For many years I traveled for myself alone. I refused to write about my trips, or even to plan them with any useful purpose. Friends would ask what research had taken me to Malaysia or New Guinea or Pakistan, since it was obvious that nobody would go to these places merely for recreation. But I did.
And I felt a real need for rejuvenation, for experiences that would take me away from things I usually did, the life I usually led.
In my everyday life, I often felt a stifling awareness of the purpose behind everything I did. Every book I read, every movie I saw, every lunch and dinner I attended seemed to have a reason behind it. From time to time, I felt the urge to do something for no reason at all.
I conceived these trips as vacations—as respites from my ongoing life—but that wasn’t how they turned out. Eventually, I realized that many of the most important changes in my life had come about because of my travel experiences. For, however tame when compared with the excursions of real adventurers, these trips were genuine adventures for me: I struggled with my fears and limitations, and I learned whatever I was able to learn.
But as time passed, the fact that I had never written about my travels became oddly burdensome. If you’re a writer, the assimilation of important experiences almost obliges you to write about them. Writing is how you make the experience your own, how you explore what it means to you, how you come to possess it, and ultimately release it. I found I was relieved, after all these years, to write about some of the places I have been. I was fascinated to see how much I could write without reference to my notebooks.
There were also some episodes from medical school that I had always intended to write about. I had promised myself I would wait fifteen years, until they were thoroughly ancient history. To my surprise, I find I have waited long enough, and so they are included here.
I have also included experiences in the realms that are sometimes called psychic, or transpersonal, or spiritual. I think of this as inner travel, to complement the outer travel, although that distinction—between what is internal sensation and what is external stimulus—often blurs in my mind. But I’ve found the effort to disentangle my perceptions useful in a way I had not anticipated.
Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes—with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
I eventually realized that direct experience is the most valuable experience I can have. Western man is so surrounded by ideas, so bombarded with opinions, concepts, and information structures of all sorts, that it becomes difficult to experience anything without the intervening filter of these structures. And the natural world—our traditional source of direct insights—is rapidly disappearing. Modern city-dwellers cannot even see the stars at night. This humbling reminder of man’s place in the greater scheme of things, which human beings formerly saw once every twenty-four hours, is denied them. It’s no wonder that people lose their bearings, that they lose track of who they really are, and what their lives are really about.
So travel has helped me to have direct experiences. And to know more about myself.
Many people have helped me with this book. Among those who read early versions of the manuscript and gave me comments and encouragement were Kurt Villadsen, Anne-Marie Martin, my sisters, Kimberly Crichton and Catherine Crichton, my brother, Douglas Crichton, Julie Halowell, my mother, Zula Crichton, Bob Gottlieb, Richard Farson, Marilyn Grabowski, Lisa Plonsker, Valery Pine, Julie McIver, Lynn Nesbit, and Sonny Mehta. Later drafts of the text were read by the participants themselves, who offered valuable suggestions and corrections.
To all these people I am grateful, as I am to my beleaguered travel agents of many years, Kathy Bowman of World Wide Travel in Los Angeles, and Joyce Small of Adventures Unlimited in San Francisco.
In addition, certain people have had a major influence on my thinking, although they do not appear much in this book. I am thinking in particular of Henry Aronson, Jonas Salk, John Foreman and Jasper Johns.
By design, I have limited the scope of this book. Freud once defined life as work and love, but I have chosen to discuss neither, except as my travel experiences impinge upon them. Nor have I undertaken to assess my childhood. Rather, it is my intention to write about the interstices of my life, about the events that occurred while what I imagined to be the real business of my life was taking place.
It remains only to say that certain changes have been made to the original text. Names and identifying characteristics of physicians and medical patients have all been changed. And in later chapters, some names and identifying characteristics have been changed at the request of the individuals involved.