Sharing Travel Experiences

Ross is Lost: Thoughts on Adventure Travel

by Andy Hayes

When I first found the blog of today’s guest, I probably spent the better part of an hour or two surfing through all of the amazing stuff. It goes without saying that a site titled We’re Lost and Everything is Dirty is bound to have some juicy stuff, and it certainly succeeds in delivering.  I’m not sure whether it’s the National Geographic-style photography, or the utterly nowhere-near-any-sort-of-path types of experiences, but Ross Lee Tabak is the king of travel adventures, without a doubt.  Read on and be inspired….

Can you introduce yourself?

I’m Ross. I’m a young American. Since I was about thirteen I’ve wanted to go everywhere and see everything. When I got a little older I realized that’d require completely giving up the monotonous, uninspiring, cog-in-the-wheel life we’re supposed to lead, so I did that. Now I’m floating around Asia writing, taking photographs and poking at every little interesting thing I can find.

Your blog, We’re Lost and Everything is Dirty, is about adventure travel that is “being rather than arriving.” That sounds a lot like travel more (our slogan), only messier. Care to give is a bit of background on your ethos behind being rather than arriving?

I think it’s a pretty common travel philosophy, journey as destination, but I’ve never felt it completely describes what I’m going for. I’m still figuring it out, but I think there are two (possibly contradictory) parts:

Earth and its humans are really, really weird. Yeah sure, “weird” depends entirely on your perspective and cultural lens, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it and pretend like everything is Ancient and Beautiful. There’s no reason we can’t inject a little humor and irreverence into traveling. My favorite example of this is probably The Vice Guide to Travel – I know I’m supposed to hate Vice, but those documentaries are really, really interesting.

On a deeper level, I want to isolate traveling from traveler. Your opinion of somewhere depends almost entirely on your experience, so I’m asking the question, “What is this place like?” instead of, “How did you like this place?” In other words, I want to remove ego (in both the vernacular and Freudian sense) and introspection and move the focus from A Person to A Place.

I know this is totally counter to the prevailing idea of “travel as personal development,” but I certainly think there’s a place for that. It’s just that it’s not the only part of travel. I love travel narratives but too often they turn into romanticized, orientalist accounts of places the writer doesn’t really understand. Ultimately, you’re not important – there are six and a half billion people on this planet and the world is way cooler if you look outside of yourself.

Take those annoying wooden frogs Hmong women sell all over Southeast Asia, for instance. You could write something like, “The women in their silver jewelry and the sound of the frogs made me feel so far from home, and yet I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace.” That’s fine, but who are you? If you focus on the frogs instead, you might find out that they were originally used to capture real frogs and they make a mating or distress call depending on which way you rub the wooden stick. I think that’s a lot more interesting.

Andy:  I’m speechless.

Your site’s disclaimer says “Even those that do take enormous risks in departing from the mundane, and this blog is peppered with stories of people who screwed up and died.” Do you have any advice for travellers who are seeking some real adventure but are totally terrified of, uhm, dying?

Haha, I’ll get back to you on that one. It’s not like I’ve ever walked into a warzone or anything (though I’d certainly like to see it one day), but risky expeditions tend to be the most captivating. I don’t think an adventure needs to be incredibly dangerous to be worthwhile, but it does need to put you way, way outside your comfort zone. Which I guess is the same thing. There are a lot of people out there who know a lot more about conquering fear than I do (like Tim Ferriss), but it comes down to the fact that wanting to do something isn’t enough. Saying, “I want to fly a gyrocopter across Africa, but I have a job/I have to go to grad school/I’m too scared” doesn’t make any sense – you either want to do it or you’re too scared. There’s no reward without risk.

Andy:  Getting out of your comfort zone never killed anybody.

You come up with some AMAZING adventures (like the mental asylum visit). How do you research your next adventure?

Thanks! Luck and a lot of internetting. Right now I’m trying to get to a place called Nagaland, which I found by literally staring at Google Maps and thinking, “That’s a cool name!” Turns out it’s a Baptist headhunter enclave straddling India and Burma, so I dug deeper to see how weird it gets. Sometimes clicking around satellite images and wasting time on Wikipedia is the best way to get ideas. Lonely Planets, Wikitravel and other travel-oriented publications are awesome resources if you know where you want to go, but if you manage to do something truly original there won’t be a guide.

Having said that, what is on your bucket list? I am somewhat scared to ask.

I’m kind of banking on living forever, but I’ve always wanted to ride a motorcycle across China, down the Karakorum Highway and through the ’stans. Or pure DMT, you know, whatever.

What has been your most inspirational and adrenaline-pumped travel experience?

Man, that’s hard, but I think most of the good ones involved motorcycles. One time my friend somehow hit and killed a cow without hurting himself and we had to run from a bunch of angry farmers (I still feel bad that we didn’t pay for it). Another time a different friend and I took a wrong turn in Northern Vietnam and ended up 30km down a crappy dirt road in the jungle, and right when it started to get dark my bike ran out of gas. We had to walk back to the nearest house and beg some guy to sell us some, then ride another 10km along a cliff in the pitch dark. It rained that night and the bikes were useless in the mud, so we had to charter a damn riverboat to get us out of there.

To be honest though, the most adrenaline-pumped experience is always leaving my empty apartment, checking my bags and getting on a plane with a one-way ticket. I’ve done it a couple times and it never gets any less terrifying. And I’ve got to do it again in a week…

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Wow. I’m still speechless. So, go and check out Ross’s site, We’re Lost and Everything is Dirty. It’s not for the faint of heart, but as we mentioned, leaving your comfort zone never killed anybody. Yet.

Photo of wooden frog by neonarcade, others by Ross Lee Tabak

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