The inspirational adventures of a solo backpacker as he travels around the globe, hoping to empower others to realize that they too can travel alone, on a shoestring budget, and learn more about languages, cultures, perspectives, interactions, how to make friends, how to feel comfortable being themselves, how to keep an open mind, how to find and connect with like-minded people, and how people live on this planet than they could ever imagine. Unleash the wanderlust inside you!
Iceland is one of the most beautiful places in the entire universe. The tiny island of 323,000 people contains every landscape from black sand beaches to rocky fjords to lush mossy green valleys to 1,000 meter deep ice caps to giant standalone volcanoes. Due to the volcanic nature of the island, nearly everything is heated and powered geothermally, and nearly every village has its own pool fed by natural hot springs. The capital city, Reykjavik, is incredibly clean and welcoming, and the locals are some of the friendliest I’ve encountered yet. The weather may not be the greatest, but in summer the 24 hours of daylight makes it always possible to wait for the rain to stop without sacrificing precious daylight hours.
My trip to Iceland began with a morning spent in Reykjavik before jumping on a bus into the mountains. My dad was coming home from a conference in London and I was heading back to Europe from the US, so it worked perfectly for us to meet halfway in Iceland.
Viking ship art in Reykjavik
Dried fish, an Icelandic favorite
Reykjavik
The bus took us out of the city and into the back country, eventually turning off the paved road onto a dirt path which appeared completely unsuitable for driving. Several rivers crossed the “road”, which would have been a major obstacle to any normal vehicle, but the bus driver plowed right through the rivers without any acknowledgement of the complete lack of bridges.
"yo fuck bridges," said the Icelandic bus driver
We were dropped at Landmannalaugar, a little hut and giant campground in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beautifully colorful snowy mountains and hot springs to bathe in. Landmannalaugar is the starting point for the incredibly beautiful and incredibly popular Laugavegur trail, a 55km trail that winds through every landscape Iceland has to offer, with options to stay in huts along the way or carry your own tent. If you ever visit Iceland, you really should hike the Laugavegur trail.
The hut and camping village and Landmannalaugar
The hot creek at Landmannalaugar, which was always either way too hot or way too cold
The types of names you have to remember when hiking in Iceland
Normally the trail is done in four days, but due to the extreme amount of snow still remaining at the first stopping point, and our complete lack of snow camping equipment, we opted to do it in three. This meant doing two days of hiking in the first day, for a total of 23km up to the highest point on the trail and then back down a steep decline to Lake Alftavatn. The trail wound through colorful steaming mountains filled with hot springs and fumaroles. At some points boiling water bubbled out of the mountain and large clouds of steam seeped out of every dip in the rocks.
Looking back at the colorful mountains in Landmannalaugar as we start the hike
Beginning the 23km day
Valleys of volcanic rock, snow, and hot springs
As we continued, the colorful volcanic landscape became more and more white until we were trudging through an endless field of snow. Kilometer after kilometer passed and there was still no end to the snow. We stopped at the hut at the top of the pass for a rest and were glad we had decided not to stay there, as it was very crowded and very snowy. Finally, after saying “it’s just over this hill” about 100 times, we came to a point where we could actually see beyond the snow, and we were treated to the most incredible view of lone volcanoes reaching all the way to the horizon. The trail steeply dropped off and we walked/slid our way down to the hut and campsite at lake Alftavatn, a few kilometers below.
Water boiling out of the volcano
Endless snowfields
The snow finally comes to an end!
backwards flannel: the best way to hike in cold weather
The campsite at Lake Alftavatn
The second day was quite a bit shorter than the first, but was no less beautiful. The trail wound up and down the hills, and we were at low enough elevation that the rivers were no longer frozen. This meant there were several rivers to cross, but similar to the roads in Iceland, hiking trails don’t have bridges either. It was a hilarious sight watching dozens of hikers take their pants off and waddle through the knee-deep water, clothed in warm jackets and giant backpacks but bottomless from the thighs down. Several more kilometers passed as we walked through a barren black volcanic desert, crossed another river or two, and finally reached the campground at Emstrur hut a few hours later.
One of many stream crossings where hikers waddle bottomless through freezing water
Majestic Iceland
A new landscape as we enter the volcanic desert
The gorge near the Emstrur campground
We woke up early the next morning to complete our journey to the end of the trail in Thorsmork. With the giant glaciers Myrdalsjokull and Eyjafjallajokull in sight, it began to rain for the first time yet on our trip. The sun never quite went away though, which meant we found ourselves walking next to a rainbow. With one last river crossing, we saw a peculiar sight: trees. These were the first trees we had seen yet on the hike. We were welcomed to the finish with a walk through the forest, a nice change after three days of beating sunlight.
Rainbow
The final stream crossing didn't even require taking my pants off
That night was spent back in Reykjavik before renting a car and heading out to the east side of the island. We drove straight to Skaftafell, stopping to see a few waterfalls along the way. Skaftafell is a beautiful village at the base of several giant glaciers. From there it is possible to walk up to at least two of the glaciers, which seem small and snowy from a distance, but when you walk up to them you realize they are made up of towering 40+ft blocks of solid ice that carve their way through mountains. Anywhere from about 100m to well over a kilometer wide and up to 1,000m deep, it is absolutely breathtaking to stand next to such a massive amount of ice with the power to reshape entire mountain ranges.
Seljalandsfoss, with two Polish hitchhikers that we picked up
Fields of Lupin. A beautiful, but invasive, species
The glacier Svinafellsjokull
The glacier tongue reaches out into the valley, ending in a large iceberg-filled lagoon
The ice is formed when snow falls on the top of the mountain, and when the snow gets deep enough it weighs so much that it compresses into solid ice. As more and more snow falls, it pushes this ice down the mountain, taking chunks of rock along with it and carving valleys into the mountainside. The glacier tongue extends out from the valley, thousands of feet below the mountaintops where the ice was formed, where the climate is much warmer but the ice is so thick that it still melts very slowly. You can clearly see where the ice has acted as a bulldozer and pushed huge amounts of sand and dirt into mounds in front of the glacier.
Skaftafellsjokull spills down the valley
A closeup view of the white and blue glacier ice, taking rock and dirt along with it as it flows down the mountain
Since the glacier has melted and receded, these mounds have become a natural dam to hold back the meltwater, and a lagoon has formed, filled with icebergs which break off of the glacier. In Skaftafell, it is possible to walk up to the glacier tongue and the icebergs and even lick them, and in the larger glacial lagoons, Jokulsarlon and Fjallsarlon, it is possible to ride in a boat around the lagoon. When nearing the glacier you can feel the cold emanating from it, as if you’re walking into a giant outdoor refridgerator. We took a boat ride around Fjallsarlon, and it was incredible to see the deep blue color of the ice which had broken from the glacier just hours earlier. We also drove to Jokullsarlon, where the lagoon has an outlet to the North Atlantic Ocean, and you can see icebergs bobbing around in the waves. It is truly an incredible sight.
The icebergs appear bright blue just after the break from the glacier, and they turn white as they melt
Standing on an iceberg
Icebergs bob in the waves
Licking an iceberg
Fjallsarlon glacier lagoon
boat ride in Fjallsarlon
After our adventures in the Skaftafell area, my dad had to leave to go catch his flight, so he dropped me off in a town where I met up with my friends Clayton and Marisa, who happened to also be traveling Iceland at the same time. We found puffins, swam in a hot pool on a mountain, casually shotgunned, and I slept on the couch in the common room of their hotel that night. The next day was my last day in Iceland, and on the way back to Reykjavik we stopped at a river in Hveragerdi to swim in. The river was fed by hot springs and the entire valley was filled with steam. Like all hot springs, it was either too hot or too cold with no happy medium, but it was still an amazing experience in a beautiful location and definitely worth a visit.
Columnar basalt
Puffin!
Clayton, Marisa, and I at Skogafoss waterfall
A hot pool in the middle of nowhere
Hot spring-fed river
The hot river from above
That wraps up my experience in Iceland. So, if you weren't already planning a trip to Iceland, I hope you are now!
I was welcomed to the Boston airport by the wonderful aroma of Dunkin Donuts as I walked out from the baggage claim. This was the most intense culture shock I had experienced yet in my year of traveling. The whine of loud American accents complaining about something or other rang in my ears like the most horrible siren that wouldn’t stop. I looked around for a sign telling me where to go for connecting flights and opted to walk the 5 minutes to the terminal rather than follow the hoards of people rushing to get on the bus (yes, they have a bus for those too lazy to walk 5 minutes). Two hours later I was in Washington, D.C., on my way to see my family for the first time in six months. The next couple weeks consisted of nonstop family reunions, which was incredible after being on another continent for so long and separated from my family.
Family
The next day was my grandma’s funeral ceremony. Though sad, she had a great 93 year life and it was a wonderful way to bring together the extended family that I hadn’t seen in years. All of the cousins gave speeches, sang songs, or read passages written by my grandma, and I presented a poem that I had written on the plane. It went like this:
Once there lived a beautiful soul,
who refused to eat an unhealthy cereal bowl.
She was my grandma,
but I called her Nana,
and the family she raised deserves the utmost praise.
For 93 years she graced the Earth,
and to my father she gave birth.
She left behind some great memories,
like time spent with Choo Choo and Cinder, her two doggies.
She used to have a house at Bethany Beach,
an hour past the fruit stand that sold pies made of peach.
Those family reunions I’ll never forget,
Kayaking and canoeing into the sunset.
We planted flags on newly discovered islands,
and played whack-a-mole at the boardwalk, going home with several wins.
One time I fell in the jellyfish-infested canal water,
and Nana was there for me, as was Rondell, her daughter.
Later in life she wasn’t so mobile,
but a quality that remained is that she was always noble.
One time my Nana had a great fall,
but a broken leg didn’t stop her from painting pictures for my bedroom wall,
and then she got shingles and could no longer paint happily,
so I taught her Sudoku with giant numbers that she could see.
The last time I saw her was one year ago,
with my dad in her Riderwood home.
I read her a book but I don’t think she understood what I said,
because, unfortunately, she was on her deathbed.
But though she was no longer with us mentally,
I could tell that she knew it was me.
That day is our last memory together,
and it’s one that I’ll remember forever.
She left behind a family, perhaps her greatest gift,
Aunts and uncles and cousins whom I hope to never lose touch with,
So let’s keep reuniting year after year,
It’s what Nana would have wanted if she were still here.
All of the Fergies, next to Nana's paintings
After the memorial service we all piled into cars and headed to Bethany Beach, Delaware, where we would stay for the next week in two rented houses, one of which had been owned by my grandparents when I was a kid and brought back great memories. My grandparents’ old house had kayaks and canoes which we could use and the other house had an elevator inside, which was pretty ridiculous. It was amazing to reconnect with my cousins, including Eric, who has been playing D1 baseball and may be on his way to the professional leagues, Ryan, who I had nearly lost contact with for a few years but he has been traveling in and out of South America for the past 3 years, having very similar experiences to me on my travels, Andrea, who is finishing chiropractic school and moving back to Taos, NM, and Claire and Helen who I have seen much more than the others but was still great to see them again.
The Fergies, before and after. 1995 (?) to 2015
Fergie cousins at the beach house
Beach chillin' with a wine bottle of water and one shoe
For the week we swam every day in the waves, had morning yoga sessions on the beach, and cooked some amazing meals. Some highlights included a night canoe/kayak ride to discover Big Whale Island--an “island” in the middle of the bay, jumping around in the waves, watching dolphins corral thousands of fish up to the shore and then feast on them while occasionally jumping out of the water and giving us a show, improvising a video (which you can see below, or here) and bonding with family members who I had lost contact with for a few years. We also went to the crab shack for dinner one night, a yearly tradition of my family in which we order all-you-can-eat crabs and spend the next 3 hours downing beers and cracking crab shells until we go home reeking of a fish market. It’s always one of my favorite meals of the year.
Beach yoga, led by Ryan
On an adventure to big whale island
A tradition
Mickey's Crab Shack, complete with a beer tower and hundreds of crabs
An incredible work of art (click here if it doesn't load)
After Delaware, we returned to Washington, D. C., for my grandma’s burial ceremony and for another big family reunion, this time with my mom’s side of the family. Since my grandma had been a marine in her youth, she was given a full military ceremony complete with American flags and fully-uniformed marines shooting their guns in the air in the Arlington Cemetery. It was something I had only ever seen in movies, and was really cool to see my grandmother receiving this kind of recognition for her service.
Later that afternoon, Beckwiths from all over the east coast gathered in Arlington, Virginia, for an afternoon and I got to see even more family that I hadn’t seen in years. It was incredible to see so much family, and this trip really reminded me of how important it is to keep in touch with all of my family members, even those cousins who live far away. That evening, my mom and I headed to the airport for the last of our family visits--Florida to see my other grandma, uncle, and aunt.
Beckwith cousins
Our time in Florida was spent mainly at the beach and eating fancy meals with my grandma. Delicious home-cooked meals and nice restaurants were very welcome after living on a backpacker’s diet for the past year, so I indulged on my eating experience as much as possible while with family.
Dinner with grandma
The Florida trip was quick, and three days later I already found myself on a flight back to D.C., where I would spend two more days before returning to Europe. The date was July 3, and the next day would be the first time in four years that I had been in the US for Independence Day. I stocked up on American flag Budweiser cans and headed over to a party with some Pomona friends to enjoy the day off and watch the many fireworks displays over the nation’s capital.
the only photo to come out of DC, two sexy models
I didn't take this, but the fireworks looked something like this
I woke up the next morning on Henry’s floor with a terrible headache, stoked that I was finally within reach of some classic American hangover food. Another highlight of my trip was brunch that morning/afternoon: Chipotle. Though I was never the biggest fan of Chipotle before I went to Europe, spending a year without burritos had made me crave that delicious Tex-Mex more than ever before, and it lived up to every expectation. It was so good that I got Chipotle again for dinner that evening, at the airport as I headed out for the next stage of my journey: Europe round 2! I excitedly boarded the Icelandair flight to Reykjavik and passed out immediately, waking up again at 6 AM with a gorgeous view of the volcanic island spread out below me. This trip back to the US had given me an amazing sense of belonging and made me think a lot about how lucky I am to have such an amazing, supportive extended family, and now I was ready to hit the road again and fulfill my dream of exploring every remote corner of Europe and beyond.
To continue my 1 - 1.5 month late blog writing habit, here’s a post about England, Ireland, and Madrid back in the beginning of June. From Egypt, I bussed and hitchhiked my way back to Tel Aviv and got on the cheapest flight available: $90 to London. I was on my way to meet 3 friends, Ryan, Kasey, and Alina, in Dublin, with a quick stop in Oxford along the way. For anybody who has been regularly reading this blog, you may recall a ski trip in Switzerland back in January. Well the people from that ski trip all live in Oxford and I had a really good time with them so I thought it’d be fun to visit. Cassandra, one of my best friends from Pomona, also came that weekend.
We spent a bunch of time wandering around looking at Oxford’s beautiful architecture, having beers in bars, and park chillin. I was excited to finally be in a place that used hops in their beers, but the excitement of IPAs was dampened by England’s habit of serving their beer warm and flat. I will never understand the appeal of a cask aleover a cold, crisp American IPA.
Oxford
The highlight of Oxford was definitely tree climbing. A couple of the guys in the Oxford crew were experienced climbers who used ropes and harnesses to scale otherwise unclimbable trees. Andrew is a nature photographer who photographs the canopy of trees, and has done everything from primate conservation photoshoots to chainsaw advertisements high above the ground. I found his life very inspiring and hope that I, too, can find a way to combine outdoor sports and nature into a career like he does. Tim, the other climber, doesn’t do it for his job, but is still an awesome guy who likes to do awesome things, and a great teacher. Tim showed us how to tie the ropes so that we could safely hoist ourselves up the trunk of a giant Beech tree. We had to throw one rope over the highest attainable branch while another rope held us securely in place. This is by far the hardest part, as throwing a rope accurately while hanging in a harness at an awkward angle is no easy task. We would then pull ourselves up, sometimes using branches and sometimes just using the rope, tie back in when we reached the top of the high rope, and do this process all over again. About ten rope-throws later, I made it to the top.
Jaysen forgets which way is up
Cassandra hangs in the tree
looking down
selfie!
After an epic day of climbing and a great weekend spending time with old and new friends, I hopped on a train to Wales, where I would get a ferry to Dublin. Alina and I were to arrive in Dublin that evening and Ryan and Kasey would arrive two days later. I hadn’t seen Alina in almost three years, but we decided to meet up in Ireland on a whim and it turned out to be the best idea ever. It was love at first sight (well, first sight in 3 years, at least…). We met our couchsurfinghosts, an Irish woman and a Spanish man who had tons of amazing life experiences to tell us about, and spent the evening catching up. The next day we switched CS hosts to another guy who had more space for Ryan and Kasey to join, so we brought our stuff over to his very comfortable apartment right in Dublin’s city center. Though he was a bit of a creeper, he was very generous and we got along pretty well. He took us out to some bars around Dublin and gave us our own bedroom to sleep in. Another couchsurfer, the one and only Ben Bang, was also staying there and he came on an adventure to Howth with us the next day, an area of beautiful cliffs and beaches just north of Dublin.
Alina and I at Howth cliffs
selfie with a kid on a leash
When Kasey and Ryan arrived, we hit the bars again, attempting and failing over and over again to understand the Irish accents of the people we met. The next day was spent wandering around Dublin, trying really hard to acquire the taste for Guinness but ending up still not being a huge fan.
We found Dylan at the O'Connell statue
Trying really hard to acquire a taste for Guinness
The Guinness factory, which we did not go inside
That night was spent at Kasey’s friend’s house, who lives just outside of Dublin, and the next morning I had to say a sad goodbye to Alina, as she was headed back to Germany. Ryan, Kasey, and I spent the day drinking wine and eating cheese in a park, shotgunning Guinnesses on a street overflowing with kilt-clad Scotsmen, and watching the Ireland vs. Scotland soccer game in a pub where 90% of the crowd was wearing a kilt. We discovered that there may be a language even harder to understand than the Irish accent: Scottish. That night we went out for our last night in Dublin, to a carnival-themed club which served cotton candy for free. The next day we got on a bus and went to Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, where we would meet our last couchsurfing host, Mark.
is it Scotland or is it Ireland?
Mark was a super nice guy who had never hosted couchsurfers before, but was so into the idea of couchsurfing that he told his flatmate we were old friends in order to give us a free place to stay (he wasn’t so sure if his flatmate would be keen on the idea). Mark took a day off of work and drove us all the way to Connemara, over an hour away, so that we could see the castle there and see the beautiful western Ireland countryside.
Connemara castle
Irish countryside
After Galway I said goodbye to Kasey and Ryan and headed to the airport to fly to Madrid. I had a flight out of Lisbon 2 days later to go back to the US. and had originally planned to spend those 2 days in Lisbon, but that plan changed after spending time with Alina. After she left Dublin, we got to talking about when we could see each other again, and made the crazy decision to book a last minute flight and run off to Madrid for my last days in Europe. Somehow I found a way to spend 2 nights in Madrid and still get to Lisbon in time for my flight, via 2 blablacars and a train, stopping in Caceres to pick up my suitcase that I left at Matt’s house along the way, and we went for it. I’ll leave out the details, but it was the most amazingly romantic getaway that I ever could have hoped for. And the jamon iberico- absolutely orgasmic. I hope that someday the two of us will reunite.
Alina and I in Madrid
"me gusta jamon iberico," said the Spanish person
The next thing I knew, I was landing in Boston to the smell of Dunkin Donuts and the sound of whiny American accents. After a year spent in 27 countries covering several thousand miles in buses, trains, ferries, airplanes, and cars with new friends from all over the world, doing everything from cooking a grilled cheese sandwich over lava on a glacier-capped volcano in Iceland, to skiing mountains that were once minefields in Bosnia, to being given full control to play with equipment worth more money than I'll likely ever make while working in a lab in Germany, to the legendary hakuna matata parties in Darmstadt, to getting dumped by a long-term girlfriend but making the best of it by traveling longer, to playing with baby goats while working on a farm in Bulgaria, to meeting the nicest restaurant owners who picked us up and fed us a giant meal while hitchhiking into Albania, to getting a free hostel room in exchange for folding sheets and advertising and leading pub crawls in Tel Aviv, to understanding the meaning of transcendence at Israel's Burning Man, to coming face to face with sting rays and lionfish 100ft underwater in Egypt, to never really liking Guinness but having a great time nonetheless in Ireland, to a last-minute decision to run off to Spain for a couple days with a new-found romance. A year spent traveling alone but never a single day spent actually being alone or without excitement. A year where I learned more about languages, cultures, perspectives, interactions, how to make friends, how to feel comfortable being myself, how to keep an open mind, how to find and connect with like-minded people, and how people live on this planet than I ever could have learned from any job or class in the world.
Inspired to enable others to travel too, I returned home to the land where drinking fountains flow freely, where public toilets exist solely for the reason of keeping piss off the streets rather than for making a profit, where I'm not the only one who says "awesome" and "dude", where one can drive 3000 miles and people will still speak the same language, where unlimited Cholula is an option in college dining halls, where anyone can enjoy an abundance of oversized artery-clogging portions dripping in grease, where Ritz crackers can be readily slathered in EZ Cheeze, where weed laws are the most progressive in the world but healthcare laws are some of the worst, where republicans whine about gun laws and poor people, yet where productive talks about race, gender, sexuality, and general social justice are more common than just about anywhere else, where an incredibly diverse variety of people, cultures, and ecosystems live side by side, where pristine wilderness truly exists, where IPA gushes out of beer taps at craft breweries, and where really dank Mexican food is never far away.
So, readers, go traveling. Finish your college degree and go explore. Go alone. Don't make a plan. Don't book a return flight. Don't take much money. Don't feel like you need a career-path job right out of college, there will still be job openings next year and you'll have a whole lot more valuable life experience under your belt. Don't feel like you're too poor, just go to a cheap country or use resources like workaway and helpx to travel for free. Face your fears and just go out there, you'll be amazed at how quickly your fears disappear and how many incredible opportunities come your way. After all, YOLO.
