COMMUNITY
Mike Roy, now touring the
world, that’s all he needs.
Roy has been on the road
for two and a half years
and covered 30,000 km
with three rules: no gas,
no meat and no trash.
On his website, Mike
notes: “Travel gives you
the opportunity not only
to become happier, but
also to become better. It
expands your sphere of
compassion. Once you
first feel that inkling that
everyone else is just as
important as you, and for
all the same reasons, it
becomes natural to try to
take their well-being into
account when you make
a decision.”
As this article goes to
print, Mike is currently in
northeast India. So far, he
has been cycling through
Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand,
Cambodia, Burma and
Nepal. He has shared
the road with a number of other nomadic
cyclists whom he terms
“faux-bos”, including Dr.
Stephen Fabes, who has
been on the road for five
years and 60,000km.
Obviously, this lifestyle is
not for everyone – and
some people who choose
to embrace it may simply
enjoy being nomadic. But
in Mike’s case, it’s as much
about raising awareness
of environmental issues,
and showing that it’s possible to live happily on a
very small carbon footprint, as it is about enjoying being outside, riding
his bike, and having few
possessions.
He gave a TEDx talk in
Palgong about how after teaching English in
South Korea for two years,
he came to see that he
was not separate from
the problems he was seeing locally and globally.
“Problems like resource
depletion, deforestation
and climate change,
don’t feel real to us. […]
What feels real is […] waking up on time, paying
the bills, the happiness
and welfare of our friends
and family. But if we want
to make progress on fixing
the big issues, and if we
Anthony By Parvati Magazine staff
want to build a sustainable and a just culture,
we all need to be thinking
about more.”
He went on in the TEDx
talk to say, “If you’re Christian and you think you
ought to love your neighbor, if you’re a Buddhist
and you want to reduce
the total amount of suffering in the world, or if
you just want to be a nice
guy, that means keeping
in mind at all times the effects you have on other
people as though they
were your brother or your
neighbor.”
The Hindu reports Mike is
heading to the Sadhana
forest in Pudicherry, India, where he will spend
a month participating in
tree planting.
We’re not saying everyone needs to start living
on bicycles. But if Mike
Roy can, then maybe we
can look at ways to pare
down our own wants and
needs, in recognition
of the greater whole in
which we are implicated.