Someone Once Told Me

World Tour

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2479This is Alex Ayling, a travel filmmaker who roams the globe with his brother Marko. Together they’re known as the Vagabrothers.

They won an international film-making contest in 2013 which saw them travel the globe for six months, passing through six continents. Now Alex explains his SOTM story fully in his audio commentary, but what follows is an abbreviated version.

”On that trip, in the second week, we were in the Riviera Maya in Mexico. I had actually studied the Maya in university. I’ve always been very interested in the knowledge that different cultural groups around the world have that we might have forgotten.

”We went to a Mayan community in the middle of the Yucatan in the middle of the jungle. There were two shamen there who run a temazcal, basically a sweat lodge, a clay bowl that’s pitch black.

”There’s a ceremony before you enter. It was in Spanish but we speak the language. The ceremony initially seems kind of ridiculous but we had an open mind.

”Time sort of warped and slowed down. I’ve never been so hot and sweaty and started to hallucinate and we all started to chant these words.

”After we had chanted that for what seemed like an eternity, everybody went around the circle and had to tell why you were there and what had brought you into the temazcal and what you wanted to be cured of, what was heavy on your soul.

”It was really moving for my brother and I, we were close but we had a lot of issues and were always competing and fighting with each other. That experience was one that brought us a lot closer together and clarified a lot of things.

”This message is also so simple and one that living in a concrete jungle, in any city around the world, is so easy to forget.”

Taken in London, UK.

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