The Time I Traveled Halfway Around the World Without Enough Money to Get Back

Shanghai - Our Destination

One of the core beliefs I have about living an extraordinary life is that I have to take risks. Playing it safe, always coming in on the side of comfort and security, and being too careful are sure-fire ways to have an unremarkable life. The people who stand out in the world are those who take unimaginable risks and come out on top.

The thing is, you have to be intentional about risk taking. If you don't have a mindset that accepts risk as part of the equation, you'll never even begin to start doing interesting things with your life, let alone exceptional ones. But also be intentional about the reasons for taking the risks. I've seen people do some pretty reckless things that have little or no value besides the adrenaline rush. I'm not talking about risks like that. I'm talking about taking a risk in order to produce something of value in your life.

Like the time I went to Nepal without enough money to get back. I was involved in non-profit work and was taking a team of 6 people from Switzerland to Nepal, on to Hong Kong, then back to Switzerland from Shanghai. The airline tickets were open-jaw, meaning we flew into Kathmandu and flew out of Beijing. Total trip was three months long. It was my responsibility to get the team from Kathmandu to Shanghai during those three months.

Here's the thing. One of the team members was unable to come up with all the money she needed for the trip. We wanted her on the team and were convinced that taking her was the right thing to do. What that meant, practically, though, is that we would have carry her out of the funds of the other team members. We didn't have enough money for the team to purchase the tickets, travel between the two locations, and pay for things like food and housing for the three months in between. If we left, we truly did not know how we would complete the trip with the money we had. All we did have was a conviction that we were doing the right thing and a willingness to ride out the adventure, wherever it took us.

As we left Switzerland, one of the main emotions I was feeling was one of “What the heck have I gotten myself into?” I think this is a normal part of adventure. There is always a moment (or a whole long string of moments) where I start to double-guess myself, wondering if I'm being adventurous or simply crazy. Normal people don't do these kinds of things, I think to myself. Then the irony of that statement hits me: I don't want to be normal, do I?

The first part of our trip went well, or as well as can be expected for these sorts of trips. Stomach problems, bad drinking water, and harrowing bus rides over steep mountain passes were all part of the equation. I was approached to smuggle jewelry back into Europe by a shady store owner. Our bus was stopped by rebels demanding a bribe of the current newspaper before letting us pass. You know, routine travel stuff. I was constantly eying our money supply. Luckily, however, Nepal is a pretty cheap place to be in, especially if you're not always doing the tourist thing.

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Purchasing the tickets to Hong Kong was an experience, though. Five of the team members were American, one was Swiss. The tickets were actually more expensive than we had hoped, which ate into our already tight budget. We purchased the tickets from a local travel agent, who had to hand-write the tickets and submit stubs into the airlines and transit authority to make sure everything was legit. I was nervous about it because I had to hand over our team members' passports and wait for a couple of hours, something which violates one of my cardinal rules of traveling (Handing over the passports, not waiting).

When the appointed time came and I went back to the travel agency, he gave me the tickets and passports back. I looked them over and saw that they had filled out the Swiss team member's nationality as USA. I handed it back to him and said “This isn't right – she's Swiss, not American.”

He looked it over and made a tapping noise with his mouth. He said “Follow me.” We then proceeded to go on a crazy journey through all of Kathmandu hunting down people who's sole function was apparently to tell us to go find someone else back across town. I followed that little travel agent everywhere – at least three hours of going into a house, or a storefront, where the travel agent would converse briefly in Nepalese with whoever was there, and then turn around and go to the next place. Finally, after walking for what felt like all day, we landed in a slightly larger travel agency exactly three blocks from where we started. I could look out the window and see my guide's store where we had started. The travel agent there took the ticket, (I swear I am not making this up) erased the nationality, and wrote in “Suisse” instead. This turned out to be okay, since the customs agent at the airport was more concerned with our “departure tax” receipt than with our tickets.


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The real moment of panic came on the airplane between Kathmandu and Hong Kong. Our budget for Nepal had been about $7 per person per day, which covered all of our housing, meals, and transportation. China was a different story altogether. We hadn't made any contacts in China yet, so we were forced to rely on the Lonely Planet guide book. My heart rate kept increasing as I searched for hotel or hostel rates and found that the absolute dirt-cheapest place to stay was $10 per night. Looking at it now, that seems really inexpensive. But when we were covering all of our expenses for $7 per day, paying 150% of that just for a room was freaking me out.

I calculated we could stay in China, at Hong Kong rates, for exactly 8 days. Then we would have zero dollars left. In fact, it was looking like even paying for train tickets straight to Shanghai and changing the return flight to be six weeks early would take more money than we had.

So, there we were, disembarking from the plane and going through customs with absolutely no idea where we were going to go or how we were going to make it work.

On an off chance, my amazing wife had written down a phone number of a local branch of the organization we were a part of. But those international branches were always a gamble. Sometimes, they were nothing more than an office with a phone that was rarely answered, and if it was answered the probability that they would speak English was pretty low. Not to mention we weren't entirely sure about China's laws and how they felt about NGO's operating in their country and what we could and couldn't do. However, with zero other options we figured we would at least contact them to see if they knew anywhere cheap to stay. It was a long shot, but it was all we had.

Amazingly, after we cleared customs and right before we got to the baggage claim, we found a courtesy phone. An honest to goodness free phone that anyone could use. My wife dialed the number for the branch office, and a friendly American answered right away. My wife told the lady on the other end of the line that we would like to come visit their office sometime.

“Well, where are you now?” the friendly voice inquired.

“Ummm...we're actually at the airport,” my wife replied.

“Really? Did you just get here?”

“Umm, yeah. Just now.”

“Well, do you know where you're going to stay?” she asked, still very enthusiastic.

“Well...Not really.”

“Well, this is great. We just had a bunch of people leave here, and we have plenty of open housing. We would love to have you stay here! In fact, one of our staff members is on the way to the airport now to pick up someone else. He can get you back here right away!”

One amazing lesson I've learned is that when you step out and take risks in order to have an extraordinary life, you end up having all sorts of “coincidences” happen to you. Case in point: Not only did we happen to arrive just as someone happened to be on the way to the airport who happened to have a nice, free place to stay, but one of the people he was originally meeting at the airport just happened to be a girl from my hometown that I had gone to high school with. How do you even begin to explain something like that?

Anyhow, we took the bus back to the branch office. The cost of the bus trip? Nearly $9 per person. Yep, just the bus ride from the airport cost more than an entire day's expenses during the first half of our trip. Needless to say, my heart rate was slightly elevated.

Well, our hosts were extremely gracious to us. They gave us a huge break by not charging us to stay there for a few days, they got us contacts within “mainland” China, and they helped us plan out the rest of our trip in the most cost-effective manner possible. In fact, we were told that the absolute cheapest they knew that anyone had ever gone to China for was a budget of about $12 per person per day. We were able to do it for about $10.

Despite their help, despite cutting every cost we could think of (Do we really have to eat every day?) we were still looking at the end of our finances in approximately 3 weeks. That left 3 weeks with no money.

As a team, you can bet we were praying and wondering how in the world this was all going to work out.

Then, just a day before we were going to head into China proper, one of our team members got some exciting news. (Remember, this is in 2001, before skype, before reliable internet throughout the world, and before international calling was so dirt cheap) His parents, who were unaware of our team's dire financial situation, had randomly had a garage sale where they sold some pretty nice furniture. They felt that the money was supposed to be for something else, so they wanted to give it to us! They got him word that they were depositing the money in his account, except that it wasn't just for him, it was for the entire team!

As it worked out, that was almost the exact amount of money that we needed to complete our trip. We did everything on our schedule, and by the time we finished we even had a little bit to spare.

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What does all this have to do with you? Well, I'm passionate about seeing you live a life that's outside the ordinary. It just can't be done without throwing caution to the wind every now and then. When everything is riding on the line, you find yourself focused on the moment, insanely aware of every detail, truly experiencing life. More than likely, you'll find that things work out even better than you can imagine them working out.

So go ahead. Take a big risk. It doesn't have to be traveling across the world. It might be quitting your job, or applying for a job. It might be starting a business, or talking to that certain someone. It might be anything. No one's challenge will be the same as yours. But if you long for something extraordinary, you have to take the first step.