I revel in the queue these days. Lines speak to me. New driver’s license, new medicare card, wait for a flight to arrive, wait to exchange my krone back to dollars. I get to go through it all over again, as slowly as possible. I try to recall at least one thing, or the sequence of events. The flashbulbs of each day. Work my way from start to finish. Commit it to memory like a hostage.

A trip like this is not a highlight reel.

I see a man sitting on a street corner in Copenhagen, his head caulked at a 45 degree angle, his sunglasses rest on the table, his eyes closed, he soaks in the early morning late July sun. We leave a Malaysian bank into a throng of onlookers that are desperate to catch a glimpse of someone, but not us. We walk on the tarmac toward our Air Asia flight westward from Bali, a plane so large as though its passengers are about to colonize Saturn. I steal a quick conversation between two rowboat drivers in the straights of a Northern Vietnamese river. We devour our final veggie momos, bleary-eyed at daybreak at the border town in easternmost Nepal. We flee a fire in Kathmandu and tear gas in Istanbul. We fall asleep on a Thai beach marred by motorboats and wake up confused before a pristine view and gentle lapping waves.

Some memorable, some not at all, but all branded into the subconscious. They bloom when I smell a certain smell, hear a certain sound, see a certain colour, on a certain angle, at a certain moment.

The 8 months felt like 8 years. Daylight hours were maximized. Sleep ins were not an option. Generally, it was loud and you were up. The bus left at 6am. The plane took off before 7. The Georgians, at just past 5 in the morning, embarked on their trek and made enough noise to rouse a coma victim. Even when sleep tempted in our most weary moments, it wasn’t worth it. Stay in bed and you miss a midnight Indian holiday procession through the streets of KL, a pre-dawn hike to Poon Hill for the magnificent view of the Annapurna skyline, or the fastest boat out of Ranong to get your Thai visa renewed before noon.

4 months removed from travel, and 4 months into a non-nomadic existence, the same wake up time no longer proves as restful. Travel didn’t require that we be anywhere on time. But more often than not we were. We made sure that our months away didn’t slink by in what felt like weeks. The new routine seems so far removed, but the challenge is still there. I solve problems (complex laws vs. complex train schedules). I manage expectations (a hierarchy of bosses vs. surly hotel managers). I react quickly to changed situations (focus on x, not y, and you have 30 minutes vs. this is the last stop, it’s raining, it’s dark, and the next ferry only leaves in the morning…)

Set up anew and the old world camps out in the back of your mind like a far-away deadline: World Trip isn’t forgotten, but it’s fallen off the radar of my day-to-day life.

But it was a life.

We didn’t vacation like somebody does for 3 weeks in Mexico over Kwanza. Ours wasn’t just relax, sightsee and be carefree. The challenge was crucial. It defined it. Find out where to go next, how to get there, where to stay, and, most important, size it up against where we had been became our purpose. We studied the people and their manners. We compared cultures. We were critical. We made friends. We wrote (most) everything down.

I pour through the photos and it changes the flashbulbs. These moments caught in time become more than just memories. They are the core of a distinct day in the life. World Trip is defined less by where we went and more by how we adapted and maneuvered while we were on the inside. What made that day good? What made it hard? Why did I love about Langtang so much? What exactly? How did we find that guy’s place in Turkey?

I won’t return to every street corner. I don’t think I’ll see Singapore every again. But I remember the couple that studied architecture stuck in traffic in the bemo to Legian, and the lemon cookies we munched on under a tarp in Kuta Lombok during the predictable afternoon downpour as we learned about a German exchange student’s experience in Banglung, and wandering through rice paddies in Ubud, on foot, because no human could peddle up that hill on a one-speed beach cruiser. And that’s just Indonesia.

Flashbulbs.

(Maya’s flashbulbs, more often than not.)