Today was the last trip through a strange place on my journey. Kom Obo, Egypt was another non-descript, poor, dusty, but still fascinating village I traveled through on my way back to civilization. I spent my last night on a felluca boat down the Nile River with a few dozen backpackers. I got off and they sailed on to their own adventures. I found my way on the local bus to the taxi station, negotiated a reasonable price to get to an airport, but have spent the last three hours at a police checkpoint waiting for the tourist convoy to arrive and secure my safety for the last 80 kilometers to Luxor.

Tonight I fly to the resort village of Naama Bay in Sinai and will be surrounded by Italian tourists, pizza shops and English package-tour scuba divers. My last week on the road will be spent in tourist land, hardly a villager to be seen anywhere except in the kitchens of the resort hotels. Safety, comfort, and perhaps a little boredom.

Just about a year since I dropped out of my old life and explored anew one. Don’t know how many times I told the story of my past, and explained a distinct lack of knowledge of my future. But it will be here soon enough, and with it some difficult decisions about growing up, and growing old.

It’s hard to come to grips with what I have experienced this year. What has become commonplace to me would be a tremendous adventure to most people. For instance, I’m sitting now with ten arabic-only speaking men, watching soccer, as donkeys trot by and trucks filled with livestock are checked out by policemen carrying machine guns. My taxi driver was angry because I didn’t argue enough with the officer at the desk about getting through the checkpoint early. Maybe his automatic pistol on the desk gave me pause about pestering him too much. A hundred meters in either direction turns to rocky, mountain-filled desert. I’ve sat and watched as a huge boulder grows a shadow down a mountainside as the sun gets low. A train goes by and the air fills with yellow dust, but no one seems to notice, they just close their eyes for a minute and wait for it to pass. I’m the only one wearing pants. Everyone else sports a light-colored robe, and some beat the heat with white wraps around their heads. My table mate smokes a shisa, a bubbly water pipe with an ornate, but well-worn handle.

At last the tourists arrive and we are free to go.

I suspect if you told me a year ago that I would live these moments with hardly raising an eyebrow I’d have laughed out loud. Who amongst my friends would find this commonplace? Even as I write it it seems like the opening paragraph to a spy novel or exotic love story. Perhaps I’m just tired of the road and it’s time to go home.

But what lies in wait for me there is scarier than any excursion I’ve made these past twelve months. I have to enter the workforce, make plans for my future, get married, have kids, buy a car, rent an apartment, reapply for a drivers license. These things frighten the daylights out ofme.

Much of being a traveller is addictive. I’ve talked to dozens of dropouts who now make their way doing what they once did for love, and now do for money. I’ve met ex-banker divemasters who no longer wear suits, and live in cheap apartments near exotic dive sites. They make more than enough to live, but seem as burned out now as they describe they were when they dropped out of the regular world. I met a travel agent from the UK who said fuck-it and moved to Egypt, cutting her salary by two-thirds but living in paradise. Still, she looks a little wistful with a beer in her hand staring out to sea. How much happier is she really here than there?

But there is lots pulling me to do the same. Just one more course and I, too, could cruise exotic ports working as a scuba guide, chasing tourist girls and refining the perfect tan. Maybe I could even grow into runing some sort of tourist business: a shop, a bar, a hotel. I have the general skill, but still lack the passion to follow through.

Back home doesn’t seem that much more exciting. I can go back into the internet world, organizing web sites for corporations and taking their money, exchanging the money for vacations once in a while, and increasing my retirement account for later on. But really, that doesn’t seem to hold much allure.

I can write a book, that could hold me over for a few months. Maybe even get the thing published, go on the lecture tour, become an author. It’d help if I could spell a little better. And I’m so little impressed by my last year’s achievements I’m not sure I could be that inspiring.

So, in a week or so I return to my hometown, live with my parents, and wander around looking for some form of monetary income. Thirty-eight and living with mom and dad. Won’t I be a hit at the high school reunion?