I’m in the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India. It’s around 7AM my time and 10:30PM back in Boston. I’m on my 24th hour of travel, and I am nowhere near my destination. My luggage is lost, my flight is canceled, my phone ran out of wifi within the first forty-five minutes of landing, which was well over six hours ago, and I am alone. I'm trying my hardest to tell myself that I am okay, yet despite how many reassuring mantras I quietly repeat, I slowly feel the tears pool around my bottom eyelids. I hate crying in public unless they’re happy tears. These... these are not happy tears.
I settle into a random seat at a gate that’s currently unused. I grab my phone from my backpack and dial my sister’s phone number. I don’t care how much this international call is going to cost me. I’ll pay every dollar I have to hear her voice. Every. Last. Penny.
“Marisa, I can’t do this. I’m not as brave or independent as I thought I was. I am so tired. I just want to turn around and go home.”
Have you ever been at the end of your rope? Ever thought you hit rock bottom and then realize, rock bottom has a basement?
My adventure doesn’t stop there.
After spending eleven hours in the New Delhi airport, I hop on my rescheduled flight to Kathmandu, Nepal and land after the last leg of my flight took off. I race around the airport to see if I can catch another flight to Pokhara, Nepal. I learn the flight that I missed was the last one out for the day. I immediately panic. Where will I stay tonight? How will I get to my accommodation? Where the hell is my luggage?
Human trafficking isn’t just an elusive term here. It’s a real and scary issue. The stats reveal alarmingly high rates of women are trafficked every day, and I am terribly uneducated about the dangers I’m walking into.
Not only that, but I am alone. I am 4’11”. I am 22 years old. I wear my American identity like a mascot costume. I am clearly lost and confused. I am on hour 34 of travel. I am practically delirious.
In a nutshell, I am insanely vulnerable.
After my sister quickly books a hotel that’s thirty minutes from the airport for me, I realize I have to find a taxi to bring me there. As soon as I leave the airport I know I’ll be without wifi— without connection to anyone or anything. I have no choice but to trust that I will get to where I need to be, safely and soundly.
I walk up to a taxi booth, and a monkey runs across my feet. I stop dead in my tracks. Where in the world am I?
A man offers to take my bags and directs me towards his car. He grossly overcharges me, which I am not aware of at the time nor do I care, and I slip into the backseat of a beat up, old vehicle. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve been this on edge. I do the only thing I can think of and silently pray to God my driver is a good man.
It feels like right out of the womb I’ve been taught why I need to be skeptical of men. I’ve been taught to ignore cat calls, persistent gestures, and prolonged staring. I’ve been taught to share my location, double-check the license plates of male Uber drivers, watch my drink, “bring a buddy”, carry pepper spray, hike with a group, the list goes on. Protecting myself in the US has always been second nature to me. As soon as I’m on foreign soil, I no longer have a familiar checklist to run through. I only have my faith in humanity. I hand over my trust to the universe, and I keep my eyes on the driver.
Luckily, I arrive safely to the hotel. I run up to my room, lock the door, and flop on the bed. After a half-minute of rest, I turn the shower all the way to hot and try to wash the last 36 hours of travel off my body and mind.
I climb back into bed, still anxious as can be, when I realize the hotel has wifi. I grab my phone and frantically search the room for the wifi password. Where is it? Did the front desk staff mention where I could find it? I walk to the desk near the bathroom. This is what I see.
In that moment, I breathe. For the first time, in I don’t even know how many hours, I calm myself down enough to just breathe.
~
I would love to say my series of unfortunate events ends with my travel to Pokhara, Nepal. I thought I had experienced the worst of it, but my return home is not an easy one.
~
I have four flights back to Boston, MA. A day before I leave Nepal I receive notice that my second flight is canceled and has to be rescheduled for earlier that day. My first flight is going to land after the only takeoff time listed for my second flight, so I cancel my first flight altogether. I book a taxi and decide to drive seven hours to the Kathmandu airport.
On my way to Kathmandu, my taxi driver and I run into dead stop traffic. We are driving alongside a mountain. There are no guardrails. The roads are barely wide enough to accommodate two lanes, and traffic laws are more of “suggestions” than strictly enforced rules. There are several moments I hold my breath while I’m sitting in the backseat.
My driver gets out of the car and walks up to a group of men standing a few cars down from where I am. Shortly after, he comes back and says, “There’s a landslide up ahead.”
Are you serious? A landslide? I should have predicted this.
A little while later, the landslide is cleared up enough for us to pass by. When we make it past the eroded mountainside, we continue onward until we reach the airport. Fortunately, it’s smooth sailing from there until I get home.
~
I am not detailing any of my traveling journey for pity. Woe is not me in retrospect.
Was it difficult? Hell yes.
Was I scared shitless? Beyond.
Did I want to give up and go home? Many times.
Did I panic, cry, and feel completely defeated? Precisely.
Regardless of how difficult that was to get through alone, I am so much more equipped to navigate the unplanned because of what I went through. I have a way better handle on how to think rationally and focus on finding solutions than I did back then. I would genuinely go through it all over again if it meant I had the same perspective on how to work through a plethora of obstacles that are thrown my way.
That journey also taught me one very important thing I would not have known if I didn’t experience all those pitfalls: There is only one fight we'll lose. Every other fight, we will win.
What does that mean?
Maybe I “failed” on the composure scale.
Maybe I “failed” on the preparedness scale.
Maybe I even “failed” on the rationality scale.
But, did I really fail? Even if I had turned around and got on the next flight to Boston, would I have failed?
Failure, to me, is not trying in the first place. It would have been me realizing that taking four legs of international flights all by myself was too much and too hard. It would have been me never purchasing that roundtrip ticket to begin with because I was too full of self-doubt. It would have been deciding that venturing to a country halfway across the world from home was dangerous.
Our setbacks and hardships are not failures. They are pivots to more aligned directions we should be taking. Just because something doesn’t work out the way we imagined, doesn’t mean it’s a failure. It’s probably a blessing in disguise.
If we look at our "failures" and try to find the teachable moments within them, we stop focusing on what we lose and start seeing what we gain.
~
Eleven months later, I’m sitting in the Alejandro Velasco Astete Cusco International Airport in Peru. I’m alone and writing in my journal, waiting for my flight to begin boarding. A woman's voice comes over the loud speaker. She’s talking in Spanish. I can’t fully understand her, but everyone around my gate is up in arms. I piece together that my first of three flights is canceled.
I make my way to the desk that I’m instructed to go to. The woman who is fielding everyone’s questions informs me that I will probably not get placed on a flight out that day. She tells me that if I run to gate B and ask if there are any seats left on the flight, I may just get lucky.
I grab all my belongings and start running. I know this feeling. I can manage it. I will be okay.
Panting, I ask the woman at gate B if there are any seats left on the plane. She tells me there is just one.
While I’m walking down the boarding bridge, out of breath with sweat dripping from my brow, I can’t help but think, “I won this one, too.”
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