Bye Bye NYC

I’m preparing to leave NYC for good (for now) in a couple of weeks, and it feels right. I’m going to travel overland from Delhi to Istanbul, by way of Pakistan, Afghanistan (I hope), Iran, and of course western Turkey. The trip will take 2 months and I’ll be covering a lot of ground: about 2,800 miles (4,500 km) as the crow flies. I won’t be using wings.

For everyone who thinks it’s crazy (Ma) for an American to visit these places at a time when respect for America is at a low ebb (to put it mildly), let me tell you I have my reasons. The first is that I want to research a book. It’s unclear yet what form the book will take, but I suspect it may be equal parts travelogue, confessional, and black comedy. If the truth gets too ugly I may be forced to take refuge in fiction. That’s about all I know at the moment.

I plan to write in a more immediate style. So be warned, the next slew of words will be less polished and more frequent. I want to record everything, the whole experience, with honesty. So I’m going to try to repress my natural tendency for obsessive self-editing, and attempt to improve on the snail-like frequency of past missives. I’m hoping the new approach will result in more immediate and detailed writing. Expect plenty of grammatical blunders, embarrassing personal revelations, and other gibberish. I hope you can bear with me.

Another reason I’m going is that I simply want to see the places I’ve been hearing about on the news since I was a kid. Our country has been meddling in this part of the world for as long as I can remember, and I still feel as though I understand nothing of the customs, the culture, or the feelings of the people who live there. I’m sick of getting my news from the news. I want to see for myself the result of our elected officials’ foreign policy. I want to meet an Afghan face to face and find out what he has to say. And I want to cross the Khyber Pass into Kabul. I want to see the sunrise on the Hindu Kush.

I’m also hoping to track down and record with musicians along the way. Whether this is possible I don’t know. But I’ve jacked up the laptop for recording, and I’m packing a microphone and a travel guitar. We’ll see if I get any takers. I will also be taking a lot of pictures. So with less than 2 weeks to go, I’m paring down my possessions to just those things that fit in a backpack. The rest is getting thrown into storage or into the street. (I would have left already but dental necessity precluded it; Afghanistan may be known for many things but the quality of its dentistry is not among them.) Assuming I survive the trip -- and the chances are good, if I don’t do anything too stupid -- I’ll wind up in Istanbul on August 1st for a celebratory beer, on a terrace overlooking the Bosphorus. Wish me luck.

Comments

[Alex in NYC]

Ahhh....at last you've managed the update!!! Well done, my lad, well done.