From the brilliant web comic xkcd.

Photo: alicepopkorn

It is said that when a student is ready, a master teacher will appear.

Sometimes what is to be learned comes in the form of going inward and engaging with the self. Other times, we are guided out into the world and to visit sacred places in order to learn more about who we are.

Spiritual pilgrimages have been a part of many cultures and religions since they were first conceived – think Buddha in his Siddhartha days, Jesus as he went out into the desert, Muhammad retreating to a cave outside of Mecca.

According to Robert Sheer, the oldest known spiritual travel destination is Mount Kailash in Tibet, to which pilgrimages began some 15,000 years ago.

As many people are shifting their views on the environment, their spiritual or religious beliefs, and their life’s purpose, pilgrimages are being taken to a whole new level through organized spiritual travel tours.

BNT recently spoke with Greg Roach, founder of Spirit Quest Tours, to find out what exactly is behind this increasingly popular form of travel.

BNT: How would you define spiritual travel?

Greg Roach, Founder Spirit Quest Tours

GREG: I could write pages and pages to answer this question! It’s different for everyone, but for us it means simply traveling with consciousness, respect and intention.

Consciousness of spirit and the blessings of the divine that allow us the freedom to travel (even if that freedom comes in two week blocks), respect for the sites and people that we visit, and the intention to travel as “ambassadors of peace” and to further the evolution of consciousness (our own, or others) wherever we go.

That’s an equation that’s always evolving – depending on where we’re traveling to, who we’re traveling with, and what’s happening in the world at the time.

Typically spiritual travel involves seeking out sacred sites, performing rituals, meditations and ceremonies and getting deeply immersed in the place, the people and their beliefs. This is really our goal at Spirit Quest Tours – to help our travelers discover the deep essence and truest energy of a destination.

How does Spirit Quest provide, according to your site, “life-changing, heart-opening, pilgrimages”?

We think of a Spirit Quest tour as a pilgrimage because of the intention that we, and our travelers, bring to the trip. It’s our intention to be open to the world and culture in way that’s transformative – to use the great gift of travel as a tool for transformation and awakening.

This intention helps to open person’s heart, that in turn helps to create positive change in a person’s life.

People go through profound changes on these trips. I see them become more of who they really are, more of who they want to become. They find a power they forgot they had. They become more patient, accepting, loving, open.

Why did you decide to take on the spiritual side of travel? Do you think this is a niche market that hasn’t provided many options for travelers?

Photo: alicepopkorn

My spiritual life came first, and that then led me to this career. I took an Egypt trip in 1998 and had a tremendously powerful spiritual awakening there. A “shattering experience” would actually be a good way to describe what happened to me.

The personal, emotional and psychic fallout from the trip was profound, and serious, so I began to travel to sacred places as a kind of coping and healing strategy. I spent the next several years visiting sacred sites all over the world.

In 2001, I was invited by UNESCO to present a paper at the opening of the Alexandria library (I was in the hi-tech world at the time and hold several patents in the field of interactive video technology, so travel is not my first career).

This not only gave me a chance to return to Egypt, it gave me a chance to reconnect with my friends and guides from my first visit. One thing led to another and within a year I had fielded my first Egypt tour and Spirit Quest Tours was born!

So we led our first “Spirit Quest Tours” trip in 2002 and have lead many trips to many parts of the globe since then.

The more time I spend helping people to experience the world, and helping the world to experience our people, the more I’m able to connect with the wonders of human accomplishment, the wonders of the natural realm, and the great, pervasive genius that ties it all together.

Phrases like “green travel” and “responsible tourism” have become buzz words over the past couple of years. Why did you choose carbon offsetting and the Bali Children’s Project as your way of participating in these forms of tourism?

No one but you / Photo: alicepopkorn

Travel and tourism can be tremendous forces for good, producing greater cross-cultural understanding and a benevolent redistribution of wealth, or they can further a kind of “cultural imperialism” while negatively impacting the environment.

I think it still comes down to your intention, and for me that’s simple math. These are just the right things to do.

So, for the environment, we are carbon neutral for all of our land and business activities, and we invite our travelers to join us and offset the carbon footprint of their air travel. We did a lot of research around this and decided that we liked Carbon Fund.org’s approach.

We also feel that we have a spiritual obligation to help sustain the cultural future of our host countries, so we raise money for local children’s charities in our destinations. Here again, we also carefully research the organizations we work with.

The Bali Children’s Fund is a great example of the kind of charity we like to support. They’re doing tremendous good and making a real difference in the lives of underprivileged children in Bali.

What has been your favorite, and most spiritually fulfilling, trip? Do people tend to gravitate toward this particular destination, and why do think that is?

Okay. This is a tough one. It’s a little like asking a parent which child they love best! But if I’m honest, there’s only one answer for me: Egypt.

Egypt tours are by far our most popular trip. Egypt has such a power to it, and we hear from many people who tell us that it’s a life-long dream to go on an Egypt tour, and it never fails to deliver. And it also happens to be my personal favorite.

The country itself boasts a staggering history – and the Egyptian people are genuinely warm, open and welcoming.

But most importantly, Egypt possesses a mysterious, majestic quality that people respond to at a very deep level and there is an energetic quality to the land, and the ancient sites, that acts as a powerful kind of spiritual accelerant.

Many of our readers tend to backpack their way through multiple destinations on very little money. Does spiritual-based travel have to cost more, or is it possible to experience this form of tourism on a shoestring budget?

Again, I think it all comes down to your intention. I’ve done everything from sleeping in freezing monk’s cells on plain wooden boards to staying in the finest 5 star resorts. So you can have a spiritual travel experience anywhere along this spectrum. I don’t think there’s anything inherently more, or less, spiritual about either austerity or luxury.

The question is really what’s the consciousness you’re bringing to the experience and the environment? You can be a bad traveler in a hostel or the Ritz Carlton. Likewise, you an be a positive influence in the world whether you’re sleeping a goose feathers or straw.

Spirit Quest Tours trips tend to favor the more luxurious end of the spectrum. Our travelers tend to skew a little older, so money is maybe less of an issue.

Do you find that with all of the economic and societal changes that are going on in the world today, more or less people are seeking this type of travel?

There no doubt that more and more people are attracted to this kind of travel. There is a growing hunger for deeper, more meaningful, experiences.

Collectively, the west has had years and years of distractions available to us and, by and large, distraction and consumption have proven to be hollow ways of passing our time here on this planet. I meet a lot of people who are waking up to this truth and this awareness is being reflected in choices all across the spectrum of their lives – including the kind of travel they undertake.

Meaning is becoming meaningful again, and I feel very blessed that Spirit Quest Tours is able to help and participate in this consciousness.

For more info, visit Spirit Quest Tours.

Have you taken a spiritual pilgrimage? Share your thoughts below.

School in Prek Toal / Photo: tajai

Being a foreigner in Cambodia often feels like one big web of miscommunication.

At the most basic level, this has to do with my minimal Khmer vocabulary. Even when I find the right words, there’s a good chance I’ll mangle them beyond recognition. Likewise, I hate seeing the shattered look on a Khmer person’s face when he thinks he is speaking English and I cannot understand a single word.

But the missed connections are more than just a problem of language. Even when someone speaks English well, there are still dozens of cultural potholes that we can fall into.

Here’s one that comes up all the time: Khmer people exist in a world in which everything is taken very literally.

Sometimes this manifests itself as funny cultural quirks. (You want an ice cream sandwich in Cambodia? It’s a baguette with some little scoops of sorbet stuffed inside).

But I didn’t realize how compelled Westerners are to turn everything into an abstraction until I saw their ideas constantly being lost in translation, and that can be utterly maddening for everyone involved.

Fun And Games

In session / Photo: tajai

At the Buddhist school where Jason and I teach an English class full of teenagers each week, our attempts to recreate Western education techniques fail miserably.

Pictionary seemed like a grand idea, but the students were easily frustrated, as they didn’t understand the concept of drawing anything besides a literal rendering of the word.

Given the word “party,” a Westerner might draw a cocktail glass or a disco ball, party hats or a birthday cake. One Khmer student drew four people sitting at a table. That is, after all, what parties often look like.

When trying to get her teammates to guess “teacher,” another student drew a picture of a monk, at which point her team guessed “monk” repeatedly. We suggested adding something to the picture, but she was confused – why would she draw an apple or a chalkboard or a pencil when the word was “teacher”?

If Pictionary was arduous, Twenty Questions was a complete catastrophe. The class seemed perplexed by the notion of “guessing what we were thinking.” (Why would they do that? Why couldn’t we just tell them?)

When we convinced them to start asking questions, the queries tended to be hesitant and completely unrelated. “Is it pizza?” one girl asked hopefully. “Is it a duck?” asked the next student.

Even after we corrected this habit of asking about single items and provided them with some hints, the game limped along pathetically. “Okay,” I said. “So remember, it’s not served hot and it’s something round. What could it be?”

“Is it soup?” one student asked innocently. I had to restrain an urge to hurl an eraser at him. The lesson had ceased to be about English at all – it had become an exercise in abstract thinking and logic.

Abstract Meets Logic

On days when we give up and teach by rote, the students are relieved, cheerfully repeating our monotone pronunciations.

If this happened in a Western classroom full of seventeen-year-olds, one would conclude that surely learning disabilities were to blame. But on the contrary, our Khmer students are very bright, remembering vocabulary and grammar rules quickly. Their learning style has little to do with intelligence level.

At first I thought the explanation would involve complicated notions of Eastern thought and perspectives (which it might). But I think the more likely answer is that most Khmer people can’t think abstractly because nobody bothered to teach them how.

Skills like creative thinking and basic logic feel innate to me, like an inborn part of my personality, but I’m realizing that they’re not. I was taught them just like so many other things, at school, from my family, and in my backyard, playing with the girl next door.

That playtime when we were very little girls is the first time I remember learning that an abstract “imagined world” and a real world could coexist.

For years, summer vacations were full of magic trees and blue whales swimming in the back yard, of royal tea parties and dastardly villains lurking in the basement.

The Privilege To Learn

Peeking through / Photo: tajai

In a country razed by horror just a generation ago, my Khmer students have never been taught to pay attention to anything other than the very real and pressing world around them.

Maybe it is a little like America in its infancy – I used to dread when early American literature was assigned in high school, all those texts of Thomas Payne and John Smith and Cotton Mather that speak of much passion and hard work but little imagination or whimsy.

They were men who were busy inventing a nation, and they had no time to invent anything else. I see echoes of this in Cambodia.

Paintings by Khmer artists, for instance, are not valued for originality of content or technique, but rather for their careful precision in replicating a few standard designs. They can recreate a temple backlit by a sunset perfectly, but would they ever again be able to translate their inner life onto the canvas?

It makes me painfully aware that a life like mine, filled with thought and art and invention, could only have been hatched in a handful of very fortunate countries.

On the one hand, it makes me newly appreciative of the country of my birth and desperately grateful.

It is both a heady and terrible realization to know that those deepest and most private parts of the mind, the mental pathways that serve as the foundation of one’s self, were granted by a privilege that I did nothing to deserve.

What are your thoughts on the privilege to learn? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Photo: Tina Keller

I quit my “day” job about a year and a half ago. It was the second time I left a job mostly so I could take off traveling for at least three months.

Each time provided me with insight into myself, the world, and eventually, the direction in which I should head (although it was not always so clear in the beginning).

Recently, I found myself looking through the pictures from my “first” trip – the store-fronts from above in the Islington neighborhood of London, the hostel in Zambia where five of us cooked dinner and drank cases of Castle beer over cards, the flooded river running through Stein that kept us indoors most of that September in Germany.

At that moment I received an email containing the piece The Survival Dance and the Sacred Dance.

The author, Hugh MacLeod, relates an excerpt from the book Soulcraft, by Bill Plotkin. The idea is that we each have to first and foremost set up a “survival” dance, i.e. find a job that pays the bills, whether we like that job or not.

Then we are free to search for our “sacred,” or soul dance, something that is our true calling in this life.

Plotkin writes:

Everybody has to have a survival dance. Finding and creating one is our first task upon leaving our parents’ or guardians’ home. [...] To find your sacred dance, after all, you will need to take significant risks. You might need to move against the grain of your family and friends.

Taking “significant risks” is often involved in traveling. In order to really see the ins and outs of a country you haven’t been to before, to really gain knowledge and understanding of the culture you are spending a relatively short amount of time in, it takes putting ourselves on the line in a way we rarely do at home.

Conversing in a different language, attempting to make real connections with locals, figuring out which areas aren’t safe and not having a home to hunker down in when travel gets overwhelming – these are risks we do not deal with on a daily basis.

And yet the decisions we make while traveling actually affect our decisions once we return home.

After that first trip, I was called to study health and the environment, which I can’t imagine would have happened without seeing gorgeous, but frayed African lands or an organic, vegan farm (yes, vegan) in Germany.

Moving to the beats of dhol / Photo: prakhar

After my second trip, after memories of eating incredible seafood in Tasmania, seeing parts of the former East Germany that still look like the former East Germany, and kicking it with ex-pats in a dark and steamy bars in Prague, I was called to write about it all.

But we also must hone “psychological self-reliance,” or we may get thrown by the few unfriendly, unreliable, or downright crooks we meet, and suddenly believe everyone from that particular area is that way. As Plotkin writes:

By honing psychological self-reliance, you will find it easier to keep focused on your goals in the face of resistance or incomprehension, initial failure or setbacks, or economic or organizational obstacles. And spiritual self-reliance will maintain your connection with the deepest truths and what you’ve learned about how the world works.

And what if you run out of money months before the end of your trip or realize it would be easier (and thousands of dollars cheaper) to fly to home instead of continue to journey? The decisions we have to make can sometimes be painful at best, heartbreaking at worst.

But the good news: eventually, it gets easier. Plotkin reveals the universe wants you to find your soul dance:

What your soul wants is what the world also wants (and needs). Your human community will say yes to your soul work and will, in effect, pay you to do it. Gradually, your sacred dance becomes what you do and your former survival dance is no longer need.

Somehow each of us has to take part in the survival dance as we travel, but not forget our sacred dance, or the reason we wanted to travel in the first place.

Community Connection

Need some advice on the advice of your inner voice? Check out Ian MacKenzie’s post What’s Your Inner Voice Telling You?

What risks have you taken in the survival and sacred dance of travel? Share your thoughts below.

Who wouldn’t want to visit Rome at the height of the empire? Photo: Carla216

Two hundred years ago a traveler had to wait months to traverse oceans. We now have the means to wake up in New York and fall asleep in Sydney, all in the same day.

The trend: travel is becoming exponentially more accessible to the common man.

But the tradeoff is that culture and history are being lost. Remote islanders maintain their outdated tribal customs merely to get a buck from the nearest walking wallet with a camera. Cities that in ancient times were considered quaint and romantic have become nothing more than identical concrete jungles.

We’re losing the remnants of human history with each passing day – why not find a means to time travel for leisure? Where would you go if you had a weekend in any city in any century?

1. Rome, Height of the Empire

No one in living memory has ever really seen the Colosseum. Whatever your religious beliefs, there used to be gods in that city; watching over the empire from their marbled countenance, and ensuring trade on one of the first greatest centers of business in the western world: the Roman Forum.

Imagine being able to walk down the epitome of civilization; they didn’t call the period after Christianity spread and the empire fell The Dark Ages for no good reason. ..

2. Kyoto, 16th Century

Giesha Girls in Kyoto / Photo: Anna Pearson

In the 1500’s, Kyoto served as the national capital and home to the imperial family. Tokyo (then Edo) was little more than a fishing village at this time, not yet placed on the map by the empowering of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

In modern times, many travelers journey to Kyoto to discover only remnants of what was once one of the most beautiful and mystical places on the planet. Back in its heyday, this Japanese city would have been the richest and most populated next to Osaka.

The predecessors to geisha gently walking in their kimonos, made from imported Chinese silk; visions of the mountains to the north and east not yet lost in a sea of grey; everything under ten meters high.

The only downside? Not much fresh fish or sushi: transporting the latest catch from Osaka to Kyoto took a while to perfect, and sushi was still in its infancy.

3. United States, The Old West

Back to the Future had the right idea – many people at one point imagine themselves as a cowboy or cowgirl.

What would you give to be riding on horseback on a cool summer morning in the undeveloped expanse of the western territories? Nothing for hundreds of miles in any direction, except perhaps the whistle of a steam locomotive and wandering tribes of Native Americans.

Of course, if you go back far enough in history, any land can be considered unexplored or undiscovered, but there’s a certain romantic connotation that stirs up when thinking about the American movement to the west.

It’s the promise of the unknown – traveling towards the Pacific, having uprooted everything stable, everything civilized in the east, and seeing where the Oregon Trail took you.

4. Ancient Egypt, c. 2500 BC

Imagine it like this…only newer. / Photo: liber

Watch the building of the pyramids and learn more about archaeoastronomy – skylights in the pyramids were carved so that certain constellations could be viewed at a set time of year.

Even the great structures themselves were arranged on the sand corresponding to the placement of three stars overhead. Discover the meaning of the Great Sphinx – who knows why it was built? Maybe some pharaoh just had a mutant pet.

Cairo will surely be hot and dry during this period in history, so remember to pack light loose-fitting clothing and plenty of sunscreen. If you wait around for another five hundred years, you might catch the finishing touches on Deir el Bahri.

5. London, 14th Century

“…the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages. Everything from the legal system, to nation-states, to reliance on technology, to the concept of romantic love had first been established in medieval times.”

- Timeline, Michael Crichton

Everyone wants to be a knight in shining armor or a princess fair and true. Chivalry isn’t dead. In fact, if you choose to travel to London roughly seven hundred years ago, you’ll find it quite alive and well.

A walking tour of this city will let you face the first real London Bridge, providing the only access across the Thames. Canterbury Tales by Chaucer paints a rather vivid picture of this era. Many of the buildings in London we associate with medieval times were already in place: The Tower of London, Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey.

Remember to apply insect repellant liberally, as the Black Death was known to pass through Britain and France in this century.

6. Chang’an, Han Dynasty

The origin of The Silk Road and a golden age in Chinese history, when Confucian principles laid down the foundation for society and Buddhism was just beginning to spread. Travel west along this trade route and in a matter of months, you’ll reach the Roman Empire.

7. Chichen Itza, 5th century

Although you may not be in a temple of doom, it’s wise to heed the words of Indiana Jones and “protect your heart!” As one of the largest Mayan cities on the Yucatan Peninsula, Chichen Itza was the site of human sacrifices.

It’s true that quite a few of the largest temples are very well preserved in modern Mexico, but I challenge you to find another time or place in which ancient games that could rival basketball were played. Best to arrive before the Toltec siege.

8. India, c. 600 BC

The Buddha had about forty-five good years of teaching from the time of his reaching enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree to his death. Don’t waste them. Meeting the Awakened One and learning the dhamma firsthand would be an experience for which almost anyone in Asia would trade his or her life. Try and eliminate the suffering in your heart before your departure…

9. New York City, Roaring 20’s

By the time the 1920’s dawned in New York City, the modern version of a cityscape was already formed: Macy’s department stores, the public library, Grand Central Terminal, and the then world’s tallest Woolworth Building.

Unfortunately construction on the Empire State Building won’t commence until after the crash of ‘29, but take advantage of this period in history with your choice of taxicabs or horse drawn carriages. Watch Lindbergh start his journey across the Atlantic. Gaze at the audience of women in hoop skirts and men in all too stiff and uncomfortable suits.

10. Babylon, c. 600 BC

One of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the hanging gardens of Babylon. As one of the first empires in human history, Babylon was built in the shadow of ancient Sumeria near the Euphrates River, and may have even been the source of the legendary Tower of Babel with its own Temple of Marduk.

I’m sure there are many asking “Why not see some dinosaurs?” Think a little practically in this impractical form of travel and question if you’d prefer camping in the late Cretaceous (and being trampled to death), or blending with the masses and observing the election of a Roman consul firsthand.

Besides, if a Tyrannosaur doesn’t get you, the meteor will later on.

Community Connection

You’ve been to the past, now meet travelers that we still remember tale. Read 10 Travelers and Why Their Tales Made History. Also, what other trends might we see in the future of travel? Check out 6 Predictions For the Future Of Travel.

Where and when would you go if you had a ticket guaranteeing a weekend of fun in any place at any time?

Photo: sherrattsam

According to an article in the Irish Times, a Chinese government manual has been circulating on “how to beat up troublemakers without leaving marks.”

Apparently, it’s not hard to obtain a copy of the manual; they are available in any bookshop or online.

Aimed at “urban management enforcement squads,” otherwise known as bruttish chengguan, the manual describes exactly how to go about beating up mostly unlicensed street sellers.

Tips include:

Urban management officials should seize the opportunity when there are not many onlookers around. Do not hesitate. Finish the job quickly, without giving your opponents time to prepare. The whole job should be completed within 10 seconds.

It also adds:

Several officials should always act together. Make sure to leave no blood on the opponent’s face, no wounds on the body, and no witnesses in the vicinity. Be calm and focused. Be a firm public official.

Coincidentally, China’s state council just introduced the nation’s first program on human rights called the National Human Rights Action Plan (2009–2010). The plan outlines measures to be implemented over the next two years around work, basic living conditions, social security, health, environmental, cultural and women’s rights, among others.

But activists say that recent arrests, including that of Tan Zuoren, an environmental activist from Sichuan that Amnesty International believes is at serious risk for torture, do not bode well for this enforcement of these rights.

It is believed that Zuoren’s detention was linked to “his intent to issue a list of the names of children who died in the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake along with a report blaming corruption in state officials for the collapse of a number of schools.”

How does this explicit government manual affect China’s stance on human rights? Share your thoughts below.

How do you feel when you see this ad?

Photo: Cordaid/People In Need

I’ll tell you the truth: I uttered “whoa” as I finished reading it. The ads were created by Cordaid for third world poverty.

Sometimes a nice smack-in-the-face reminder is just what we need when we’ve been complaining about not having the latest Google phone, or top-of-the-line Mac, or even a sweet pair of sunglasses (although considering I always sit on my sunglasses, I refuse to spend more than $10 on a pair. Still, that’s $10 a pair).

But some people do not appreciate this form of manipulation, or are downright offended by advertisements like these. Two recent campaigns that caused some negative backlash.

Depression Notes

The NYC Child Study Center used a ransom note as a means of portraying how depression can “take your child.”

This campaign also included a note about autism, saying, “We have your son. We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives.” The campaign was pulled because critics complained these ads reinforced negative stereotypes.

The Booby Wall

Another offensive campaign was Schick’s Booby Wall (check out another one of their not-so-gender-correct ad campaign’s about “trimming the bushes“), which is supposed to bring awareness around breast cancer via an online picture exhibit of breasts.

This campaign is still in rotation, despite the fact that some viewers think it is trying to “sex-up” cancer, that it is thinly-veiled exhibitionism, and reinforces the objectification of women.

But, Do They Work?

Some social campaigns are obviously going to be smarter than others, and I’d be hard pressed to find people who don’t agree with the Dutch Cordaid/People In Need campaign.

I mean, who can argue with water being more important than sunglasses?

The real issue is whether these “shock ads” lead to much needed awareness, or merely outrage.

What is the more effective to promote behavioural changes: shame, or by positive experiences, such as directly connecting with other cultures? Share your thoughts below.

On January 19, 1971, two oil tankers collided in San Francisco Bay, creating an enormous oil spill. After seeing the devastating damage, John Francis decided to act.

For the next 22 years, he refused to ride in motorized vehicles. He also spent 17 years voluntarily silent. During this time he walked across 48 states of the USA as well as South America, and even managed to earn a few scholarly degrees along the way.

Watch his story above, and the message he learned from his self-imposed prison.

Learn more at PlanetWalk.org

What do you think of John’s story? Share your thoughts in the comments!