Do you ever dream of disappearing? One day you’re there, and lots and lots of people could find you, if they wanted … and the next day no one knows where on earth you might be?

I thought about that while in Sri Lanka. Going “off the grid” …

I’ve given this some semi-serious consideration, and I’m not sure it’s possible, anymore. Which I find a bit sad and a bit alarming.

Sri Lanka seems like a pretty good place to get lost. Fairly populous, off the beaten track, perhaps not quite on the cutting edge of security-conscious — when it comes to Westerners, anyway.  Not like the U.S. or even the UAE, which collects all sorts of biometric data.

Our hotel didn’t ask for ID. We showed up in the van that they had dispatched to the hotel, and they simply assumed we were the people who had been due to arrive that day. (Someone had been holding a sign, outside immigration, at the airport, but he didn’t ask if the name was actually mine, nor did he ask me to prove it.)

The hotel didn’t even take credit cards. Not even for security purposes. Cash for everything. “Registration” was just walking in using the name on the reservation made weeks before.

So, if I hadn’t bothered to tell anyone that I was going to Sri Lanka, could I have disappeared from view — where I was, there on the beach?

Maybe for a few days. Until some governmental agency got serious about it, anyway.

The Sri Lanka passport control had seen my passport, upon arrival. I was on a SriLankan Airlines manifest. I had paid for the ticket with a credit card.

All sorts of electronic trails into the country.

But couldn’t I have disappeared from view, once I hit the ground in Sri Lanka?

A bit. Had I worked at it. But only if I had arrived with lots of Sri Lankan rupees (cash), or I had made an informal deal to swap some other form of currency with a local. Someone who didn’t know me. Because the money we were spending had come out of an ATM halfway between Colombo and where we stayed. Another electronic trail.

Plus, even as informal as our hotel was, not that many Westerners are knocking around Sri Lanka. If the government put out a general bulletin with my picture on it, some citizen probably would have spotted me within a day or two.

American writers, authors, like to create the Man of Mystery, who comes from nowhere and then disappears again, and no one is quite sure who he is or where he went. Remember the end of “Lone Ranger” episodes? Grateful townspeople invariably would wonder: “Who was that masked man?”

Obviously, wearing a mask will only draw more attention to yourself. May as well wear a sign: “I am trying hard not to be recognized or remembered!”

A more recent example of the unrecognized man is Jack Reacher, from the Lee Child “thriller” series. Reacher carries no identification. Has no credit accounts. Writes no checks. Pays for everything in cash. Carries no luggage. Buys clothes, in cash, wears them, throws them away, buys new ones. Stays in cheap motels. He is meant to be the nameless hero of lore. But even Reacher has a tether, as he wanders around the U.S. riding buses and hitching rides: he goes to a Western Union to pick up cash from a bank account he has in Washington D.C.  In one novel, that is how authorities find him. They wait for the bank transfer to be made, and they stake out the Western Union office.

So, where do you go to get lost? Whether you’re on the lam or just opting out? Inside the U.S. seems almost hopeless.

I have some ideas. They all have flaws that even I can see.

Life off the grid under the conditions I envision would not be easy. If I were truly attempting to get lost, it would involve lots of cash and probably crossing at least one border illegally and one or two false passports, and a convincing disguise. Alleged murderer Whitey Bulger got lost for 16 years, most of it hiding out in Southern California. So it’s doable, for a spell, yes?

It’s an interesting, even romantic notion. But very hard to pull off. Even in Sri Lanka.