My name is Chris Dame, and I am a travel addict.

It started when I was young, taking road trips to cities outside my state. I enjoyed exploring new places, seeing the history they found special, and meeting people who had different expectations of what the important things in life were. Both of my parents were choir directors who traveled for competitions and conferences, which led to me exploring new places on my own while they hobnobbed with other directors and got serious research done.

While they spent their days listening to music, I spent mine listening to rivers, talking to crickets, and reading books in crowded shopping malls. I explored the Alamo on my own and made friends with random children and adults who were strangers minutes before by figuring out what “common ground” was.

By the time I rode an airplane for the first time at the age of 10, I had fallen in love with the journey. I spent the entire time exploring the culture of airplanes, how people acted differently, what different buttons did, and when my father finally settled me into my seatbelt, every new thing that passed by the window that I had never seen before. It was intoxicating.

In the years leading up to getting a driverâ€s license, I would seek out faster transportation that would let me explore further away, faster. I would bike or skateboard for hours every day, trying to find new places. On the weekends, I would be gone all day, taking little breaks to refuel, chugging down a gallon of liquid and eating a sandwich quickly so I could head back out.

Once I got my own car, I left those smaller wheels behind, now able to reach bigger cities in less time than it took me to get to my friendâ€s house across town on bike. Gas was cheap then, and I would go on road trips to nowhere in particular, searching out the unique and different.

Eventually, I became a college student in St. Louis. I would study, and I would eat, but I wasnâ€t a big drinker. I spent my time on the internet, learning about new things and new people. As a result, some of my girlfriends lived in faraway cities that required flights to visit. And we did. And we explored new cities we had never heard of, meeting new friends, discovering new microcultures, and enjoying the open road.

At this point, travel was a necessity for life. If I didnâ€t leave the state where I lived at least once a month, I would get antsy. I lived in Portland, Oregon for 7 years, regularly driving to Seattle, taking the Greyhound to California, or flying to the east coast to visit friends. I didnâ€t care how I got there, as long as I was moving. I had friends in other cities that were closer to me than ones where I lived. While I had my own apartment, I had no more attachment to it than any other place I traveled to.

Eventually I got a job in San Francisco that required travel to foreign countries regularly, deeply exploring new cultures. I suppose it was inevitable. I spent about half my time on the road. Sometimes to places I knew people, but mostly to places I had never thought of visiting. India, rural England, Finland, Kenya, wherever. It didnâ€t much matter to me, the further the better. I saw people at my company burning out on travel. They got elite status with airlines and hotels, then never used them because they didnâ€t want to travel anymore.

Not me, though. Not me.

I started running projects on my own, working in travel to places I wanted to visit. Longer and longer trips. Soon I was spending a month or two at a time on the road, developing deep friendships with people in the cities where I temporarily lived. I became known inside the company as the person who always traveled with one tiny bag and was always more prepared than the others, so I was constantly giving out advice to other professional travelers on how to survive on the road, which is precisely where I thrived.

Eventually I wanted to do more than the company would have allowed, and I set off on my own. I sold off everything in my downtown San Francisco apartment and set off to travel full-time, visiting places I had always wanted to see. Andorra, South Africa, Vietnam, even spending a long stint in Japan learning the language. Even then I would take frequent trips to other countries just to get my travel fix.

The road can be fun, but it can also be lonely. I found myself visiting places that had no internet, or electricity for only a couple random hours per day. I would explore, but my home is in my friends spread around the world, and I was cut off from them. I was sitting on an exotic beach with new friends in a foreign country, and I would have given it all to be sitting in a tiny one-bedroom with a close friend who really knew me, laughing about how things have changed. Just one inside joke would be enough.

One of the awful parts of traveling like this is that you will never get sympathy, or even empathy for problems like this. People feel like you are living the dream, and you donâ€t deserve to be sad. The truth is that itâ€s a life like any other, with its ups and downs that are just as high and low. People just imagine the good parts, though, and you become the “crazy friend” who is doing all kinds of things they dream about doing. An inspiration. Not a person.

It becomes isolating. Smothering. Soon I was buying same-day tickets to places I had never heard of, searching out the next amazing story to share with my friends. Once you discover that itâ€s cheaper, much cheaper, to hop around the world than to pay for an apartment in one city, itâ€s easy to get caught up in the “why not?”. I found myself alone in places where I didnâ€t speak the language, trying to find something interesting, something new. But nothing was good enough.

This is when I discovered that itâ€s easy to justify spending entire days on the internet when you are doing it in foreign countries. Starved of my friends, I began seeking them out. Taking little chunks of conversation and laughter when I could between the busy moments of their lives.

Their lives.

The lives that seemed so ordered. So put-together in a way that made sense. Not like mine. The life that caused stumbling words and annoyance when someone asked a simple question like “What do you do?” or “Where are you from?”. Those arenâ€t simple questions for me, and likely never will be. Iâ€ve been ruined by the road.

Where most people work hard to try to break away from the same thing every day, I have to work to find a routine. How do I find time to work when I donâ€t know if I will have internet? How do I work out when I might be on a 30-hour flight unexpectedly? How do I stay in contact with friends and family when I donâ€t know if itâ€s even possible to get a phone as a foreigner? There is no relaxing after another hard day for me. Itâ€s just another night of figuring out a culture after being thoroughly exhausted from a day of travel and unexpected paperwork.

So I hole up again. I find a new book. I catch a friend online. I leave my room once to get food for the day at the nearest convenience store, then I lock the door. I escape, and sometimes I even forget that Iâ€m traveling. I spend so long immersed in the things that remind me of home, recovering, that I even forget where I am.

That night I feel well enough to venture out and slowly explore again, and the foreign chatter and signs I canâ€t read slap me across the face. Oh yeah. Iâ€m not home. Wherever that is, anymore.

If you are reading this, you have freedom. Freedom to get on the internet and read about whatever you want. Freedom to talk freely and communicate with people all over the world. Freedom to build things and criticize things other people have built. Freedom to live life and walk around without constant fear that a lion is going to attack you.

These things border on seeming silly because weâ€ve all had them our entire lives and take them for granted. That is one of the best things about freedom. It has already been fought for and won, so you have the freedom to not constantly think about it. You can be completely relaxed about it while you watch a hilarious TV show that some other free people built from scratch and you downloaded from the internet without paying. Then you can, if you so desire, leave some scathing reviews of it online about how they never should have bothered. Not once do you have to worry about that lion.

Freedom is something completely passive that you never have to think about. Liberty, however, is active. You “have” freedom. You “take” liberties. Liberty is what you do with what freedom gives you, if you choose to.
With freedom, you can choose to go to university and go into academia. You can shun education and get a job flipping burgers. You can start your own business that helps other people so much that they pay you a fortune to keep doing it. You can start a non-profit and build schools in third-world countries to bring them education they otherwise wouldnâ€t have the freedom to get. You donâ€t have to do anything with freedom, but you have the option of taking the liberty to do amazing things in life.

Itâ€s become commonplace for people tell me that they are inspired by me or they are jealous of my life. While I should be flattered by these things, I usually just feel awkward and donâ€t know what to say. I donâ€t feel like Iâ€ve done anything special in life. Iâ€ve just recognized the things in life I donâ€t like doing, thought about what things made me happy in life, and started building plans to cause more of the latter and less of the former. It has been and continues to be a lot of work, but itâ€s worth it to me to have interesting stories at a party.

I have good days and I have bad days. There are productive days and there are days where I donâ€t leave the bed. There are days where I build beautiful things with amazing people, and there are days where Iâ€m stuck in a metal chair for a dozen hours at an airport because of a mechanical failure. The trick is focusing on the good parts and trying to turn the bad parts into good parts, or at least amusing ones with a good story. Stuck in the airport for 12 hours? Make some friends and have some wheelchair races! Do anthropological surveys of the gift shops and what kind of people would buy those things! Write a novel! Whatever you do, donâ€t just sit there and complain about how life sucks, because that just makes it true.

You have freedom. Are you going to be content with that and the beer that helps you forget what you arenâ€t doing, or are you going to take the liberty to do what you really want in life? Itâ€s work. Hard work. But I assure you, itâ€s worth it.

Everyone has a bucket list of things they want to do before they die, and one of the highest ones on my list is going to the ten biggest parties in the world.

Iâ€m not sure when this started, but it has been an amazing adventure so far, full of amazing people and ridiculous stories. Iâ€ve already written about one of these, a week and a half long party of 50,000 people in the desert called Burning Man, and there are more to come. The list has been shifting and changing as Iâ€ve learned about new gatherings and some have fallen off the list as Iâ€ve decided they werenâ€t worthy. So far Iâ€m most of the way through my list, having completed 7 of them.

If you counted, you noticed there are actually 11 festivals on the list. This is because there is no source for this information, and what defines a “party” is completely subjective, so I’m still undecided on the last few. Glastonbury and Kazantip are paid music festivals, and Carnivale is more of a controlled parade than a party, but they all sound great. Iâ€m open to suggestions, so go ahead and leave a comment. Kazantip was unknown to me until recently, and I suspect there are others.

I find it kind of amusing that I tend to have ridiculously big goals when it comes to my personal life that take me a long time to achieve, but my career goals tend to be fleeting. The career goals have been achieved as they came to me, but life goals are something to be savored and done over a long period of time.

This is how I live my life, and I suspect you do something similar in yours. Whatâ€s on your bucket list?

Giving experiences instead of stuff is one of the most fun philosophies to live by. Instead of giving someone something else they have to maintain, you give them an amazing event and memories that last forever. It also means you get to be much more creative with what you give people, as you canâ€t fall back on crappy souvenirs.

With this line of thinking, my girlfriendâ€s birthday recently passed and I got her something very unique. An all-expenses-paid trip to North Korea. Itâ€s a country not many people have visited (or even want to), but I knew it would be an amazing experience. Even with my expectations, it still managed to amaze both of us.

The trip was never guaranteed. North and South Korea have been in a state of declared war for decades now, and even the “demilitarized zone” is heavily militarized, with armed soldiers staring each other down all day, every day. Every now and then a battle flares up and they shut down the DMZ entirely, meaning any tours are cancelled with little to no notice. This happened both the day before and the day after our trip, and somehow we slid under the radar by luckily picking the perfect day. And just in case you were going to suggest going ahead without the tour, it is strictly illegal to be in North Korea without strict supervision by tour guides at all times.

Our trip started off innocuously enough, gathering with a handful of other people at a hotel in downtown Seoul, filing onto a bus, and driving thorough the beautiful Korean countryside. Our tour guide told us intense stories about the war, pointing out guard towers along the border where the easiest spots to swim across would be and telling us about the things we would see during the day.

The first stop was a train station. There is a large, rusted out locomotive that towers over you as it slowly decays, a relic from the days when the tracks were less for show. We scrambled up to a rooftop viewing tower, where we could watch a train pass by. There is only one train that goes down these tracks, and it makes its journey completely empty every day across the border. It is merely a symbol of things that could be, potential unity between the Koreas, and they pay to ship it back and forth just to keep hope alive. There is a chain link fence nearby that has become a shrine for people to put their wishes for a unified Korea on display, and it has slowly become covered in flags, banners, and hand-written notes.

We herded back into our bus and started heading closer to the border, past the first set of armed checkpoints where they checked everyoneâ€s passport for validity as the tour guide told us in detail about why she wants her daughter to marry one of these prestigious guards. Once we were all cleared, we were led into a large museum showing what life is like in North Korea. We watched a short movie showing how literally hundreds of thousands of North Koreans starve to death each year on the streets, while the government throws massive hedonistic parties the citizens donâ€t know about. North Korea is the largest single purchaser of Hennesy in the world, spending around $800,000 per year for 10 years running, all for these parties.

There are no cel phones, no computers, and no internet citizens are allowed to use. They are taught an alternate world history where their leaders have revolutionized everything and the heathens in other countries keep falling all over themselves as the causes for all evil in the world. The police state is so all-consuming that nobody ever talks bad about the government, as the reward for turning in traitors is good enough that nobody can be trusted.

One of the worst things that happens fairly regularly is when people smuggle across South Korean soap operas on VHS tapes. To prevent this, the police occasionally cuts power to an entire block, then goes house to house checking if anyone has these contraband videos stuck in their powerless VCRs. If they do, the criminals then disappear, likely never to be seen again. These tactics all add up to an effective cutting off of the country from the rest of the world, with no communication ever made, and no other countries trusted. Imagine how hard it would be to get a DVD player into the country, much less a computer.

This also means that around 2/3 of the people in North Korea are satisfied with life, getting enough small perks from the government throughout life that it seems things are going as well as could be expected. From our perspective, though, any country with 1/3 of the population starving while the government throws lavish parties is horrific. Unfortunately, there isnâ€t much we can do.

There is a North Korean refugee who lives in South Korea now who sends aid every month back to people in his homeland. To get around the border control, he sends over care packages attached to massive weather balloons when the wind is right. What is in the packages, however, is very tricky. You could send food, but the military has caught on to that. They poison the food, then leave it where it was. When people get sick from eating it, they say itâ€s just another trick from the evil outsiders. You canâ€t send money, as trying to exchange foreign currency in the country would have you immediately thrown in jail. The same applies for any foreign goods, as almost nothing is imported. So he sends boxes of socks. Itâ€s one of the few goods North Korea imports, so it wonâ€t seem suspicious, and the finders can sell it in the market freely.

The rest of the stories in the movie were sad tales of life in North Korea, such as one of a homeless woman in the market with a sign saying her daughter was for sale for approximately 8¢. Once someone finally took up her offer, she took the money and immediately ran inside the market to buy bread, then ran back out to share it with her daughter one last time. Many other stories were shared about the horrors of daily life there, but Iâ€ll just suffice to say they were all equally waterworks-inducing and get on with the story.

A barren living room showcasing a 12” TV and a small table surrounded us when we got to the part of the tour I had been looking forward to the most, getting to talk to someone who escaped from North Korea and ask them anything we want. She was small and meek, having lived through the great famine of the 1990s that left an entire generation of North Koreans smaller and shorter than their friends and relatives. She had been relatively well-off in North Korea. She had gone to university, like her younger brothers were at the time, and she spent years in the military. Her father was even trusted enough that he was allowed to make the occasional business trip to China, which is very rare.

Unfortunately, this was also the cause of all of her trouble. During one of these business trips, her father had a heart attack and died. The government decided this was all a ploy, that he was escaping from North Korea, and demanded that the family produce the body to prove his innocence. As it is impossible to ship a body to North Korea from China, especially when you donâ€t know anybody in China, he was deemed guilty and the entire family was punished. She lost her job and wasnâ€t allowed to get another, her brothers were kicked out of university, and her mother lost the family home. North Korea had abandoned her over nothing she had done, and everything she had built her entire life toward was now gone.

With nothing left for her, she went to the border with all of her money and waited. And waited. For days. Eventually, someone walked by who offered to smuggle her over the border at night for a large fee. She accepted, and that night the man took her and another woman with a baby through the muddy valleys, barbed wire fences, and large open areas, all while being chased by barking dogs. At one point while they were wading as fast as they could across a river, the other woman dropped her child, and knew they couldnâ€t slow down to save it, so they kept running.

Once they arrived in China, she was sold off to an awkward Chinese man as his wife. This was essentially slavery, as at any point in time he could turn her into the authorities and have her deported back to North Korea, where she would be immediately executed. She lived this life for about 2 years, mothering two children for the husband who bought her. Then one night she escaped at night once again, this time slowly working through a series of countries including Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. This was about 2 years of constantly being on the run and chased by various governments. Out of the initial 17 people in her group, only 8 survived to the end, and she attributed her lengthy military training to her survival.

Having finally arrived in South Korea, she was given a small stipend by the government, which she immediately handed over to the people who had gotten her there. She was given a brief 6 month re-education where she learned how the rest of the world remembers history, how to use a computer and a cell phone, and a crash course in modern language, as she was the equivalent of someone from 1800s England being dropped in modern America without understanding all the ways language had changed.

After this brief learning spree, she was free to do whatever she wanted. Unfortunately, her life hadnâ€t given her any experience that made her hireable, so she had been working as a tour guide for the last few months, as it was the only profession where her experience in North Korea gave her an edge over everyone else.

My mind now fully blown, we wandered back to the bus without this tour guide for the most dangerous part, actually crossing into North Korea. We had to go through even more military checkpoints before watching a film about all the times groups of people had been killed right where we were, whenever North Korea saw an opportunity to get away with it. We had full military coverage surrounding us as we marched single file toward the border, which had armed military from both sides facing each other about 15 feet apart, waiting in readied martial arts defensive stances.

We filed into a conference room that was exactly on the border, half in South Korea and half in North. We cautiously walked toward the large table in the middle that marked the exact border, and bravely stepped into North Korea. It wasnâ€t an immersive cultural experience, but it was very tense and an amazing experience. We could see the physical border marked on the ground outside through the windows and take pictures with the soldier guarding the single door that lead into North Korea proper. My girlfriend took my picture, then as she walked toward him for hers, she got a little too close to the door and he barked and stomped at her to get her to stop and she squealed and jumped backward. I then took her picture with her shaken expression next to the emotionless guard, and she took mine.

Now that we had reached the pinnacle of our tour, we went to the North Korean gift shop, where they had all kinds of goods made in North Korea, as well as cheesy replicas of military outfits and weapons. After looking through the items, I decided a bottle of North Korean wine made from wild grapes couldnâ€t be passed up, and we got it to share with the friends hosting us that night in Seoul. It was… questionable-tasting at best, but completely worth the experience.

All told, it was an amazing trip where I learned about a culture I only had cursory knowledge of, and my eyes were opened to how different and horrific life can be in some parts of the world. It would be interesting to take a full immersion trip to the country sometime, even though I know I would only be allowed to see certain curated parts at specific times. Tensions with the country have been running high lately, with the newest heir to the throne wanting to make a name for himself, and Iâ€m not sure how much longer it will be possible. If you get the chance to make the trip, I highly recommend it. If you get the chance to get the trip as a gift for someone else, itâ€s even better.

That bundle of puffiness up there doing a great impression of the StayPuft Marshmallow Man is me, getting ready to head out into ridiculously cold weather. How cold? −40°, and sometimes colder. I didnâ€t specify Celsius or Fahrenheit because that is the magical temperature at which they meet. Itâ€s so cold it doesn’t matter.

Just to give you an idea of what itâ€s like walking around at these temperatures, if you threw a pot of boiling water into the air, it would turn to snow instantly. It’s typically a better idea to put things on the windowsill to cool them down quickly, as it’s more freezing than the freezer. The water vapor in your mouth freezes when you inhale, so your first breath after stepping outside is typically followed by a massive coughing fit while your lungs try to figure out how you managed to breathe ice.

I think you get the idea of how incomprehensibly cold that is, yet itâ€s just another winter here in Mongolia. Each day, if you decide you want to step outside to, I donâ€t know, get food, you are facing spending a lot of time out in this consciousness-freezing weather. If you are taking public transportation, you will be waiting out in the cold for an infrequent and unscheduled bus. When it finally comes, there will be a thick coating of ice on the inside of the bus, due to the condensation building up and freezing when it touches the window. So, good luck figuring out which stop is yours, as they donâ€t announce it.

The way Mongolians survive is by wearing a “deel” (pronounced “dell”). A deel is a massive, thick robe lined with sheep hides, all of the wool facing you with its soft, cuddly warmth. Itâ€s essentially a bright colorful tent where you are constantly being hugged by a herd of sheep, and it is very, very warm. Regardless of how beautiful they are, they are expensive, big, and fairly useless outside of Mongolia, which means they’re out of the question for me.

Iâ€d always assumed scientists living in Antarctica just stayed indoors all the time, but the fact that there are outdoor markets here year-round meant it was possible to survive in this weather, and perhaps even thrive. Piece by piece I figured out how to not get hypothermia while using what I had with some local materials, despite the completely anti-minimalism stance. I decided I liked breathing more than not having this stuff.

Step 1: Baselayers

As Iâ€ve written about before, most of my clothes are merino wool already, which comes in very useful here. Wool underwear, wool leggings, a wool t-shirt, and wool socks make up my first layer. So far, nothing new.

Step 2: Midlayers

On top of the existing warmth, I wear another pair of leggings, these made from local yak’s wool, two more pairs of thick yakâ€s wool socks, and a couple of long-sleeve shirts, sometimes also wool. Then I put on my double-thick cashmere hat, a long cashmere scarf, and my gloves, which are essentially 3 very thick pairs of gloves crammed into one pair. I also wear my fleece coat on top of all of this. That should be enough, right?

Step 3: Outerlayers

No. On top of all of this I wear jeans, a pair of hiking boots rated to −30° (ridiculously warm most of the time but here it’s not enough), and a knee-length down coat with a hood and a zipper cover to keep wind from sneaking in and icing it shut. I pull the scarf up over my face to allow me to breathe, and the only part of me left exposed is my eyes. As a result, the hot air coming out of my scarf rises up and freezes onto my eyelashes, frequently freezing my eyes shut. But Iâ€m warm.

Now that Iâ€ve described everything needed just to step outside for a second, imagine how long it takes to put all of this on in the morning before you even get to step outside. About 20 minutes every single time. Now cut to 3 hours later and imagine you just braved the icy outside world to finally get back to your nice, toasty home. You are suddenly sweltering inside your wool furnace, and are facing the same 20 minutes while you drench everything in sweat. Whee! Itâ€s a good thing merino wool never stinks.

Now I have a huge collection of very warm clothes that have even gotten me through spending a winter night outside sleeping in a yurt. Every single day Iâ€m thankful for each and every item, especially the cashmere. Itâ€s a luxury in the rest of the world, but a staple fabric here (the only thing both warm and soft enough to rub against your face for long periods), available cheaply on most street corners.

So, how does this all fit into my minimalist lifestyle where everything fits in one small backpack?

It doesnâ€t.

I may keep a piece or two that prove themselves to be amazing, like the cashmere hat, but once I leave for warmer climates this stuff is gone. There’s no point trying to keep this stuff as souvenirs or “just in case”, as I doubt I will ever be anywhere this cold again. I am essentially renting all of this stuff for a while, and once I leave Mongolia, Iâ€m leaving these ridiculously warm clothes as well to return to the minimalist lifestyle I know and love.

This. This is a feeling I know well. That weird metallic taste in the back of my throat similar to when I accidentally stay up all night, engrossed in something new. The delayed reaction time to everything, sometimes hearing things only a while after they were said, sometimes after Iâ€ve already responded and forgotten what I said. The feeling that I donâ€t want to move or do anything, but knowing that I need to keep moving or it will get much worse.

This is jetlag.

There are many theories on jetlag, and most people are happy to offer theirs. Itâ€s easier traveling west than east. Adjust your schedule before you go. Adjust your eating schedule and your sleep schedule will follow. I try different things all the time, but Iâ€ve discovered that itâ€s just powering through that always works. There are no shortcuts, so just acknowledge that day 2 is always going to suck and push forward like the first snowplow called in after a blizzard, paving the way for the others to follow.

Sometimes Iâ€m affected more than others. There have been times I arrived and slept 36 of the first 48 hours, and there have been times I walked directly off the airplane into nonstop action for a week straight without thinking about it. I have yet to find any rhyme or reason for these, so I just accept them as natural aberrations and allot time accordingly, letting people know when Iâ€m having it rough.

The times it doesnâ€t affect me, people are amazed by my abilities as a professional traveler and ask me the secret. Well, there is no secret, just work. Suck it up, recognize that you are spending some time at less than your full capability, and put one foot in front of the other.

This is one of the rough times. I went west, not east, and it still hit me like a semi truck made of sand, sliding all around me and embracing me, trying to lull me into sleep until tomorrow. Everything will be better tomorrow, right?

Probably, but there are things that need to be done today. Decisions to be made, places to go.

So I walk, and I talk through things with my friends. They laugh, they identify, and I put one more foot in front of the other on the path toward earned sleep. It will feel so good to sleep. Just not now. Now is the time for ignoring clocks and not thinking about how much more time is left. Now is the time for talking, for reading, for doing everything I can to keep moving forward.

Maybe Iâ€ve switched to talking about everyday life right now, but it certainly feels like the jetlag.

You could easily attribute it to germophobia, but Iâ€m not sure lifted toes would make anyone any less susceptible to hordes of fungal and bacterial armies on a strange shower floor. If you have at all been paying attention to the places I stay and the things I eat, you would realize “germophobe” is not a title that applies to me anyway.

Yet so it goes, showering with my toes raised from the wet ground day after day as I settle into a new place. Eventually, given enough time and comfort, they will gently rest to the ground as they are intended. Each place is different. In Japan I found many friends quickly and immersed myself in the culture and they settled in after about two weeks. India took over a month before they trusted the tile there. Most places never see the day.

Like now, in Mongolia. Iâ€ve lived here for over a month now and I realized this morning that my toes have yet to touch the floor. Iâ€ve climbed several mountains, ridden horseback through the countryside, and eaten lots of local cuisine, yet my toes still tell me that this is not home.

The locals donâ€t speak English, and my Mongolian is still atrocious. I have met plenty of expats here, but so far I havenâ€t clicked with anyone. They all seem to be biding their time until itâ€s their turn to leave, and bonding is generally done over complaining about the food and culture, neither of which is my style.

Iâ€m not giving up yet, though. Thereâ€s still more country to see and more people to meet, and Iâ€m not ready to let my toes win yet.

In a few hours I hop on an airplane to Mongolia. Iâ€ve never been before, and I know very little about it. I saw a documentary partially set there once, and it showed people living in tents with cows, trying to stay warm. While this may still exist in the country, I am headed to the largest city in the country, Ulan Bator, where I suspect they may have discovered buildings with walls.

To be honest, Iâ€m not even sure thatâ€s how you spell the name of the city. Iâ€ve seen it spelled several different conflicting ways, sometimes with a lot of extraneous vowels. This means Iâ€m not even quite sure how itâ€s pronounced.

And Iâ€m moving there today.

“This is how I live” is something I find myself saying more and more to people lately, as they ask about my lifestyle and what itâ€s like. I hop from country to country, sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for months on end. A good part of my time is just spent in transit. Hours on a bus, a day on a plane, a few minutes on a subway, a week on a train. A lot of the time they feel more like my home than any building I may be staying in.

Which makes sense, as I generally spend more time there than on any given bed or couch. Crouched over in a random airport terminal reading a book or wandering the halls with my iPhone out, hunting for free WiFi so I can figure out how I can get to my next destination.

That is another word that seems to have lost most of its meaning for me. Destination. Most people generally refer to it as a specific location, an end goal. These are kind of people who ask me unanswerable questions like “How much longer are you going to be traveling?” and “Where do you live?”. My destinations have typically become people now, as I figure out new ways of staying in touch with the kind of people that I am attracted to. Hilarious people who are making their way intentionally through life, as opposed to letting it happen to them. The kind of people who have the self-confidence to throw themselves into an absurd situation knowing they will make it out with a great story, and the humility to accept when it all falls through.

Laughing about the situation the entire time, naturally.

As we, these amazing people and myself, wind through the streets, we quickly discover that destinations are one of those things for when you feel lazy. A destination is an established place that you are going back to because it was amazing last time and will continue to be, so you can relax in knowing itâ€s a safe choice. Much more frequently we find ourselves walking, riding, and talking our way through random places, finding something that looks amazing nearby to try, once someone realizes they are hungry.

This is how we discovered the most delicious ice cream in the world, here in Berlin. We were wandering the streets between a shopping district and some sort of fair when we saw an artisanal chocolate shop. After perusing their gallery of different chocolates all wrapped in the same clear wrapper, we decided on the ice cream in a freezer off to the side. Specifically, I got the dark chocolate.

Thereâ€s a story my mother likes to tell about me, from around when I was 12 years old. I was generally kind of talkative, but during one meal I was particularly quiet as I was eating amongst everyone else. After a while of just eating in silence, I looked up and proclaimed to nobody in particular, “I. Like. Food.”

This generally holds true to this day. As such, the next few minutes after finding this dark chocolate ice cream are kind of hazy, as I kind of disappeared into eating. I do recall that it seemed like there was only enough ice cream to make it not just a cold scoop of delicious chocolate, and my friend recalls me making moaning noises. As this is all Iâ€m left with, I am forced to reconcile this by concluding that this is the most delicious ice cream in the world.

Which makes me wonder what will be in Uulaan Batoor. What will be amazing there? Who will have amazing stories and things to teach? What will be the things that I tell friends “You have to visit, just for this.” about?

I honestly donâ€t know, and I really canâ€t wait to find out.

This is how I live, and this is why I live this way.

Save money by spending more.

Yesterday I was talking to someone about how I travel the world with everything I own in one little backpack, and I got one of the standard responses, “I could never be prepared for everything with that.” She proceeded to list off 20 pairs of jeans, a big list of medical “just in case” things, and completely different outfits every day of the year. She was so freaked out on one trip when she discovered she only packed one pair of jeans that she immediately went out to buy more.

And somehow she doesnâ€t see the irony of the fact that sheâ€s never prepared. She has to buy even more things last minute because she has so much stuff that she canâ€t bring with her. She is gushing money by spending it on a million little things that never actually help because she never has any of it with her.

I just spent $200 on a single pair of pants. Considering you can get perfectly solid pairs for $50 or less, thatâ€s a lot to justify. But for me, itâ€s easy. (More about the amazing pants later.) Because I have such limited space, each thing I buy is going to displace something else and it has to be the best possible version it can be; durable, versatile, and useful. I only have one pair of pants and one pair of jeans, and this gets me through every possible scenario, and they get a lot of use. Compare that to her 20+ pairs of jeans for over $1000 total (that she likely never uses) and you quickly understand how much money Iâ€m saving by buying the best possible things for more money.

You know that dresser thatâ€s been handed down through your family for generations? You know, the solid mahogany one that is gorgeous and works just as well as the day it was made with no maintenance. The one with history that brings a smile to your face. Now think about that coffee table you got on sale at IKEA. The one made of compressed tree flakes that a corner broke off of when you bumped into it, so you repaired it with a Sharpie. The one that you could toss over your head with one hand if you wanted, but you debate whether itâ€s worth it to move it to a new place or just get a new one.

That is the difference between paying for quality and looking for the cheapest price possible. Typically, paying 50% more for something gives you something that is a joy to use and lasts five times as long. Finding the cheapest possible option gives you something that doesnâ€t quite do what it advertised, and starts falling apart a week after you getting it, quickly causing you to spend even more money to bandage together something you never really wanted to the first place so it can keep hobbling along doing not what you wanted.

Why would you put yourself through wearing ill-fitting, itchy clothes or getting frustrated at a computer because it is failing you yet again? There is an expression, “Buy it right or buy it twice.” I think this expression severely underestimates, and doesnâ€t consider the fact that you have to use the piece of crap you just bought so cheaply.

By doing a little research before you buy and getting the amazing new thing that is genuinely amazing, you are supporting the small people who did all the work to make these amazing things. Would you rather support them or the weasels who rush in after the hard work has been done and cut as many corners as possible to make it cheaper?

Iâ€m not saying you should spend lots of money all the time. Be selective about what you buy. By having everything I own in one carry-on backpack, I have limited space for everything I own. This means every purchase I have gets carefully researched and mulled over, because every single thing I buy has to earn its keep, lasting a long time through various situations that can wear down lesser things quickly. You donâ€t need to limit your space in order to follow this philosophy, you just need to change how you think about purchases.

The next time you are thinking about getting that jumbo pack of socks in a plastic bag that will be itchy, fall down within minutes, and have holes within a few weeks, think about spending more than the cheapest possible option to get some that are buttery smooth and will last you years into the future. You can get something high quality that will make you happy every time you use it, or you can end up paying more to keep replacing the same cheap crap you hate to use. Donâ€t be afraid to spend a lot on things you will actually use, then use them all the time. It will be a little painful at first, but in the long run you will save a ton of money and only have high-quality things that make you smile every time you use them.

P.S. Those pants I mentioned at the top? Outlier Climbers. They are classy enough to be solid dress pants, stretchy enough to rock climb or do yoga in, and durable enough to last for years. Some days I never want to take them off because they are so comfortable. Go. Get some. I don’t get a penny for recommending them, they are just that good, and I want to see them thrive.

How to get in shape?

Get some exercise.
Eat healthy.
Keep it up.

How to get rich?

Spend less than you earn.
Keep it up.

How to be successful?

Figure out what you would define as successful.
Work consistently toward that.
Be nice to others and help them toward their goals.
Keep it up.

“Psh, I knew all of that trite cliché crap,” you might sneer as you buy another fad diet book. “I want cutting edge details that get me there quicker!”

Unfortunately, nothing will. Every book that is released that has any decent information just rephrases these concepts in new ways, possibly introducing some fine-tuning aspect that doesn’t really matter.

One example that everyone seems to know: “Don’t eat after 8pm!”

That’s ridiculous fine-tuning that will only make a difference if you are already in olympic-level shape and need to shave off an extra 0.025 pounds for an edge over the competition. Forget it.

“Never eat eggs!”
“Eat more eggs!”

If people relentlessly argue about whether something is good for you, that means it’s fine and people want to argue about something. Go ahead and eat eggs, just don’t gorge yourself on them. Or anything, for that matter.

However, what I’m saying right now is not what people want to hear. It isn’t sexy. You don’t get to say “I followed Paris Hilton’s all-hot dog diet and lost 485 pounds in a week!” and then go right back to gorging on eggs with it magically staying off. You have to make little life changes over long periods, adding in exercise and changing your meals slowly as you figure out what you think is fun and delicious while still being healthy.

People love the details. They think it makes them look smart to spout random research studies that contradict common sense. Those studies were likely sponsored by people who wanted certain results, which is how they defy common sense. These same research-spouters tend to constantly find new information that keeps contradicting old information, and they never actually do anything.

Never listen to anyone who has lots of information but never does anything with it. The only reason that ever happens is because someone wants to seem smart, cool, or make other people jealous. None of these are good reasons, which is why the person never gets anything done.

One of my favorite stories is about Henry Ford. Yes, the famous one who invented the assembly line and brought cars to the masses. I’ve heard a lot of people make a fuss about how Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and other famously successful people dropped out of college. Henry never even graduated from high school.

At one point during his career, a big newspaper started saying horrible untrue things about him, and he sued them for libel. During the court proceedings, the lawyers tried to leverage his lack of education against him, asking him questions about history and math, trying to make him seem ignorant and uneducated.

When Henry decided he had enough, he leaned forward and said “If I should really want to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the other questions you have been asking me, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid men who can answer any question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me, why I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?”

Now that’s an answer.

The courtroom went silent after he said that, and the attorney had no more questions.

Henry Ford was a man who knew his goals, and worked relentlessly toward them. He didn’t let the details bog him down, or people who thought he was wrong. He knew what he wanted, and just kept working toward it. He wasn’t concerned about being cool, sexy, or trendy. He just cared about what he knew needed to be done, and he did it, one step at a time.

Now, what are your goals, and what is the next step you are taking to get there?