in my head telling me to go home, I wouldn’t be writing this piece, nor would I be admiring this work of humanity coming together. Maybe that little mental pothole was just one of many lessons wrapped in pain, destined to be experienced and overcome.

If you’re on the road and feel like I did when writing this, I just want to say: hang in there. You’re not alone. We’re wandering this road together, one foot in front of the other.

If you like the way I write and want to read my book, here’s a link. Dear Stranger, Origins Rock and Roll Wildchild. - Jay

DISCLAIMER. All photos used in this post do not belong to me. I found them on Pinterest and altered them for emotive purposes. If you own any of these photos, please comment your name below as the photographer, or if you want me to take them down, I am happy to do so.