Despite my chronic pain conditions, there is one period of 2weeks to 6 weeks of each year when my pain abates to a minor ailment. Ever since I was a young man when I backpacked from Singapore to Israel overland living in temples and monasteries all the way and my total cost of transportation and accommodation in 9 months of travel was $3.41 . The desert parts through Baluchistan Iran Syria Jordan Lebanon and Israel were remarkable sanctuaries of historic dimensions. I understood why Moses, Mohamed, and Jesus found wisdom there. I vowed then to make solo crossings of all the tropical deserts of the world. Every year in the last 30 years I have made a solo crossing of all the deserts of the world. . . Pain free! The Sahara 3x, the Atacama, the Gobi, the kalahari, Thar, and all the central Asian deserts . My travel motto is eat with locals, sleep with locals( mostly worker lodges or hostels) and travel with locals. However they travel I travel with them. I live daily by my wits only with no reservations, no defined route, usually no fixed destination . I come how when I feel like it were ever I am.
But the curiosity is my pain abates. Certainly my survivor skills are at a peak. The adrenaline is in a permanent high dosage and the sheer joy and pleasure of my experiences releases high levels of oxytocin and I don’t need oxycontin. After I ran out of deserts I began remote continent crossings, just a few years ago from capetown to Cairo overland which I wrote about here:
https://www.thestar.com/life/travel/2011/07/15/im_74_and_i_backpacked_across_africa_alone.html
While I didn’t mention it I was kidnapped and felt NO PAIN. I knew my life was about to end. (If interested google ‘kidnapped by Somali gang diakiw’) Most recently at 83, last fall I went to Kenya to go to the remote Lake Turkana , Chalbi Desert area where life exists with 6 different tribes facing extinction and live dramatic communal lives of intense family relations and community cohesiveness. But for me, No pain. Go figure