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Its all up to you, Kenza, said my father as he handed me a compass and a map.

He told
me I was to be captain for the day. Look at the winds, plot your course, and well be
off! It was the summer before my eight-grade year, and I was aboard a 40-foot sailboat
with my two younger sisters and my parents in the British Virgin Island archipelago. It
was my first true taste of adventure: new fauna, unfamiliar food, and vibrant green
mountains rising up from a crystal clear Caribbean Sea. My thirst for exploration could
be quenched because I was at the helm at least for the day.

The Bonderman Fellowship has been on my mind since my first quarter at the University
of Washington. Solo travel to at least six countries for at least eight months in at least
two regions of the world?! I spent my freshman and sophomore year in denial that such
an opportunity could possibly exist, let alone be available to me. The thought of such a
chance for learning and adventure has consumed me. Through college, I have striven to
succeed in rigorous engineering courses while also exploring my new home state of
Washington. I found solace in nature as I backpacked through the Cascades and took up
rock climbing as a new hobby. I have dreams to improve lives through bioengineering
research in the future, but I have other dreams as well. I want to step away from system
pressuring me go to school, then start a career, then start a family. and gain experiences
that will be invaluable to me as a human being and engineer to improve our world. I
want go backpacking somewhere unfamiliar. I want to travel.

I am fortunate to have been introduced to travel. Due to my parents careers in the airline
industry, I was able to take formative trips to Europe and the Caribbean during my
childhood that otherwise would have been financially infeasible. I have fond memories
of staying in a French farmhouse and watching our host milk his cows, of glimpsing
Africa from Gibraltar. These family vacations introduced me to wonderful cultures and
beautiful places, but what did I really learn about myself? I yearned for a travel
experience of much greater depth and still do.

This past summer in the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy, my family stayed with a
man named Massimo in the tucked away mountain town of Laste. One night he made us
dinner and we talked for over two hours, exchanging broken English and our few words
of Italian. He had lived in Laste, consisting of 10 houses, his entire life. So had his
parents and their parents. Massimo talked about wars and changing borders, his
granddaughter, the local language only spoken by the few families that comprise the
town, and the communitys connection to the surrounding mountains and valleys. I
learned more in those two hours than I ever have about a person, a place, and a culture.
To me, the peaks of Pelmo and Cernero represented overwhelming beauty over a valley I
longed to make familiar. To Massimo, his gifts of a topographic map and conversation
represented an intimate piece of himself he wished to share with us. Massimo and the
Dolomites were a large part of my travel plan inspiration.

I plan to travel to Argentina, Chile, Peru, the Kyrgyz Republic, Western China, Nepal,
Myanmar, Vietnam, Greenland and Iceland. I am interested in how the surrounding
natural landscapes have contributed to cultural homeostasis or transformation of local
communities in these places. To what extent have harsh landscapes dictated aspects of
livelihood and culture? How have communities survived among the worlds grandest
peaks and most unforgivable environments for hundreds of years? I expect to see fringes
of modernity woven into ancient cultural traditions. I might see places and cultures frozen
in time.

I want to see landscapes through the eyes of the local people. I want to trek to isolated
mountain towns, the hidden places. The glorifying mountaineers and transient foreigners
have crafted visions of majestic places such as the white expanses of Greenland and
rocky heavens of Kyrgyzstan. But I know there is so much more to understand aside from
natural beauty. I do not wish to be another visitor passing through, only to gaze for an
instant. I wish to hear the words of the indigenous people and hold them in my heart for a
lifetime. I wish to truly see.

Motor biking through the Ha Giang region of Northern Vietnam through rising and
falling mountains lush with vegetation will be incredible. I hope to meet farmers working
the terraced paddy fields that line endless valleys. I dream of speaking to a Sherpa amid a
panorama of formidable peaks in the Khumbu region of Nepal. I want to understand both
the physical and metaphorical divides created by the Himalaya; the resulting tension
between Sherpa preservation of cultural tradition and influence from the western
climbing community. I wish to experience the mountains as the natives do: as their
religion and livelihood.

There is no doubt that my journey will be difficult in a physical sense. But intellectual
navigation will be the greatest challenge of all. I hope my beliefs are challenged
everyday, and that I see life through the eyes of others. Going alone will allow me to let
go of familiarity and live in the present. I imagine there will be times during my solo
travel when I will feel very alone. I hope that it is in those quiet moments that I am able
to reflect on the peoples stories and the places they call home; on how their cultures have
changed over time; on how I have changed. Id be lying if I said I wasnt a little scared.

I will take my backpack and hiking boots, turn off my phone and open my eyes. I will
travel deliberately so I can learn to live deliberately. And when I return from abroad, I
will retell stories of little known cultures, expansive panoramas, resilient people, colossal
massifs, and incredible human compassion. The lessons I take away from my travels will
stay with me the rest of my life. They will guide me on my never-ending quest to be a
more selfless citizen and a globally minded and human-focused engineer. I will inspire
others to never stop inquiring, exploring and growing. I will inspire others to dream.

In the words of accomplished photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin, I felt the urge
to live intensely. But how? This is a question I will likely struggle with my entire life. I
believe that embarking on this transformational journey across ten countries will lead me
to the answer. Watching sunrises over Cerro Torre in Patagonia; overcoming language
barriers; staying in a yurt near the Karakul Lake in the Xinjiang Region in China;
laughing; getting lost on public transit; ski-touring on an Icelandic glacier under the
Aurora Borealis; finding the secret rock climbing spots with local Vietnamese climbers;
visiting remote temples in the hills of MyanmarExposing myself to experiences unlike
any I have ever had will redefine my definition of what is possible in nature, culture, and
humanity.

I have my compass and my map. I am ready at the helm to take a new bearing and chart
a course of profound adventure; to feel the wind in my hair and seek transformative
foreignness; to foster understanding of new peoples and environments. To be presented
with the Bonderman Fellowship would be an unrivaled opportunity. With my dream of
personally transformative travel and becoming a world citizen through cultural
understanding, I hope you strongly consider my application.

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