Repost This Article
Photo: Bhaskar Banerji / Feature aperturepriority
“Life can be pretty surreal at times. And travel is no exception to the rule,” write Dave and Deb, the bloggers behind The Planet D.
In recent post, they chronicle a few of their most surreal travel experiences.
We seem to have some of our strangest experiences when we are on the road. Some of them are completely out of our control and we just have to hang on and enjoy the ride. While others have been completely our own doing. A momentary lapse of reason if you will. Either way, they make for some fun stories around the campfire.
Which got me thinking…
Without a doubt, the most surreal travel experience I had involved snow, hot springs, and 3 mailboxes out in the middle of the desert, no houses in sight.
It was mid-May, and we left at 5 o’clock rush hour east of San Francisco, heading up highway 80 towards Lake Tahoe. Hot air came in through the cracked window as we sat in traffic, but I simply relaxed in the passenger seat.
A friend had led this trip many times before, so for once, I was able to completely let go of the reigns and just sit back and enjoy.
Due to a game of “let’s point out all the weird, dreamy stuff we see” (which is pretty easy to do once you start paying attention – pink buses, guy dressed in drag on the side of the road, etc.), several hours passed quickly, and I noticed the air change as we climbed into the Northern California mountains.
Snow And Heat
Suddenly, I noticed snowflakes falling lazily onto the windshield. I literally felt as if I had been transported to another part of the world.
Then the darkness began to set in as we made our way past the brightly-lit casinos on the Nevada side of Tahoe, turning off the road onto a dirt path.
My friend drove the switchbacks through the small bushes and what resembled tumbleweed. I wondered, “How the hell does he know where we’re going?”
Abruptly, we came to a stop at the end of dirt path, and he said to me, “let’s go.”
Out of the rented four-wheeler (it was always his approach to rent, knowing some serious damage might happen to the car in the places we were going) we jumped, and in the dead of night, made our way to a tiny, hidden pool of hot water.
Did I mention it was still snowing? That quickly became the fastest I’ve ever stripped. But I couldn’t believe the feeling of sitting in the middle of nowhere, the snow hitting my face as I warmed my body in the hot spring.
After grabbing a hotel room that night, we headed south to Saline Valley, located right beside Death Valley in California. We had to make a stop by these incredible sand dunes, where the most insane wind I’ve ever experienced made our hike to the top and along the edges a bit scary (and sandy in the teeth), but hardly prepared me for where we would transpire just a couple of hours later.
Oasis In The Desert
Mail call / Photo: Bhaskar Banerji
My friend had often told me of this “oasis in the desert,” but I couldn’t believe it until I saw it.
In the middle of Saline Valley, a humongous desert landscape surrounded by mountains, were two natural hot springs with friggin’ palm trees and grass surrounding them.
Apparently, hippies had been trekking there since the 60s, and somehow planted grass in the middle of the desert, with volunteers keeping it up over the years.
Because it is so hard to get to, and there are no signs, only those who know-the-way make it there. Which made the existence of three lonely mailboxes (what the hell are those doing out there?) all the more bizarre.
On that short, two-day trip, I felt a spiritual connection to the Earth that I had never known before. But I also found myself wondering… was it all just a dream?
What is your most surreal travel experience? Share your stories below!
Christine Garvin
Christine Garvin is a certified Nutrition Educator and holds a MA in Holistic Health Education. She is the founder/editor of Living Holistically...with a sense of humor and co-founder of Confronting Love. When she is not out traveling the world, she is busy writing, doing yoga, and performing hip-hop and bhangra. She also likes to pretend living in her hippie town of Fairfax, CA is like being on vacation.
Connect with Facebook
People who live around southern NJ and Philadelphia will understand this one…
Here I am in China on my break from work for Chinese New Year. I fix it so I’ll be in Hong Kong over the holiday itself. And who do i meet right in the middle of downtown Kowloon?
The Mummers of Philadelphia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Parade)
It turns out one of the guys went to my high school when I was 2 and another one lives near where I have more family. The world is a very small place…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solardrum/3683978675/
Surreal was taking the train to Berlin with my sister through what was then East Germany. We couldn’t figure out if the East German conductor was trying to extort money from us, or if we actually had to pay extra. We were in a compartment with a couple of Germans, and a Chinese guy. Although we looked German we couldn’t speak anything other than a couple of curses in German; luckily my sister was fluent in Mandarin, so she and the Chinese guy started chatting away. It sure weirded out the Germans though.
Scariest and most surreal experience:
Riding down the Amazon on a tiny boat in the middle of the night, where the only source of light is a flashlight the “captain” has–well, that and the lightning crashing around us. Oh, and there was one flickering lightbulb in the back of the boat. We were rocking all over the place and regularly getting the motor stuck in vegetation, turning a two hour ride into something much longer.
The impenetrable darkness and violent storms around us were pretty frightening, but I knew it was time to be scared when all the locals on the boat pulled the life jackets from the roof and put them on, leaving enough for each of the rest of us to share with another person. My friend and I clung to the shared vest and just sat praying we wouldn’t die. If all that wasn’t enough, I had also been ill before we got on the boat, thrown up over side, and drank so much water to rehydrate myself that I ended up having to pee in a bottle so that I wouldn’t explode before we reached our seemingly impossible-to-reach destination. It’s definitely one of those experience that I look back on and think, “Wow, did that really happen?”
i went to london last halloween to see french and saunders and do some sightseeing/pub crawling. i used the underground to get places, and i knew that it’s taboo to talk to other people on the underground. i was trying to fit in and not be too touristy, but i had to use a tube map ’cause i’m not a native. i was studying my map trying to find out which was my stop when some people standing next to me asked me where i got my map in the the most beautiful upstate south carolina drawl… we talked for about 10 minutes about what wew were doing in london, where we were from, etc. turns out these people were from greenville, which is about 75 miles from my hometown, asheville,nc. i even went to the same university as this guy’s brother. and they were in town to see french and saunders too. talk about a small world….
Mount pisgah N.C. we drove to to parking spot that takes you to the trail, 31/2 miles straight up, we ate wild blueberrys and drank water from small springs. it took forever to get to the plat form at the top, we layed down on the plat form and watched the tower swaying back and forth, the clouds were flowing right over us, and then we heard the slight sound of a motor, we stood up and looked around and there was a small piper cub flying below us! the blueberrys,the spring to drink from , the clouds covering us and the towering swaying was awesome but the airplane below us was surreal. none of this was planned on and that made it unable to forget, who would want to?
now that sounds like something straight outta Fear and Loathing…
Excellent
Hello!
I am venezuelan and the first time I went to Costa Rica I went to visit Arenal. For me it was just amazing enjoying the natural hot springs in a night full of stars and the active volcano on my front erupting red hot rocks. You could see the volcano exploding little by little and continously, and hear the roar of the land. It was just amazing!