Jeff Arata

I left the US on June 7th to do something different with my life

July 2022 I visited Alaska for 10 days with college friends. While the trip was great, I found myself thinking about the last time I really took a vacation on the flight home and realized it had been 6 years. I had taken some days off, done some long weekends, and taken a week to see family around the holidays (I wouldn’t call that a vacation though), but the last time I had taken extended time off to be fully separate from everything was 6 years before then. 2016. wat

Late 2019/early 2020, I had been working my adult job for about a year, had vacation saved up and what felt like stable income. I was thinking about doing something bigger, like 2 or 3 weeks off to somewhere I had never been (I was thinking India at the time). I hadn’t gotten past thinking about it when March 2020 rolled around and I promptly forgot about all that, until that same return flight from Alaska July 2022

With those 2 big slaps in the face, I started daydreaming of the most extreme version: backpacking a whole year. I obsessed over it, looked into Egypt cause that’d be sick, watched tons of videos of people who did the same, and landed on the idea of circling the Mediterranean. Then I remembered I had just signed a 1 year lease 1 month before this, so had to wait lest I wanted to pay a year’s rent for nothing

So I stewed on it, flip flopped, scared myself out of/back into it, and finally committed by buying a plane ticket less than 2 months out lol. A good friend of mine shared a version of Sylvia Plath’s fig tree quote which helped me to actually commit. And I’m glad I did, I met up with that same friend at the start of my trip as they had planned their own, so we got to hang for the first 10 days of mine :)

While the whole year daydream changed to 6 months in reality, I did spend most of my trip slowly watching all the fig trees around me come into season

Ultimately, I realized that there was something different I wanted to do with my life and I kind of forgot about it along the way. Now I’m glad I remembered and actually did something about it :)

💜💚

I’m currently floating around the US working on a project

I left Armenia Nov 23rd after doing the one thing I knew I had to even before going

Returning to Yerevan felt relieving and I was glad to have over a week staying in one place. Much of my fatigue came from figuring out where to sleep/how to get there. I took day trips for the rest there was to see, but I could rest in Yerevan

One day trip south was only in Russian and snowed in at the mountain pass. We changed to seeing Areni Cave, Noravank, and Mt. Ararat from Khor Virap (~1km to the Turkish border) which I was glad to see. The snow cleared 2 days later and I got to see Southern Armenia on a 2nd day trip. With another week, or less fatigue, I would have stayed awhile. Either way, I made some friends, rode the world’s longest cable car, saw Armenian Stonehenge, and had some stellar gata

Visiting the Armenian Genocide Memorial was the one thing I knew I had to do. I had seen it from afar my first day in Yerevan; the sun set directly over it in the distance from the top of Cascade. I saved actually visiting for my last day

The first day of my trip began in Liguria, the region my Italian ancestry is from. Over 6 months, I headed towards Armenia, passing through where my Armenian ancestors lived in the then Ottoman Empire/today’s central Turkey. The last day, I arrived at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan. I had almost 30 minutes alone when I first stepped down into it. I took it in slowly, reflecting on where I had been, where I was, and what this memorial meant

As I understand it, my Armenian ancestors emigrated from the then Ottoman Empire to the US some years before the genocide. Seeing this memorial, I wondered, what would have happened if they never left? Would they have lived? Would I be here? Would I have lived differently? Would I have ever lived? Would any of the rest of my family?

I didn’t begin this trip expecting to answer those questions, nor find myself asking them. I didn’t even know that much about my Armenian heritage until early October. I just knew I had to go to this memorial. Somewhere along the way, I learned why. And it’s something I’m still learning about

🇦🇲

14th year today :)

I first left Yerevan on November 4th without doing the only thing I knew of to do in Armenia

Before arriving in Armenia, there was literally only one thing I knew of to do. Fortunately the same day I arrived in Yerevan, the guys working at the hostel were stoked I had 3 weeks and suggested all kinds of places to go, things to do, foods to eat, and generally set me up with a plan for my time there. After expedmyself from Turkey on short notice/as fast as I could, the sort of reassurance I felt in Yerevan was quite welcome. And having people willing to help me navigate all that comes with being a new country helped a ton

While I took a day to rest some, one of the hostel volunteers helped me navigate the healthcare system. My hearing was the only thing I was worried about but had no idea how do find care. With no appointment, we walked into a public clinic, he translated for me, I saw a doctor, got a hearing test, was told what I can do/that I’d likely heal up in a few weeks time (my hearing seems to be fine now), and was back at the hostel within an hour. For $25. Literally have never experienced anything like that in the U.S. ever lol

I was recommended a restaurant serving Western Armenian food. I didn’t really know what that was until I saw the menu and realized I saw very similar menus in Turkey. We didn’t engage with our Armenian culture too often growing up, but the flavors are there in memory. On arriving in Turkey, the food was suuuper familiar, tasting just shades off from something I had long ago. But the lamb I had at this Western Armenian restaurant was it. On first bite, the flavors were exactly what I knew without knowing it, not a few shades different, but exactly on. I’m very much still learning about all this, but this was near the beginning of me learning about what truly is Armenian vs Western Armenian vs Turkish culture/food

You can see Mt. Ararat from Yerevan. The national symbol of Armenia is a mountain that sits in modern day Turkey, and you can see it from Armenia’s modern day capital. History is a wild thing 🇦🇲

I’m currently in Austin and temporarily a car owner again 🗿

I left Cappadocia on October 28th where most of the balloons I saw were only on postcards

As seemed to be the move, I took a night bus to Cappadocia after killing a day waiting in Antalya and arrived after somehow actually kinda sleeping on the 9 hour ride??? The dude in front of me was blaring autoplay turkish youtube videos while asleep, so I had to turn that down myself lol

A fair amount of Kas friends once again had a reunion for a few more days, all piling into the same hostel of course. Despite the balloons being cancelled and us seemingly having booked a free balloon ride with Uber that never happened, we still did get to see the cool landscapes there. Turns out the fairy chimneys were possible because the 3 main layers of rock have different hardnesses, the top layer being the toughest and most resistant to erosion/protecting the layers below like a roof, and the lower layers being easily dugout to create buildings from the rock. So we hiked around, explored some wild stuff including some 1000 year old abandoned churches carved inside the stone, and got yelled at for hiking through an area that was apparently an excavation site. Half the folks there hiked through that site, whoops

The underground cities nearby were pretty crowded with tourists, but we had heard beforehand that there were some tunnels there that you could clearly go down if you really wanted, but weren’t well lit/easy to access. I think we found all of them, including a few that seemed like they opened up to multiple rooms, but most of them were just insanely tight crawlways that we bailed on lol. We did however sing John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” down there in the pitch black. I kinda wonder if any of the other tourists above heard us lol

While I never actually got to see the hot air balloons since they were cancelled each day I was there, the baklava at this bakery we found was amazing, and insanely cheap, so I think it balanced out some. I most definitely went every day I was there.

I’m currently back in Austin waiting out the rain 🌧️

I left Kas on October 20th, and still hadn’t gotten a sunburn the whole trip

After a not so fun start by forgetting my wall power adapter on the bus I took to get there (but fortunately being returned with the help of the bus station manager and a whole lot of patience/google translate under stress), I rolled into Kas and remet some friends from Fethiye. They invited me to check out an abandoned waterpark before leapfrogging ahead of me the next day. Having that sorta of familiarity on arrival is one of the wonderful things that can happen travelling through hostels :)

By that night, I heard legend around the hostel that one could potentially get “free” cake and tea by going to a certain beach club and hanging most of the day. And while the subtext that made the cake “free” was rather dubious, it was quite tasty by the waves lol

Of course, the centerpiece of my time in Kas was the logistical anomaly that was 12 people coming together for a full day boat tour, organized the day before, starting early in the morning (but not without a sprinted breakfast), complete with 3 cars among the group exactly enough to get us all there, on time. In addition to some cheeky drone shots from the IG famous captain, we commanded the front of the boat the whole way lol. To prep for this, we wrangled together a massive family dinner the night before of the most classic travelling go to meal: veggie pasta

All in all, Kas felt like the sorta beach bumming hostel living I had enjoyed most of the summer, but in October, and with a mess of another amorphous group of friends :)

I’m currently still in the Bay trying to have a bunch a good Asian food before heading back to Texas lol