Travel

Mass tourism = human pollution

Why Overtourism Is a Capitalist Crisis

August 25, 2026 — Leave a comment

The tourist didn’t design the system that made travel a substitute for a life worth living.

A new form of environmental propaganda has quietly become mainstream.

Every week, another headline appears telling ordinary people they are responsible for climate change, then hands down the same list of penances. Drive less. Fly less. Stop buying this. Stop enjoying that. Recently, Le Monde highlighted that tourism accounts for around 9% of global CO2 emissions.

The number itself bothers me. It’s huge, and mass tourism is something I have no patience for.

The framing bothered me even more.

Once again, the spotlight was placed on ordinary people instead of the system that shapes almost every decision they make.

It’s becoming increasingly common to hear the same message.

You’re responsible.

You’re the polluter.

You’re destroying the planet.

Study. Work. Pay your bills. Repeat. But if you finally manage to save enough money for a vacation, you’re suddenly made to feel guilty for that too.

That is not environmentalism.

That is misdirection.

Anyone who reads my essays knows I take my environmental footprint seriously. The choices behind that, the minimalism, going vegan, the way I get around, weren’t picked up to look good or fit in. They came out of years of reflection.

I’ve been a minimalist for nearly a decade because endless consumption makes neither people nor the planet happier.

I’m vegan because I care about animals. I also recognize the immense environmental cost of industrial animal agriculture, from habitat destruction to food waste and greenhouse gas emissions.

I buy second hand exclusively and repair things before replacing them. I don’t buy new clothes. I’d rather walk or take public transportation than drive, and I’d rather borrow or share something than own it outright, because half the stuff we buy individually just sits there waiting to be used once a year. I’ve taken a nine hour bus instead of a forty five minute flight to the same destination, more than once, because the extra hours felt like a small price for the difference in footprint. I believe we should leave this world better than we found it.

None of that makes me exceptional. It just means I got lucky, or stubborn, enough to question habits most people never get the chance to question, because those habits get taught before we’re old enough to notice them.

Unlike wild animals, humans cannot realistically leave no trace at all. We build, consume, and transform our surroundings. But we can choose to leave as little trace as possible.

That responsibility matters.

What I reject is the idea that environmental collapse is primarily the consequence of millions of individuals making bad personal choices, as if those choices appeared out of nowhere.

They didn’t.

We’re born into a world that treats consumption as the default. Questioning it comes later, if at all, because most people spend their lives just trying to survive rent, survive the cost of food and shelter. Then, once that survival eases up even a little, we try to make up for lost time. We overconsume to compensate for what we never had, the same way anyone leaving poverty tends to, emulating the people who always had the means. “Treat yourself. You earned it. You worked hard for it.”

Individualism finishes the job from there. Look after your own happiness first, leave everyone else’s problems to someone else. That isn’t a flaw people are born with. It’s a job someone trained us for.

So yes, individuals are responsible for what they do. But the system is responsible for how most individuals were shaped to behave in the first place, and pretending otherwise lets the actual architects of the mess off the hook.

The system was built so individuals would fit inside it, and it worked well enough that the individual is now a piece of the machine that keeps breaking us. That’s what makes escape so hard. It isn’t one bad law or one greedy company standing in the way. It’s advertising, employers, housing, food systems, culture, and habit all pulling the same direction at once, thousands of small parts that don’t need to coordinate because they all reward the same behavior. No amount of individual willpower gets the masses out of a system built from that many interlocking pieces. You can opt out personally. The system barely notices.

Now, does tourism have environmental impacts?

Absolutely.

Mass tourism damages ecosystems. It strains local infrastructure. It raises housing prices. It pollutes coastlines. It turns historic neighborhoods into amusement parks. Entire cities are transformed into products designed for visitors instead of homes for residents.

These are real problems.

But they’re not caused by tourists wanting to see the world. They’re caused by an industry that’s turned that desire into something to sell as much of as possible, to as many people as possible, regardless of what the planet or the destination can absorb.

That distinction matters.

And here’s the part that should actually worry us. Right now, only a small share of the world’s population can afford to travel the way tourism gets discussed in Le Monde or anywhere else. If everyone on earth consumed the way the average French person does, we’d need close to three planets to sustain it. Live like the average American and the number climbs higher still.

The uncomfortable truth is that the planet is only holding together because most of humanity is still too poor to consume like the wealthy world does. As more of that population gets richer, and some of it will, that 9% doesn’t stay at 9%. It grows, the same way every other consumption metric grows when purchasing power spreads. We’re not looking at a stable number. We’re looking at a preview.

I also have for a long time questioned whether much of what we call tourism today is even about travel anymore. My work attests to that.

For many people, traveling is just another form of consumption.

They fly somewhere, stay in the same spots, eat at the same chain restaurants, shop in the same luxury stores, and return home with thousands of photos that exist mainly to prove they were there.

The destination changes.

The lifestyle doesn’t.

Social media has accelerated this transformation. Many destinations are no longer visited because they offer something meaningful. They’re visited because their images perform well online.

Travel becomes content.

Experiences become status symbols.

Places become backdrops.

This isn’t the industry malfunctioning. It’s the industry working exactly as designed. Travel companies exist to grow. Growth means selling more trips to more people more often, and the easiest way to do that is to sell travel as a reward, a treat, a thing you’ve earned and deserve, the same script used to sell everything else. Advertise the escape, not the destination. Call it self care. Call it living your best life. The vacation guilt the headlines produce and the vacation obsession the industry produces come from the same machine. One hand points the finger, the other hand keeps the conveyor belt running.

I think it reflects something much deeper than the shallowness of the masses.

Many people feel disconnected from their work, their communities, and even themselves. Life often revolves around earning enough money to repeat the same routine next week. Under these conditions, vacations become less about discovery and more about escape.

People aren’t always searching for another country.

They’re searching for relief.

Give people meaningful work. Give them stronger communities. Give them time with family. Give them parks, culture, nature, and purpose close to home.

Many would feel far less pressure to chase an escape valve on the other side of the planet every summer.

There will always be genuine explorers.

Some people are naturally driven to understand different cultures, ecosystems, languages, and ways of living. They travel to learn, to question their assumptions, and to return home with ideas worth sharing.

I’d guess that’s a minority. Watch how travel actually gets consumed, the itineraries, the photo spots, the same five restaurants recommended to everyone, and it’s hard to conclude that curiosity is the main thing driving most of it.

Historically, travel served the purpose of learning through exploration rather than consumption. People left home to study, exchange knowledge, observe other societies, and bring back innovations that improved their own communities.

Travel wasn’t simply about extracting something from a place.

It was about growing through them.

Today, too much tourism encourages the opposite. It treats landscapes the way it treats products, something to use up and move on from. It’s also flattening a diverse world into sameness.

That isn’t a failure of human nature.

It’s a predictable outcome of an economic system that turns everything into something to be bought and sold.

So yes, I oppose mass tourism. I absolutely do.

I oppose cruise ships that poison the oceans they sail through before dumping their waste in port cities and leaving.

I oppose short weekend flights taken simply because they’re cheap.

I oppose cities being redesigned for visitors while residents are priced out.

I oppose zoos and circuses that trade animal suffering for entertainment.

I oppose beachfront developments that sell the view and never mention what it cost to build.

I even oppose ecotourism, most of the time it’s just greenwashed tourism for the rich, another way to price out ordinary people while the outcome stays the same.

None of that makes the tourist the offender. An industry built to sell escape, and paid handsomely for doing it, is the one that turned a personal desire into an ecological liability.

The system is the culprit.

The environmental crisis will not be solved by making people feel guilty for taking a vacation. Most don’t even care.

It starts with education, teaching people to question the conditioning instead of just living inside it.

From there, it will be solved by degrowth. Not for the nation building its first hospitals or its first clean water system, that’s need. Degrowth is for the societies that already have what they need and keep manufacturing new needs anyway, the Emirates building another amusement park in the desert, Nevada building another casino with a golf course attached. One is need. The other is appetite dressed up as progress.

We already own enough clothes to dress the world for generations. The pile sitting in circulation right now would outlast most of us several times over, yet the fashion industry keeps manufacturing seasonal trends to convince us otherwise. That’s the target. That’s where degrowth should appear.

Less consumerism. Less unnecessary work. Eating plant based, living with less, minimalism as a norm rather than a lifestyle choice for the few. More shared economy and less of the individualism that trains us to treat our own comfort as the only thing worth protecting.

Degrowth looks like communities that function without a car and a credit card for every errand, hobbies that give something back instead of costing something, planting trees and cleaning rivers instead of shopping malls and card tables in casinos.

It looks like people who no longer need two weeks a year on the other side of the planet to remember they’re alive, because the other fifty weeks stopped feeling like a sentence.

Until we are willing to confront that reality, the headlines will keep telling you to fly less while the industry keeps telling you to fly more, and both of them profit from you never noticing it’s the same voice. Guilt won’t shrink a system built to keep expanding. Only pulling its foundations out will.

That’s the trip actually worth taking. And unlike the one on the brochure, nobody’s selling it to you.

Teekay

Rainforest

How to Read a Rainforest

August 20, 2026 — Leave a comment

On the plants, poisons and people who turn the jungle into a pharmacy, a grocery store and a home

I didn’t realize how little I knew about the forest until our guide started pointing things out.

Our trek through Taman Negara, near Kuala Tahan, covered around 8 kilometers. We started at 10 in the morning and got back around 5pm, with a break at Teras Waterfall before the boat ride back to town.

The trail demanded attention from beginning to end. Mud, wet rocks, exposed roots and shallow streams meant every step had to be placed carefully, and in several spots ropes were fixed to the hillside to help hikers climb or descend slippery slopes. Waterproof hiking shoes with good grip aren’t optional here. They’re the difference between enjoying the trek and spending the day sliding through the mud, if not something worse.

But the distance and the terrain weren’t what made the hike memorable. It was realizing that most ordinary-looking plants are much more than they let on. By the end of the day, I wasn’t seeing trees and bushes anymore. I was seeing functions.

Our guide walked us through plant after plant, and one stuck with me more than the rest. It was used to treat snake bites. When cut open, it’s applied directly to the wound. According to the guide, the inside of the plant would turn yellow as it absorbed the venom, and fresh pieces were applied until the inside stayed white, which is believed to mean no venom is left. Whether or not modern medicine backs that up, it’s a testament to thousands of years of people experimenting with what grows around them.

Other plants did other jobs. One relieved asthma. Another became shampoo, soap and mosquito repellent all at once. I didn’t catch its name, but all it took was rubbing a few leaves together with water before a rich, citrus-scented foam appeared in the guide’s hands. It smelled better than most commercial soaps I’ve used.

The forest also supplies drinking water. Those thick vines made famous by Tarzan actually hold water inside them, and so does bamboo. In a place where rivers aren’t always close, knowing which plants can quench your thirst can matter more than you’d think.

One of my favorite discoveries was the stingless bees. They build their nests inside hollow tree trunks, with only a narrow wax entrance reaching outside. The honey stays protected deep in the wood, out of reach of most predators. Seeing a colony hidden inside a living tree was something I’d never come across before.

There were still plenty of reminders that we were sharing the forest with wild animals. At several points, the guide stopped because he could smell them before seeing them. The scent, he said, likely came from monkeys or maybe elephants that had recently passed through. We also found deep claw marks running up the side of a tree, almost certainly left by a sun bear climbing toward a hollow trunk where bees had built their nest. As if that wasn’t enough, he showed us a recent photo of a local man who had survived a panther attack, a humbling reminder that this rainforest still belongs to its wildlife as much as its visitors.

After hours of humidity and sweat, reaching Teras Waterfall felt like a reward. The cold water washed away the heat before we made our way back to the river and boarded the boat home.

The boat dropped us off for the last stop of the day, and we walked up a slippery, muddy slope to reach the Batek camp. Right at the entrance sat a pile of freshly cut bamboo, maybe for a new hut. The camp itself had several huts, built entirely from bamboo with roofs made from local palm leaves, arranged around a central fire pit. One small hut off to the side served as the “shop” where they sell crafts to visitors. Off by one of the huts, a group of unmarried men sat together, just talking among themselves, in no hurry to be anywhere.

The Batek are one of the Indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia and have lived in these forests for thousands of years. Physically, they reminded me of Papuan people, though generally taller. Their entire population today is only around 2000 people.

The camp felt almost entirely integrated into the forest. The only domestic animals I noticed were three chickens running around near the huts, apparently kept for special occasions rather than everyday meals, a small sign of how much even their world has started trading with ours.

One man showed us how they start a fire using nothing but what the forest provides. He worked in near silence, and it was over in maybe 20 seconds. The second he finished, he just sat back, calm, like he’d done it ten thousand times before, which he probably had.

Then came the blowpipes, and this is where hunting in the forest really came alive for me. The Batek still use these to hunt monkeys, squirrels and birds high in the canopy, and I was surprised by how sophisticated the weapon actually is. It’s made from bamboo, while the darts are carved from what they call water palm trees. Behind each dart sits a small piece of plant fiber that seals the tube, so the hunter’s breath pushes the dart forward with real force. At the mouthpiece is a black bulb that creates an airtight seal and makes the shot more efficient. The man demonstrating it was quiet, maybe shy, maybe just naturally calm. At one point he said something to me directly, but I didn’t catch it. Even Bahasa isn’t really their first language, let alone English.

I got to try it myself. Standing about 15 meters from the target, I took a deep breath and blew as hard as I could. The dart landed dead center, which I wasn’t expecting at all.

The darts get even more interesting once you learn how they’re prepared. Their tips are coated with poison collected from a tree. The bark is cut until a white sap starts to bleed out, then the dart is coated with the latex and left to dry. Rather than killing instantly, the poison weakens the animal over the next 15 minutes or so, and hunters simply follow their prey until it collapses.

Back at the village, the hunter presents the animal to the village leader, who carves another ring into the weapon. Over time, the blowpipe stops being just a tool and becomes a record of experience.

They told us how they live too. Unmarried men traditionally live together until they marry, often young. They don’t follow an organized religion but believe the forest is inhabited by spirits.

When someone dies, the body is placed high in a tree and the family leaves the camp to settle elsewhere.

The Batek have traditionally been nomadic, moving every few months, sometimes because food gets scarce, sometimes because predators like leopards make an area unsafe, sometimes because the death of a family member means it’s time to leave. Their movements follow the rhythms of the forest rather than property lines or borders.

Today they also host small groups of visitors and sell handmade crafts, among them miniature blowpipes and hunting sets, to supplement their income. It struck me that they’ve probably never had to think about whether those objects might get stopped by airport customs. In their world, they’re everyday tools. In ours, they’re something else entirely.

I was the last one to leave the camp, and for a moment I just stood there taking it in. These people would spend that night around the same fire pit, and the next night, and the one after that.

The view from the camp looked out over the river and the rainforest, and it hit me that this might be the oldest rainforest in the world, older than the Amazon, and these people have been living in it, exactly like this, the whole time.

Looking back, what stayed with me wasn’t any single plant or demonstration. It was realizing that the rainforest isn’t simply a collection of species. It’s a pharmacy, a grocery store, a hardware store, a source of clean water, a place of worship and a home, all at once. Without someone to interpret it, I would’ve spent seven hours walking through an endless sea of green. With a guide, I found out that almost every tree, vine and leaf had a story to tell.

This trip was a gift for my wife’s birthday. In the end, it turned into a gift for both of us, one more memory we’ll carry for a long time.

Thanks for reading.

Teekay

Backpacking

Backpacking lost its soul

August 18, 2026 — Leave a comment

On the ego that turned exploration into consumption.

People often ask why I spend weeks in one place when I could be crossing several countries off my list instead. I suppose I’ve never understood how moving more is supposed to mean seeing more.

I don’t travel to collect countries.

I travel to disappear into one.

Backpackers don’t stay anywhere anymore.

They arrive. They sleep. They photograph. They publish. They leave.

Then they repeat the process somewhere else until the trip ends and they return home exhausted, convinced they’ve seen the world because they were physically present in it.

They haven’t.

They’ve consumed it.

That’s what backpacking has become.

Not exploration.

Consumption.

Call me a gatekeeper if you want, but I don’t think making travel accessible to everyone was a good thing.

Some things deserve to remain difficult.

Difficulty isn’t just an obstacle.

It’s a filter.

Backpacking once demanded uncertainty. You hitchhiked because there wasn’t another option. You camped because you couldn’t afford hotels. You got lost because Google Maps didn’t exist. You depended on strangers because there was nobody else.

You didn’t stay three weeks because slow travel was fashionable.

You stayed because leaving wasn’t simple.

That difficulty selected people.

Not better people.

People with different motivations.

People who wanted to understand rather than display.

Then technology removed almost every barrier.

Flights became cheap.

Hostels multiplied.

Google Maps eliminated uncertainty.

Translation apps eliminated effort.

Social media eliminated the need to tell stories because photographs could pretend to tell them for you.

The filter disappeared.

The culture changed.

Today, travel isn’t sold as curiosity.

It’s sold as identity.

The tourism industry doesn’t ask what a country might teach you.

It asks who you’ll become once other people know you’ve been there.

Travel has become one of the cheapest ways to manufacture an identity.

You don’t need to become interesting.

You just need to stand somewhere interesting.

That’s why so many people return with bigger egos instead of broader minds.

Ask them what they learned.

Most will tell you what they saw.

Ask them about the people.

They’ll tell you about the monuments.

Ask them about the language.

They’ll proudly repeat the three words they learned after spending 90 days crossing six countries.

They’re collecting locations, not understanding and certainly not growth.

Tourism has become another branch of consumerism.

Countries are products.

Experiences are products.

Cultures are products.

Even people become products.

Everything exists to be consumed, photographed and replaced by the next destination.

The strangest part is how proud we are of this.

“I’ve been to 25 countries.“

Why is that impressive?

Wouldn’t it be more impressive to deeply understand one?

To speak its language.

To know its neighborhoods instead of its viewpoints.

To have friends instead of recommendations.

To return home with your certainties broken instead of your passport filled.

Movement has become confused with growth.

They’re not the same thing.

Most people don’t travel to become different.

They travel to confirm the person they already believe themselves to be.

Travel becomes evidence.

Proof that they’re adventurous.

Proof of their supposed open-mindedness, despite the racist behavior they display toward locals.

Proof that they’re successful.

It’s ego disguised as curiosity.

The environmental hypocrisy follows naturally.

People cry in front of ancient forests before buying products linked to deforestation.

They snorkel around coral reefs while financing industries that destroy them.

They admire wild animals, then return home and continue consuming the system driving those animals toward extinction.

Nature isn’t changing them.

It’s entertaining them.

People tell me tourism creates conservation.

I think that’s backwards.

Conservation is usually the bill we pay after treating the natural world like a warehouse.

The less we consume, the less there is to rescue.

The same thing happens with culture.

We’re constantly told cultural exchange is inherently beautiful.

Sometimes it is.

Sometimes it spreads destructive habits faster than wisdom.

The world is becoming culturally flatter.

Walk through enough cities and they begin to blur together.

The same cafés.

The same apartment blocks.

The same shopping streets.

The same influencers taking the same photographs.

We’ve mistaken imitation for development.

We’ve decided that progress means looking like whoever industrialized first.

Traditional architecture disappears because concrete and glass looks richer.

Buildings that evolved over centuries to suit local climates are demolished so cities can resemble places they were never meant to resemble.

I don’t call that progress.

I call it forgetting.

A yurt isn’t inferior because it doesn’t resemble a skyscraper.

An earth house isn’t backward because it isn’t made of concrete.

Architecture should answer the climate before it answers fashion.

A society should adapt to its environment before adapting to global trends.

That’s my definition of progress.

Better adaptation.

Not better imitation.

The same principle applies everywhere.

The easier photography became, the less people learned photography.

The easier publishing became, the less people learned to write.

The easier backpacking became, the more it became tourism.

Convenience doesn’t simply allow more people to participate.

It changes why they participate.

And once the reason changes, the activity changes with it.

That’s what happened to travel.

The greatest journeys aren’t measured by distance.

They’re measured by transformation.

You should come home questioning yourself more than the people you visited.

If all you brought back were photographs, opinions and a stronger sense of your own importance, then you didn’t really travel.

You consumed another place.

The tragedy isn’t that the world became accessible.

The tragedy is that accessibility turned one of humanity’s greatest opportunities for humility into another marketplace for ego.

Backpacking didn’t disappear.

Its soul did.

Thanks for reading.

Teekay

Lalibela by Teekay RM

A place without clocks

March 25, 2026 — Leave a comment

This isn’t fiction. It’s called the African Jerusalem.

People there don’t need clocks. The bees tell the time.

As my readers know, I’m vegan, so I don’t take from animals, not even honey. That hasn’t changed. But in the highlands around Lalibela, I noticed a different way of living with them, one rooted in respect and faith.

Reasons why we don’t eat honey

I spent four years of my teenage life in Ethiopia, then returned again at 22. Some places stay with you in a way that doesn’t fade, and for me, this is one of them.

Not far from Lalibela, in rural areas often referred to locally as Gueorgis, beekeeping isn’t just a livelihood. It’s something older, something spiritual. Among Ethiopian Orthodox Christian communities, bees are not seen as simple insects. They’re often regarded as pure creatures, sometimes described as reflecting the discipline and harmony of angels. Not because they’re divine, but because they’re part of a creation that follows a precise order, one that humans are meant to observe and respect.

That idea of order shows up everywhere, especially in how people relate to time.

  • The concept of time

There’s a belief I heard more than once while I was there. The bees give the time three times a day. In the morning around what we would call 10, then at midday, and again in the afternoon around 3. These are the moments when their activity peaks, when they leave in visible waves to gather nectar. It’s not a clock in the modern sense, but it becomes one in daily life.

And in many of these rural areas, that matters more than any watch.

Because the reality is that in remote parts of Ethiopia, especially around Lalibela, people have historically lived without precise, mechanical timekeeping. Time is read through the sun, through patterns. Morning begins when the light settles a certain way. Midday is when the sun stands above you. Evening arrives when shadows stretch and the air cools.

People don’t meet at exact hours. They meet in moments. And everyone understands those moments.

There’s a cliché you hear often about Africans being fashionably “late,” about Ethiopians not caring about time. I don’t take that at face value. Without claiming it as a proven explanation, I think it says more about the observer than the people being described.

If your entire system is built around minutes and precision, then anything outside of that looks like disorder. But what if it’s just a different structure?

For instance, in Islamic cultures, time is extremely precise. Daily prayers are tied to exact solar positions. Fasting begins and ends at defined moments. The lunar calendar governs entire cycles of life. Time there is something to be measured carefully and adhered to strictly.

In contrast, in many rural societies, time is lived before it’s measured. It flows with what God has set in motion, rather than being cut into exact units. So what looks like “lateness” might simply be life unfolding without the pressure of the clock.

And Ethiopia takes that even further in a way most people don’t even realize.

It doesn’t just live time differently. It counts it differently.

There’s what we call international time, and then there’s Ethiopian time. In Ethiopia, the day starts at what we would call 6 AM, roughly sunrise. That’s hour one. So what we call 7am becomes 1 o’clock. Noon becomes 6. What we call 6 PM becomes 12. It’s not confusion. It’s consistency with the sun. The first hour begins when light begins.

It’s a system that actually makes a lot of sense. It aligns the clock with lived reality rather than abstract convention.

The calendar follows the same logic.

Ethiopian calendar has 13 months, not 12. Twelve months of 30 days, and a thirteenth month of 5 days, or 6 in a leap year. That last month, Pagume if my memory hasn’t failed me, is short, almost like a pause between cycles.

Thus, the new year doesn’t begin on January 1st. It begins around September 11th. Right after the heavy rainy season, when the land resets, when the skies clear, when life begins again. It’s agricultural, but also spiritual. A renewal that actually follows the environment people live in.

And because of how this calendar was preserved, based on older Christian calculations of the Annunciation, Ethiopia is about 7 to 8 years “behind” the Gregorian calendar. So while much of the world is in 2026, Ethiopia is in 2018.

It’s not that one is right and the other is wrong. It’s that one remained rooted in its own continuity, and I love and salute that.

  • Beekeeping in the African Jerusalem

That continuity matters when you look at places like Lalibela, often called the African Jerusalem. Tied to Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, whose name is understood to mean “the bees recognize his greatness/sovereignty”, it reflects one of the oldest continuous Christian traditions in the world. Christianity has been practiced in Ethiopia since at least the 4th century, long before much of Europe fully adopted it.

So when people bring honey to churches, when priests bless bees and beekeepers, it’s not symbolic in a modern sense. It’s continuity across centuries.

And that continuity is visible in movement too.

During honey harvesting seasons, some people from extremely remote villages set out for the markets of Lalibela, carrying honey in hand-crafted clay jars to sustain their families. They walk for days, not hours, days!

They move across the highlands, guided by the sun, by memory, by instinct. No maps, no schedules. Just direction.

Along the way, they stop at churches. Some of them centuries old, carved into rock. They offer part of their honey. Priests receive it, bless it, sometimes bless the bees themselves. It’s not commerce. It’s passage.

When night falls, they stop.

No tents. No inflatable beds. No modern equipment. They sleep outside, on the ground, with whatever they carry. Then at sunrise, they continue. Dozens of kilometers, step after step, until they reach the central market.

And this still happens today.

Part of what makes this possible is the geography of the Ethiopian highlands, historically known as Abyssinia. Compared to neighboring regions in Kenya or Tanzania, which are home to large populations of dangerous wildlife, the high plateaus around Lalibela are relatively safer. Fewer large predators, different ecosystems. It doesn’t mean there’s no risk, but it makes long-distance walking without protection far more viable.

The beehives themselves are adapted to this environment. Made from hollowed logs, woven fibers, and natural seals, they protect the bees from temperature swings and pests, and can survive in remote areas with minimal attention. Over generations, this system has allowed Ethiopian beekeeping to continue for at least 1500 years, deeply tied to the rhythms of the land.

The climate shapes everything too. Much of Ethiopia doesn’t follow four seasons, but cycles of rain and dryness that vary by altitude. Life organizes itself around what is given, and when it’s given, whether for people or for bees. In this context, priests play a role. Honey and candles are brought to churches, blessed, and prayers are offered for people and their bees.

Provision ultimately comes from God, and humans participate within limits they cannot control.

Even so, tension remains. People treat the bees with care and respect, but taking honey is still taking. Even when done carefully, it remains a form of exploitation. It may be necessary, it may be balanced, but it must also be acknowledged.

What stayed with me after all these years and despite how much I traveled was the alignment. A place where time is not just counted differently, but felt differently. Where a day doesn’t begin at midnight because a clock says so, but when light actually appears. Where a year resets not in the middle of winter, but after the rains have passed. Where journeys are measured in effort, not in minutes.

In a place like Lalibela, you start to question what we consider “normal.”

Maybe precision isn’t always clarity.

Maybe being “on time” isn’t always being in sync.

And maybe there are ways of living, still existing today, that haven’t forgotten that time was never meant to be owned, only followed.

Thanks for reading.

Teekay

Duality by Teekay RM

Immigrant kids think in parallel

March 20, 2026 — Leave a comment

We belong here, but we carry somewhere else at the same time.

I didn’t grow up in one place, I grew up across countries, cultures, across versions of life that don’t always overlap. Nothing ever felt fully singular;

Not home
Not language
Not even memory

There’s always another layer running underneath.

A joke that only lands in one country
A smell that brings you back somewhere no one around you knows
A version of you that only exists in a different language

Sometimes it hits you mid-thought. You’re here, but part of you is somewhere else entirely.

Maybe you didn’t move as much, but if you grew up between cultures, you know this feeling.

Because we do learn the world around us
We move through it like anyone else
We understand its rules, its references, its rhythm.

But we also carry something quieter, a parallel world most people don’t see or know about.

It lives in memories that don’t translate
In inside jokes that fall flat outside the circle
In moments that shaped you, but have no place where you are.

And then there’s language.

Some of us speak our parents’ language, some don’t. Some are fluent, some are still finding their way.

Either way, it stays with you

Because language isn’t just words, it’s a way of thinking. You don’t just switch vocabulary, you shift perspective.

Sometimes you even feel it in yourself. Not like you’re becoming someone else, just.. a different version of the same person, expanded.

Every culture has its codes: What’s said, what’s not. What’s allowed, what’s felt but never expressed..

And if you understand more than one, you start to see the world differently.

Then comes the next layer, religion.

Growing up with beliefs and traditions that don’t match the world around you

Again, different rhythms, different priorities and a different way of making sense of life altogther.

You learn what everyone else knows, but you also carry what they don’t: Names, stories, references that exist outside the mainstream.

It’s not always visible, but it shapes how you move.

Living through all of this does something to you. It doesn’t just make you adaptable, it makes you more aware.

You understand what it means to be misunderstood
To feel slightly out of place
To not fully belong

Some embrace it, others struggle with it.

But when you’ve felt that, you don’t want others to feel it too.

Not everyone reflects on it, but those who do soften.

They listen more
They notice more
They hold space differently

Because they’ve lived the distance.

Immigrant kids blend it, and stand out.

We connect things that aren’t supposed to touch
We carry perspectives that don’t usually meet.

We’re rarely the ones drawing lines because we know what it feels like to stand outside them.

Being an immigrant isn’t easy

It comes with friction
With weight
Sometimes with rejection

But it builds something solid

Depth
Awareness
Resilience

You learn to see more
To feel more
To understand more

You don’t just move between worlds

You connect them.

We don’t need to split ourselves to fit in, we don’t need to shrink parts of us to be understood.

We carry multiple worlds
Multiple languages
Multiple ways of being

That’s our wealth.

Let us be.

Thanks for reading.

Teekay

European cities

Realizations after 9 years of living and traveling in Europe

May 18, 2025 — Leave a comment

Suddenly, the world feels so small.

It’s funny how easily we take things for granted once we’ve lived them.

I hadn’t set foot in continental Europe until I was 17. I was never particularly fascinated by it, but I was curious, mainly because I’ve always been a football head (aka soccer). My understanding of Europe came almost entirely through football. It’s surprising how much you can learn about a place through the way it presents itself to the world.

For me, football was Europe’s Hollywood.

Sure, I’d read books by European thinkers like Rousseau, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Adam Smith (dad’s an economist), Marx (capitalism’s greatest critic), Montesquieu and plenty of Greek philosophers, but most of them weren’t contemporary thinkers. They wrote about their own times, their realities. Football, on the other hand, made Europe feel present, dynamic, real. It gave me a window into the continent’s character.

For instance, I knew about the English and their pub culture way before I had set foot in England. I already knew they loved to drink before games, loved to sing in the stands and viewed the sport almost like a religion.

The Dutch, with their total football philosophy, played the game differently. Organized, intelligent, team-oriented, their football reflects a society that values structure and versatility.

The Germans famously love their beer. Bayern Munich holds a photoshoot every year to promote Oktoberfest, which I only knew about thanks to their events.

The Turks are loud and proud. Fireworks in the stands, packed stadiums on a weekday, and fans who treat football like life or death, it perfectly depicts their character.

The Spanish, on the other hand, are just as proud, but more divided. The Basques, Catalans and Andalusians all bring their own flair to the game. They also have their own holidays, like San Jordi (Catalan Valentine’s day), and you learn about those through football too.

The Italians are perhaps the only ones who proudly exposed the ugly face of their society through the beautiful game: their racism toward Black players, their theatrics and machismo are ever present on the pitch and off of it. Their passion is unmatched and unapologetic, but so is their cheating. Not great, thank God people outside of football are different.

Anyway, last but not least, the French. It was already striking to me how different people within the country were. France is so diverse, which I already knew then, but which became even clearer the second I set foot here.

I’ve been to more than 20 European countries since moving here, and visited over 100 cities in Europe. I’ve made lifelong friends who became family. I studied, partied and worked with them. Better yet, I ended falling in love with a European, who then became my wife and lifelong partner. Who would’ve thought?

And yet, I take it all for granted now.

I love living in Europe, and there is nowhere else I’d rather be, but traveling around Europe doesn’t excite me as much as it used to. It feels like I’ve seen it all, which, of course, isn’t true.

It’s strange how easy it is to feel indifferent to things you once dreamed of.

Gratitude, I’ve learned, isn’t just a feeling. It’s an action. A choice.

Our next trip in Europe will be to the Balkans, and Greece. Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia are on our list. I hear the culture there is very different to Western Europe, which is super exciting!

Thank you for stopping by.

Peace!

Teekay

Teekay scuba diving

How I got into scuba diving despite the odds

May 6, 2025 — Leave a comment

It’s been bumpy.

In September 2024, after touring Europe for 9 months, I realized I needed a new challenge. I had no routine back then, but I was itching for something that would push me out of my comfort zone. I hesitated between picking up rollerblading again, something familiar and nostalgic, or diving into something completely new.

As someone captivated by the ocean and its many mysteries, I started thinking why not do something with that? That’s how I got into scuba diving.

Now, I knew absolutely nothing about scuba diving. I’d snorkeled a million times before, sure, but as I quickly learned, scuba is a different beast altogether.

There was one small problem, though: I was only going to be around for a couple of weeks before heading off on a another road trip through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Luxembourg, before eventually visiting friends in Strasbourg and Romans. Not exactly the ideal time to start something new.

Still, I called the local dive club and got through to P. I think he’s the president, though I’m not entirely sure. What I do know is that he’s an experienced instructor and sounded like a genuinely nice guy. I told him I’d have to disappear for a couple of months after my first session, and he just said, “No problem. We’ll pick it up from there when you’re back in December.” That put me at ease.

Before leaving, I squeezed in my first-ever scuba dive in the pool, and let’s just say it didn’t go smoothly.

At barely two meters deep, the pressure was too much for my ears. We had to resurface twice before I could finally stay down. I was tense, bloated, and extremely uncomfortable, definitely not my finest hour. I left with more doubts than confidence. But I had two months to reflect, refocus, and maybe strengthen my Eustachian tube.

When I came back in December, I jumped right back in. The group had changed, most of the other “newbies” weren’t so new anymore, and they all seemed to know each other pretty well. I didn’t mind. P was there and made sure I was comfortable. Besides, I’ve always been a bit of an outsider anyway.

So, the second session? A total game changer. Thanks to the dryland workouts P had recommended, I was way more relaxed, and my ears cooperated this time. I actually enjoyed myself. It was the confidence boost I needed.

But not so fast.

Session three was a swim session. And here’s something I may have mentioned on this blog before: I’ve always wanted to learn how to swim properly, but never got around to it. Growing up by the sea, I swam “freestyle” almost every summer. My dad first threw me in the water at age 5. He’s always been a strong swimmer but me? Not so much. Or not at all!

So during that swim session, the lack of technique finally caught up with me. Everyone else swam like they knew what they were doing. I felt like I was flailing.

When I remember the most from that session was that the instructor on duty that day wasn’t exactly kind about it. However, another one quietly pulled me aside, explained what I was doing wrong, and gave me tips on how to improve. That five-minute exchange was all I needed.

Then came the sting.

At the end of the session, I overheard some instructors talking to P, my “supervisor.” Let’s just say that they were extremely harsh. I knew that I wasn’t ready, that I could barely float, that I couldn’t swim, but the stuff and the way they said it was just mean. But in hindsight, that moment made me push through to prove them wrong. I had no doubt that I would improve. Talk is cheap.

Right after that incident, I started taking proper swimming lessons outside of scuba. I practiced every chance I got. Little by little, things started clicking.

Weeks went by. My scuba technique improved. I got more confident in the water. I stopped feeling like I was just surviving and started actually enjoying it.

And just this past weekend, I went on my first dive in nature.

It was amazing.

Sure, I lost my weight belt (50 bucks gone in a splash) but I didn’t care. The dive itself was beautiful. I was paired with G, a quiet guy who knows his stuff. Not a chatterbox, but full of good advice. I also really like E, another club member. Super chill and probably the nicest guy there, even though I don’t see him often.

Now summer is right around the corner. In a few weeks, we have a diving weekend coming up, and I can’t wait. I’m close to getting my first-level certification. It’s been tough, my technique was abysmal when I started, but I’ve grown a lot. I’m feeling more comfortable, more daring.

My instructors helped me a lot. But I’m also proud of the work I put in. I earned this progress.

Will I continue next year? I think so. I want to see where this journey goes.

We’ll see what happens once the season ends.

Thanks for reading!

Teekay

Life in Lyon, mostly pros and some cons

December 14, 2021 — 1 Comment

My Honest Experience After Three Years

Lyon was the city where I became an adult.

I moved there to study at university and stayed for three years. During those three years, I learned how to live on my own, manage money, make mistakes and figure out what kind of life I wanted.

Would I move back?

Probably not.

Would I recommend it?

Absolutely, to the right person.

Those two answers aren’t contradictory.

I’ve lived in several countries and cities since then, so I naturally compare Lyon with many other places. Looking back, I appreciate it much more today than I did while I was actually living there.

It’s not my favorite city in France.

It never felt like home.

But that’s okay.

Some cities aren’t meant to be your final destination. They’re meant to prepare you for whatever comes next.

Lyon did exactly that.

If you’re thinking about moving there, studying there or you’re simply curious about what everyday life is like, here’s my honest experience, the good, the bad and everything in between.

Big enough to keep you busy, small enough to breathe

One of the first things I appreciated about Lyon was its size.

It’s a proper city.

You’ll find concerts, museums, football matches, festivals, universities and pretty much everything you’d expect from one of France’s biggest urban areas.

Yet it never felt overwhelming.

I’ve spent time in cities where leaving the house already feels exhausting. Too many people. Too much traffic. Too much noise.

Lyon never gave me that feeling.

You can cross the city without turning it into an expedition. After a while, you start recognizing neighborhoods instead of feeling lost in them.

I think Lyon found a balance that many cities never do.

It’s large enough that you’ll rarely run out of things to do.

It’s small enough that everyday life still feels manageable.

Public transportation is one of Lyon’s biggest strengths

I’ve always believed that a good city is one where you don’t need to think about transportation.

Lyon is one of those cities.

The metro works.

The trams work.

The buses work.

The funicular still feels fun no matter how many times you take it.

Most days, I simply left my apartment and went wherever I needed without thinking twice about how I’d get there.

That’s probably the highest compliment I can give any transportation system.

I’ve lived in places where owning a car felt almost mandatory.

Lyon wasn’t one of them.

Even today, if someone asked me which French city impressed me most when it comes to public transportation, Lyon would easily make my shortlist.

Its location is almost unfair

If I had to choose Lyon’s biggest advantage, this would probably be it.

You’re close to almost everything.

The Alps.

Switzerland.

Italy.

Southern France.

Paris.

Whether you enjoy hiking, skiing or simply taking weekend trips, Lyon makes it ridiculously easy.

Some of my favorite memories from those three years weren’t actually in Lyon.

They were outside it.

I spent weekends hiking around Grenoble, exploring Annecy, discovering Aix-les-Bains and getting lost in places I’d never heard of before moving there.

Annecy quickly became one of my favorite places in France.

If you’ve never been, put it on your list.

Seriously.

Living in Lyon made all those trips possible.

Instead of spending every weekend in the same city, I could keep discovering somewhere new.

That suited me perfectly.

I’ve never been someone who enjoys staying in one place for too long.

Student life

Lyon has a reputation for being one of France’s best student cities.

From what I saw, it deserves it.

The universities attract students from all over France and abroad. There are always events happening, cafés full of students and plenty of nightlife if that’s your thing.

It wasn’t really mine.

I’ve never been much of a drinker.

While many of my classmates spent Thursday nights in bars, I was usually somewhere else.

Watching football.

Learning about investing.

Trying to earn money.

Or simply enjoying a quiet evening.

I had just left home, and my priorities were different.

I wanted to become independent.

I wanted to stop relying on my parents as quickly as possible.

So my experience of Lyon probably wasn’t the typical student experience.

That doesn’t mean the city lacked nightlife.

Quite the opposite.

It simply means I chose a different path.

And looking back, I wouldn’t change it.

The People

If there’s one thing I never fully connected with in Lyon, it was the people.

Before anyone gets offended, let me explain.

I’d lived in several countries across four continents by then (6 by now). Every place has its own personality, and every person experiences it differently. This is simply how I felt during my three years there.

Compared with other places I’d lived, people in Lyon often seemed more reserved. Conversations didn’t happen as naturally. Making friends took time.

That doesn’t mean people were cold.

In fact, once you got to know them, many were kind, loyal and welcoming.

The first step just felt a little harder.

Ironically, some of the friendliest interactions I had weren’t in the neighborhoods people usually recommend.

The neighborhoods everyone warned me about

Whenever Vénissieux or Les Minguettes came up, people usually had something negative to say.

Crime.

Poverty.

Avoid them.

That was the reputation.

Then I actually went there.

What I found were families doing their shopping, kids playing outside, neighbors talking to one another and people simply living their lives.

Were there problems?

Of course.

No one should pretend those neighborhoods don’t face real social and economic challenges.

But reducing entire communities to their crime statistics never sat right with me.

Those visits reminded me of something I’ve experienced in many countries.

Places are rarely as simple as their reputation.

Some of the wealthiest neighborhoods I’ve visited felt emotionally empty.

Some of the poorest felt surprisingly alive.

Lyon reinforced that lesson.

The city where I stopped eating meat

Most people associate Lyon with food.

It’s often called the gastronomic capital of France.

Ironically, it’s also where I stopped eating meat.

When I arrived in Lyon, I was still omnivorous. That said, I never really enjoyed meat.

I mostly ate it because everyone around me did.

Then I started having recurring digestive problems.

One day I simply thought:

Enough. Not because I knew it was the issue, simply because I stopped liking it.

To my surprise, many of my digestive problems disappeared.

At the time, I became pescatarian.

Years later, that decision eventually led me to veganism, but that’s another story for another day.

So whenever someone asks me about Lyon’s famous cuisine, I smile a little.

Most people remember Lyon because they discovered French food.

I remember it because I discovered I didn’t want to eat red meat anymore.

Funny how life works.

Cost of living

Lyon isn’t cheap.

Then again, compared with Paris, it almost feels affordable.

Housing was my biggest expense, just like it is for most people.

Finding an apartment wasn’t always easy either.

French administration loves paperwork.

Sometimes it feels like you need paperwork to prove you have paperwork.

If you’re moving from abroad, be prepared.

You’ll probably hear words like garant, dossier and justificatif more often than you’d like.

Once I got through all of that, everyday life became much easier.

Public transportation kept transportation costs low.

Walking was often faster than driving.

And because I wasn’t someone who spent every weekend partying, my student budget stretched surprisingly well.

My favorite places

Even years later, certain places immediately come back to me.

Fourvière

If you only visit one place in Lyon, make it Fourvière.

The basilica dominates the city, but honestly, I remember the view just as much as the building itself.

Standing up there, Lyon suddenly makes sense.

You can see how the city grew around the Rhône and the Saône.

It’s one of those places where you naturally slow down for a few minutes.

Vieux Lyon

Yes, it’s touristy.

Yes, you should still go.

I never got tired of wandering through its narrow streets.

Sometimes I’d intentionally take a different route just to see where I’d end up.

That’s usually the best way to explore old cities.

Parc de la Tête d’Or

I’ve always believed every city needs somewhere people can simply exist without spending money.

Parc de la Tête d’Or is that place.

You can walk.

Read.

Exercise.

Sit under a tree.

Or do absolutely nothing.

Cities need spaces like that.

Probably more than shopping malls.

Along the rivers

The Rhône and the Saône quietly became part of my routine.

Sometimes I’d walk for no particular reason.

Sometimes I’d stop and watch people cycling past.

Other times I’d just sit there.

Not every memorable place has to be spectacular.

Sometimes it’s enough that it makes you slow down.

Football

Anyone who knows me knew this section was coming.

Olympique Lyonnais was impossible to ignore while living there.

Watching matches at Gerland became part of my time in Lyon, I truly loved it.

Football has a way of connecting you to a city, even when you know you won’t stay forever.

What I didn’t love

As much as I appreciate Lyon today, I never felt a strong desire to stay.

Part of that had nothing to do with the city itself.

Even in my early twenties, I knew I wanted to keep exploring the world. Lyon was never meant to be my final destination. It was simply the next chapter.

The weather didn’t always help either.

If you enjoy long, sunny summers and mild winters, Lyon might disappoint you. Winters often felt gray, and snowy, and after a while I found myself craving the ocean.

That’s one of the reasons I eventually fell in love with southwest France.

I also never developed the emotional connection I later felt with other places.

Some cities grab you almost immediately.

Lyon never did that for me.

It earned my respect long before it earned my affection.

Looking back, those are two very different things.

Would I move back?

Probably not.

Not because there’s anything wrong with Lyon.

Simply because today I know what I’m looking for.

I need nature close by.

I prefer smaller cities.

I love being able to reach the ocean within minutes.

I enjoy quieter places where life feels a little slower.

Lyon doesn’t pretend to be that city, and I wouldn’t ask it to be.

That doesn’t make it worse.

It just makes it different.

So, who is Lyon actually for?

If you’re a student, I think Lyon is one of the best choices in France.

If you enjoy public transportation, you’ll probably love it.

If you like having concerts, museums, football matches and weekend trips all within easy reach, Lyon has a lot to offer.

If you enjoy hiking or skiing, its location alone is almost enough to convince you.

If you’re looking for your first experience living away from home, it’s a city where it’s relatively easy to become independent.

On the other hand, if your dream is living beside the sea, spending every weekend at the beach or escaping into nature within a few minutes, there are probably better places.

And if warm weather is essential to your happiness, Lyon’s winters may eventually wear you down.

Three years that changed me

When I moved to Lyon, I thought I was moving there to get a degree.

Looking back, I learned much more than what happened inside a classroom.

It’s where I learned how to live alone.

It’s where I started managing my own money.

It’s where I stopped eating meat after years of digestive problems and eventually began the journey that would later lead me to veganism.

It’s where I realized I cared more about freedom than status.

More about experiences than possessions.

More about discovering the world than settling in one place.

Lyon didn’t turn me into the person I am today.

But it helped shape that person.

For that, I’ll always be grateful.

Verdict

Would I recommend Lyon?

Yes.

Without hesitation.

Not because I think it’s the greatest city in France.

Not because it’s perfect.

No city is.

I’d recommend it because it’s a city that works.

It offers opportunities without the intensity of Paris.

It has excellent public transportation.

It’s beautiful without feeling like an open-air museum.

It’s surrounded by incredible places to discover.

And if you’re willing to make the effort, you can build a very good life there.

Would I choose to live there again?

No.

My life has taken me in a different direction.

But every time I think about Lyon, I remember the city where I became independent, where I challenged old habits, where I grew up, and where I quietly started building the life I live today.

Some cities become your home.

Others become part of your story.

For me, Lyon will always be the latter.

Thanks for reading.

Teekay

Update (2026): I lived in Lyon over a decade ago. While things like housing prices, bike infrastructure and vegan options have evolved since then, this article remains an honest account of what it was like to live there and the lessons I took away from those three years.