Since I didn't go to bed, I waited a while and got an Uber equivalent over to the airport. My driver was using a propane powered car, which I've heard of but never seen before. The airport experience wasn't very exciting and the lounge food was terrible, but so it goes. A toddler was absolutely screaming and then fighting his mother the entire flight to Istanbul. I hung around in a different lounge for a few hours before getting on my flight to Birmingham, where I then took a train to the big city of Dudley and got to my hotel for work the next day. I passed out until the morning early in the afternoon.

This will be my last entry on travelblog since I'm not going east anymore. It's not really travel for fun at this point as much as it's travel for work. I wish I had more to say here, honestly. The trip was incredible and I feel like I should share some profound wisdom or advice gained from my journey venturing east, but I don't think this is the time for it. I'll ruminate on things for a while and you can ask me about it in person. Writing the blog has been great and I'd recommend it to anyone considering a similar type of trip. Maybe I'll reactivate it in the future - I've got ideas for a whole host of protracted trips that could happen someday, though who knows if I'll ever find this much time to do something like this again. Maybe it doesn't need to be this long. But I really hope this isn't it for my months-long journeying since it's really an experience like nothing else. I'm deeply sad to be going home and, while I'm looking forward to so many things about returning to life in Somerville, there will be so many things about traveling that I miss. The constant flow of new people, the freedom, the opportunities to learn, the exploration... Travel like this is truly unbeatable and I'd recommend it to anyone. No, it's not without its challenges (both logistical and mental), but it's completely worth it in every way.

As I say, I wish I had more parting thoughts than I do. There will undoubtedly be much reflection in the days ahead, and probably a certain amount of pining for travel. In a way, I hope I remember the negatives of this trip if only to remind myself that life on the road isn't perfect. I am deeply tired and as much as I wish I didn't have to return for work, I need a vacation from this sort of vacation. While the scope of my trip isn't unheard of, the pace pretty much is and I don't know how much longer it would still be enjoyable without a few weeks off to see friends and family. I mention this because, if part of this trip was intended to sate my appetite for exploration and adventure, well... That certainly didn't succeed. If anything, it whet it further. Working a 9-5 will be a challenge when I know that somewhere in a hostel, new friends are laughing, seeing the world, and challenging themselves. I might need to find something which can approximate at least part of that experience, but I don't really know if that's possible. Or maybe I'll go back and find that I very dearly missed the comforts of home and that I really appreciate not moving around so much. I'm not sure if I'm hoping for that - is it better to discover that the peak is behind you already, or that you've been there the whole time but it isn't as high as you'd thought?

But that sort of thinking is for later. Before I close, I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who's been following the blog - it's hard to articulate why, but getting a text about whatever the most recent entry contained made me feel cared for in a way that kept me in a good place. For as social as this experience was, there were lonely, isolated times, and it was messages like those which helped me stay in bright spirits. If you're reading this now, thank you for caring enough to check in. Hopefully we'll get a chance to chat about this in person soon, because these blog entries are really only the tip of the iceberg. Sure, they contain a rough outline of events, but so many little odd details don't make it in. And while I often don't see those bits as important at the time of writing, reflection on the past has a strange habit of shifting perception.

Way back in one of my Bosnian entries I shared a Tolkien poem from early on in The Fellowship of the Ring, before the hobbits have left the Shire (a metaphor for the country I'm currently in, funnily enough). Well, here's its corollary from Return of the King, as the hobbits have returned home at last from the dismal depths of Mordor, beyond the mountains in the far southeast (Serbia?):

The Road goes ever on and on

Out from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

Let others follow it who can!

Let them a journey new begin,

But I at last with weary feet

Will turn towards the lighted inn,

My evening-rest and sleep to meet.