How can we adopt an untethered attitude to life, especially when it comes to expectations of travel? C.L. Stambush talks about how her experience of motor-cycling around India taught her more about herself, and how she brings that to her daily life. We also talk about connecting with people across cultural and language barriers, when taking risks is worth it, and how we need to keep pushing the boundaries of our comfort zone to live a more expansive life.

C.L. Stambush is an award-winning writer, journalist, editor and author of Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India.

Show notes

• Taking risks and discovering that life improves because of it


• Riding alone on a motorcycle around India


• Breaking down barriers when we travel to different cultures


• Getting over our fears around traveling


• If we are not pushing forward, are we sliding backward?


• Cultivating an untethered state of mind


• Recommended travel books

You can find C.L. Stambush at clstambush.com

Header and shareable image generated by Jo Frances Penn on Midjourney and edited on DALL-E.

Transcript of the interview

Joanna: C.L. Stambush is an award-winning writer, journalist, editor, and author of Untethered: A Woman’s Search for Self on the Edge of India. Welcome, Connie.

Connie: Thank you. I’m excited to be here, Jo.

Joanna: This is such an interesting topic.

You traveled around the edge of India by motorcycle back in the late 90s. Why did you choose that trip in particular, what led to that happening, especially back then, when it really wasn’t so common?

Connie: That journey was a long time in the coming. I would date it all the way back to when I was in kindergarten or first grade when I was very shy kid and I just hugged the wall and kept one shoulder to the wall at all times. But as I became aware of what I was doing, I didn’t like this aspect of myself. I felt like I was really losing out on engaging in life, because I just kind of watched it from the sidelines.

So over the years, I wanted to become braver and put myself in situations like forcing myself to stay up and watch scary movies or get past this very scary stuffed bear in the museum alone, and just kept pushing myself farther and farther. By the time I got to India, which is in itself a very long, convoluted story, I was working for a pharmaceutical company, and they were downsizing.

I never imagined that I would leave the United States. And I literally had this overnight revelation where I just woke up the next morning and said, I quit. I sold everything that I had, I bought a backpack, flipped a coin, bought a one-way ticket, landed in Germany, and kind of went, ‘Oh, I didn’t really have a plan or anything as to what I would do.’

From there, I progressed on through Europe and then Eastern Europe and then the Middle East. I wound up working in India as an editor for a wire service, the women’s feature service and then when that contract ended, I decided I was ready to leave Delhi but I was not ready to leave India.

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I didn’t want to see India on India’s public transportation. So the motorcycle seemed the most obvious thing for me to do, because everybody had a Royal Enfield Bullet. You have this wonderful bump, bump, bump sound. And it just called out to me. So I decided, I’m just going to do this.

Joanna: We’re going to go back into the book, but I just have to ask as a child, you decided to become braver and force yourself to try these things. And then, like you said, you quit, you sold everything. There’s definitely something in your personality that makes decisions quickly, and then does these difficult things. But of course, this book is set back in the 90s. But that’s not the end of your story. How has this attitude to travel and taking risks impacted your life since then?

Connie: I think that it has allowed me to take even greater risks than I probably wouldn’t have. When I came back, I decided I wanted to get a master’s degree. And so again, I just up and left what I had going on here and went to New York and got a degree from Sarah Lawrence College, in creative nonfiction writing, and then came back.

So it has given me the freedom to understand that the world will keep going and keep getting better for you if you just keep trying the things that you want to do, but are a little hesitant to do anyway. Nothing comes to a crashing end when you try something new. Usually, it works out better.

Joanna: I like that. Let’s step into the book. Now, I’ve been to India a number of times. And of course, much of India is ancient as well. And there are some really beautiful places. What are some of the most memorable places that still stand out for you even all these years later, either because of beauty or an emotional or spiritual resonance?

Connie: I had lived in India for over three years by the time I took this journey, so I had traveled to various places. And then when I did this travel journey, I was basically on the edge so not necessarily in some of India’s most famous places. But during my time in India, the places that stand out to me would be the desert.

I’ve always drawn to the desert, Jai Samir, and then also the mountains and South India because it’s just so much lusher and greener down there.

In terms of the things that stand out to me, it’s not really places, but people.

I met just so many amazing people while I was there, even people I didn’t necessarily have a conversation with or engage with, just people who were friendly.

First of all, as a woman alone, riding a motorcycle, I didn’t really look like a woman, I looked like a Westerner. I had full gear on, I had a motorcycle helmet on. And they couldn’t really tell that I was a woman.

But at one point, it was early on in my journey, and I was riding along the highway, and in front of me was this overloaded truck with all these women that had gathered from a field where they were out working, and were being taken back home again. They were very listless and just sort of worn out from working in the hot fields all day.

One of them began to watch me. And as she watched me, she became more intent as to try to figure out who I was, then she began to nudge a woman next to her. And soon, they’re all looking at me. And smiling really big, because there’s the recognition that this is a woman doing something that women just don’t do in India, which is one being on a motorcycle at that time, as well as traveling alone. And then it was just great. They just all smiled and waved, and it was just really uplifting.

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There were many experiences where I ran into women. There was another time when I got stopped at a train station, and there was no train on the track, but the barriers were down. And the minute I stopped as a foreigner, the men would sort of begin to crush in on me because of the space or the lack of space that we have between the US culture and the Indian culture. And so they got quite close to me and kind of closed in on me. And it was very hot and I began to take off my gear a little bit at a time.

And the minute they noticed that I was a woman, they didn’t know what to do with me at that point. So they all just kind of stepped back. But this gave an opportunity for these tribal women who had been standing at a far-off distance with some of their sheep flock. They had been watching, but there had been no opportunity for them, so when the men moved away, the women just moved in.

They wanted to feel my hair and compare it to their hair, and feel my skin and compare it to their skin. And I felt like at that point, because I was quite lonely on the road – and this was even still, within the first month or so of my journey – that it was just really a lovely experience to feel that I wasn’t so alone because riding a motorcycle as a woman alone in India, I felt very much like an outlier. And to have these women come up and tell me, we get you. You’re different. We’re different. It was just a very beautiful connecting moment for me,

Joanna: It’s one of the things, isn’t it, with travel there that you feel there are always people who can help.