My departure from Sri Lanka was understated. I said my goodbyes to Kara and Keven, dismissing the sentimentality. “I’ll write you an email”, I replied, a cheap reference to an interconnected digital world. I should have said “I’ll miss you too”, but that might have been to close to the loss. The taxi had arrived early, and only as I sped off to the airport did I realized how much of a home Sri Lanka had become.

One red-eye later, I am back in Bangkok with the strange obligation of taking a vacation. As my cab slowly worked its way through downtown Bangkok toward my hotel, I couldn’t help but feel a recently familiar anxiety.

“You can always change your tickets,” Keven said when I told him that part of me felt anxious to get back to the United States. Skeptical that he was implying that I should once again extend my stay in Sri Lanka, I reassured the status quo, and my vacation, by quickly adding “it will be good for me.”

But it is more than this. I am not just leaving the country, I am also leaving my job and my life in Salt Lake. While out of the country, I received a job offer inviting me to come work at the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C. It seems this association, where I have been teaching, would like me as a Senior Programmer. The offer is good, the opportunities and timing are right, and while I have logistically accepted the offer, I am waiting for my emotions to catch up. I find myself asking existential questions. “Why do people leave?”, “Why do people stay?”, and “What makes something a good decision?”

Ted, my boss, had sent me an email a few days before in response to my resignation. “I believe that the best decision would be to have Kara steal your passport and ticket back to the US and keep you trapped in Sri Lanka as a slave under corporate ownership. However, for some reason that seems to be socially unacceptable.

“Although you will be leaving our firm,” he continued, “I prefer to think of your departure as an indefinite ‘leave of absence’ or sabbatical.”

And so I leave knowing that if I don’t like D.C. I can always return. But I know that I will, and so I won’t. Paradoxically, that is the problem.

Cheri, the Brooklyn based massage therapist I met at 30,000 feet on my last trip to D.C. had sent an email informing me that my emotional moon sign was Cancer. I couldn’t help but think of my brother-in-law. “Cancers, we’re crabs,” he once said, pinching his hands like ad-hoc claws, “we build nests.” And he would begin to dig in the imaginary sand. My temporary nest in Seeduwa now abandoned, returning to Salt Lake promises an emotional security that Bangkok will make me temporarily forego. But even that nest in Salt Lake now seems somehow insufficient.

I received the job offer last Saturday, minutes before I waltzed out the door to Sri Pada. However, as the train lazily climbed the hill country, my excitement slowly gave way to the emotional implications of my impending move and the existential questions took on a different tone. “How can people leave?”

Restless before the climb, I laid in bed wishing in vain that life would somehow slow down long enough for me to regain my footing. A brief respite before the next adventure was all I wanted. Simultaneously optimistic and saddened at the change, I searched in vain for a way to mourn a loss about which only I knew, knowing that if I could just break down I would get the catharsis I so desperately needed.

Instead I was left with questions, most importantly this: “What makes home?”

Funny, I suppose, that crabs build nests in something as impermanent as sand.

All good things come to an end. Today is my last day in Sri Lanka, and I am not sure I will ever come back. A month in a foreign country — not too shabby.

Reflecting on the time, the changes are funny. My feet are constantly dirty, and my hair, ravaged by the humidity has just given up and turned into a British fro, if such a thing exists. My mom would cry. I have been so busy while here that it has been hard to keep up with myself.

It would have made sense to learn some Sinhala while I was here, but for some reason I never did. Somehow in my personal labor camp it seemed unimportant. One more victim of lack of time. Yesterday, however, in the emotional preparations for my return, a classic moment crossed the line, linking this life to my past.

“How do you say ‘no’?”, I asked Kara. She had been yelling at a driver who had intentionally taken us out of our way in order to make some extra cash.

She looked at me, stunned at the realization that I had somehow missed these essentials. “Nae” (sounds like “Neh”), she said. I looked back at her and burst into hysterics.

“What?” she asked, my laughter having scared the driver back onto the right course. Kara had said this so many time during my time in Sri Lanka, and I had always found it a bit amusing. Carly, in moments of indifference or annoyance would respond in exactly the same way. “Neh.” I assumed that Kara was doing the same. To find out that all this time Carly had been accurately expressing her emotions in Sinhala was a bit too much.

The other day, Carly sent me an email. “Write in your blog”, she said. The truth is that I have a half dozen half finished entries that I have been to busy to finish. So, in short Carly, “Nae.”

There is a line, or at least a rough space, at which your lines are crossed. In a country where the color of your skin is the best indication of status, walking down the street is enough to draw attention. Everyone seems desperate to be friendly, at least with your wallet, and the propositions, even if only for attention, can become overwhelming.

While everyone seems desperate to try out that one English word they know, no where was this more apparent that during the hike up Sri Pada. The stairs were scattered with teenagers, emboldened by the social credit they were sure to receive from their peers. These interactions, however, which had little if anything to do with me, don’t compare to when that one word is intended to obligate you into handing over money.

Of course this works both ways. “Where are you from?” was far too common a starting place. Pretending I didn’t speak English became a favorite tactic. While in Kandy, a English tourist asked me, “Are your from Canada or the United States?”, apologizing for being unable to place my accent. From that point on when asked the tiresome question, my tactic changed to one of an assumed nationality. “Canada”, I would say, beaming proudly.

And so I was caught of guard one day in Kandy, when a man responded by saying “What part? Ontario?”

“Oh, no no”, I said, trying to catch my balance and distance myself at the same time. “Vancouver.”

“Oh Vancouver!” I was about to learn this was not the right answer. “I used to live there.” Apparently this man who spoke more than just one word of English, but wanted my money none the less, went to school in Vancouver. He precede to rattle off a list of his favorite spots, places about which I was now obligated to enthusiastically reminisce.

I refused his taxi service, explaining that I was going to the train station and would like to walk. “Ah yes,” he said, “Canada very big, you guys like walking.” 15 minutes later, and completely lost, I hired a trishaw to drive me. It was one block away.

And so it was that Kara, Keven and I were taking a walk, with more success this time, to dinner. We were discussing Jaffna, and the possibility of Kara visiting, or rather the lack thereof. Jaffna, at the northern tip of Sri Lanka is home to largest concentration of Hindus, Tamils, and the Tiger rebel group. Things are decidedly restless, which I secretly think made Kara all the more restless to go. No one was exactly sure how long the trip there would take, but the consensus was two days by train. Sri Lanka isn’t that big, really, the trains are just that slow.

“I don’t think so”, Keven said to the ad-hoc itinerary, met by a stream of Kara’s faux protests.

Just at that moment, a trishaw pulled up. “Where you go?” the driver said, spouting off another common favorite.

“How much to Jaffna?” Kara spouted, spinning in his direction. The driver was too stunned to reply, and Kara, like the rest of us, could have looked over her shoulder and seen that personal line go right on by. “We go to Jaffna, and then you wait two hours, and come back. How much? 300 Rupees?”

I would have felt sorry for the man, but I was laughing too hard.

Amitha and Anjuna were excited to hear of my plans to visit Sri Pada. I had decided that I couldn’t leave Sri Lanka with out having gone to climb this mountain. Also commonly known as Adam’s Peak, it sits at the top of Sri Lankan geography and has been a pilgrimage for over a thousand years. In the center of Sri Lanka, Lonely Planet had described getting to the peak as “simple.” This statement, however, was followed by a page worth of explanations that demonstrated everything but this fact. I was not concerned about getting there, but I had real fears about not being able to get back. Not expecting to find any English so complicatedly far from Colombo, and knowing that I would be making this journey by myself, I worked actively to quell my anxieties while holding tight to my cell phone.

Defiantly striking heavenward against the surrounding skyline, Sri Pada has been claimed by every imaginable religious group. The huge foot print at the top of this 2243m peak seems to be the major cause. The name Adam’s Peak comes from the Judeo-Christian claim that the footprint was the first place Adam stepped after having been cast out of heaven. Buddhists, however, believe it to be the last earthly step of the Buddha, made during his ascension to Nirvana. Some believe its owner to be St. Thomas, or even the Hindu Lord Shiva. My favorite, however, comes from the name Samanalakande, or “butterfly mountain”, the place where butterflies come to die.

Despite the historical diversity, only Buddhism is readily apparent during the 7km assent. Travelers, including myself, frequently begin the hike around 2am in order to reach the top by sunrise. I had checked into a hotel in Dickoya after a 5 1/2 hour train ride from Colombo and was shocked to find myself freezing due to the altitude and the rainy weather. After an unexpected and embarrassingly large dinner, which I justified with my lack of food for the day and the forthcoming workout, I dozed fitfully until 1am, when my tri-shaw showed up to take me to the base of the mountain. An hour later, I found my self gazing up at a string of lights winding their way up into the sky, illuminating the path for pilgrims.

Near the beginning, monks greeted travelers as they slowly moved forward on their midnight assent. The path started off rather shallow, but quickly turned upwards, eventually forfeiting to a vertical progression of stairs. And while the way is now well established, elderly women, devoutly struggling against their failing joints, worked their way up the mountain, one step at a time, harkening back to the journeys of past generations:

“…others struggle upwards unaided, until, fainting by the way, they are considerately carried with all haste in their swooning condition to the summit and forced into an attitude of worship at the shrine to secure the full benefits of their pilgrimage before death should supervene; others never reach the top at all, but perish from cold and fatigue; and there have been many instances of pilgrims losing their lives by being blown over precipice or falling from giddiness induced by a thoughtless retrospect when surmounting especially dangerous cliffs.” — Vicotiran-Era Guidebook, 19th Century

Roughly 5200 stairs and a number of hours later, I found myself waiting for sunrise at the top. As the sun slowly burned into the morning clouds, an allusion to the storm from the evening before, I found myself remembering the young monk who had greeted me at the base.

“May Lord Buddha bless you and your journey,” he said in pristine English, his eyes glimmering purely in the artificial light. He couldn’t have been much older than me, but pressing a dot of paint on to my forehead and reaching for my hand, he slipped a plain threaded cord around my wrist. With a kind enthusiasm, he momentarily looked into my eyes, and then, while chanting a series of prayers, he repeatedly tied the cord to hold the blessings tight.