ARTICLES
The Secret Life of Solo Trekkers
Gore-Tex presents Experience More, April 2016
Reflections on how traveling solo enriches your life, from prominent travelers around the world. (Gore-Tex presents Experience More, April 2016)
ENTRIES FROM THE GLOBAL TRIP BLOG CHRONICLES
Capitalist Pigs
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 07, 2004
DAY 285: Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I always knew Russia as the U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union, a place where citizens living under the system of Communism drank vodka and stood on really long lines at the government store to buy toilet paper. On a national scale, they were America’s adversary since the beginning of the Cold War, a formidable competitor in the space race, the arms race and boxing in Rocky IV.
Classic Russia
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 07, 2004
DAY 286: “What does this mean?” I asked my traveling companion Sam, showing him a digital photo of a protest rally I took like an obnoxious American tourist by a statue of Karl Marx in Moscow’s Revolution Square. There was a Cyrillic character I couldn’t recognize in a word before the English phrase, “Go home!”
Sam analyzed the word. “Oh, do you know what that says? Yankee, go home!”
Funny, the protesters that I took a photo of like a Yankee were protesting me.
Encounters With Lenin
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 07, 2004
DAY 287: “Is it Communist or Capitalist today?” I asked Sam from my bed.
“It’s looking pretty Communist out there,” he answered, looking out the window. “Communist” was cloudy and gray and “capitalist” was bright and sunny.
“Alright!” I said. When you’re a tourist in a place like Moscow, sometimes you want that old stereotypical classic Communist feel.
A Room For The Night
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 07, 2004
DAY 288: With my traveling buddy Sam gone, so went my room to go halfsies on in a prime location in Moscow, right outside Red Square. In true The Global Trip fashion, I had failed to make a reservation for the night in town, but just kept my bags in the hotel storage and hoped I could find a cheaper opening in a relatively convenient location before spaces filled up as the day went on. More importantly that that, I was to leave on the Trans-Siberian Railway the next day and I didn’t exactly have my train tickets yet.
Body Language
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 10, 2004
DAY 289: In the 19th century, America was on a conquest to expand its territory. Geographically, that meant head out to the old west, back in a time when it was the new west.
Meanwhile in Russia, a similar phenomenon was going on. While most European countries were scrambling for territories in Africa, Russia expanded east, consolidating its far east posts into a greater nation.
Both America and Russia linked their outer territories the same way: by laying down the tracks and constructing grand railways.
Crashing in Yekaterinburg
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 10, 2004
DAY 290: The No. 118 train continued to cruise eastbound to the outer limits of Europe as the sun came up to start a new Trans-Siberian day. Despite the stereotype that there’s nothing in the region but snow, it was starting to get sunny and warm — after all, it was summer.
Grudka
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 10, 2004
DAY 291: “Breakfast is ready,” Tonya said, wearing an apron from the kitchen.
“Okay.”
“It was ready an hour ago.”
“Oh, sorry!” I apologized. The night before they asked me what time to have breakfast ready by and I told them “nine” — only to sleep in until 9:30.
The Things Between Europeans and Asians
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 10, 2004
DAY 292: The continents Europe and Asia are separated naturally by the Ural Mountain Range, which extends from the northwest of Kazakhstan to the Kara Sea in the Arctic Circle. The mountain range is fairly wide as most mountain ranges are, and without any legal boundary between two different nations (it’s mostly all in Russia), it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where Europe ends and Asia begins. As far as I’m concerned, the mountains are the wide border between the two continents, just as Central America is a big border between North and South America.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 10, 2004
DAY 293: The day before in the Yekaterinburg Guide Center office, I had met a South African guy doing the Trans-Siberian trip like me. He too was somewhat upset that so far it hadn’t been the international party on wheels of vodka and chess that people made it out to be, but was happy enough that he had lucked out in his compartments with nice people. “I haven’t been stuck with three drunk Russian guys,” he said. “But I suppose with all my good luck, the bad luck is sure to come.”
Bowling For Siberia
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 10, 2004
DAY 294: “So is Novosibirsk what you thought it to be?” my 20-year-old host Julia asked me at dinner that night.
“I didn’t think there’d be a city this big here. I thought I’d be staying in some small house with an old couple. I had that image of the babushka,” I said. By that time in the evening, the entire image of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk had changed for me.
Lucky Lazy Day
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 10, 2004
DAY 295: When I boarded the No. 8 train the night before, I was anxious. Would I be assigned to a second-class compartment with three drunken Russian mafia-types again, or encounter a sexy, but questionable blonde bombshell in a black bra? I got to my compartment assignment, #25 in Wagon #006. Inside was a young guy in a uniform.
The Real Siberia
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 11, 2004
DAY 296: The sun rose around six to burn off the morning mist of the Siberian countryside. I was awake before my alarm clock set for seven — my internal body clock was all out of whack with the constant adjust of time zones every other day.
No Aunt May
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 15, 2004
DAY 297: Living in a homestay with Nina was sort of being like Spider-man’s alter ego Peter Parker. I lived in my own room with an old woman with white hair who, without me might be pretty lonely, just like Peter Parker and his Aunt May after his Uncle Ben’s death. Meanwhile, she, nor did many people I’ve met, knew of my secret identity as this big world traveler — a superhero to those stuck in office cubicles — with The Global Trip insignia emblazoned on my chest. (I don’t really reveal my 16-month travel plan to locals, thinking that they might think I’m some sort of millionaire. RTWs make you poor!)
Deadpan Looks By The Deep Blue Lake
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 16, 2004
DAY 298: From what I had heard, many travelers on the Trans-Siberian Railway only stop once on the way from Moscow to the Far East in Irkutsk in order to see nearby Lake Baikal (rhymes with “bagel”). The shimmering deep blue lake — the world’s deepest body of freshwater — was formed after a collision of tectonic plates. It is believed that as the plates separate over time, the lake will get deeper and wider, forming the earth’s fifth ocean. Until then, it still remains the one “must see” place in Siberia.
Gangs of Siberia
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 16, 2004
DAY 299: As a tourist, you don’t really have to worry about the Russian mafia, so my Lonely Planet guidebook says; they are only involved in high-scale crimes involving big business or bribing police or politicians, like the Italian mafia in The Godfather. Whether or not it was the actual Russian mafia that harassed me on the second leg of my train journey when three drunk Russians sicked fake or corrupt cops on me I don’t know, but that’s not to say the actual Russian mafia is alive and well, not only in Russia, but around the world. I learned all of this at my family-run B&B’s son Nicolai, a fine 23-year-old Russian guy with very good English.
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Asia
From the trip blog: "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World"
Posted August 19, 2004
DAY 300: It’s somewhat fitting that I stumbled upon a interracial wedding party taking a big new family portrait in Soviet Square in Ulan Ude (picture below, which I took by posing as one of the many wedding photographers). The bride and her side of the family had Russian Caucasian faces while her new hubby had an East Asian one, just like the ones on his side of the family.
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ABOUT ERIK R. TRINIDAD
When he’s not making a living as an interactive/motion designer or playing with fast food, Erik R. Trinidad is a travel writer, blogger, video host and producer focusing on adventure and culinary content. His work has been featured on National Geographic Intelligent Travel, Adventure.com, Discovery.com, Saveur, Condé Nast Traveler, and 
Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why, which also includes the work of Tim Cahill, Doug Lansky, Jennifer Leo and Rolf Potts. He has also referenced his travel experiences in his solo book, Fancy Fast Food: Ironic Recipes with No Bun Intended.
For over ten years, Erik has traveled to the seven continents of the world — from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo — with a curiosity for exotic foods and a thirst for adventure (and writing material). In his travels, he has been mugged at knifepoint in Cape Town, extorted by corrupt Russian police on the Trans-Siberian Railway, stranded in tornadic storms in the American midwest, and air-lifted off the Everest Trail by a helicopter that was thankfully paid for by his travel insurance. But it hasn’t been all fun; he has also donned a tuxedo amidst the penguins of Antarctica, paraded with Carnival-winning samba school Beija Flor in Rio, run for his life at Pamplona’s “Running of the Bulls,” cage-dived with great white sharks, gotten shot point-blank in the stomach in Colombia (while wearing a bulletproof jacket), and above all, encountered many people around the world, including some Peruvian musicians in Cuzco who learned and played “Y.M.C.A.” at his request. He loves the irony that, after everywhere he’s been, he has never been to Mexico.
Erik writes stories and news articles when he’s at his base camp in New York City, and continues his blog when he is on the road — provided he’s not occupied tracking down lost luggage.
Additional news/article clippings at ErikTrinidad.com.
See Erik talk about travel in an American Express ad:
Read about Erik in this feature article from Filipinas magazine by National Geographic Traveler Associate Editor Amy Alipio.