This is what I packed for my three-month journey across Asia last year: A handful of clothes, books, and toiletries that fit into a 35L Tortuga Setout pack. Sometimes, during multi-day jungle or motorcycle treks, I stowed the Setout in guesthouse storage and traveled with the smaller, ultralight Outbreaker daypack. Looking at these items now,…
When I was in Kandy, Sri Lanka last year I mailed nearly 50 postcards to Deviate podcast listeners, as part of an informal Season One promo, while I was on a round-the-world AirTreks itinerary across Asia. Writing 50 or so postcards was good fun, but it made me realize how rare it has become for…
Two decades on, it’s difficult to remember how obsessively the media was fixated with the 1999-to-2000 New Year (and, in particular, “Y2K glitch” worries about computer data). I was writing my “Vagabonding” column for Salon Travel at the time, and the editor there requested that all regular contributors write a short meditation on where they…
My very first vagabonding trip – which was one of the single greatest journeys of my life (if nothing else because it was my first) – happened 25 years ago, in 1994. My friend Jeff and I spent nearly eight months traveling around North America by van, and the two of us reminisce about the…
This is the kit Amanjano uses to make Mentawao tribal tattoos, of the sort he (and shaman like him) wears all over his body. The top item is a palm-wood hammer that is used to tap the wood-mounted nail (note lower item) when injecting tribal ink under the skin. Tattoos are one of the first…
My second host in the Siberut Island rainforest was Amanjano, a 62-year-old shaman who lived on a scenic bend of stream deep in the jungle. Amanjano proved to be more laid-back and happy-go-lucky than Amantiru, my first host – in part, I’m sure, because of his nature, but also because of his age. Whereas Amantiru…
This is my send-off after a multi-night stay at Amantiru and Baitiru’s place in the Siberut Island rainforest. It was interesting how quickly I became used to the rhythms of jungle life. I recall thinking, upon first hiking up into Amantiru’s house, “Dude, that guy is wearing a loincloth.” A couple days later, having gotten…
The social atmosphere on Siberut Island was very much geared toward evening gatherings. It took me a while get used to it, since even before the web-wired “information age” I grew up surrounded by popular culture like TV – and Amantiru’s place didn’t even have a radio. Indeed, the songs Amantiru and his friends sang…
My trekking guide, Agus, told me the story of some Dutch journalists who wanted to visit an “authentic” Siberut Island village, and were disappointed that the Mentawai they saw within a day of the Baderaeket River used plastic cups and ate processed sugar. Insisting that Agus take them deeper into the jungle for a purer…
Amantiru, my Mentawai host on Siberut Island, processed sago flour using a technique not dissimilar to traditional wine-makers’ ritual of stomping grapes. He jokingly called it “dancing without music.” Whereas the world’s most iconic staple foods are rice (commonly associated with Asia), wheat (Europe and the Middle East), and maize (the Americas), the Mentawai diet…
One of the more startling features of Mentawai houses are the animal skulls that hang over the lintel of each family home. Some of these bones once belonged to wild pigs, others to flying foxes. Most unnerving to behold are the bones of “simpai,” the black-and-yellow primate endemic to the islands, which yield faintly human-like…
