People First, Place Second.

So. 

I’m home.

On July 21st, I began my first mile of travel in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. The next five months would whirlwind me across America, through Europe, within India, across the mighty Pacific and back to Hawaii on December 23rd. 25,000 miles – I circled the world. 

The places were magnificent. But I am finding more and more and more that travel is first about the people, and second about the place. Always. Always. I could have been in hell (aka: an airplane) but if there was someone cool to connect with (an English Muslim student on his way home to Pakistan) then I was in heaven. I could recount – literally – hundreds of examples of this rule: people first, place second. 

I met hundreds of incredible people in my travels; some tweaked a realization in me, and I didn’t even know their name. I still remember the beggar girl in Vrindavan who cemented my realization to allow my heart to soften, and to let go of my feverish attachments. Others reached inside my heart and flipped me upside down. The people of Chowpatty are forever imprinted on my heart as the goal of what it means to be a devotee of the Lord, and what it means to serve.   

You can’t recount people in a list, like you can with places you’ve visited or the miles you’ve traveled. It just doesn’t work like that. People are the breath of travel… they are the breath of life.

Thank you. If I encountered you in my travels – even just for a moment, the span of one breath – and you’re reading this, thank you. You were the reason and the perfection of my journey.   

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