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  Copyright © 2017 by Kim Dinan

  Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  Cover images © Curioso/Shutterstock, Phonlamai Photo/Shutterstock, Valentin Agapov/Shutterstock, sword_sf/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of experiences over a period of time. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been re-created.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dinan, Kim, author.

  Title: The yellow envelope : one gift, three rules, and a life-changing journey around the world / Kim Dinan.

  Description: Naperville : Sourcebooks, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016040631 | (pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Dinan, Kim--Travel. | Voyages around the world. | Generosity.

  Classification: LCC G226.D56 A3 2017 | DDC 910.4/1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040631

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Hampi, India

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Ecuador

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Peru

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Germany

  Chapter 8

  India

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Nepal

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Indonesia

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Vietnam

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Mexico

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Michele and Glenn Crim,

  in response to rule number two.

  Hampi, India

  Prologue

  Wendy and I stepped out of a creaky, multicolored boat onto the dust-packed bank of the Tungabhadra River. The river ran as dark and lazy as a slough. Three women in colorful saris beat their laundry on rocks near the riverbed. A small gang of boys splashed and shrieked in the sleepy current, naked and skinny as baby birds. We started a slow, meandering walk along Hampi’s main road. Heat pulsed from the dirt streets and crawled up my legs as we shuffled past coffee shops, tourist hostels and roadside stands that sold miniature Ganesh figurines.

  Across the road a teenage boy sat slumped in a black and yellow rickshaw that he’d parked in the shade under an outcropping of boulders. He perked up when he saw us. “Hello!” he waved. “HELLOOO! YOU NEED RICKSHAW?”

  I looked up and squinted into the sunlight. “How much?” I yelled, swiping my arm across my sweaty forehead.

  “For you,” he called back, “eight hundred rupees. GOOD PRICE!”

  The price he asked was nothing, really, in the scheme of things, but I knew he charged more than he should. I shot him my best you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look. During my time in India I’d developed a cat-in-the-bathtub response to being ripped off. Plus, haggling was a way of life in India. He’d double the price, I’d halve it, and we’d meet in the middle.

  I shook my head no and resumed my slow pace down the road; tiny beads of sweat flew from my hair and plopped onto the dirt street like raindrops. “Too much!” I yelled. Rule one of haggling: you must be willing to walk away.

  But the rickshaw driver wasn’t giving up so easily, and I didn’t expect him to. He called after us, “Ma’am, fair price. It is fair price! I will drive you anywhere you want to go! We go to Monkey Temple and Lotus Temple and Old Town. All day we drive. FAIR PRICE!”

  He jumped in his rickshaw to follow us. “It’s true ma’am, it’s true. A very fair price.” His rickshaw bumped beside us on the pockmarked road as he leaned his head out trying to woo us.

  My eyes fell on Wendy, who shrugged her shoulders, then back on the driver, and I shook my head in disagreement. “No, it is not a fair price. Six hundred rupees is what I will pay.” It was true that I wanted a fair price. But I realized with surprise that a part of me just wanted to win this bidding war. I’d come a long way from my first tentative days on the road, nine months ago.

  “Ma’am, okay, okay. I will drop the price. Six hundred rupees. If you are happy you pay seven hundred.”

  Pausing for a second, I calculated the math in my head. Wendy leaned over. “Kim, you’re arguing over two dollars. It’s hot as hell. Let’s just take the rickshaw. He seems like a nice guy.”

  I turned to him and smiled, conceding. “Okay, six hundred rupees. If we are happy we will pay seven hundred.”

  He smiled back, a white, toothy smile, and his hair flopped down into his eyes. Wendy and I climbed into the back of his rickshaw, and together we bumped off down an empty dirt road toward the Monkey Temple.

  The craggy ruins of Hampi spread out before us. I stole a glimpse at Wendy, her head cocked toward the window as she watched the rocky geography pass. The terrain looked like nothing I had seen in India, or anywhere for that matter, like an ancient giant had dropped boulders the size of houses haphazardly across the open land.

  The bright sun scorched my face, and I closed my eyes. A hot breeze whipped my hair into a cyclone. I folded my hands into my lap and absentmindedly felt at the place on my left ring finger where my wedding band used to be. My thoughts turned toward Brian. What was he doing right now? Did he miss me?

  I was imagining him in southern India, stopped at a roadside stall drinking chai, when the windshield of our rickshaw, violently and without warning, exploded into thousands of jagged pieces. Shards of glass blew over our driver and toward Wendy and me in a powerful wave.

  My eyes snapped open. Outside of the rickshaw, the world paused—still and silent. Inside, my heart slammed against my chest, and the sudden rush of blood drummed in my ears. Had we been shot? It seemed like a ridiculous notion, yet something had shattered the windshield. I looked down at my body. It was covered in glass but intact. “What happened?” I finally uttered. I looked up at our rickshaw driver, who still puttered down the road, wide-eyed and blinking, skinny rivulets of blood streaming dow
n his arms.

  “Stop driving,” Wendy finally managed. She leaned forward to tap our driver on the shoulder. “You need to pull over.”

  We steered onto the side of the road and our driver sat silently, unmoving, his hands still gripped tightly to the steering wheel. Tiny pieces of glass were stuck in his eyelashes like snowflakes. His arms were dripping blood.

  “What happened?” I said again. “Did a rock hit the windshield? Were we shot?”

  Our driver did not answer.

  Wendy and I climbed out of the rickshaw. We picked the glass from our clothing and out of the backseat. After a few moments our rickshaw driver stood too and began to dust the glass from his body.

  “Are you okay?” he asked us.

  We nodded and I pointed to his arms. “You’re bleeding.”

  Our driver looked down and wiped his bloody arms on his jeans and for a second I thought he might cry.

  “This is not my rickshaw,” he said. “I just rent it.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Bad karma,” he muttered, more to himself than to us. “Bad karma.”

  We stood in silence on the side of the road, staring at the rickshaw like we would a lame animal, and watched as our driver pulled the remaining jagged shards of glass from the windshield. The frantic beating of my heart began to slow. We are fine, I told myself. The windshield just broke because of the potholes.

  Our driver climbed back into the rickshaw, and Wendy and I followed his lead. “What is your name?” I asked him.

  He turned to look at me. “Mahaj,” he said. “And what is your name?”

  “Kim.” I smiled.

  “Wendy,” said Wendy.

  Mahaj raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Windy? So you are responsible for this.” His eyes held the spark of a smile, and Wendy and I chuckled.

  Mahaj revved the engine to life and steered the rickshaw back onto the road. “These things happen,” he said, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. “What to do? Many things happen in life. Still, we must be happy.”

  • • •

  Many hours later I folded seven hundred rupees up in my hand, the day’s fee for Mahaj’s rickshaw services. Then I dug through my purse until my fingers found the yellow envelope I had tucked into an interior pocket. Discreetly, I pulled some bills out of the envelope, and I folded them up too. It would be enough to fix Mahaj’s windshield and a little extra to turn his luck around.

  When I handed the money to Mahaj, he smiled and thanked me, putting it into his pocket without counting. Then he offered to drive us back to the boat dock. But evening had finally arrived, and the sun was retreating below the horizon. The small village cooled in its afterglow.

  “It’s a nice night,” I told him. “I think we’ll walk. But thank you for the wonderful tour of Hampi.”

  Wendy and I walked through the calm flush of evening, our feet crunching over the gravel in the streets. I thought of Mahaj and his life in India, of my life back in Oregon and how it had led me out into the world. Earlier in the day I told Mahaj that I was a writer. He’d told me that he dreamed of becoming a filmmaker, and I’d heard in his voice the same conviction I had in mine when I spoke of my own life of writing. “Mahaj, you must do everything you can,” I’d told him. He’d smiled his wide smile at me and said, “I am.”

  The river had just come into view when Wendy broke the silence. “How would you describe the yellow envelope money to Mahaj, if you had to?” she asked.

  I paused for a minute, thinking. It wasn’t the first time I’d pondered the question. In the beginning, I considered typing out a small note to accompany the money when I gave it away. But what would I say? And how could I even ensure that I would have a note prepared in the recipient’s own language?

  “I would tell Mahaj that the money I am giving him is not mine but a gift from someone else. I would tell him that it is my job to pass it on to him, that he is supposed to have it.” Wendy nodded, understanding.

  Behind us, I heard a shout and turned to see Mahaj running toward us, his right hand waving above his head, money clenched in his fist.

  He caught up to us, breathless. “Wait, wait,” he said between gulps of air. “You’ve paid too much.”

  When I looked down at the rupees in Mahaj’s hand I felt a flush of embarrassment. I should have explained the extra money, I thought. But I remembered the words I’d just spoken to Wendy. It wasn’t my money; I was just the conduit. And I remembered too the first rule of the yellow envelope: don’t overthink it.

  “No Mahaj, the extra money is for you.” I told him. “Please, fix your rickshaw.”

  “Oh,” he said, taken aback. “But are you sure?”

  Wendy and I both nodded. We were as awkward as two dashboard bobbleheads. For the second time that day Mahaj looked stunned. And then he smiled his big toothy smile and said those universal words, thank you.

  Chapter 1

  On May 11, 2012, I walked out of my job and into a warm and beautiful spring day.

  A few weeks earlier I’d sat in my cubicle nervously typing up my resignation letter. My hands were trembling as I took a seat in my boss’s office and told her what Brian and I intended to do.

  Maybe I should have known that my plans to sell everything, quit my job, and travel wouldn’t come as such a shock to her. Six months before, during my annual review, she asked me what kind of future I envisioned for myself at work. Never a good liar, especially when caught off guard, I’d blurted, “Brian and I want to travel!” She’d cocked her head slightly, processing my confession, and then said, “Well, if that’s the case, it’s best to do it while you’re young.” More recently, she knew that Brian and I had sold our home and moved into a temporary apartment. She must have anticipated that changes were in store for me.

  Still, I worried she’d be upset that I planned to leave or mad about the extra work she’d be responsible for while she looked for someone to replace me. But my boss had taken the news well. She’d been encouraging and supportive, excited for me, even. Exiting her office afterward I’d felt light and free. The secret I’d been keeping from my coworkers was no longer a secret.

  That evening, Brian and I and our friends piled into a pleather booth in our favorite bar and clinked our beers together to toast new beginnings. I no longer had a job. Brian had one week of work remaining. And then we would embark on a cross-country drive back to Ohio to visit with family before our international travels began. Soon, every day would be Saturday. We would have time, a commodity more precious to me than money, and we were going to spend every minute of it.

  • • •

  Three years earlier I’d first uttered out loud a truth that had changed the trajectory of my life. I’d been on a solo trail run, crunching over leaves in the winter stillness of Portland’s Forest Park, when a raw admission had bubbled up from the center of my chest and out of my mouth in a burst of winter air. I was not happy with my life. I did not want my desk job, my mortgage, or my car. I wanted to write, and I wanted to travel the world. I needed to.

  It had been an overcast morning, as most November mornings are in the Pacific Northwest. Weak sunlight filtered down through the leafless trees as my feet crunched over the ground in rhythm with the inhale and exhale of my breath. The steady sound calmed me somewhat, the familiar escape of my morning run.

  As I usually did on my runs, I mulled over my life, thinking back over the last seven years and wondering how I’d veered offtrack. To the outside world I knew I didn’t look offtrack at all. I’d married my college sweetheart, we had good jobs, and we owned a home. My type A personality kept everything in order: the house stayed clean; the Roth IRAs were funded. I ran four to eight miles after work each day. You could set your watch to the militant rigidity of my daily routines. Externally I appeared to be thriving. But internally I felt off-kilter. Somewhere along the way I’d lost the feeling of potential and excitement I’d
once felt for my life.

  And in the past few months I’d developed a crippling, ever-present anxiety. It had begun as a small thing, a feeling of unease, but had manifested over time into shortness of breath, heaviness in my chest, and squeezing in my throat. What had started out as an annoying but manageable discomfort quickly grew into an overwhelming feeling of intense panic.

  This panic would sideline me seemingly out of nowhere. While working or running or driving, or while my mind was wandering through mundane to-do lists or upcoming weekend plans, I’d be struck with anxiety so strong it nearly brought me to my knees.

  Running was my time to think, and the topic that most captured my thoughts in those dwindling days of 2009 was the root of my unease. On my run that quiet November morning, I considered the state of my chronic anxiety. For some time, I’d known that the anxiety correlated with the twinges of dissatisfaction I’d been feeling about my life. I was unhappy, and I knew it, but the thought of admitting it filled me with a suffocating dread.

  In 2008, I’d left a job that I liked pretty well and taken a new job, jumping ship for a shorter commute and a lot more money. Yet I’d known from the first moment I walked into the office that the job was a bad fit. Immediately, I felt out of place, like a clown bumbling into a formal dinner party. But they’d offered me a position with two weeks of vacation and a salary almost 50 percent more than I’d been making, so I shushed my inner voice as it screamed No! No! No! and said yes. Yes, I’ll take it. When would you like me to start?

  They assigned me a desk in a windowless cubicle; my closest—and loudest—neighbor was the color copy machine. My job was isolating and lonely, but I felt trapped there, roped in by the money. I had a mortgage and a car payment, after all.

  And more important than the car and mortgage, I had a husband. And he had only the faintest idea of the vast emptiness that had begun to consume me.

  The hours and hours I’d logged running had helped me uncover the crux of my anxiety: I’d spent the past seven years building a life I no longer wanted. I didn’t want the career, the house, or the car. For nearly a decade, I’d chased a life that I thought I was supposed to chase, following one path because I hadn’t known that there were others that branched off it.