Alex Warofka

To some, I am a space traveler. I have visited other galaxies, lived on other planets, side by side with aliens. And I have returned, alive, to share stories of these strange worlds and the mysterious lifeforms that inhabit them.

Of course, in reality, these galaxies are merely continents, the planets simply nations, and the aliens nothing more than the humans who live there. Yet the portrayal of the developing world in popular opinion and the media would lead one to imagine that these places are separated from us not by a few hours in a Boeing 747, but a years-long journey in a rocket ship. These people, we are constantly reminded, are nothing like us. They are uncivilised, unintelligent, even dangerous, and, with few exceptions, doomed to wallow in their dystopian backwardness for all of eternity.

Yet, fundamentally, Jakarta and Delhi are little different than Tokyo or London. Rural Bangladesh is not too far removed from rural America. As citizens of the developed world, we may enjoy better health, better education, and a thousand channels of satellite television, but our struggles, our triumphs, and our dreams are the same, an omnipresent element of the human condition. We are more alike than we are different.

I firmly believe that it is impossible to spend any significant amount of time in the developing world and not reach this same conclusion.

Three days, three countries, and four cities. Approximately 31 hours spent in airplanes, airports, and on trains. One black signal rainstorm. A grand total of six hours of sleep.

To many, this experience would be a hellish torture on par with any of the dastardly tactics devised by the interrogators at Guantánamo Bay. Yet, for me, the whirlwind journey I made from London to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Shenzhen and back to Tokyo was strangely empowering. I’ve always found that there’s a sort of freedom and clarity that comes from not being attached to anyplace, from knowing that, six hours from now, I’ll be in another city in another country speaking another language and the present will be like a distant, faded memory…. When I’m in such a constant state of motion, it’s as though my flight has never landed, and I’m still floating ten thousand meters above the earth, even if my feet are firmly planted on the ground.

At one point, with a few hours to spare before my return flight from Hong Kong to Tokyo, I found the time to head to Ocean Park, a local HK version of Sea World or Disneyland. And it was while riding 越矿飞车 (Yuè kuàng fēi chē), staring out at the beautiful landscape of the South China Sea, that I realised the best way to describe the way I felt: it’s like that brief calm at the crest of the hill on a roller coaster, where everything seems clear for a single, brilliant, dreamlike moment. But you know that it can’t last. In an instant, you’ll be in free-fall, and reality will be rushing up to meet you.