A day ripping dirt bikes through the Kintamani jungles. We were offered a beer after, and instead both took water. There was nothing a beer could have added to a day like that.
At the end of the day, covered head to toe in volcanic dirt, the guides offered us a cold beer.
We both took water.
That moment is the whole reason I wanted to write this one down. Taj has no sobriety date and nothing to count. He's a "regular" guy, and I'm putting that word in quotes on purpose, because I've never been clear on what regular is supposed to mean. He just doesn't identify as being in recovery the way I do.
And still, the thing we both landed on at the end of a day like that was identical. There was nothing a beer would have added to it, and nothing about it worth wanting.
I think about that a lot when people ask me what an alcohol-free vacation actually looks like. For anyone who hasn't done it, it makes complete sense to picture subtraction: this idea of standing at a beach bar holding a soda water while everyone else is having fun.
That has never once been my experience of it.
How I met him
Taj and I met under pretty cool circumstances. We were both out on Fuvahmulah, a tiny island in the Maldives, for tiger shark diving. That's a particular kind of introduction. You don't really do a lot of small talk with someone after you've both been three feet from a 14-foot tiger shark. Safe to say you skip about four stages of friendship right there on the spot.
Taj is from Hawaii, and he brings the spirit of Aloha with him in a way I've rarely seen from anyone. There's a love that pours out of the guy, and it tends to land on whoever is standing closest to him.
The islands have been part of my life since I was about five, almost every year, growing up a California native with Hawaii sitting right there in my "backyard". That place has given me a lot over the years. Watching Taj carry it the way he does makes me smile every time I'm with him.
He runs Aloha Exposure, a locally owned tour and photo company on the island. Their whole premise is showing people the real Hawaii instead of the packaged version, through the eyes of someone who actually grew up there. They take people out for scuba, surf lessons, island tours, photography, and yes, of course, motocross dirt bike adventures, as a former motocrosser himself (which becomes extremely obvious about ninety seconds into riding behind him).
On top of all of that, he runs a ministry, Revelation of Hope.
Faith is a real part of his life, and he's loud and proud about it, in the ministry and in the work both. It comes out through his hands as much as his words. The way Taj sees the world, he catches with a camera and an artistic eye, then hands it back to his audience as a view you won't get from anyone else anywhere. Call it a philosophical lens, a biblical one. Either way, he finds magic sitting inside ordinary everyday life. Most people walk straight past that. He stops and photographs it.
His work lives on Instagram at @tajimagery and in his YouTube channel, Reflections of Hope. Over 20,000 people are already subscribed, and once you've watched a couple you'll understand why. It's incredible work.
He came to my home
That's what made this trip land for me. He had shown me his island. Then he came to Bali, which is my home now, and I got to return it.
We took dirt bikes up into the Kintamani highlands. If you haven't been, it's the volcanic country in the north of Bali, cool air, black soil, and jungle trails that open into views that stop you mid throttle.
We rode with Bali Mountain Dirt Bike, who run enduro tours up there and know those trails far better than any map does.
We gripped it and ripped it. Through the trees, through the mud, up trails that I wouldn't have found on my own. He rides like someone who has done it since he could walk, and I spent half the day just trying to hold his line.
The trails run from tight green single-track, where you can't see more than a few yards ahead, out onto open volcanic slope with nothing on it at all. Going from one to the other in a single afternoon is the whole appeal of riding up there.
I was completely, entirely present for every minute of it. Not because I was being disciplined about anything. Because there was nowhere else to be. You can't ride a jungle trail and be somewhere else in your head. The trail doesn't allow it.
The part nobody writes about
Then we came back down, filthy and grinning, and the beer got offered.
Neither of us wanted it.
That's the piece I want to sit on, because it undercuts an assumption that runs through almost everything written about alcohol-free travel. The assumption is that not drinking is a restriction you're managing, and that the only people doing it are people who have to.
You don't have to be sober in recovery to be alcohol-free. No reason required, no program, no story. Some people just find that the day was already full.
That's the version I wish got written about more often. Somebody looks at a beer at the end of a genuinely great day and can't find a single thing it would improve.
This is what the sober curious conversation has been circling for a few years now, and I think it's one of the healthier shifts happening in travel. Plenty of people are quietly asking what alcohol is actually contributing to a trip they paid real money for.
The math I actually use
Here is how I think about it, and it's simpler than most of the advice out there.
Not: what am I giving up.
Instead: what does this add to my life, and what does it take away.
Drinking was never going to put me on a dirt bike in the Kintamani jungles with a friend from Hawaii. It was never going to put me in the water with tiger sharks. It was never going to hand me a body that could hold its breath and go down there in the first place. I would have been somewhere else that day, and I wouldn't have remembered most of it.
I'm not naive about this. There are people out there riding motorcycles hungover, and people who drink and still travel well. That's not my argument. My argument is about what became available to me on the other side of putting it down, which is a life with a ceiling I haven't found yet.
That's exactly why I believe in adventure-based recovery. Sober doesn't mean small. It means you get the full, undiluted version of your own day.
What an alcohol-free vacation actually looks like
Practically, since that's probably what brought you here:
Build the trip around a verb. Ride, dive, surf, climb, shoot. When the day has a shape, the evening doesn't need one. Almost every drinking holiday I can remember was structurally a trip with nothing in it.
Book with locals who do things. Operators like Taj's exist almost everywhere. They're running real excursions, not bar crawls, and the day ends with you tired in a good way.
Go where the days start early. Dive boats, trailheads and surf breaks all run on a schedule that makes a hangover expensive. That does most of the work for you.
Bring one person, or find them there. The dinner table after the adventure is the best part of the whole thing, and I've never once needed a drink to enjoy it.
Don't announce it. Order the water, keep going. Nobody at the table asked Taj or me why we weren't drinking, because neither one of us made it a thing. We just said no.
You don't need to be in recovery to want any of that. You just need to notice how much better the day is when you're actually in it.
So here is my question for you.
If you took the drinking out of your last vacation entirely, how much of the trip would actually be missing, and how much of it would you finally remember?
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Whether you're navigating early sobriety, planning your first alcohol-free trip, or looking for someone to walk alongside you, I'm here. Learn more at Nomadic Addictt, read more about the inner work at Love Unlocked, or start the conversation.