No Wrong Way to Travel: A Conversation With Maggie Downs
I met Maggie when she came to a travel-writing lecture I’d been invited to give at our alma mater. That fact embarrasses the heck out of me now, especially because she listened so intently and offered what felt like genuine praise after the class. What I didn’t realize is that she should have been the one at the lectern. Years later, she continues to school me on both travel and writing.
Downs’s recently-released memoir, Braver Than You Think: Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother’s) Lifetime, recounts the year she spent backpacking solo through seventeen countries―completing the bucket list her dying mother could not.
Not only is it a page-turning read, but it’s an example of the best the travel-writing genre has to offer―exquisite detail, authentic and complicated people, cultural exchange, and emotional growth―all without the colonial perspective that too-often plagues Western writers. Most importantly, it’s a testament to the power of human connection. If more of us had the courage to leave all comfort behind and share our hearts with the people we encounter, perhaps the world would truly be as warm and beautiful as Instagram suggests.
For now, I’m thrilled to share this interview with you. Maggie and I spoke about outlasting fear, seeing the world on a person level, and what to do when the thing that makes you who you are is suddenly off-limits.
TIFFANY HAWK: The thing I love most about this book is that you admit to being afraid at the outset of the trip, fearing you’d go “scurrying home after a few weeks.” You say you’re not like the more accomplished travelers, who “wear their courage like a patch across their rugged backpacks.” I actually thought the same thing about you when I first heard about your book and the trip that inspired it. I thought, I’m not like Maggie. She’s so much bolder and braver, a woman on a totally different level. But in reading the book, it seems like you grew into that brave person little by little as you were forced to take one risk after another.
My favorite example is when you rode the boda boda motorbike with no helmet in Uganda, knowing it’s the cause of most of the country’s deaths. You say, “I will not take a boda.” Then when you had no other choice, “Okay just this one time.” Then “Fine. I’ll take bodas, but not at night.” Inevitably, one night there are no other options and “Bodas it is.” Is that the secret to developing courage? That little risks lead to a little more comfort, which can eventually leads to great bravery? Or does it just go to show how desperate one can be when traveling solo?
MAGGIE DOWNS: This is such a great question, and I don’t know if there’s a secret to developing courage. I wish there were. But it does make me think of this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”
That’s not to say I’m a hero or ever think of myself as one, but on a very general level, that philosophy resonates with me. I don’t know that I’m ever truly courageous, but I can usually outlast my fear. I just have to take the little risk first.
(I saw that Ralph Waldo Emerson on a teabag tag recently, by the way. I don’t have random quotes like that stashed in my brain.)
HAWK: Another thing I loved was that you aren’t a wealthy woman running off and indulging her senses. You sold everything you owned, and you still had to travel on a meager budget, skimping on food and staying at dodgy hostels and in strangers’ modest homes. More than just making the book accessible, it also seemed that your lack of resources actually helped you connect to people in an incredibly intimate way you may not have otherwise. I mean, if you’d had anywhere else to stay in Giza, would you have agreed to go home with Rami, a man you’d just met in a market? It was one of your more uncomfortable nights but also one of the most beautiful, with his sister Raina washing your hair and ladling water over your body to “shower” and ease the pain of your mosquito bites. Do you think the tight budget helped you have a closer connection to the world? And would you travel that way again?
DOWNS: Absolutely yes, to both of your questions.
This didn’t make it into the book, but about a year after my backpacking trip, an old friend asked for my assistance on a European road trip. He wanted me to help him exchange money, order food, check in at hotels, and basically manage all the minutia that goes into travel. In exchange, he would pay for my airfare, hotel rooms, meals, and any necessities.
Yes! Of course I said yes.
There was just one catch. This man had seen a list of “100 Places to See Before You Die” on Facebook, and that was his itinerary. He wanted to see as many places on that list as possible within one month.
The European road trip was the exact opposite of my trip around the world. I traveled in comfort and stayed in nice hotels. I ate fancy meals and never had to carry my own bag. Since we were driving, I always had reliable transportation. And it was a whirlwind. There was one day we started with breakfast in Slovenia, had coffee in Croatia, ate lunch in Hungary, dinner in Slovakia, dessert in Austria, and spent the night in the Czech Republic.
It was great, and I’m happy I did the trip. But I didn’t develop any connections with people who lived in the countries we visited. In some cases, I barely even saw the countries. I nodded off while we drove through Hungary and almost missed it.
I think there’s value in seeing the world in different ways, and I don’t believe there’s a wrong way to travel. Anything that gets a person out of the house, interacting with the world, is good and worthwhile.
But given a choice, I prefer to travel slowly, staying in hostels or homestays, meeting people and collecting stories along the way.
HAWK: You face dramatic forms of danger from nearly freezing to death in a snowstorm in Bolivia to braving the rapids of the Nile to being surrounded by gunfire during the Arab Spring in Cairo. And of course, like all female travelers, you are regularly on guard around aggressive men. Oftentimes, though, the situations that seemed menacing turned out to be entirely innocent. Like Abdullah, the Bedouin driver who stopped in the middle of nowhere, put the car in park and snapped your seat backward. For a moment you were terrified, “too frightened to move,” but ultimately was only helping you take a much-needed nap. You slept, using his jacket for a pillow, for two hours while he listens to music on his knock-off iPod. Did experiencing the kindness of strangers change the way you look at the world, and does it help you have faith in people during these angry, unpredictable times?
DOWNS: Absolutely. Before my trip, there were friends and relatives who warned me to stay away from specific countries for whatever reason, and I’m thankful I didn’t listen.
I met so many good people. I was welcomed warmly, and some of my new friends even became like family. And I don’t think this was a matter of having good luck; I believe the world is filled with kind people and I crossed paths with just some of them.
“Now I see every place on that person level. Even the places I haven’t traveled yet.”
So I don’t know how anyone could experience the generosity that I received from strangers and not be changed by it.
The biggest difference is that I used to look at the world on a larger scale. I looked at an entire country as a whole. But if you’ve ever played around with Google Maps, you know there’s more to a country than what’s painted on a globe. Zoom in and you start to see regions. Zoom in more to discover cities. And then you find neighborhoods and villages, streets, alleyways, parks, farms, swimming pools, unusual buildings. You see the route someone might take to work at the local school, and you spot the market where they pick up groceries, and suddenly you’re looking at a place on a person level.
Now I see every place on that person level. Even the places I haven’t traveled yet.
Also now I’m adamant in my belief that there are more good people in the world than bad. That’s what keeps me hopeful in tumultuous times. I know it’s true because I’ve witnessed it.
HAWK: Toward the end of your trip, you are in Vietnam, and you say, “I think if I came to Ha Long Bay as the same traveler who started my trip just under a year ago, I would have been disappointed by the more commercial, touristy aspects. But what I’m learning is that making memories involves accepting the world the way it comes to you, not the way you wish it to be.” Can you say more about that? How do you recommend travelers do that, especially when visiting a place they’ve been dreaming of?
DOWNS: It’s even more challenging now to discover and appreciate a place on its own terms, because Instagram has changed how we see locations. Now, as I’m sure you know, cities have Instagram tours, and there are specific locations or activities for the ’gram.
A great example is the Pure Lempuyang Luhur temple site in Bali, which is popular on Instagram as The Gates of Heaven. It makes for a stunning photo—two dramatic stone columns that rise into the sky, the tourist posed between them, everything reflected in this still, silvery pool of water.
Except there is no pool. It’s an illusion. The reflection is created by a guy holding a mirror beneath the camera.
If your expectation of a place is created by Instagram, of course you’re going to be heartbroken when you find out it’s just a mirror. And that’s exactly what happened to me when I went to Bali.
I had to consciously remind myself that the Bali I saw on the screen was a form of entertainment. Yes, it’s pretty and perfectly filtered, but one of the things that made me fall in love with travel is that it exists without filters. Travel is often beautiful but it’s also gritty and raw and stinky and unexpected, and that’s what makes it real. I’d much rather have the authentic version of a place than the airbrushed one.
Now I try to be more realistic when I go to a new place. I do use Instagram to collect ideas for sites to visit, but I try to avoid places that exist simply for a photo op. I’m also strategic. I like to go places in the off season, and I wake up early. It’s easier for me to appreciate a place when I’m not battling a crowd.
HAWK: Very few books have transported me to any destination as effectively as this one. One way you did that is by recounting the finest of details from the nicotine-stained couches and snoring missionaries at the Lima airport to the taste of the wine in Mendoza, Argentina ―“jubilantly spicy and snappy –ripe berries with a twist of black pepper” ―to the smell of the air rushing into your taxi in Mumbai, “thick, smoky, and bloated with humidity. It smells robust, like perfume and incense, waste and potent spices.“ I’m not only wondering how you remembered all of those details, but even more―how did you manage to home in on them in the first place, especially when there was so much to take in and you were sometimes weary from demanding travel?
DOWNS: I had a small Moleskine datebook that I purchased in South Africa, and I made a bullet-point list each day of places I went, people I met, things I ate, plus any details that seemed particularly vivid or unusual.
Prior to purchasing the Moleskine, I jotted down some notes, but I wasn’t very complete with them. I did, however, write very long and descriptive emails home to my friends and family, since it was still early in the trip and people were eager to hear from me. I reconstructed a great deal of the South America section using those messages.
Also my sister is a second-grade teacher, and her class was learning about the world through my travels. So I learned a lot about each country because I wanted to give my sister’s second-graders some fun and exciting stories, but that knowledge added additional depth and dimension to my own stories.
HAWK: Halfway through your trip, your husband, Jason, meets you in Egypt. In contrast to the early pages of the book when you feared you were going to have to go scurrying home, now you “buy the bus tickets, haggle at the market, hail taxis, navigate the Metro. I locate food, figure out directions, quickly calculate currency conversions in my head.” Jason is amazed. He says, “I’ve never seen you so in control.” Now that you’re settled down, not only a mom, but a mom trapped at home in a pandemic, do you still have that edge? If so, how do you maintain it?
DOWNS: I’d like to think I still have that edge, but I honestly don’t know if I do. And the pandemic has been particularly hard on me. I’ve often told people that travel makes me the best possible version of myself. So if I don’t have travel … who am I? That’s a question that keeps me awake at night.
But it’s important to me that my son sees a strong mother who has a curiosity for the world, even with a limited ability to go places. That’s why I’ve started taking him on smaller adventures, both to fill my well and maintain a semblance of who I used to be.
We’ve gone camping off grid. We’ve driven deep into the Mojave to hike into an extinct volcano. We’ve located remote beaches and gone meteor gazing in the desert and walked unknown trails.
My next book should be A Field Guide to the Apocalypse, because I’m getting very good at going where the people aren’t.
HAWK: It was sometimes hard for you to leave a place, especially those where you were surprised to feel a deep sense of belonging like Buenos Aires and Nqileni, a remote village in South Africa. You say, “If I’m scattering tiny pieces of my heart all over the globe, what does that mean for my sense of home? How will I ever belong anywhere when parts of me are forever in exile?” Did you ever come up with an answer?
DOWNS: The only answer I’ve come up with is to keep moving, because that’s how I find new places to fill those heart holes.
HAWK: Because of your mom’s early onset Alzheimer’s, you say, “she never got to be the woman she wanted to be.” What would you say to women who are waiting for a better time to pursue their dreams?
DOWNS: I’ve been reading this memoir called Meeting Faith: The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun by Faith Adiele. There’s a part where Faith sets a goal to meditate for an hour — and an hour later she opens her eyes. She writes, “This quiet accomplishment feels like the first real thing I’ve ever done. Meditation and mindfulness are the only accomplishments that aren't about how I package or present or sell myself, about how I jump through burning hoops or work the system or get smashed upside the head by the system. They are real precisely because they can't be celebrated or résuméd or measured by anyone else. It is me, all me, all real.”
I’m enamored by that idea of the “quiet accomplishment,” because I think most women have a lot of dreams, and not all of them have to be climbing Mount Everest.
There are small dreams, quiet dreams, that can become quiet accomplishments right now, without putting anything off or waiting for a better time. Those quiet accomplishments are the things that build confidence, because they are real and they belong to you alone. Once you have that, you can do anything. And you will.
Buy Braver Than You Think: Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime, or visit Maggie at www.maggieink.com.
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