What I talk about when I talk about travel

Home is where the heart is, which begs the question: where is my heart?

I was last writing to you from Hawaii. Now, I’m coming to you from Mexico City, where I’ve been logging 15-20,000 steps a day, mostly in flip flops. Most days, I’m walking from cafe to park to wine bar to bed and back with a vintage Eden Place tote bag from Abena in tow. I’m usually sweating and carrying an extra shirt just in case, along with my laptop, a Muji pen, a Field Notes notebook, extra charging cables and an external hard drive.

One of those “This time last year” photo notifications jogged my memory to the fact that I…was doing basically the same thing exactly one year ago. Amit and Sabina were getting married here. I arrived a few days early to work from the Meta Mexico City office and got some face time with my then-boss, Aldo, during which I channeled the courage to tell him that I wanted to be laid off (more on that).

This wish was granted 2 months later, but not before celebrating a post-wedding “friendmoon” in Oaxaca, seeing Sajeeb perform at Coachella, spending a week in LA with Myrna, and wondering extensively what I’d do after almost 5 years at Facebook.

Wondering extensively, featuring Field Notes and Muji pen (Oaxaca, April 2023)

A lot has happened in the last year since my last visit to Mexico City, which I’ve come to realize has included 5 months of travel. That’s…a lot.

A younger version of me didn’t have “traveling the world” on his life’s vision board. Honestly, even a present version of me doesn’t really dream of it. But I do find myself on planes strangely often for someone who strongly identifies as a homebody. 

But of course, home is where the heart is, which begs the question:
Where is the heart?

In the search for mine, I often find myself at the airport, responding to the call of friends, leaning into adventure and charging up my curiosity. Along the way, I always wonder, “What do you do all this travel for, Ankit?” I still don’t have The Answer, but I’m more interested in the questions.

Today, I look back at how I’ve ended up where I’ve been lately to make some sense of it all. Join me.

I’ll return to Brooklyn after this, where I plan to sleep in one bed for 3 months before I take off for Europe at the start of summer. (Photo by Aldo over lunch, my former boss, a year after I told him I wanted to leave Facebook, also over lunch)

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Seeds of adventure

I have no idea how others find themselves on planes. I wonder about this all the time when I’m at the airport people watching. Seriously. Where is everyone going!

Since I’m talking to myself, I’ll start:

A few times a year, I find myself with an invitation to go somewhere. Sometimes, it’s an obligation. Other times, an opportunity. Occasionally, both. Lately, there’s been a lot of weddings, but over the last few years, the invitations have come in a lot of different forms.

Let’s look at my last few departures from home, starting with the one I’m on right now.

March 2024: Cabo, Honolulu, and Mexico City, with pit stops in LA and SF

JFK > SJD > LAX > HNL > SFO > MEX > JFK

Most recently, I was asked to dogsit for a friend of a friend in Hawaii. This was probably a “once, ever” sort of invitation: free home with an office and a car to cruise around Oahu in exchange for dog care and getting there.

As tempting as this was, I felt a lot of pressure within myself to keep my foot on the gas to keep momentum going on projects and commitments that required focus for me. For weeks, I was tempted to decline what felt like a distraction, but I told myself if I hit specific goals by mid-February, I’d feel more confident that I could go to Hawaii for 16 days without losing my footing. This was good fuel to keep me focused. It worked.

Shortly after I confirmed, Erin mentioned her sister, Amanda, might be looking for a sublease while I was gone. We facetimed over coffee shortly after, and I learned quickly that Amanda respected coasters and plants the way I would wish for anyone staying in my home would, but she needed a place for a week longer than I was planning to be gone. Having someone else stay in my home isn’t something I take lightly, so I decided I’d rather find a way to make this work than search for a subletter who fit my dates perfectly.

Where could I go between Hawaii and New York that made sense on the map, to my current zero-income psychology¹, and to my desire to not slow down on my work? (“But, Ankit, what is work for you, exactly” ↗)²³

Amit, Sabina with a side of Mexico City

Amit and Sabs just moved to Mexico City and lovingly reminded at least weekly that where they were staying had a second bedroom with my name on it. I looked to see if the NYC > HNL > MEX > NYC route made any sense at all as far as the cost of travel and fatigue. It did. I called them to propose the dates, stipulating that as much as this would be fun(!), it was also a work week(!) After thinking about it for a day, it was a go

A few days later, I get a message from Noah, inviting me to join for a few days of the inaugural retreat for his new business, Wingfoil Travel, in La Ventana, a small beach town outside of Cabo. He had a unclaimed bed in his lodge and saw a good chance for us to catch up and further fulfill his plot to convert me into a wind and water sports enthusiast. He didn’t know this, but the dates for this invitation fell immediately before my Hawaii trip. I told Noah to give me 24 hours to think about it.

Laptop, tote bag, ATV and friendship in tow

Learning to wingfoil was not in my life’s vision board honestly (sorry pal <3), but Noah and I had a lot of catching up to do. We usually only caught each other over long voice notes and spontaneous phone calls while folding laundry, so the invitation to enjoy quality time with an old friend perfectly scheduled before a trip I already planned felt like a cosmic sign. I did feel overwhelmed by the schedule creep of this trip, but I talked it through with some friends that understand what’s important to me, and the “yes” came through very clear.

The cosmic signs continued to present themselves when I went to adjust my flights to include Cabo, as my new itinerary was both very budget friendly and included an overnight layover in LA and an extended morning layover in San Francisco—both homes to at least a handful of loved ones.

I messaged Shephali to see if the kids were free for some quality time with Anki Mamu (“Come straight to our place when you land”). I asked Myrna if her schedule had space for me. (“Wait, can you stay longer?!”). Could Ross and I enjoy a meal? (“What are you hungry for?”) Maybe Zach might want to do a run together (“How long are we talking?”). I messaged half a dozen friends in SF to see who would be free to receive me for a 7am coffee, city stroll and/or park sit while I killed time before my 1pm departure. It was all a little bit of schedule tetris, but the exciting kind.

All because I said yes to dogsitting.

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Kami, Tania, Bhavani, Parakram, Akshat, Karan, and Motiraj; the morning we reached Base Camp (October 2023)

Fall 2023: Bombay, Everest Base Camp, Bali, London, with cameos in Tahoe, Malibu, and Dubai

JFK > SFO > DXB > BOM > KTM > DPS > LON > LAX > JFK

Last year, Akshat planned a fully organized trek to Everest Base Camp (also a “once, ever” sort of invitation). All I had to do was get to Kathmandu and block out 3 weeks of my life. That’s “all.” It felt like an invitation I’d be silly to say no to, but it felt like a lot, especially at a time when I felt unclear on what I was doing with (parts of) my life. Still, I was torn.

I brought this up in a conversation with Grace when she was visiting New York, to which she responded: “Well, if you did end up going on this trek, you’re not far from Bali. Oh, by the way, we [the family] are moving to Bali in October, a few weeks before your trek ends! Stay with us!”

I don’t know if she expected me to take her so seriously, but the idea of quality time with one of my favorite ex-colleagues and her two adorable daughters on an island after trekking 80 miles honestly sounded like a dreamy way to slowly transition back to some semblance of the real world. Okay, less torn.

Bali in a frame

The only schedule constraints I had to account for were Benny and Sweta’s wedding a few weeks before the trek and Aneesh and Sarika’s wedding a few weeks after, and the idea of packing and unpacking for both of those trips if I were already doing this big one to Nepal and Indonesia was exhausting to even think about, so I started thinking…

Bombay had been on my mind for a while. I hadn’t seen my friends there since before the pandemic, and the city had seen so much change. Not to mention, half of the group going on the trek was coming from there. How about two weeks there between the wedding in Tahoe and Kathmandu? This is starting to make a lot of sense. (Turns out one of the flight options had an overnight in Dubai, so I messaged Sarah to see if dinner and breakfast was in the cards. It was.)

I was intending to see my sister in London for her birthday in November, which was…sort of on the way back from the Eastern Hemisphere, and I could make the dates line up enough to celebrate her early. How about ten days there between Bali and the wedding in Malibu?

Dubai night with Sarah, Bombay morning with Akshat and Zubin, Bali sunset with Grace and Emie, London underground with Poorvi and Ayaan

In a way, blocking out 2 months for all of this felt more sensible than 3 weeks for the EBC trek alone.

Sold.

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2021-2022: “Ankit, use your PTO”

In past lives, I frequently found myself on work trips. These were usually between California, New York, London, Mexico City and India—all places I’d happily spend extra time, so I’d usually piggyback on the expensed flight if I could and take a few days off after and make a whole trip out of it. 

Outside of these work-trips-turned-nonwork-trips, I was notoriously bad at using my paid time off (PTO), so every year or so, I’d find myself in a conversation with my boss at the time about how I need to use my days off if I didn’t want to lose them. 

In this past life, these “Ankit, use your PTO” conversations stressed me out more than the job itself. “Time off” was always a weird concept to me. I understood not working, but what do you do when you have time off? I needed a hook with more direction than, “You have time. Go somewhere.” So I sought inspiration.

When Twitter (RIP) didn’t feel like such a void, I tweeted about this, which prompted a spontaneous phone call from Scott, who invited me to join him as a camp counselor at Experience Camp in Maine. Four days later, I got a message from Hao, who invited me to join him in Lisbon. I guess I knew how I was using my PTO. 

I still don’t fully understand why Hao was in Lisbon, but we lived together in our early years in California, were long overdue for a catch up and he had an apartment and car available to us at no cost.

Almost a year later, I had another, “Ankit, use your PTO” conversation. This time, I looked to Instagram for inspiration—and with a marginally clearer sense of what I was looking for (progress!)

An adevnture that never was

After sitting with a bunch of ideas and suggestions, it became obvious that planning a trip was more than I had space for at the time.

I ended up taking the time off and staying home. This was just a few weeks after I moved myself, my clothes and my plants into an empty, unfurnished apartment in Fort Greene, I think the fatigue was my body’s way of telling me to take a moment to chill and settle in. 

In the moment, I felt like I “failed” some life test around how to use time, how to plan a trip or how to enjoy myself, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that I had opened space for an invitation to myself to really be in my own neighborhood and dedicate some time to making my new apartment feel like home. 

This idea of using PTO to stay exactly where I am prompted a subtle revelation to me: Travel wasn’t about going somewhere else. It was about going to myself. 

The Holstee Manifesto: “Getting lost will help you find yourself.” (There really are no original thoughts.)

Later that year, I found myself with a quiet holiday season at the end of 2022 and saw a good chance to take some PTO (without my manager telling me to! More progress!) I spent it at home again. This time, however, instead of it feeling like some compromise, it was intentional, and I took ten days to pour myself into a writing retreat from my apartment. It didn’t take an airport, but I definitely went somewhere and ended up more at home than before.

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Weren’t we talking about travel?

In a way, yes. But no, not really. This is about relationships.

When I started writing this piece, I thought it would be about navigating new and unfamiliar places and how to find the parts that speak to you. I planned to say more about how travel isn’t about escape so much as it about bringing your life with you to new places; about what it means to be culturally fluid across different worlds; about minimizing your footprint when you’re temporarily in a place that other people call home every day. I even wrote a whole rant deconstructing the “personal brand” of travel in our current social media era and the obvious and less obvious absurdities of traveling for image.

There was going to be a section about the costs of context switching: how to keep your relationships back home alive while you’re away for a while; about keeping your diet, health, fitness, sleep dialed in while out of sync with your normal routine; about how prepare for an adventure and create space to integrate your experiences into who you become when you return.

But for the most part, all of these things were downstream of relationships. Every single thing I could write about travel was really in some way a reflection of being with my loved ones, choosing relationships over convenience and learning what it means to say yes.

So all those other parts got edited out. Maybe I’ll write about travel more tactically another day, but today, this is what I’m talking about when I talk about travel.

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"the water almost looks like a blanket that you could pick up and pull further over your feet" - @chetporter (who has a new album that you should listen to!)

#blessed

I’d be remiss writing a piece like this without acknowledging what’s obvious: it’s easier to do what I do when you’re single and childless, male and in good health, rich with time and friends who happen to be in all these places.

1. ICYMI: We talked about money in my last piece here.

2. What is my work right now?

I notice I have a funny experience writing “work” when describing what I’m doing right now. I’m not employed, looking for a job, starting a business or hustling for income, but my phone stays on “Do Not Disturb” for most of the day.

I’m writing a lot. I’m publishing regularly. I’m in a zero-to-one phase developing a new creative project I’ll talk more about soon. I’m training for a half marathon, actively working through some family challenges and rewriting some long-held narratives around relationships, work, technology, money, purpose, community and more.

My days feel fuller than they did when I had a “job.” It’s a little less legible for a resume, and I’m not formally accountable to anyone besides myself, but it’s work.

3. What is work, really? <tangent>

To me, work is not a job. Work is where I channel my energy.

(I feel like this perspective is more colloquially understood, but I write this with serial W-2, LinkedIn types in mind.)

My energy flows towards a lot of things, and the sum total of it all is a reflection of what I value and how much of myself I’m willing to let go of. In my experience, what I’m willing to give and what I have space to receive continually prove themselves to be two sides of the same coin.

Questions I ask myself when I think about where I’m channeling my energy:

• What gifts do I give away? (What am I willing to receive?)

• What am I choosing to sell of myself? (What am I willing to buy for myself?)

• What am I excited to share with others? (Where am I open to connection and collaboration?)

• What do I choose to keep to myself? (What am I protecting or holding sacred?)

• How do I choose to serve? (Where do I forget myself?)

These questions help me assess how I’m actualizing intention, consider what I work for, who I’m becoming through my work. It expands “work” from a 9-5 burden to a way of living and expression. Relationships are work. Health is work. Perspective is work. Being a part of anything at all is work.

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