Raam Dev

Hello, future.

Carrying the Weight

Summit of Mt. Monadnock

It was below freezing and I was sweating profusely. A light snow dusted the ground, hiding small patches of ice that littered the rocky trail and made each step questionable.

It wasn't supposed to be a tough hike, but the weather, the extra clothing, and the weight on my back were all adding to the challenge.

I generally hike alone and for a short trek like this one I wouldn't have brought a backpack. However, a friend came along this time and insisted that one of us bring a bag for food, water, and extra warm gear.

I always prefer a challenge so I asked to be the one to carry the bag. But halfway up the trail, sweating, and out of breath, I suffocated my ego and handed the bag over to my friend.

Without the bag, my body felt so light. I began hopping from rock to rock, practically running up the mountain without so much as an elevated heart rate.

The freedom was exhilarating.

And then I landed on a patch of ice and almost slipped. Continue reading →

33 Moments of Introspection

Pine Trees in Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest

"What if I had a clone? What if my clone wasn't complete and he needed some kind of information that would help him better understand who it means to be me?"

It was an odd thought, but I went with it anyway. I was sitting in an office, peering into the darkness that enveloped the city of Boston. The shapes of buildings were outlined with tiny lights and red, green, and white colors flowed on the streets below.

"What would I tell a clone to help him better understand me?" I began jotting down specific points that came to mind and stopped when I reached thirty-three.

"Was this me? Did this list convey the essence of what it's like to live in my head?"

Over the course of the next few days, I went back to that list and spent time pondering each point. I jotted down stories, described examples, and otherwise tried to define what each thing meant to me.

Now I'm sharing that list here with you in the hopes that you will glean something useful from it. Continue reading →

Love is Enough

Love is Enough, seen in a remote Himalayan village in Nepal

"Who's that Buzz guy?"

"Buzz Aldrin? He was one of the first people to walk on the moon."

She was surrounded by space geeks, asking questions about space history that must have seemed trivial and obvious to everyone around her. But she wasn't judged. She wasn't laughed at, criticized, or looked down upon. Instead, her curiosity was enthusiastically embraced and nurtured.

Five people stood around the kitchen and took turns answering question after question. Five people who only a few days earlier were total strangers. This, I realized, is why love and passion are so important to humanity.

Their voices began to blur and their outlines became fuzzy as I began daydreaming of a world where every person was just as compassionate and caring. A world where strangers would regularly come together to share knowledge and exchange ideas. A world where what mattered wasn't power or prestige, but pure, simple, love.

But let me back up a little and explain how this group of strangers, including myself, came to be living together under the same roof. Continue reading →

Reaching Out to Mother Nature

Last week my nephew celebrated his first birthday and over the weekend I attended two birthday parties for him. I watched as he opened numerous presents and found himself surrounded with more toys than he could possibly know what to do with.

He played with each toy for a few moments until he seemed to become so overwhelmed by everything around him that he reached up for his mother (my sister) with open arms. The abundance was too much. He just wanted simplicity.

It was easier to return to the familiar comfort of his mothers' arms than it was to indulge in the excess of toys surrounding him.

I realized that like my nephew being surrounded with toys, we often surround ourselves with more than we know what to do with and, as a result, we become physically and psychologically overloaded.

Stress, feelings of isolation, boredom, a missing sense of purpose and direction, confusion, self-doubt, a lack of enthusiasm -- all of these are evidence of living with more than we can handle. Continue reading →

Taking Initiative and Instigating Change

After reading my last blog post, Pemala, a Nepali friend and a regular reader, left the following note on my Facebook Wall:

Reading "The Revolution Starts Here" was very insightful. It gave me the moral support that is lacking in our community.

I have had enough with the Nepali community leaders in Boston who were fighting among each other for position. I took a stand and voiced my opinion in front of everybody. I thought, I could go home and talk about it or I could take a stand and let everybody in the community know what was happening.

I am planning to gather [the] younger generation for suggestions to improve the organization and have more youth involvement. And, I am going to propose that they help organizations like Nepal FREED who is doing something worthwhile for Nepal.

It was incredible to see how writing a blog post could help someone feel motivated to take action and possibly translate into things that would help the children I visited in a remote part of the world several months earlier.

Pemala's message caused me to really dig deep and consider the far reaching effects of our actions. It made me analyze the reasons for my own inaction and gave me the missing piece to the puzzle of why I've been feeling stagnation in my life since returning from my trip overseas.

Her message allowed me to see the role initiative plays in instigating change. Continue reading →

The Revolution Starts Here

"He had an Afro and he was wearing big pink sunglasses... he said he was a Vietnam vet and that he had been stocking up on canned food in his trailer-park home for the past two years."

"I have no idea why you would be talking to a drunk guy with pink sunglasses at the bar, but anyway what was he afraid of? What was he planning for?"

"He just came up to me and started talking. He said there's a revolution coming and the whole world is going to change. He's getting ready and planning for the worst. I wasn't really taking this guy seriously, but I've heard a lot of people talking about a revolution. Rumors mostly, but lots of people seem to think something is going to happen."

"Yeah, there's a lot of messed up stuff going on and something needs to change. I don't know. A revolution might happen but I don't think people are going to be on the streets with guns shooting and robbing each other." Continue reading →

Raindrops of Change

Monsoon rain shower in Hile, Nepal

Imagine a city where every resident was someone who had changed the world in a big way -- Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Alexander the Great, Mother Theresa, The Wright Brothers, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, and any other famous person who has ever changed the course of history.

Now imagine you're strolling around that city and watching all those great people walk around, except that none of them know who they are; none of them realize the impact they're going to have on the future of the planet.

Right now this world is full of people like that. People who are powerhouses of potential. People with an incredible capacity for greatness but who walk around seemingly unaware of that fact, unaware that they have the power to become passionate leaders, creative innovators, magical healers, and moving motivators.

People like you and me. Continue reading →

Revealing Reality by Considering the Context

A few hours after arriving in the United States, I tried recording a short video to capture the strange feelings and emotions that I was experiencing, but my thoughts felt too incomplete and scattered. Now that I've had two weeks to process everything, I feel like I can articulate what's going on a little better.

On my last day in India I was taking a taxi to the airport when I felt the driver suddenly tap the brakes. I looked out the front window to find a seven-foot bull strolling up the highway into oncoming traffic.

The cars were all traveling at high speeds but they barely slowed down and instead just swerved around the giant creature. It was as if they were simply avoiding a pothole. That's when I realized that I wasn't even surprised by what I had seen. Continue reading →

Homesick in a Strange and Privileged Land

I was holding back tears and trying to swallow intense emotions that were bubbling to the surface. The room was dimly lit and the stadium-style seats were the most comfortable chairs I had felt in more than six months. I looked at the cup of coffee in my hand and, closing my eyes, I slowly touched it to my face and felt the warmth of its contents.

Only 24 hours earlier I had been in another country, a place on the opposite side of the world so foreign and so different that it was easy to forget that I didn't just arrive from another planet. Obvious differences stood out, but it was the subtle differences that really made the biggest impact.

The first thing I noticed was the faster pace of life. It's not so much the physical speed of things, but pace at which you're expected to respond to and process information. Simple things like paying for something at the register or answering the telephone felt hurried or rushed. Even conversations seemed needlessly accelerated. It feels as though you're expected to think, act, and operate like a machine. Continue reading →

9 Nomadic Principles for Everyday Life

Flowers in the Himalayan Mountains

As the speed of my life comes to a screeching halt in the United States, I find myself desperately searching for something of my nomadic lifestyle to hold onto -- some way to apply what I've learned without traveling.

I wrote these nine nomadic principles as a way to remind myself how to stay nomadic even when I'm not moving around -- a way to keep that freedom alive inside regardless of how limited I might be location-wise.

You don't need to be a nomad to apply these lessons and they're just as relevant for a non-traveler as they are for someone who spends their life roaming the planet.

1. Embrace change

Change is the only constant in the universe. If your life is full of routines, it can be extremely easy to forget how natural it is for things to change unexpectedly. Change is normal. Resisting this universal constant guarantees you will encounter stress when things don't go according to plan. Continue reading →

Starting the Journey to Ithaca

Boat on the Beach in Gokarna, India

In the past six months I have lived in four countries and called more than twenty-six places home. I've traveled more than twenty-five thousand miles using cars, buses, jeeps, trains, airplanes, rickshaws, taxis, motorcycles, and my own two feet.

I've gotten lost walking at night in Bombay. I've watched thousands of giant bats descend on the great city of Udaipur. I've walked through clouds, surrounded by fields of corn and I've climbed ten-thousand feet into the Himalayan mountains, covered in sweat, sand, and sunburns.

Sitting down to write a summary of the most incredible six months of my life, I found myself faced with the task of telling a story of epic proportions, one that felt on par with the Lord of the Rings and The Odyssey. I considered limiting it to the story of my inner journey, but then I realized that was even more grand than the physical one.

As I reminisced and pondered what to write, my journey reminded me of these words by the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, written almost exactly one-hundred years ago: Continue reading →

The Lifestyle of a Minimalist Digital Nomad

Working at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

"How many bags?"

"Just one" I replied, motioning to the small 30L backpack on my shoulder.

"And how much luggage?"

"None... just this one bag."

It's as if people can not comprehend someone traveling with only one bag. Everyone, from the airline ticket attendant, to the taxi driver, to the clerk at the hotel, seemed to insist that I must have more luggage.

I sat down in an empty section of Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur International Airport and put my bag down on the seat next to me. As I watched people wrestle with multiple suitcases, I looked over at my lonely bag and remembered how different my life used to be. Continue reading →

Frugal Travel Report for August 2010

This is the sixth and final report detailing my travel expenses during a six-month trip through India, Vietnam, and Nepal, as outlined in The Plan: 6 Months, 3 Countries, and $3,000.

Frugal Travel Reports
March 2010 (includes Pre-Travel expenses)
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010

***

At the beginning of the month, I took an unplanned three day trip to visit two small towns in the mountains north of Kathmandu where an NGO is helping build schools for children in Nepal. That last minute decision turned out to be the highlight of my entire six month journey.

After returning to Kathmandu, I went with a friend to Pokhara where we spent six days trekking in the Himalayan mountains. When we were finished, my friend returned to Kathmandu but I stayed behind to spend an extra week in Pokhara.

I then took a bus back to Kathmandu where I spent one week in the now familiar backpacker district of Thamel. Of the eight weeks I've spent in Nepal, five were spent in Thamel. Although it's probably one of the most expensive places to spend time, it removed any need for transportation and made getting online easy and (at least somewhat) reliable. Continue reading →

Exercising Life with Fun and Play

Kids playing football in Pokhara, Nepal

It's one thing to see less fortunate people on the street and have the urge to help them, but it's something else entirely to have almost one hundred children staring at you hoping that you'll do something to improve their future.

It was my second day visiting the schools in Nepal and I had been greeted like a king and given my first-ever public speech a few hours earlier. I was feeling extremely moved and inspired by how I might be able to help so many people.

As I hiked from the first village of Kahule to the even more remote village of Bhalche, the strangest thought came to me: How could I fulfill this urge to dedicate my life to helping improve the world and still justify skydiving?

For that matter, how could I justify doing anything recreational or fun that wasn't directly related to helping others? Continue reading →

Fear of Failure as a Barometer for Success

Fully loaded soda bottle truck in Kathmandu, Nepal

"Fear of failure is a ticket to mediocrity. If you're not failing from time to time, you're not pushing yourself. And if you're not pushing yourself, you're coasting." - Eric Zorn

That quote came across my screen after having spent almost twenty minutes aimlessly passing time on Facebook. I suddenly realized that for the past few weeks I haven't been pushing myself or risking failure. I've been coasting.

Case in point: I wasn't going to publish anything on this blog today. I had already decided that my next post would be on Friday. It was easier that way. I had no idea what to write and I was relying on inspiration to strike at some point between now and then to write a great post.

The truth is that ever since releasing my first ebook and visiting the schools in Nepal, I've felt the pressure from my inner perfectionist to continue outdoing myself. Continue reading →

Taking Responsibility For Our Creations

Bamboo Waterfall in Kahule, Nepal

Many people had told me that taking an airplane would be safer and on several occasions I found myself wondering if I should've listened to them. The eight hour ride on a tourist bus between Pokhara and Kathmandu wasn't the most comfortable, but that's what I get for spending $5 to take me more than 280km (170+ miles) over mountains where the roads were littered with evidence of total failure.

As I gazed out the window and watched the landscape change from city to mountainous countryside and then back to city, I couldn't help but feel saddened by how enthusiastically the cities seem to grow. So much pollution, waste, and destruction follow in their path leaving the Earth malformed, blackened, and bare.

It's the monsoon season here in Nepal and the rivers are raging. Small streams of water trickle down everywhere from the green mountains. The locals often cut the bottoms off old plastic bottles and use them as funnels to create small water spouts. More commonly though, they use flat stones or pieces of bamboo sliced in half to create channels that direct the trickling streams into neat little picturesque waterfalls. Continue reading →

Why You Matter The Most

Sunset over Lake Pokhara

For days after returning to Pokhara, my stomach was upset and my body refused everything I fed it. My head was on cloud nine and my body was endlessly tired. My inner energies were dissipated and my life felt out of whack.

Any attempt to reply to emails, work on writing, catch up with social media, or even explore the city, was met with solid mental and physical resistance. All I could focus on was eating healthy and resting until my health improved.

I could have struggled. I could have sucked it up and battled through it. I could have ignored the fact that my temple was in need of repair and instead focused on work. I could have ignored my own needs and told myself that I needed to sacrifice.

But what good would that have done? How would being selfish towards myself help me in my quest to help others?

The words "be the change you wish to see in the world" are easy to say, but the danger behind the simplicity of those words is that changing ourselves is not an easy task. It's a complex and oftentimes difficult endeavor. In fact, it can be so difficult that neglecting ourselves and choosing to help others is often the easier option! Continue reading →

Losing Focus in the Himalayan Mountains

View of the Himalayan Mountains

I had only been in the small village of Hile for two nights and yet I felt myself getting emotional about leaving. Was it because we had stayed an extra day to help the owner repaint the exterior of her guesthouse? Or was it because the owner was so nice that she made it feel a lot like home? Was this what being homesick was supposed to feel like?

We had trekked from one village to another for five days, climbing more than 2000m (6000ft) to a height of over 3200m (9600ft). My 22kg (50lb) backpack became heavier with each step and on day two I questioned my ability to make the rest of the trip. On the fourth day, we descended down seemingly endless stone stairs for almost eight hours.

I was traveling with my new friend and trekking guide, Tashi Sherpa, along with his 21 year old cousin who had climbed Mt. Everest four times and reached the summit twice. Tashi, who is an incredibly knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful guide, recently started his own trekking agency. If you're looking for a trekking guide in Nepal, I highly recommend you contact him.

This six day excursion ended up being more important than I had imagined. It reminded me how easy it is to lose focus of what matters and it allowed me to see a side of Nepal much different from what I observed while visiting the schools in Kahule and Bhalche a few weeks ago. Continue reading →

Discovering the Real Nepal

Nepal FREED - Ainshelu Bhome Kahule 7 School Welcoming Raam

If I could take the past four months of traveling through third world countries and compact them into two days, it wouldn't even begin to explain how life-changing, eye-opening, and humbling the past few days have been for me.

I'm still digesting everything so I hope you'll forgive me for not going into too much detail, but it should be enough to say that I gave my first, second, and third public speech, entirely unprepared, in front of almost one hundred children and adults, after climbing up through the clouds to the highest elevation I've ever ascended on foot.

I was welcomed and treated like a king.

And what had I done to deserve all this? Nothing.

I had to keep reminding myself that although I hadn't done anything to deserve such a grand welcoming, my ability to reach the world through my writing gave me a potential that none of them had; I had to constantly remind myself that my life contains such an abundance of opportunity that I needed to find some way to give it back to them. Continue reading →

Frugal Travel Report for July 2010

This is the fifth in a series of reports detailing my travel expenses during a six-month trip through India, Vietnam, and Nepal, as outlined in The Plan: 6 Months, 3 Countries, and $3,000.

Frugal Travel Reports
March 2010 (includes Pre-Travel expenses)
April 2010
May 2010
June 2010
July 2010
August 2010

***

By the time you read this, I will likely be on my way into the Himalayan mountains visiting a small village where an NGO is helping build and fund schools to improve education.

In my previous post, I asked for help coming up with questions for the tour and your timely feedback was much appreciated. The generosity, wisdom, and helpfulness of this community never ceases to amaze me; thank you.

***

Now it's time for yet another embarrassing report of my expenses for the past four weeks. This is where I literally put my money where my mouth is and expose to the world just how "frugal" I have really been.

I say embarrassing because while you're reading this, I will be visiting a village where my expenses for this month could have paid a school teacher full-time for six months. Continue reading →