Travel

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty." ~Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Of the twenty years I've been alive, the freest and happiest I've ever felt was when I was on the road. There's something about travelling around with just a backpack that completely enchants me. Perhaps something of a cliché, but travelling makes you easy going. You learn to go with the flow, whether that means a spur of the moment trip across the border to another country or just an unexpected meal with friends you just met. It makes you learn to let things go and embrace "right here, right now." It encourages you to figure out who you are or who you want to be. There's nothing like taking a campervan around New Zealand to make you realise that seeing one too many fields can make you a little crazy. Living in a different town or city every few days is liberating, you're not tied down anywhere to pay bills or go to class or do the ritual nine to five. You are free, to do pretty much anything.

On my first trip, I travelled around North America, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia. Pretty much a classic backpacker route across the world, but a bloody brilliant one, and one which I wouldn't change. Throughout my blog, I'll write about the different cities and locations I travelled to, good and bad hostels, means of travel, on the road experiences, and a whole host of other travel-related stuff that I would like to give my two cents on. Most importantly, I'll be blogging about my travel plans for my next trip that I'm taking in 2014. You may read me go on about my savings plan, visas, budgets and plane ticket prices, but planning a trip is the first step towards getting on that first plane, it's half the fun, and I can't wait to get started.