This uplifting travelogue about a young Canadian family caught my fancy. It came out during the pandemic but of course the travel had happened before. In that way it felt like time-travelling back to an earlier era in two ways–a time when we could choose to discover other parts of the world and a time when the world was still ruled by ancient wisdom and simpler ways.
One morning at breakfast, while scrolling through unimportant stuff on his phone, Bruce Kirkby was totally distracted and barely heard his boys Bodi (7) and Taj (3) chatting to him while they ate their Cheerios. “Dad! Did you hear a single word I just said?” Bruce realized he needed to unplug from the modern world, and the way to do that was to get out–way out.
A bit of an overreaction perhaps, but Bruce and his wife Christine decided the time was right to embark on a unique trip halfway around the world to a thousand-year old Buddhist monastery in the remote Zanskar valley, one of the last places where Tibetan Buddhism is still practised freely in its original setting. They travelled over land and sea by cargo ship, river boat, bus, horse, and on foot (intentionally avoiding airplanes)–clearly the journey was not going to just be about getting there, but about what could be learned along the way. An additional component of the trip for Bruce and Christine, was coming to terms with their son Bodi’s recent autism diagnosis.
Bruce’s writing is funny, moving and honest. I loved reading about their courage to forge into the unknown and their willingness to accept challenges, as well as the many little bumps and bruises along the way. I related to the rewards they received by taking themselves and their children out of comfort zones and into intercultural friendships and self-discovery. And living for months in a place where there was nowhere to plug in the iPad! Even though I’ve never been to Tibet, parts of the book had a familiar feel because we actually lived remotely and cross-culturally with our children for many years, and I resonated with joys and struggles in their experiences that were similar to ours.
The adventure was filmed and funded by an Australian travel reality series which seems a bit incongruous. Even though the family of four only had two duffel bags stuffed with essentials, there was a whole crew of people and equipment alongside them that cluttered things up. Bruce is honest about not loving that aspect of it, but it was necessary to make it happen. And it did make entertaining footage possible, see the trailer below! The show was called Big Crazy Family Adventure.
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