Dear Cape Town,

I’m back in Austin, for a hiatus. I stayed in Cape Town for 3 months… it feels like a dream, a truly wonderful dream. So I might go back to dreaming for another year… we’ll see what happens. …

I love to travel because it allows you to reinvent yourself, in essence, to be your true self. And nobody you encounter along your journey questions your authenticity, since they are meeting you as you are for the first time. They imagine you’ve always been this way. And you have, you’re only now getting to show this specific part of yourself because the world is allowing you to. On the other hand, most people who have known you have difficulty believing that there are more layers to peel away. It’s a shame really because unless you allow yourself to grow, to transform, to vibrate and shine, you become a reflection—an image of how others see you.

I guess this is what people say when they mean they are traveling to find themselves. After realizing you can choose who you are, you consequently ask yourself, well who do I want to be? And then you become it… if you’re smart. I’d like to think most people who travel are smart because they’ve at least gotten so far.

It’s not surprising then that I love the people I meet when I travel. They are adventurers and explorers and geniuses and they are getting more interesting by the second. They let the wind blow and the sun rise. They are firecrackers. They are superhuman because they believe it. Time is no longer an enemy, and moments seem less fleeting because it’s all worth it. They realize time isn’t money, time is travel, and the only days wasted are those which suffered the fate of being born during pre-enlightenment, or those which suffer the fate of being born during a bad economy.

I like to pretend that I have money; it works quite well. I’ve learned to deceive myself and others. After all, I did convince my father at four months old to move across the world. And so now I continue to convince myself to take myself around the world, and I continue to try to convince other people too.

My mom and sister made their way to Cape Town, South Africa for a whole 6.5 days. I told them this really wasn’t enough, but something is better than nothing. The week they visited me was also my last week in Cape Town and it made me realize all the things I will miss until I come back again….

The way the sun shines through the forest, to let you see the trees…
The people who won’t let you get anything for free…
The creativity that happens, not because someone tried to create it, but because it just happens…
The sunsets and sunrises that can’t be captured in photographs, but you try anyways because they are just so beautiful the thought of keeping them to yourself seems selfish…
Getting to share the city with people you really want to share it with…
Climbing mountains and realizing that you can climb mountains…
Feeling excited, because you’re scared, but because you’re also excited…
The best damn pizza, milkshakes and veggie burgers you could ask for!
The fact that even the poorest kids have a soccer ball…
The mystic..
Astronomers and their crazy constellation computer programs, tryin to challenge my libraness….and forgiving them because they showed me the amazing view from Lion’s head…
Finding snow again after not seeing it for about 12 years…
The ability to take roadtrips every weekend in a different direction to somewhere new…
Working at Cow, the Cows and asking Steyn to play his music all the time heh…
Walking through a jungle of monkeys….
The farm in kommetijie…
The cliff at cape point matthias and I discovered, with a view better than the top..
Of course all the amazing people I met, who know who they are..
Being the first American or first Indian people had ever met…
and much much much more...

Till we meet again!