archived from Evernote on 10 May 2025. editor’s note at the end for more context.
On Travel Stories
In a word, India is incredibly… populated.
This means that it’s not just a dream come true for avid people-watchers (like me) but also for anyone who happens to be cow, donkey, horse, swine, elephant, dog (especially), cat, many types of bird and camel -watchers as well.
The sheer number of people also means to an equally overwhelming number of stories, but here in this space what I have to share is the story of my own #asmtrvl experience backpacking India and Nepal.
on gratitude
One of the biggest parts about travelling/backpacking I found awesome is how much more thankful it made me, personally.
This is in many many ways; the most obvious one is in how we tend to compare everything with how good we have it back home. And as Singaporeans, we really do have it pretty good.
As a first time traveller/backpacker though, if you ask me I’d say all this thankfulness started even before the trip itself.
- When my parents allowed me to go, and how in the days leading up to departure they’d keep trying to make me bring more stuff and/or money (just in case).
- Prayers and messages from family and friends who wanna meet you even though they don’t have the time.
- Recent events have (to me) made air travel seem scarier, sure, but they’ve also helped remind us all to take nothing for granted.
Getting everyone through immigration in a foreign land is another Thing To Be Grateful For and so is getting your backpack and aaalll the things in it after flights.
Here’s a fact.
Things are definitely not going to go as you planned: trains will be delayed (or so full the doors are locked and you spend your journey sometimes literally squatting in the corridors of packed cabins), you’ll fall sick or get scammed, you’ll lose stuff and your hostel will run out of hot water, or electricity, or wi-fi (or all three).
But such is the way of travelling, that every single one of the above turns into a TTBGF.
So we’re thankful we actually got on the train at all! And that this toilet you desperately need to go to has a door! And that there is wi-fi, even if it’s only way out in the lobby and terribly slow.
Things do go according to The Plan; all we need to do is realise that it won’t exactly be ours.
All this just goes to show how long your writeup is going to get when you’re trying to actually count your blessings, and I haven’t even mentioned the wondrous sights of mountains and monuments. But the last thing I want to add here is how all the people are, for me, one of the biggest TTBGFs of all.
Your travel buddies, definitely. But also the random fellow backpackers, and the hostel staff, and the old man trying to pass off as a police officer so he could fine us, and the auto driver whose niece’s wedding party we sorta-crashed, and the red-faced guide who sounds like he memorised his lines including where to pause for us to laugh. Everyone you meet is gonna have a story, and that’s true whether it’s a happy or sad story, whether you get to find out what it is or never do and whether you’re travelling or back home.
What I learnt for myself though, is this:
1) to treat people like they do have stories and not just as supporting characters in your own great adventure;
2) to realise that you are you today partly because your story is yours, and not of a elephant herder from Agra or an elderly lady from Jaipur; but most importantly,
3) to be grateful for all of this, and go on, with whatever you’ve been given, to write the best story you can.
On Leadership
Here’s a confession: for a lot of my life, I’ve looked at leadership as something you’re either good at or not.
And today, I still feel the same.
What has changed for me though, is that time and experiences, including the #asmtrvl adventure, has taught me that maybe there are things far more important than natural leadership talent.
One of these things is a desire to lead. If you have this, then I truly believe positions don’t matter; whatever your actual role, you are going to act like a leader (whether this turns out a good thing depends on my second point).
On the other hand, the reverse is also true. Maybe you’ve experienced it too: sometimes there’s a leadership position that nobody really wants, but someone has to take and that lucky person is… you. Or you’re simply assigned as a leader of a group. If you never find in yourself your own personal reason to want to lead the group, you never really will.
And this is the other very important thing I have learnt: why do you want to lead? Is it for a nicer resumé? Is it for recognition? Do you want the experience? Do you want to change things? Do you simply feel obligated to do it? Or is it something else? Maybe it’s a mix of reasons.
The most important thing though, to me, is being conscious of your own reasons.
Throughout #asmtrvl, the phrase “out of your comfort zone” became almost a cliché for all of us. Anything bad happens? Out of our comfort zone! Freezing? Out of our comfort zone! Don’t feel like trying some weird food thing? Dude, out of your comfort zone!
But clichés are clichés precisely because they mean something important enough to be repeated. And we really were uncomfortable, and it did make us stronger men. The material discomforts though, for me, also pushed us to get uncomfortable in our regular reflection sessions too. And so we shared stories. We exposed flaws, and spoke the truth about ourselves, and then about our community. We talked about leadership skills and serving and social innovation.
At the end of it all, #asmtrvl wasn’t for me personally a step-by-step manual to be an awesome leader (it will help though, inshaa Allah).
#asmtrvl did, however, ask me these questions I now ask you, questions that are far more crucial to answer:
do you want to lead?
And most importantly, why?
Editor’s note:
#asmtrvl was a leadership development programme partly funded by Community Leaders Forum (CLF). this writeup was in submission of the final report. Even though we had no intention of this happening, #asmtrvl continued beyond our trip from 13 – 27 January 2015 as you can see on ASIIUM’s website here.
but #asmtrvl was also a backpacking adventure for the 9 of us from ASIIUM: Syamil, Aziz, Muhammad, Sofiy, Hafiz, Hanafi, Hanzalah, Sheikh and me. We’d never travelled together before. I’d never even been on a plane before.
I’m glad I did it, that I wrote this and that I’m finding it again. Alhamdulillah ❤️