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 me to spend an entire morning writing with a pen. It also made me appreciate how the postcard ritual – buying the cards, finding a cool place to sit down and write in them, going to the post office for stamps – is its own way of interacting with a place like Kandy. It would have been easier for me to fire off text messages, but I enjoyed the old-school discipline.
When I’m on the road, I’ve always tried to strike a balance between keeping in touch with the outside world and immersing myself fully in whichever place I’m visiting. The intention I put into posting on places like Instagram (and imbuing both narrative energy and reportorial insight into the captions – not always each with such a short word-count) – meant that my 2019 travel time was often at odds with my actual experience of the places I was visiting. Last February, in my travel journal, I wrote the following while in Sri Lanka:
“I realize that I’m going to have to stop posting to Instagram from the road – to stretch out the Sumatra narrative in a way that it covers March and then pick up Sri Lanka and the rest later. Otherwise I’m going to spend like 40% of my time and mental energy focused on these from-the-road stories (and at the end of the day I’m not sure that my readers care how close to real-time I’m being with these).”
As it turned out, I didn’t even finish my Sumatra reportage before putting Instagram on hold and throwing myself more fully into the journey. To be honest, it was totally worth it: Taking a break from social media indeed allowed me to be 40% (give or take) more present as I traveled across Asia.
That said, I did collect some cool images and stories in Sumatra, Sri Lanka, and points beyond. That in mind, I intend to (finally) share those Dispatches in coming weeks.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. For more full-formed writing, check out my book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, or the Essays or Stories archives on this site. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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