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beds. Anish alone remained sitting on the edge of his bed. He asked the question again in a different way, then again. He asked more specifically what I planned to do at the end of the year, and whether I needed to return home, and whether I liked Godawari. I finally cut him off. “I’m not really sure, Anish. But I’ll see you in the morning, okay, boys?”

      “Okay, Brother,” came the chorus. Anish lay down. I switched off the light.

      In my room, I pulled my backpack out from under my bed, and took a pile of T-shirts off a shelf, laying them flat in my bag. And I broke down. The emotion caught me off guard. I hadn’t cried in years, and I was really sobbing. I was happy in Godawari. But there’s nothing here, I told myself through jerking breaths. You eat rice every day. You never go out. You never meet any women. You have not seen a movie or TV in months. You have to take care of eighteen children. You are constantly dirty and always cold.

      I imagined my mom at the airport, saying good-bye to me each time I returned to Prague after spending Christmas in America. She would cry into my shoulder, sobbing like I was right now. I had always wondered where that sadness came from; leaving had never seemed like a big deal to me. And now here it was, that same desperate sadness, filling this very room.

      If walking into the responsibility of caring for eighteen children was difficult, walking out on that responsibility was almost impossible. The children had become a constant presence, little spinning tops that splattered joy on everyone they bumped into. I would miss that, of course. But the deeper sadness, the deluge of emotion, came from admitting that I was walking out on them. The children, as always, will be fine, Sandra had said. She could have said the same thing to my mom at the airport. I knew she was right. But I could not leave this house unsure whether or not I would ever return. I just wasn’t going to do it. Despite myself, I had become a parent to these kids—not because I was qualified, but because I had showed up.

      I went back into the big boys’ room. They were talking quietly in the dark.

      “Conor Brother!” I recognized Anish’s hoarse whisper. Dark shapes popped up in bed and whispered my name.

      “Boys—I’ll come back in one year, okay?” I whispered. “Okay, Brother!”

      “Good night, boys.”

      “Good night, Conor Brother!”

      I left Little Princes with a traditional Nepali leaving ceremony. Farid had come back from the hospital for a few hours to see me off with the other volunteers. The children, one by one, placed a red tikka on my forehead, gave me flowers, and bade me a safe journey. As each of the eighteen children approached, each asked if it was true that I was coming back next year. I confirmed it again and again. Some of the volunteers looked skeptical. Farid only smiled.

      I meant it. I would be back for them.

      Part II

       AROUND THE WORLD AND BACK

       January 2005—January 2006

      Chapter Two

      I ARRIVED IN BANGKOK on a warm night in mid-January 2005. My flight was almost empty of tourists. Just three weeks earlier, the tsunami watched around the world had shredded the west coast of Thailand, wiping hotels off picturesque beaches at the height of tourist season. I would be meeting up with Glenn Spicker, a close friend from my years living in Prague. (His nickname, Little Glenn, came from the fact he is only about five foot eight, though he packs more energy per square inch than a white dwarf star.) When the news broke about the tsunami’s devastation, we contemplated canceling our trip, but decided that the best thing we could do for the country would be to visit and spend money there.

      I knocked on the door of Glenn’s hotel room. There was a scurry of activity from within, the door flew open, and there was Little Glenn, freshly showered, dressed in shorts and a black button-down, holding a can of Thai beer in each fist.

      “Dude!” He put the beers down, gave me a bear hug, then picked them back up and handed me one. “Put your stuff down—we’re going out. Time to spend some money on this town—they need it bad. We’re in Bangkok, man! Can you believe that shi Oh, and there’s a change of plan. We’re gonna buy mountain bikes and bike across South East Asia. Way cooler, and it’ll impress the hell out of chicks. I thought of that on the plane—it’s genius, right? You down with that?”

      I dropped my stuff on one of the beds and took a long swig of beer, letting it seep through me.

      “Bikes. Yes, that is definitely genius. We could . . . wait—are you serious?” I said, trying to remember the last time I had even ridden a bike.

      “I never lie to you. Okay, this is awesome. Bikes it is—I’m serious. Are you ready? To go out? You need to brush your teeth or anything? The ladies are waiting, man! The real ladies, not the boys who dress up like ladies. I got your back, don’t worry. I know you’ve been out of the game for a while, that’s cool. You were saving orphans in Tibet. How was that? The orphanage? Was that crazy stuff, or what?”

      “It was Nepal. And yeah, ‘crazy’ just about describes it,” I said, nodding.

      “Crazy good or crazy bad?”

      “Crazy good. Strange, huh?”

      “I knew you had that in you. Awesome!” We stepped out and he went to lock his door. “But no more orphans now, right? We’re hanging out? We’re biking? We’re drinking and meeting women? This is your year, buddy. It begins now. Right, let’s rock this town . . . wait, my key. I gotta find my hotel key. Here, hold my beer.”

      Glenn was serious about both the biking and the drinking. Two days later we purchased mountain bikes, jettisoned most of our stuff, and set off riding across Thailand. We rode several hours per day. It took us two or three days to get to towns that took most backpackers a few hours on a bus, but when we did get there we were rewarded with impressed stares from women when we told them how we had gotten there.

      “I told you, man—I told you!” Glenn would shout across the bar at me.

      We rode until we reached the northern border between Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), then turned right and rode until we got to Laos. That’s where the road ended.

      “There’s no road? Anywhere around here?” Glenn was asking the woman in the tourist office. He was studying the map behind her head.

      “No, sir, I am very sorry—the only road is back where you came, back into Thailand,” she said with an apologetic smile.

      “Wait—what’s this? Is this a road?” He was pointing at a long purple line that bisected Laos.

      “That is a river, sir. The Mekong.”

      “Well . . . you got boats?”

      Four hours later, our bicycles were strapped to the roof of a boat. We floated down the Mekong for two days until we reached the former capital of Laos, Luang Prabang, with its fading colonial homes and buzzing night markets. The road reappeared in Luang Prabang, and we took off again.

      We pedaled our way up twelve-mile ascents, stopping to rest in jungle villages. Children ran to greet us and held on to us, our bikes, our legs, our saddlebags, studying us like fireflies they had caught in a jar. I would get off my bike and lie down in the grass and let the little ones pile on top of me, grabbing my face and touching my hair and untying my shoes. The older boys, those who reminded me of Anish and Santosh and the others, would sit a few feet away with wide grins, enjoying the scene but tinged by just enough self-consciousness not to join the pileup. I would sit with them too, unable to communicate. Glenn, having found some water in the village, would join us, talking to the kids as if they were old friends of his from Prague. The kids couldn’t stop giggling at him.

      I TRAVELED TO SIXTEEN countries over the next nine months. After six weeks of biking with Glenn, I convinced Alex, my friend from Kathmandu who famously had his camera stolen and traded for a chicken, to catch up with me. He too was going around the world. When I told him what I was doing, he bought a mountain bike and met me in Cambodia. Three days later, we were biking

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