Our Rhythm

I've spent a long time thinking about what made our travels special.

The Himalayas.The Caucasus. Turkiye. India. Jordan. Africa. Asia. Eastern Europe. Latin America. The American West.

But this morning I realized it wasn't just the places, it was also the rhythm. Every traveler has one, most don't notice it because they're busy chasing destinations and ideas. Ours quietly became a fingerprint of a unique nomadic life together though neither of us planned it. It shaped how every city felt, how every village unfolded, and even how we experienced one another.

Looking back, I don't think the universe was testing us with travel itself, in fact we seemed quite fortunate in that aspect. The greater challenges usually lived between us—our personalities, our quirks and weaknesses as well as strengths, our different ways of moving through the world, and the work of learning how to keep choosing one another despite them. Around those challenges, we built an entire way of traveling.

We made things harder on ourselves in ways that, strangely enough, became part of the beauty. We were unapologetically frugal. Not because we wanted to suffer, but because both of us found comfort in stretching every dollar as far as it could go. That meant hours researching neighborhoods, comparing apartments, studying reviews, calculating transportation, and figuring out how to create a life that cost very little but still gave us nearly everything we cared about.

By the time we arrived somewhere, the difficult part was usually over, and what remained wasn't the search. It was the living. That is the part I don't want to forget because they became the actual experience. Long before we ever saw a city's famous square or mountain viewpoint, we were reading apartment reviews.

"Does the Wi-Fi actually work?"

"Is there a kettle?"

"Can we cook?"

"Is there somewhere comfortable to work?"

Those questions probably sound terribly unromantic, but they became home. Travis would sit for hours scrutinizing apartment choices and asking me for input. Searching for the things we value like a comfortable sitting area for working and decompressing, a nice balcony was a huge plus, workout space, nice neighborhood. Laundry was never expected, but I distinctly remember feeling relieved whenever I spotted a proper washing area or even just a couple of sturdy laundry buckets. That probably sounds ridiculous until you've lived out of a backpack for months. Then you realize that people don't actually build their lives around highlights. They build them around ordinary acts repeated over and over.I always carried paracord and clothespins because almost anywhere could become a clothesline. A kettle is top priority, then hot water and modern conveniences. Travis always discovered the hidden gems through sheer research focus. This man is invaluable when it comes to finding such gems and researching best travel methods on a practical, no-frills budget. Eventually, we found a rhythm that followed us everywhere, and it began with a grocery bag. Neither of us approved of disposable plastic bags, so almost every country gifted us another reusable one from some local supermarket. We would buy it on our first grocery run, and before long it became the bag—the one that held the little things that turned another unfamiliar apartment into a temporary home. It wasn't glamorous. It was usually overstuffed, slightly sticky from some bottle (likely honey or peanut butter) that had leaked months before, and forever threatening to burst open during another bus ride. But it was invaluable. Every time we packed up to leave another city, we carefully rebuilt our traveling kitchen. Often anticipating what may or not be available in the next country and what we really liked.

Granola that hadn't quite been finished.

Honey.

Peanut butter.

Protein powder.

Salt.

Spices.

Cutlery.

A tiny bottle of mint to cut the instant out of my morning coffee.

And, above all else...

Coffee.

Always coffee.

Finding good instant coffee became one of our strange little rituals. Travis would stand in grocery aisles comparing brands, prices, and how much we could realistically carry to the next country. We enjoyed trying local coffees whenever it made sense, but if Nestlé happened to be the better value that week, practicality won without much ceremony regardless of how much we hated the corporation we'd find other ways to rectify that.

Travis always insisted on carrying that grocery bag, awkwardly strapped to the top of his backpack or in tow by hand no matter how heavy it became. It looked ridiculous sometimes, bouncing through crowded buses, train stations, ferry terminals, dusty roads, and mountain villages. More than once we silently hoped that whichever bottle of sauce or something we'd decided was worth hauling across borders hadn't exploded somewhere inside. That bag was never just groceries, it was continuity.

No matter where we arrived—a tiny apartment in the Caucasus, a guesthouse in Africa or Nepal, a rented room in Turkey, along with us in a rental car, or a beach town in El Salvador—we already carried the beginnings of our routine with us.

Before we'd even unpacked our clothes, we'd unpack our way of living, and somehow, that made another unfamiliar place feel just a little more like home.

Finding grocery stores became one of my favorite parts of arriving somewhere new. We would drop our bags, open Google Maps, and begin another tiny expedition.

Not toward monuments. Toward yogurt!

The search almost always became a walk through neighborhoods no tourist had recommended. We'd pass schools letting out for the day, grandparents sitting on benches, mechanics with radios playing, children buying candy, women carrying vegetables home. Those walks taught me more about places than most attractions ever did. By the time we finally carried our groceries back, we already understood something about how people actually lived there.

Frugality shaped us more than I realized. People sometimes imagine frugal travel as sacrificing experiences, but for us, it became the experience. Instead of rushing from attraction to attraction, we'd carefully weave errands into exploration and did it alongside locals who were doing the same. The pharmacy, the market, the bus station, a hardware store, a bakery someone online had mentioned... Without realizing it, we were walking through the actual circulatory system of each city. I sometimes wonder what local people thought of us. We weren't behaving quite like tourists, we weren't interested in tours or guides and we were usually quite exhausted from many things. We occupied this strange middle space that most locals didn't know how to respond to if they were trying to sell things. I suspect people remembered us for exactly that reason as much as how awkward we might seem.

Walking together had its own rhythm too. Travis always walked ahead. I always stayed behind. I don't think either of us ever planned that, it was simply who we were. He liked solving the route. I liked studying everything surrounding it.

Before leaving, I'd build a mental map—not of roads, but of the points on the landscape that mattered to me, whether or not we ever reached them. Travis solved the dotted lines. I gathered landmarks. He gathered logistics.

By the time we arrived somewhere, we'd both been doing completely different work. He had gotten us there. I had been quietly collecting the ordinary. Listening. Watching. Noticing. Trying to understand what made this place itself. One thing I'm grateful for is that neither of us cared much about collecting checkmarks, as neither of us seemed interested in proving we'd traveled correctly. Sometimes we were simply tired. Traveling for years eventually makes ordinary life feel luxurious. A quiet apartment, and a familiar breakfast, slow morning coffee, laundry finished, no buses to catch, no pressure, no guilt. I imagine even couples in perfectly stable relationships eventually begin craving those little sanctuaries after enough years on the road, and for us, they became part of survival.

Oddly enough, slowing down made the adventures feel larger. A week plus of peaceful routine somehow made hiking or riding so unforgettable, while stillness restored novelty. Some regions exhausted us more than others. Eastern Europe, Africa, the Caucasus, India... Each asked something different of us. Sometimes we relaxed immediately because people felt relational in a way we instinctively understood, while other places required constant alertness: different customs, different expectations, different social rules. We could both feel when we had reached our limit and neither of us had to convince the other. We would quietly agree it was time to retreat. Not forever, just long enough to find another little apartment where we could breathe, cook dinner, work, and become ourselves again. That retreat never felt like giving up, it became part of the rhythm too, and looking back, I don't remember countries first...

I remember mornings. Coffee quietly steaming with Danit's "Quatro Vientos" gently playing in the background while one of us researched the day, zoned out, or worked. The strange comfort of knowing we'd leave around one or two in the afternoon after exercise and work was finished with the absence of guilt. We weren't trying to be impressive travelers, we were trying to build a sustainable life that simply happened to move. And maybe that's why so many memories still feel alive. They weren't vacations, they were ordinary days. Ordinary days stretched across continents. Through all of this, without realizing it we were amassing some of the most incredibly mind-opening life experiences and breathtaking views of this planet that anyone could ask for in a lifetime as a side perk.

Yesterday I tried explaining, scientifically, why people can become so deeply attached after years of repeated closeness and separation. Psychology has good answers for that. But this morning I realized there's another half to the story that psychology alone doesn't quite capture. Attachment isn't only built from emotion. It's built from rhythm — thousands of tiny adaptations nobody names at the time. Eventually you stop remembering the destinations. You remember how two people moved through the world together. And perhaps that's the hardest thing to leave behind.

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