Travel is often a leap of faith...gulp!

In my early days as a global lecturer, I was invited to Prague to speak to parents at one of the international schools. Since my hosts lived in a housing district near the school, about a twenty minute drive from my hotel, it was more convenient for me to simply grab a cab on my own than to have someone come and fetch me.

It was early evening when I set out, and the light was fading fast.  There had been no time for dinner, so the tantalizing smells wafting over from the street food stalls, including the busy Czech sausage wagon next to the taxi stand, made me hungry. As my taxi driver did not speak a word of English and looked at the map I gave him with skepticism, a stressful nausea quickly replaced the hunger pangs. Without a cell phone (not that I would know who to call anyway) I felt like I was heading out to sea without a paddle.

Within seconds, or so it seemed, the populated part of the city vanished along with the daylight. Viewed through my nervous eyes, the city’s ‘outskirts’, the kind of scenery I probably would have enjoyed immensely if I was rolling by it in a train, looked ominous. Heart racing, I became fixated on only one thought:

“I hope to hell he’s taking me to the school!”

I quietly began to chant my new travel mantra: it will all work out. I had become a fatalist. It was either become one, or never leave home again.

Barely a few years later, new mantra in my head, I decided to take my biggest and furthest leap of faith.

This time, my journey began in Paris. I had met two South African Human Resource specialists at an expat conference being held there. At around two in the morning, I found myself in our hotel bar with them, drinking, laughing, and smoking way too many cigarettes.

“You should come and speak in South Africa,” they both said once I had lost count of all my sins that night.

“Invite me,” I countered, almost belligerently.

“Considered yourself invited.”

Six months later, I was disembarking in Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts International airport off an overnight British Airways flight from London.

“I can’t remember what Pierre looks like!” My faith began ebbing from the moment we began our descent. Luckily, Pierre was the guy who jumped out and handed me flowers. Phew.

As we drove to his home, a small holding outside of Johannesburg where I would be staying with his family, he gushed about the private safari he had arranged for me in Klaserie, the nature park alongside the famous Kruger Park where many South Africans kept camp sites.

What exactly is a private safari? Obviously, it’s one that is not planned with military precision, walkie talkies or fancy facilities. For me, it meant riding into the beautiful South African sunset with my two hosts, the teenage son of one along with his pal. That meant our group was me and four guys. No guide but lots of rifles and enough booze to last us well beyond our three days in the bush.

Before we left Johannesburg, I confess: I freaked out and started calling everyone I know in the world to say goodbye. And this was before I ever knew that a poisonous green mamba snake would be trapped by one of the teenagers in the tree next to my mattress on the elevated sleeping shelter I was going to share with the men and any wild animal that wanted to wander underneath.

I stayed pretty cool throughout the safari: showered like the men did, fully dressed in my clothes and then stretched out in the afternoon heat to dry; I dutifully would ask one of my hosts if he could grab his rifle if I had to go to the bathroom (and had to be guarded); I didn’t jump entirely out of my skin when our Land Rover, driven by one of the teenage boys, broke down at 10 o’clock at night in the middle of nowhere as we returned from the bush pub and we silently stared out at eyes staring back, everyone holding a rifle but me and a cloud of testosterone hovering over our jeep.

“Did you even know those guys?” I heard constantly before and after that trip.

“No, but they seemed nice.” And they were. It was the trip of a lifetime.

I like to believe that serendipity does indeed exist, but only when someone is open to it and ready to trust, full stop. Travelers especially must be prepared to leap without looking...except, of course, if it’s at an elephant standing in front of you.