[Nepal] Why Am I Taking Gap Year?

It is my 16th day in Kathmandu.

I have got more and more accustomed to and comfortable with my life in this city, but at the same time some thoughts have been kicking in and some internal dialogue has been going on in my head, like a voice with its volume being turned on gradually day by day.

2 websites which I visit often nowadays are LinkedIn and Workaway.

When I browse through LinkedIn Feed, I feel…left out and anxious. It seems like people or companies that I know keep making professional accomplishments, and there are so many things going on out there. Digitalization progress. Significant industry events. New role / new employer. Fundraising and valuation boost. New product / feature release. Strategic partnerships. International market entry.

I eagerly yearn for sense of achievement. I want to create impact. I want to build a new product or lead a strategic project from scratch and implement and realize it from 0 to 1, as I did in the past. If I wake up to a PM role in FinTech / marketplace / SaaS in South Asia / East & West Africa / LATAM the next morning, I will jump onto it without any slight hesitation. (well…if the remuneration is fair :)) I really cannot wait to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty again.

I met a barber from Bhutan the other day. We were both born in the same year and both left our home country at the age of 18. Over the past 8 to 9 years he had been traveling around entire South Asia as a barber, and had been residing in Nepal for 3+ years. “Let’s see how far I can go and where life will take me” he said.

That is also how I dream about moving around the world — working in different countries and companies but in similar roles and industries so that I can consistently hone my expertise and skillset, as experience in one “emerging / frontier” country can be substantially pivotal and relevant in another “emerging / frontier” country. Meanwhile, in my romantic fantasy, I also envisage about stumbling upon a like-minded and compatible business owner along the voyage and hence shifting gears and stopping by a place for a few months or years constructing something.

The vibe on Workaway is entirely different. Going through people’s profiles and reading their experience is such an interesting thing to do. I love seeing how others are taking a gap year / sabbatical leave and exploring landscape and life on the other side of the continent (or even the planet). To a large extent, I am proud that I also took a leap of faith and am currently doing the same thing.

But what is my motivation for gap year?

Sometimes I am perplexed about why I am on the move, or more precisely, what I am looking for.

I have never thought of myself as a traveler, and content of travel bloggers / full-time travelers very rarely resonated with me. I typically spent a lot of time in my accommodation, be it in New York City, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, Dushanbe, etc., shutting myself off from outside world, which was also how I enjoyed my weekends in Beijing, Phnom Penh, Tashkent. I am not that fond of nature or culture or history or whichever touristic spots; as I maintain a strict diet, I usually search for places that cater to my diet in whichever city I am in, and trying out local cuisine does not really excite me, unless it does not go against my dietary requirements. Casually hanging out with people is also not my thing — I am outstanding in cross-functional and multinational project management at work, but I am 82% introverted (18% extraverted) in personal life.

What I am obsessed with are random taxi (preferably motorbikes) rides across random streets in a new city — from time to time I intentionally find a destination (cinema / café / laundry shop / etc.) on the other end of the city so that I can spend 30 to 90 minutes on taxi while getting to see the city along the way. Narrow alleys. Old buildings. Highways. Skyscrapers. I feel the butterflies whenever I am on long taxi rides. I don’t sense that much excitement when I have reached the destinations; I feel thrilled about being on the road.

These taxi rides offer me first-hand glance into and feeling of how it would be like to LIVE in that city, and that is what I am curious about from the bottom of my heart. I enjoy observing others’ routines from a third-person perspective, while I do not want to live like them. Being an audience of the world and routine life is fun, until one becomes part of it.

No, I do NOT want to have a routine life.

I moved from China to Cambodia and from Cambodia to Uzbekistan for the same reason — I got bored. I was so sick of seeing the same style of architecture and streets every day, and familiarity with the city made it even worse. I knew the parks, the cinemas, the shopping malls, the trampoline parks, the bowling alleys, the VR arenas, the weekend markets, the art performance venues and events. I sometimes knew better about how to make detour to avoid traffic jam than taxi drivers and ride-hailing apps algorithms.

I wholeheartedly dread boredom. It haunts and demoralizes me. Supposedly, what might work for me is a lifestyle in which I spend no more than X month(s) consecutively / cumulatively in any particular country within any given calendar year, so that I will not feel I am in any manner connected to or deep-rooted in any country. Having a “root” anywhere sounds as terrifying as a chain to me.

Perhaps this is the most precious part of gap year — freedom to leave. There is literally NOTHING (but visa requirements) hindering me from booking a ticket to anywhere in the world the next morning; if I do not feel right in a city, I can leave at any time I want. No obligation of any sort — job, family, whatsoever.

I cherish this state of mind.

I still do not have a concrete answer regarding what my gap year quest is. It has been only 2 weeks into my gap year, and perhaps most people also do not know what kind of enlightenment awaits them down the road when they first embark on the journey, or why they set off on it in the first place. Who says everything necessarily needs to come with purpose / goal / rationale?

Let me make a sensible guess at this early stage — the ultimate purpose / goal / rationale of my gap year MIGHT BE to discover A) my ideal lifestyle; B) my genuine passion; C) alternate income streams aside from having a 9–5. A should be derived from B and C, while B and C are somewhat interrelated.

I still have time, and let’s see how things will evolve.