On hostels and traveling independently

Despite my freak-out at the beginning of this trip and my understanding of why people use tour groups -- for the ease and convenience and for the security of always having someone with you who knows the local language -- once I settled in to the rhythm of things, it only reaffirmed my preference for traveling independently.

On a tour bus, you don't get to watch young Jewish boys riding the city bus on their way home from school, yarmulkes atop their heads and their side curls just starting to grow in. (I was reminded of the young Sikh boys I've seen with their small turbans atop their heads -- an image of youth and adolescence beginning to mature into the full stature of their faith -- the long side curls of the Orthodox Jew or the full turban of the adult male Sikh.) On a tour bus, you don't get to pass runners out on their evening jog on the side of Mount Carmel. On a tour bus, you don't get to talk to a young boy, probably 8 or 9 years old, on the train, who tells you to go to the beach for the "REAL Israel," and who points to some men getting agitated and talking with much expression and gesturing, clearly arguing over something, in the next set of seats over, smiles at you, shrugs, and says, "Israelis!," shaking his head.

On a tour bus, you don't get to share a dorm with people from The Netherlands and England and Australia and Germany and talk about politics and religious diversity and the increasing secularization in Europe and the integration and assimilation of Muslim immigrants into society. On a tour bus, you don't get to meet other independent American travelers, a Jewish woman who is a Ph.D. student in anthropology and interested in Israel and the phenomenon of "making aliyah" (Jewish people returning to the land of Israel to live there), and her friend, a "spiritual but not religious" type, raised Catholic, blonde, sort of Irish but maybe not so Irish according to the family history, despite his sister's shamrock tattoo on the side of her ankle.

But probably most importantly for me, in a tour group you don't get the freedom and flexibility to see sites at your own pace, to sit and pray for a long time if the Spirit moves you, to stay and soak up the presence of the place. You don't get the privacy to actually pray as you visit these sacred sites. That was the hardest thing to me about my foreign study trip in college -- being herded around like cattle from site to site, with thirty-something other people constantly, no space to myself to think or reflect. It was that trip where I first began to re-discover my introversion, often intentionally going away from the group and turning my iPod on (a brand new invention at the time!) and tuning out the rest of the people in order to create some private space and time for reflection. It's nice to have that space and time on this trip, and to not be answerable to anyone but myself in terms of my schedule and what I decide to do.