I’m in a time in my life right now where a cup of coffee from a machine feels like the rarest luxury in the world. It feels like a small miracle when my desperate attempts at “tidak pedas” are understood and my noodles arrive sufficiently non-spiced and edible. When a pickup truck stops with enough space for four backpacks and four pairs of dangling legs, it’s a gift from God herself. And a lukewarm shower… well, that would be comparable to the moon landing.
Every day we drive for hours through the Indonesian countryside. At times the jungle leans into the road, thick vegetation spilling onto the asphalt. Green presses in from every side before loosening into misty mountain passes.
Mosques slip past behind my half-closed eyelids. Reds, blues, purples, blurred by heat and motion, as if seeing them through water, or just before sleep.
As our route starts to graze the equator, the heat turns unbearable. We pass through endless small villages where children run after us shouting “Bule! Bule!” Foreigners, foreigners. Old men lounge on stoops. Women serve nasi goreng to passersby from small stovetops set up in front of their homes, always smiling, open faces breezily enduring the thick air beneath their hijabs.
Palm trees everywhere. And chickens, so many chickens. Sometimes the salty smell of the ocean if the wind blows in the right direction.
It’s in these long, sun-soaked stretches of the day that I sometimes allow myself small daydreams of luxuries that feel like they belong to a previous life. Hot bubble baths, creamy camembert, a deep woody merlot. I haven’t had a glass of wine in over two weeks. For most people that might be laughably mundane, but for me I must admit, it’s nearly unthinkable.
My travel companions, for their part, are a quirky mix: two Germans and a Dutch guy, all of us in various phases of a perpetual sunburn. My skin has browned so deeply that the strips beneath my rings look baby-bottom white. Together, the four of us make quite the spectacle as we move through these small villages with our big backpacks, towering height, and many attempts to hide from the sun. Scarves and pants and shirts wrapped around heads and straw conical hats bought for thirty cents at a roadside market. Then of course there is the soccer ball, always being kicked back and forth, a constant source of entertainment and frustration.
Our plan, you see, is to hitchhike the length of Indonesia in two months. From the top of Sumatra, across Java, Bali, Lombok, and eventually ending on the island of Timor-Leste, a little-known country several days by sea from North-Western Australia. Once there, we will attempt to flag down a sailboat, maybe even a cargo ship, and brave the seven or eight days on open water to the magical land of flat whites and avo on toast.
Until then of course, I’m here, on the back of a pickup truck, quite literally typing away in my notes app at my own peril as the road zigzags violently beneath us and local drivers demonstrate a complete disregard for basic traffic laws. I’ve been thinking a lot on these rides: about adventure, food, the many meanings of life, and what it actually means to live well. To spend your days happy. To be successful.
Not unlike my emotions on these travel days, my opinions on these metaphysical matters fluctuate with the conditions. If the sun is shining, the wind is cool, and the jungle spills lazily onto the road, I lean toward a sunny kind of existentialism. When tropical rain pours down, my philosophies become self-indulgently nostalgic and spiritual, and not, might I add, unenjoyable. But it’s during the long hours of relentless heat, the sun beating down on our heads and burning our scalps, that you really begin to question what on earth you’re doing with your life. Especially once you’ve become so adept at squatting over a hole in the ground that you can pee without wetting your feet.
Finding yourself in your mid-twenties, hitchhiking across an island in far-off Southeast Asia, is probably not how most people imagined life after graduation. Then again, maybe this was always going to be the only logical outcome of a literature degree.
To be fair, I say all of this somewhat tongue-in-cheek. My existential ponderings rarely lose their brightness, and when they do, it’s almost always because I haven’t had coffee yet. I’m also painfully aware of how Western-centric these thoughts are. Squat toilets make me question every life choice I’ve ever made, while for the people who so generously let me into their homes to use their bathrooms, it’s entirely, laughably mundane.
No, in truth, I’m exactly where I want to be. Every decision I’ve made has led me here, and I’ve made and followed them intentionally, albeit a bit randomly. I am a big fan of randomness, as it turns out. As well as making life-altering decisions on a whim. And I’ll stand by that.
The truck is rattling higher into the mountains now. Clouds and jungle canopy block out the sun, and the air suddenly feels crisp, full of possibility and the promise of an ocean dip.
Exactly a year ago, I was on a bus traveling from Costa Rica to Nicaragua. Now I’m on the back of a truck somewhere in West Sumatra, on the opposite side of the world. Who knows where (or who) I’ll be next year.
But one thing feels certain: I probably still won’t know the meaning of life.
And I’ll still be having a hell of a good time trying to figure it out.
I also recently recorded a fun interview with Leon, one of the German guys I’m travelling with, about his hitchhiking journey all the way from Germany to Indonesia over two years. You can watch it on YouTube below.
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